Its not happening tomorrow but I am located where I have the likelihood of having individual fiber (from a large bundle) direct to me (yee haw - - - - no more wireless where they're working overtime to convince me that 10 MBit down is 'fast').
This means that I need a equipment upgrade.
Looking for routers that can handle fibre optic inputs and also route same a 1000 Mbit out is going to be plenty fast but if I'm adding more connections - - - - well - - - - the router has to work. What I'm finding is that most of the presently available stuff is proprietary and with the same for software. That's not a route that makes me very comfortable. Compounding things is that I don't have loads of $$$$ to toss at a solution. That IPv6 is not unlikely from the provider (same that's going to be pulling in the fiber) that's a further 'challenge'.
Any suggestions out there for how to get this done?
You cannot replace the ONT that they issue you, because it must be matched to the OLT. You can only put the ONT in bridge mode (hopefully) and put a "normal" Ethernet router behind it.
In addition, most ONT devices use a proprietary fiber optic protocol, using 3-4 separate wavelengths to convey different traffic on a single strand of fiber:
Data in
Data out
TV
Standard fiber uses 1 pair - a strand for each traffic direction:
Data Rx
Data Tx
EDIT: Also, in the US, the ONT is the demarcation point and owned by the ISP in most areas. Additionally, I believe your services are provisioned there. So you need to know the type of fiber service.
The first thing to figure out would be what kind of fiber tech will be rolled out. Could be basically one of the fiber Ethernet types or some form of PON technology, for active Ethernet it should be relatively easy to get your own, say as SFP modules to plug into e.g. a Turris omnia. PON will be trickier as the upstream device, the OLT will need to accept you CPE device the ONT. Some ISP happily provision customer owned/supplied compatible ONTs others do not. In your position, I would inquire with the ISP....
1000Mbps is quite fast to do NAT, firewall, and potentially QoS of some kind. I recommend a good managed gigabit switch and some kind of dual or more NIC mini PC as router. With relatively modern CPU like Celeron 3000 or 4000 series 4 core processor you will be able to handle firewall, NAT, and cake SQM at full speed or near to it. you can also handle services like web proxy for access controls or caching things like Linux distro packages or other services.
You cannot replace the ONT that they issue you, because it must be matched to the OLT. You can only put the ONT in bridge mode (hopefully) and put a "normal" Ethernet router behind it.
The support team member I have talked to indicated that this bridge mode would be what would be used with me placing my own equipment after that (with me being responsible for setup of my equipment). He was quite comfortable with the idea of me running some form of openwrt on my routing equipment.
The first thing to figure out would be what kind of fiber tech will be rolled out. Could be basically one of the fiber Ethernet types or some form of PON technology, for active Ethernet it should be relatively easy to get your own, say as SFP modules to plug into e.g. a Turris omnia. PON will be trickier as the upstream device, the OLT will need to accept you CPE device the ONT. Some ISP happily provision customer owned/supplied compatible ONTs others do not. In your position, I would inquire with the ISP....
AIUI this would be a very large fiber bundle IIRC something well over 200 individual fibers. They are stressing that it an individual fiber to the switch it is NOT shared fiber.
Thank you for guidance as to more questions needed of the ISP (re: which form of ONT is accepted for one.) Are there any other questions I should be asking?
1000Mbps is quite fast to do NAT, firewall, and potentially QoS of some kind. I recommend a good managed gigabit switch and some kind of dual or more NIC mini PC as router. With relatively modern CPU like Celeron 3000 or 4000 series 4 core processor you will be able to handle firewall, NAT, and cake SQM at full speed or near to it. you can also handle services like web proxy for access controls or caching things like Linux distro packages or other services.
This is what I was hoping to find out - - - - thank you!
Finding a good managed gigabit switch - - - - this seems to be quite challenging.
I have found https://github.com/open-switch/opx-docs/wiki but this seems to be meant for very large switches (48+ IIRC). I have not been able to find and 16 or 20 or 24 port switches that are on open source software - - - - any suggestions for software and/or hardware (or where to look) - - -please?
Using a sbc for a router is what I was considering but something where I can get at least 1 Gbit ports (prefer something with a 2.5 GBit I think) is not very easy to find and quite unusual with:
wondering if there are any other options (trying NOT to spend $400usd + - - - rather more like $200 or so)?
AIUI direct fiber connections are becoming quite a bit more common but I'm sure not seeing either the smaller managed gigabit switches nor routers with enough hp to manage this kind of throughput - - - - or maybe I just don't know where to look (grin - - - - that's likely enough!!).
If they are really talking about a switch and not a passive splitter, it will in all likelihood not be any of the PON variants, but rather active ethenet. Lucky you! That probably means that you should be able to get a SFP module for the appropiate standard and could use for example a turris omnia, which with its mvebu architecture might actually be able to reach around 1 Gbps (depending on the stuff you run on the router obviously, sqm/cake might not reach a full Gbps, but NAT and firewalling should).ibing
I also believe, but am not 100% certain, that OLT and ONT are typically used only when describing PON networks, and I would hope that without PON there might not be any provisioning of your fiber device necessary.
But really, get into contact with your ISP and dig up as much information as possible
In that case, forget what anybody says about PON or SFP, because you won't be dealing with that directly. You won't need special equipment, just fast equipment. There is a whole thread on here about gigabit-capable devices.
given your budget, I'd probably recommend a tplink sg108e and spend your money on the best x86 based dual NIC mini PC you can afford. make it quad core and having aes-ni, Intel NICs if you can.
if you want more managed switch the Zyxel GS1900-24e or the TPlink T1600G-28TS/TL-SG2424 are good options
