I was shopping for some hardware at the YS Hardware store, where the owner (Dan) has a side gig connecting the ONTs (Optical Network Terminals) to the YS fiber network. In other words, he’s the inside man. Anyway, I was teasing him about when I was going to get MY connection. He got my address, made sure I had the outside box, jumped in his car, drove on over to my house. 30 minutes later my ONT was installed. Yippee!
Now the details about just the installation process. I’ll discuss more about performance etc in later posts and pages. He runs just one fiber from the outside box to the inside ONT. The connector is a little larger than, say, a 4-wire telephone cable. But we were able to use the previous AT&T wire to pull the fiber connector through the same hole. It was tight, but doable. A Spectrum co-ax cable is slightly larger than a phone 4-wire cable.
Because the fiber network uses GPON each ONT has a built-in address, called the FSAN, that Dan must convey to the network managers so they can provision the equipment at the other end. By the end of that day they had programmed me correctly, and the red “alarm” light turned to green and I was on the Internet!
Dan left a 4-page booklet on the ONT, but no configuration guide, nor any network trouble desk number, nor any support number at all. Perhaps as the pilot progresses these will be provided. He did say the billing will be added to our normal utility bill. Here’s the booklet.
While the ONT was still in alarm state I could log onto it with the default id/pw of admin/zhone, but once it came live I could no longer do so. They must have changed it during their configuration. The ONT by default has its 4 gig ethernet ports assigned to the same 192.168.1.0 subnet, which is fine for most home users. There remain some questions about how this arrangement works out for businesses who want to have their own, for example, local web server, or just want to query the ONT’s status. I queried Dan about this and I’ll report back as I find out.
UPDATE! Dan got back to me the next day with the new userid and password. The ONT has different levels of authority and now my ability to configure the ONT is rather limited. I’ll get into more details as I mess around. At least I have the ability to change the IP on the LAN and to check the ONT status.
Wayne, This website is a fantastic resource! Thank you for the time and effort you have put in to it, and especially for sharing your expertise with the rest of the community in this way. As you have pointed out, there are a number of questions for which we do not have solid answers yet, particularly for those with advanced technical knowledge of computer networking. We are counting on the collective wisdom of the community, shared in ways like this, to help make this network a real value proposition for everyone. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the experience as we go.