XGS-PON with custom ONT

Greetings

I’m looking into Swisscoms XGS-PON connection and I’m looking at the possibility to bypass the Internet-Box 3 completely.

The reasoning behind this for me is that the Internet-Box has an output of 2.5gbit (measured at roughly 3gbit) max on the fastest local port. Swisscom advertises 10gbit and the only bottleneck between Swisscom and my home network is the Internet-Box (most to all other devices are 10gbit capable and I run OM3 internally).

According to the website:

Only routers and modules certified by Swisscom can be connected to the new 10 Gbit/s technology (XGS-PON). At the present time, Internet-Box 3 is the only router compatible with the supplied module.

However, from my understanding XGS-PON is essentially just a faster version of the GPON standard (essentially just dhcp+vlan), and with a XGS-PON (and sfp+) compatible ONT, the system could still work.

Swisscom ships XGS-PON with a Hisense LTF7225 SFP+ transceiver for the Internet Box 3. The module acts as an ONU from what I can tell, however simply connecting it to a compatible router did not work in a simple configuration (a Mikrotik CRS326 recognises the module, as opposed to say an Intel NIC, however bridging it to a router does not seem to work and I cannot get an IP address. The settings I’ve tried were the dhcp vendor client id 100008,0001 and vlan 10 settings specified by Swisscom for the fiber lines on this page: https://www.swisscom.ch/en/residential/help/device/internet-router/external-router.html ).

Has anyone else approached this topic or even gotten it to work? I would be appreciative of any Swisscom techs that could give their two cents regarding this as well.

Cheers

Carlo

This post is in English

@cfi2017

In the German part of the forum is an ongoing discussion about other routers (Huawei HN8255W & ZyXEL AX7501-B0) with 10 Gbit LAN interfaces and the setup process on XGS-PON. One user @user109 has a working setup and will post a guide soon.

Perhaps you could try to translate the entire thread and use the information to bring your setup up.

Imho @user109 is also very experienced with MikroTik products.

Best of luck & keep us posted on the status.

Greetings, Martin

This post is in English

Swisscom is talking about 10 GB because you can simultaneously have 1×2.5GB, 4×1GB and more wifi devices. So you get 1GB on several devices that work at the same time and even 2.5GB on another.
You should know that the IB3 was released very recently… The next version will most certainly have 4 10Gbit/s ports!

You have to be a little patient. To answer your question, you can almost use the router you want, it just needs to have an SFP + port to manage 10Gbit/s and the compatible fiber port. You can have a look at Cisco, they are at the cutting edge of technology in the field of telecoms, but the router will cost you an arm and a leg… For other manufacturers, I’m not sure if they make fiber routers with 10Gbit/ s Ethernet ports, but they will be expensive, but still less than Cisco.

Meilleures salutations de la Communauté francophone

Customers help customers

This post is in English

“On apprend parfois plus d'une défaite que d'une victoire” — José Raúl Capablanca

I am aware that the IB3 can theoretically output 2.5gbit + 4×1gbit + wifi, however that is a limitation with the IB3, not with Swisscoms fiber line. Swisscom sells a 10gbit symmetric fiber line and then sells you a bottleneck on top of that.

I am aware that the IB3 wasn’t released years back, however this is the very first time I’ve heard any claim that the next version (which doesn’t even have a release estimate) will support anywhere near 10gbit. There’s a thread in the german forum hinting at a possible 5gbit router, and Swisscoms tech support is naturally tight lipped about the topic, which is entirely understandable.

This isn’t about being patient and waiting for a new box. I’m a CS student who’s interested in the topic and am eager to learn more. This is a summer project for me.

Regarding the router, I am currently running an old Google Search Appliance server with two 8-core Intel E5s. Performance is not the issue. The connection from the server to the switch internally is 40gbit qsfp+ and the swisscom module would be connected to a mikrotik crs326 (which recognises the module) in bridge since the sfp+ intel nic in the server does not recognise the module.

My question pertains less to the hardware needed to router 10gbit or the current feature set of the IB3, nor a better replacement, it much more pertains to the effective connection from the fiber module via the sfp+ port to the dhcp/vlan settings the router needs in order to function properly.

This post is in English
a month later

Greetings

I can recommend ZyXEL AX7501-B0 for private purpose, but not (yet?) for Business (fixed IPs, PPPoE,…).

Now delievered devices are most pre-configured.

If not… here the configuration-steps:

(Connect via WLAN/LAN, use DHCP then go via your preferred Browser to 192.168.1.1)

Network Settings

  • Broadband
    • #1:
      • Mode: Routing
      • Encapsulation: IPoE
      • IPv4/IPv6 Mode: IPv4 Only
      • IP Address: Obtain an IP Address Automatically
      • DNS Server: Obtain DNS Info Automatically
      • DHCPC Options:
        • option 60
          Vendor ID: 100008,0001
      • VLAN (802.1q): 10
      • MTU: 1492 (maybe 1500 works too)
      • Routing Feature:
        • NAT: (Enabled)
        • IGMP Proxy: (Enabled)
        • Apply as Default Gateway (Enabled)

Then you should be able to register/activate your Connection: https://swisscom.ch/access/

regards

Christian

This post is in English
5 months later

Apologies to hijack this thread, but regarding the ZyXEL: are you able to

  • utilize full 10GbE from behind the router?

  • put the device into bridge mode?

This post is in English

@SkippyPlatoon

thanks for the contribution

No matter what you do, you’ll never use 10 Gbit/s on your PC

for the simple reason that no content provider has that bandwidth

unless you’re downloading

10 Gbit/s is for multi-device use for families or small businesses

Tip: read manuals and product specifications

This post is in English

“On apprend parfois plus d'une défaite que d'une victoire” — José Raúl Capablanca

3 months later

I do have that bandwith and can utilize it on a daily basis. There are other content providers that can and will provide that kind of bandwith. It’s not an edge case, and it has not been for a few years now.

This post is in English
a year later

Sorry for replying here so long after but I’ve read so many posts on here about the Zyxel 7501-B0 and had purchased one several months ago. I’ve done the configuration listed above by @Sennhauser-ITS. The router says it has internet on the status page. It says it has an IP. It shows DNS servers. It shows the PON status as green and Rx and TX show 10Gbps. I’m wired I to my laptop and have no internet. The green lights on the router are showing Power: Green, Fiber: solid green, Internet: flashing green.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

This post is in English

Quick and dirty:

  • Were you able to register your new Router by Swisscom?
    (https://swisscom.ch/access)
    -> Swisscom Support can help and Reset the registration.
  • Laptop got an IP from the Router and:
    • Can reach the Routers IP
      (given if you can open the web-interface)
    • Gets DNS and GW (GW must be the Routers IP)
      • And DNS is working? (for example “ping google.com” -> should at least show a public IP)
    • Can reach (ping)* a Public IP?
      For example:
      • 8.8.8.8 (Google)
      • 1.1.1.1 (CloudFlare)

*(If you can ping a public IP you’re connected to the internet, but may have a Problem with DNS.)

This post is in English

Thank you for your reply! I thought this as well. I was unable to ping Google’s DNS servers. I even manually configured DNS on the network adapter to use Google instead. I also found a diagnostic tool on the 7501 that lets you test the ping etc and that wouldn’t work either.

In GOOD NEWS, I have solved it. The problem is that on one of the posts here about the DHCP 60 setting it comes up with a “,” character on my computer - see this copied text from this forum post:

  • DHCPC Options:
    • option 60
      Vendor ID: 100008,0001

On the Vendor ID is says “100008, 0001” but I found another post that showed it as “100008.0001”. It used a “.” instead of a “,” character. Once I put the “.” instead of the “,” the proper splash page showed up and when I completed it everything started working! I am wondering if this was something with Google Translate on the page. I’m from Canada and my language is set to English - Canadian. When numbers are involved we use commas “,” so it might have done something funny there. No idea. Hopefully, this helps others that ran into this problem so I thought I would post and share!

Again, thank you for replying back so quickly and offering to help!

This post is in English
2 years later

Unless you and other family members are working in IT and have servers at home and in the office and on multiple clouds.

Selling 10 Gbs without being able to use it from a connected device is nonsense. And yes, I have machines in the house connected to 10Gbs network.

This post is in English