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yuvadm / ftth-il

Israeli FTTH Plan Technical Details
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Missing Information Regarding Unlimited #4

Open moriel5 opened 2 years ago

moriel5 commented 2 years ago

I see that additional information regarding Unlimited, such as the fact that most of their infrastructure is G.PON, however their earliest expansions were P2P , is missing.

Would that be because the information is hard to come by? I certainly am having trouble finding information, as most of their partner ISPs' representatives simply have no idea what to even answer to questions such as whether there is a whitelist on the network, like with Bezeq.

Also, it would be good to highlight the connectors used by the different infrastructure providers, such as SC-UPC (or was it LC-UPC, I forget) with Partner (SC-UPC with the user-end equipment), LC-APC with Bezeq (SC-APC with the user-end equipment) and SC-APC with Unlimited (including user-end equipment).

yuvadm commented 2 years ago

These are all super important points @moriel5, I would happily accept a PR that expands on all these topics

3ap commented 2 years ago

According to my experience with Unlimited in Be'er Sheva in different flats, there are at least two approaches for connection. Not sure about underlying technologies, so I describe it from end user's point of view:

In both cases it just gets IP address via DHCP from provider, without PPPoE, L2TP or anything else.

P.S. I recently changed my provider to Bezeq Fiber, and instead of using their proprietary vendor-locked router I installed the same Nokia G-010G-Q as a bridge between optical media and my router. However, it took me a while to understand that they use PPPoE for connection initiation.

yuvadm commented 2 years ago

@3ap thanks for the additional info! Any chance you can take some pictures of the fiber connections that they installed so we can help specify them?

moriel5 commented 2 years ago

@3ap Both approaches are one and the same, with the only difference being the location of the ONT.

Yep, that checks out, as Unlimited relies upon DHCP, not PPP.

Based upon the ONT you were supplied with, I would hazard a guess that either Unlimited has both P2P and G.PON installations in Be'er Sheva, or they ripped out at least some of their P2P installations and replaced them with G.PON installations, as some of their earlier installations were in Be'er Sheva.

And yes, since the Nokia G-010G-Q is on Bezeq's whitelist, it make sense that you would be able to continue using it (although interestingly, that also means that Unlimited uses the same firmware as Bezeq for the G-010G-Q).

Could you please take a picture of your G-010G-Q's motherboard, especially of the main chip?

3ap commented 1 year ago

Sorry for long answer, for some reason I didn't get e-mail notifications about your replies.

with the only difference being the location of the ONT.

I thought that the main advantage of PON networks is to not to have any active hardware between ISP and client's flat. So why in this case they decided to put their active hardware somewhere in the building and how they connect it to the electricity?

Could you please take a picture of your G-010G-Q's motherboard, especially of the main chip?

Unfortunately, I haven't managed to disassembly the device to make a picture for you, as the case relies on plastic latches instead of screws, and my attempt to make it open has failed. I'm afraid that I would damage the motherboard if I try harder.

The only thing that I can provide you now is a scan of instructions bundled with G-010G-Q. Not sure that it can help a lot but that's all what I have right now:

nokia-g10q

moriel5 commented 1 year ago

@3ap 

I thought that the main advantage of PON networks is to not to have any active hardware between ISP and client's flat. So why in this case they decided to put their active hardware somewhere in the building and how they connect it to the electricity?

It's not, the main advantages are cost-cutting (no need to provide as much bandwidth, and the ISP is moving some of the cost over to the client) and management (instead of being a peer-to-peer relationship, there is a master-slave relationship between the ISP's and client's hardware, similar to how it's done over DSL and DOCSIS).

While in many cases it's easier to for ISP's to place active hardware in between the the ISP's network centers (I'm not sure if that is the correct term) and the client's house (you need active hardware on the client's side regardless, just as with any other connection, it's just that with copper, you can also provide at least some of the electricity to the client as well, as can be seen with DSL and phone that recieve all their power via the phone line, or if you run PoE equipment ), since they could have contracts which offload some of the associate costs over to other parties or for easier management, there is nothing technological preventing P2P networks from being routed passively, up to a certain distance, up to the clients' houses, provided the conduits are large enough for all the wires to be run at the same time inside of them.

Unfortunately, I haven't managed to disassembly the device to make a picture for you, as the case relies on plastic latches instead of screws, and my attempt to make it open has failed. I'm afraid that I would damage the motherboard if I try harder.

No problem, I know how much of a headache it is, from all the devices I had opened up.

The only thing that I can provide you now is a scan of instructions bundled with G-010G-Q. Not sure that it can help a lot but that's all what I have right now:

Thanks, while it does not help a lot, at least it shows (in black and white) how the device physically looks like in general.

moriel5 commented 1 year ago

Update regarding a few things with Unlimited:

  1. Neither Hot not Cellcom have their own independent fiber infrastructures, but rather rely upon Unlimited's infrastructure (which they both have partial ownership over).
  2. Their infrastructure in the Shomron area was originally supposed to be 019's independent infrastructure (no idea if it was originally supposed to be G.PON or P2P, the representatives did not either), until it was bought up by Unlimited (and apparently locked 019 into an exclusivity contract).
  3. There are other ISPs working with them that are less known, such as XFiber (I have reports that they were in charge of expanding Unlimited's infrastructure to Har Beracha).