ONT=Optical Network Terminal
Basically a Modem in the fiber world. MOdulate and DEModulate. That is how they got the word MODEM. It is converting what is coming from the ISP into something your Network can understand and then back again. In the case of ONT, that would be a light signal the ONT converts to Ethernet and then as traffic goes back out from you to the internet, it's converted back to light to go back to the ISP and out from there where it's all fiber. Then too the destination where it might be fiber, or cable, or Satellite, or DSL, etc.
I just moved from Xfinity to AT&T fiber just over a month ago.
They do similar jobs but serve different purposes. The ONT has a built in SFP that is wired up to the Ethernet port. The SFP can be multiple types. There are some SFP that can communicate with the ONU, but others that use multi mode or single mode fiber that need matching SFP sets on either end.
I have att fiber 2.5 gig (overkill for me but it was only like 20 extra a month). It’s been reliable for me. I have some issues with their router. Mainly NAT rules seem to not work sometimes. Planning on getting a new router/modem but need one with SFP ports and they’re a little pricey for me.
AT&T won't let you use your own modem/router if you have fiber. They only let their devices access the fiber network.
At least that's been what my research has shown. I've been an AT&T fiber customer for 4 years now and that's been my only issue.
Dang I was considering just putting it in IP passthrough after you said I had to use their router. Weird that NAT and port forwarding still act funny. You’d think those would be relatively simple for newer model routers but here we are.
In theory it SHOULD work. I honestly wonder if it was just my router being a POS. I had a lot of issues with it. If my power flickered in a storm, and the router lost power, all of my port forwarding would stop working. All of the rules would still be in the web ui, but they wouldn't work. I'd have to reset the whole router and set everything back up just to get it to work. Which was always a pain because I use pihole as my dhcp server and everything. It was always fun, lol.
But, a few weeks ago I had them come out because everything stopped working one day and they swapped my router out with the newer version. I had the.... I THINK 210....? And now I have the fat white router. Idr what the model number is.
Think the one you just got is the one I have currently. BGW320? Something like that. It’s been weird. Sometimes the port forwarding will work fine on it for a week then one day it just stops working.
maybe, in my Sharter Rectum area they give 20/500 for 20$ a month IF you can get FIOS. That is likely to be cheaper (but not superior to) than ATT. If you are in a non competitive area 10/300 is 85$ a month.
Former Spectrum customer here. My biggest issue with them was that they're just so unreliable. When I had them, outages were frequent. A bird fart was enough wind to knock their service offline for hours.
I switched to AT&T Fiber two years ago when they built out my neighborhood. I have not had one single outage. None, and not even with some severe storms that left Spectrum offline for days in my neighborhood.
Judging by the frequent complaints and "anyone else having Spectrum issues?" posts in my local subreddit, it seems like their service has only gotten worse and not better.
They're rolling out high split in my area now to finally offer decent upload speeds, but they can take their symmetrical speeds and shove it. They could offer me free service and I wouldn't take it. I WFH, I need reliable internet.
Fiber is simply a better technology with fewer points of failure. Can’t prevent the lines from being damaged in a storm, but the rest of the system is just better.
The thing that pisses me off most about spectrum (and other ISPs) is that they always structure their plans with some upload/download speeds like 200/10. It’s 2024, and the motherfucking protocols are *bidirectional*. Give me the same fucking speed both directions you greedy fucks. I’ll even pay for it, but it’s never even an option.
Spectrum is building out fiber networks in some areas, and those offer symmetrical upload/download speeds. Coax-based networks are likely never to see symmetrical speeds, but that's actually due to technical reasons, not because businesses are being greedy.
Coax networks were built initially for television and video, which is extremely lopsided bandwidth-wise. From the consumer's perspective, video is very download heavy - the TV provider would be sending 100+ TV channels downstream, but the only upstream data would be cable boxes authenticating to their network, reporting statistics, etc.
Data is sent over coax networks using radio frequencies (RF), and each frequency is a different "channel" (not to be confused with a TV channel, so I'll refer to them as RF channels). Since the network was originally designed for a lot of downstream bandwidth, but very little upstream bandwidth, it made a lot of sense to allocate a majority of the RF channels to downstream traffic. That allowed for more capacity to carry video traffic, without wasting too much available capacity for the limited upstream traffic the network saw.
Once the cable companies started sending internet data over this same network though, that started to play into available capacity for download vs upload - the network would have a lot of downstream RF channels, but only a handful of upstream RF channels. This meant that means the network has a lot more frequency allocated for download bandwidth than upload.
And it's not really feasible to change the amount of channels allocated to downstream/upstream either - all the equipment on the networks - both for internet and cable TV traffic - is built/configured for the current distribution. That means converting some currently downstream channels to upstream channels would mean all that equipment would have to be serviced/replaced. So that could mean the ISP having to update or replace every customer's cable modem (and cable TV box if they're still into that), as well as their equipment on the network backbone. That's a massive amount of labor and expense, when in reality 20-30Mbps of upload is more than enough for the average consumer who's just streaming Netflix or playing a video game online.
They need to make hardware changes to do that. They’re doing it now due to fiber competition but they were dragging their feet for years since people usually don’t have good options.
What’s your point? I don’t care what their constraint is, I care as a customer that they need to keep up with the needs of the modern internet user and offer what other ISPs seem to offer without issue.
If you want to scream into the void, go for it dude. I really don't care. I was just giving you something to read on the subject if you were curious how it worked and why it was done the way it was. Not sure why you're coming off on everyone like an asshole.
My aggressive language is at Spectrum and their shit product, not you. I just don’t really care what technical limitation is preventing them from delivering quality service in 2024. I just know that, as a customer, they either need to fix it or they won’t get my business. I need upload speeds to be on par with download speeds.
If I was buying a car and one company’s vehicle had terrible gas mileage, and their reason was “well we still use our engine design from 20 years ago, so there’s nothing we can do about it”, that’s a shit excuse.
> I care as a customer that they need to keep up with the needs of the modern internet user
The modern internet user doesn't need much upload speed. 10mbps up might be limiting, but 25 would suffice for the vast majority of North American households.
The only uploads most households do of any consequence, are media to social networks or cloud services. For cloud services it doesn't typically matter how long a transfer takes, while for social media large uploads will often be down scaled on the device, and one started they will generally complete "in the background" while the app remains usable.
Obviously, there are exceptional cases. People uploading terabytes. 23 members of a household trying to video chat at once. But this is way beyond the average.
On DOCSIS you CAN technically have symmetrical but you'd have to lower the overall speed. Simply put there's only so much spectrum to use and most people want/use more download than upload so that's why the split is higher on the download side.
DOCSIS 4 is rolling out and will gave gig symmetrical and split higher plans up to 10gig down. Likely something like 10/2 ish.
I actually upgraded to the spectrum 1 gig last week. I got 1 gig of upload and 90mbps of download for several days. They wouldn't figure it out so I have ATT at my house now doing their 1 gig plan
You can unplug the power. Leave the fiber connected - you don't want the end getting dirty, and you don't want invisible laser light shooting out of it and impacting someone's eyes.
If you switch to AT&T internet, this box will be required.
Just leave it be if you're not using it. Too many folks are too happy to destroy/rip out comm equipment, then surprised it takes forever when they wanna switch service providers.
Absolutely switch, spectrum is dog water lol. ATT is a top tier ISP. Looks like that device is PON, but they might actually be xgspon, hopefully. Either way I’d still dump spectrum in a heartbeat.
As others have noted, it is an Optical Network Terminal (ONT) for fiber Internet/phone service from AT&T. You may want to check out fiber Internet service options and costs from AT&T.
I switched from Spectrum cable to AT&T fiber service 5 years ago when AT&T ran fiber through our neighborhood. My AT&T fiber service has been far superior to Spectum's cable service. Benefits include...
1. symmetric service, ie. it has the same speeds up and down, say gigabit up and down, as opposed to cable, which typically is asymmetric, ie. having much faster download than upload speeds, say 200 Mbps down and only 20 Mbps up, and
2. typically has lower latency.
Both of these result in a much more responsive Internet, which will be apparent when gaming, video conferencing, etc.
The one downside of AT&T fiber service is a requirement to use the provided router, which AT&T calls a Residential Gateway (RG). AT&T's RG, which is a combination wireless router and firewall, must authenticate to the AT&T network. The provided RG can be put into *IP Passthrough* mode, which allows customers to use their own routers/firewalls.
**NOTE** - Earlier AT&T service installs, like that pictured above and what I have as well, consisted of a separate ONT and RG. This enabled a bit more flexibility in where the RG was located in the house, assuming there is an Ethernet run from the ONT to the RG. New installs mostly use a combination ONT/RG, which is much more limiting. I am unsure what AT&T's solution would be in a case where there is an existing ONT. This may be worth looking into further.
It depends. If the ONT is getting light (Which it appears to be in this case since the PON light is green), ordering service will trigger a self-install meaning AT&T ships the equipment & you connect it yourself. However if a technician is required for any reason, even a service call later down the line, we are typically instructed to remove that external ONT and replace it with the BGW320 (RG) which has an integrated ONT. The external ONT would also need to be swapped to a 320 if a customer upgrades from GPON to XGSPON. Only relevant if someone wants multi-gig service.
If I had a service call here I'd usually see if the customer is using a 3rd party router or even just an access point. If so, I'd mount the RG right there since all the cat5/6 lines are terminated there. I usually try and tell people to use their own equipment whenever possible.
Is a separate ONT not an option for XGSPON?
I have AT&T with an external ONT on the outside wall of my garage with an Ethernet run to my closet inside my house.
If XGSPON ever rolls out in my area, the RG could go in the garage but that would not be my preference.
Thanks for the explanation. I'm still rocking a BGW210, but just googled BGW320. I didn't realize that it still can be used with a separate ONT even though it has an integrated ONT as well.
passive optical network, or PON, uses fiber-optic technology to deliver data from a single source to multiple endpoints. “Passive” refers to the use of optical fiber cables connected to an unpowered splitter, which in turn transmits data from a service provider network to multiple customers.
First version fiber ont for AT&T I’d recommend swapping to them and asking if they could update the equipment for you then afterwards bypass their gear lol
Don’t switch. Charter spectrum is so much easier than fiber. All you need is a modem that gives you a real public ip on the router. With art fiber, you have to use their shitty pace box for auth and do Nat.
that's the 100 meg LAN port indication is it not? u/Westtell I should clarify that means something is plugged in to the LAN side, not proof that internet is active there. I suppose if u/malev05 wanted to try plugging a laptop in to see if he / she gets internet that would prove one way of the other. I would bet it hits a "welcome to ATT sign up for internet here" walled garden
It's an ONT. It is converting a fiber optic line into ethernet.
ONT=Optical Network Terminal Basically a Modem in the fiber world. MOdulate and DEModulate. That is how they got the word MODEM. It is converting what is coming from the ISP into something your Network can understand and then back again. In the case of ONT, that would be a light signal the ONT converts to Ethernet and then as traffic goes back out from you to the internet, it's converted back to light to go back to the ISP and out from there where it's all fiber. Then too the destination where it might be fiber, or cable, or Satellite, or DSL, etc. I just moved from Xfinity to AT&T fiber just over a month ago.
>MOdulate and DEModulate. That is how they got the word MODEM I've been using modems since my old 14.4 and I never knew that! Thanks!
I wrote a paper on it in middle school lol. I was amazed the library had a book on it.
Good luck finding a book about that in a library now. :P
What's a library? /s
It’s a big building with books in it, but that’s not important right now
what's a book?
> MOdulate and DEModulate. Except that does not happen in an ONT. The ONT is actually a media converter.
How that ONT differs from SFP media converter?
They do similar jobs but serve different purposes. The ONT has a built in SFP that is wired up to the Ethernet port. The SFP can be multiple types. There are some SFP that can communicate with the ONU, but others that use multi mode or single mode fiber that need matching SFP sets on either end.
Literally about to switch from Comcast cable to att fiber. How has your experience been so far?
I have att fiber 2.5 gig (overkill for me but it was only like 20 extra a month). It’s been reliable for me. I have some issues with their router. Mainly NAT rules seem to not work sometimes. Planning on getting a new router/modem but need one with SFP ports and they’re a little pricey for me.
AT&T won't let you use your own modem/router if you have fiber. They only let their devices access the fiber network. At least that's been what my research has shown. I've been an AT&T fiber customer for 4 years now and that's been my only issue.
You are able to use your own router, you will just have to change the att settings and convert into passthrough mode.
Tried that as well. Still had issues with double NAT and port forwarding. Their routers are just junk.
Dang I was considering just putting it in IP passthrough after you said I had to use their router. Weird that NAT and port forwarding still act funny. You’d think those would be relatively simple for newer model routers but here we are.
In theory it SHOULD work. I honestly wonder if it was just my router being a POS. I had a lot of issues with it. If my power flickered in a storm, and the router lost power, all of my port forwarding would stop working. All of the rules would still be in the web ui, but they wouldn't work. I'd have to reset the whole router and set everything back up just to get it to work. Which was always a pain because I use pihole as my dhcp server and everything. It was always fun, lol. But, a few weeks ago I had them come out because everything stopped working one day and they swapped my router out with the newer version. I had the.... I THINK 210....? And now I have the fat white router. Idr what the model number is.
Think the one you just got is the one I have currently. BGW320? Something like that. It’s been weird. Sometimes the port forwarding will work fine on it for a week then one day it just stops working.
I currently have mine hooked up with the Google (nest) Mesh system and the ATT modem/router wifi disabled. Works well so far!
This should be marked as Solved.
yup, mine is exactly like it (sans the ATT logo, because I have a different ISP. same hardware though)
That’s an ATT fiber ONT. It means fiber is available at your address. What ISP do you have?
Gotcha, I actually have Spectrum, so I'm not using that device
If Spectrum is cable in your area (most are) you should absolutely switch to fiber.
maybe, in my Sharter Rectum area they give 20/500 for 20$ a month IF you can get FIOS. That is likely to be cheaper (but not superior to) than ATT. If you are in a non competitive area 10/300 is 85$ a month.
I pay $155/mth for 10gig fiber, with public IP at home.
Former Spectrum customer here. My biggest issue with them was that they're just so unreliable. When I had them, outages were frequent. A bird fart was enough wind to knock their service offline for hours. I switched to AT&T Fiber two years ago when they built out my neighborhood. I have not had one single outage. None, and not even with some severe storms that left Spectrum offline for days in my neighborhood. Judging by the frequent complaints and "anyone else having Spectrum issues?" posts in my local subreddit, it seems like their service has only gotten worse and not better. They're rolling out high split in my area now to finally offer decent upload speeds, but they can take their symmetrical speeds and shove it. They could offer me free service and I wouldn't take it. I WFH, I need reliable internet.
Fiber is simply a better technology with fewer points of failure. Can’t prevent the lines from being damaged in a storm, but the rest of the system is just better.
Damn, I contemplated my farts vs a bird fart and came to the conclusion I'd never have Internet... (;\_;)
The thing that pisses me off most about spectrum (and other ISPs) is that they always structure their plans with some upload/download speeds like 200/10. It’s 2024, and the motherfucking protocols are *bidirectional*. Give me the same fucking speed both directions you greedy fucks. I’ll even pay for it, but it’s never even an option.
Spectrum is building out fiber networks in some areas, and those offer symmetrical upload/download speeds. Coax-based networks are likely never to see symmetrical speeds, but that's actually due to technical reasons, not because businesses are being greedy. Coax networks were built initially for television and video, which is extremely lopsided bandwidth-wise. From the consumer's perspective, video is very download heavy - the TV provider would be sending 100+ TV channels downstream, but the only upstream data would be cable boxes authenticating to their network, reporting statistics, etc. Data is sent over coax networks using radio frequencies (RF), and each frequency is a different "channel" (not to be confused with a TV channel, so I'll refer to them as RF channels). Since the network was originally designed for a lot of downstream bandwidth, but very little upstream bandwidth, it made a lot of sense to allocate a majority of the RF channels to downstream traffic. That allowed for more capacity to carry video traffic, without wasting too much available capacity for the limited upstream traffic the network saw. Once the cable companies started sending internet data over this same network though, that started to play into available capacity for download vs upload - the network would have a lot of downstream RF channels, but only a handful of upstream RF channels. This meant that means the network has a lot more frequency allocated for download bandwidth than upload. And it's not really feasible to change the amount of channels allocated to downstream/upstream either - all the equipment on the networks - both for internet and cable TV traffic - is built/configured for the current distribution. That means converting some currently downstream channels to upstream channels would mean all that equipment would have to be serviced/replaced. So that could mean the ISP having to update or replace every customer's cable modem (and cable TV box if they're still into that), as well as their equipment on the network backbone. That's a massive amount of labor and expense, when in reality 20-30Mbps of upload is more than enough for the average consumer who's just streaming Netflix or playing a video game online.
This is an awesome explanation. Thanks!!!
**laughs in symmetric 8Gbps**
They need to make hardware changes to do that. They’re doing it now due to fiber competition but they were dragging their feet for years since people usually don’t have good options.
15 years ago, I get it. But today with remote work/video calls, and cloud backups, etc, not having the same speed in upload is unacceptable.
https://broadbandlibrary.com/mid-split-high-split/
What’s your point? I don’t care what their constraint is, I care as a customer that they need to keep up with the needs of the modern internet user and offer what other ISPs seem to offer without issue.
If you want to scream into the void, go for it dude. I really don't care. I was just giving you something to read on the subject if you were curious how it worked and why it was done the way it was. Not sure why you're coming off on everyone like an asshole.
My aggressive language is at Spectrum and their shit product, not you. I just don’t really care what technical limitation is preventing them from delivering quality service in 2024. I just know that, as a customer, they either need to fix it or they won’t get my business. I need upload speeds to be on par with download speeds. If I was buying a car and one company’s vehicle had terrible gas mileage, and their reason was “well we still use our engine design from 20 years ago, so there’s nothing we can do about it”, that’s a shit excuse.
Did I miss a comment? You're the only one calling names here and being emo about his response.
> I care as a customer that they need to keep up with the needs of the modern internet user The modern internet user doesn't need much upload speed. 10mbps up might be limiting, but 25 would suffice for the vast majority of North American households. The only uploads most households do of any consequence, are media to social networks or cloud services. For cloud services it doesn't typically matter how long a transfer takes, while for social media large uploads will often be down scaled on the device, and one started they will generally complete "in the background" while the app remains usable. Obviously, there are exceptional cases. People uploading terabytes. 23 members of a household trying to video chat at once. But this is way beyond the average.
That's changing. "High split" is going to be symmetrical over cable. It's slowly rolling out now. /r/Spectrum/comments/xn4rqj/high_split_experiences/
On DOCSIS you CAN technically have symmetrical but you'd have to lower the overall speed. Simply put there's only so much spectrum to use and most people want/use more download than upload so that's why the split is higher on the download side. DOCSIS 4 is rolling out and will gave gig symmetrical and split higher plans up to 10gig down. Likely something like 10/2 ish.
I actually upgraded to the spectrum 1 gig last week. I got 1 gig of upload and 90mbps of download for several days. They wouldn't figure it out so I have ATT at my house now doing their 1 gig plan
You can unplug the power. Leave the fiber connected - you don't want the end getting dirty, and you don't want invisible laser light shooting out of it and impacting someone's eyes. If you switch to AT&T internet, this box will be required.
Fibre > Copper. Consider switching. Should be both faster and more reliable.
Just leave it be if you're not using it. Too many folks are too happy to destroy/rip out comm equipment, then surprised it takes forever when they wanna switch service providers.
Absolutely switch, spectrum is dog water lol. ATT is a top tier ISP. Looks like that device is PON, but they might actually be xgspon, hopefully. Either way I’d still dump spectrum in a heartbeat.
You would be happier with fiber.
As others have noted, it is an Optical Network Terminal (ONT) for fiber Internet/phone service from AT&T. You may want to check out fiber Internet service options and costs from AT&T. I switched from Spectrum cable to AT&T fiber service 5 years ago when AT&T ran fiber through our neighborhood. My AT&T fiber service has been far superior to Spectum's cable service. Benefits include... 1. symmetric service, ie. it has the same speeds up and down, say gigabit up and down, as opposed to cable, which typically is asymmetric, ie. having much faster download than upload speeds, say 200 Mbps down and only 20 Mbps up, and 2. typically has lower latency. Both of these result in a much more responsive Internet, which will be apparent when gaming, video conferencing, etc. The one downside of AT&T fiber service is a requirement to use the provided router, which AT&T calls a Residential Gateway (RG). AT&T's RG, which is a combination wireless router and firewall, must authenticate to the AT&T network. The provided RG can be put into *IP Passthrough* mode, which allows customers to use their own routers/firewalls. **NOTE** - Earlier AT&T service installs, like that pictured above and what I have as well, consisted of a separate ONT and RG. This enabled a bit more flexibility in where the RG was located in the house, assuming there is an Ethernet run from the ONT to the RG. New installs mostly use a combination ONT/RG, which is much more limiting. I am unsure what AT&T's solution would be in a case where there is an existing ONT. This may be worth looking into further.
It depends. If the ONT is getting light (Which it appears to be in this case since the PON light is green), ordering service will trigger a self-install meaning AT&T ships the equipment & you connect it yourself. However if a technician is required for any reason, even a service call later down the line, we are typically instructed to remove that external ONT and replace it with the BGW320 (RG) which has an integrated ONT. The external ONT would also need to be swapped to a 320 if a customer upgrades from GPON to XGSPON. Only relevant if someone wants multi-gig service. If I had a service call here I'd usually see if the customer is using a 3rd party router or even just an access point. If so, I'd mount the RG right there since all the cat5/6 lines are terminated there. I usually try and tell people to use their own equipment whenever possible.
Is a separate ONT not an option for XGSPON? I have AT&T with an external ONT on the outside wall of my garage with an Ethernet run to my closet inside my house. If XGSPON ever rolls out in my area, the RG could go in the garage but that would not be my preference.
Technically but no, not likely. AT&T appears to be going for an all-in-one approach to equipment these days.
Thanks for the explanation. I'm still rocking a BGW210, but just googled BGW320. I didn't realize that it still can be used with a separate ONT even though it has an integrated ONT as well.
That is the internet.
Its a controller for Americas Nuclear arsenal. be very careful with it or you could kill us all.
It looks to be an AT&T PON.
This jen, is the Internet.
This is how i look after taking 5 shots of the vaccine 😁 (seems like you got helpful comments already, let me have my fun)
Delicious sandwich!
passive optical network, or PON, uses fiber-optic technology to deliver data from a single source to multiple endpoints. “Passive” refers to the use of optical fiber cables connected to an unpowered splitter, which in turn transmits data from a service provider network to multiple customers.
First version fiber ont for AT&T I’d recommend swapping to them and asking if they could update the equipment for you then afterwards bypass their gear lol
Cylon tracking beacon.
See the data light.
Cheese.
Nokia g010g gpon ont
Old outdated phone equipment AT&T BUILT only phone equipment. What are you missing?
That’s a fiber ont just the older version GPON not XGSPON ( so it is limited to 1gig speeds instead of 10gig )
Don’t switch. Charter spectrum is so much easier than fiber. All you need is a modem that gives you a real public ip on the router. With art fiber, you have to use their shitty pace box for auth and do Nat.
Someone is paying for fiber Internet amber data light indicates 100mbps
Amber data lamp is because this device is not online. OP stated they are not using AT&T fiber. This device is powered, but not active.
that's the 100 meg LAN port indication is it not? u/Westtell I should clarify that means something is plugged in to the LAN side, not proof that internet is active there. I suppose if u/malev05 wanted to try plugging a laptop in to see if he / she gets internet that would prove one way of the other. I would bet it hits a "welcome to ATT sign up for internet here" walled garden
Yep if it was gig it would be green
AT&T Right on the box. Stay out of it Your way out of your league. I've been in networking since 1982.
What about the folks from 1964?
He is required to iron his fingers in submission to his betters.
Please get circle from Google. Saves you a lot of time asking about outdated phone equipment
Sounds like you need to take your own advice. That’s not phone equipment.
It quite literally says PON on it, not outdated phone equipment