Ethernet To The Home Over Fiber - A PON Alternative?

Passive Optical Networks (PONs) have been getting a lot of attention here in the United States as companies like Verizon move to deliver voice, video and data services over optical fiber to homes. Mike Q and I even did a podcast detailing Verizon's Fiber to the Home (FTTH) PON configuration last May. In the United States we seem to believe PON technology is the best way to deliver signals over fiber to residences. This is not the case in Europe though. Lightwave.com has just posted a very interesting piece titled Active Ethernet FTTH offers PON alternative.

According to Lightwave.com, hundreds of networks around the world—and particularly in Europe—use Ethernet switches to deliver high-speed voice, data, and video services to single-family homes and apartment complexes. One of the reasons, according to Lightwave, it has not caught on is because proponents of the technology have not come up with a universal name for the technology. One name that has taken limited hold is Active Ethernet, which clearly differentiates itself from passive PON technology. This term works for some but not others - according to Lightwave.com, not all implementations place the switches in the field; the Ethernet equipment can reside in the central office (CO), with a fiber running directly from the CO to each subscriber.

As a result, some companies, like Alcatel-Lucent use the term Active Ethernet to describe implementations where there are Ethernet switches in the field and Point-to-Point to describe an implementation that is directly connected over fiber without switches in the field. Other companies are using other terms - Cisco just uses Ethernet FTTH for all Ethernet over fiber configurations.

I've always been a fan of Ethernet and have believed most connections would eventually become Ethernet. It scales well and is easy to implement, configure and maintain.What's likely hurt it most in this country as a long distance option are switch power needs in the field for active implementations and the cost of direct connecting a piece of fiber from a home directly to a switch in the CO. For these reasons I suspect companies like Verizon have gone with a PON delivery configuration. But, is this only temporary? Cost differences between Ethernet and PON actually shrink as bandwidth per subscriber increases - here's more from the Lightwave.com piece:

Bandwidth levels of 20 Mbits/sec and greater generally require that the number of splits per PON shrink. This translates into more fibers in the field and more ports in the CO to service the same number of subscribers, making PON infrastructures look more like point-to-point when it comes to fibers deployed and CO ports.

Here's an interesting quote from Ian Hood, senior marketing manager at Cisco:

"What I see in the marketplace is that providers are putting in PON for I'll call it the low end of the market—best effort, small customers, small businesses, the less than 15 Mbits per customer kind of speeds. For their high-value customers and some of their businesses, they're going with an Ethernet solution, be it building-oriented or dedicated from the CO to get beyond the 25-Mbit realm. So you're seeing a hybrid approach basically in a lot of the new large city deployments."

Will PONs go the route of DSL in the United States and be looked back on some day as a temporary technology? Perhaps - the one big advantage Ethernet currently has over PON is it has the potential to deliver the highest potential bandwidth per subscriber. Here's another quote from Hood:

"If we can get the optics costs down and embed them along with the multiplexer into our Ethernet switches, then you can go beyond 100 megabits to gigabits to whatever you can run on a lambda at that kind of cost for the next evolution of speed."

Which technology will eventually dominate? Will another alternative to PON and Ethernet come along that is superior to both? Time will tell. Be sure to read the entire Lightwave.com piece linked here.

Passive Optical Networks (PONs) Podcast

Mike Q and I recorded "Passive Optical Networks (PONs)" last night. Below are the show note questions. You can listen directly by turning up your speakers and clicking here.

If you have iTunes installed you can get this one, listen to others, and subscribe to our podcasts by following this link. If you don't have iTunes and want to listen to other podcasts and read full sets of shownotes using your web browser, follow this link.
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Intro: In this podcast we take a look at modern fiber delivery systems.

Podcast Questions:

Mike: Passive Optical Networks use Fiber – could you talk a little but about Fiber to the Premise or Home (FTTP or H)

Mike: So what exactly is a Fiber P2P Network?

Mike: OK, so what’s a PON?

Mike: What are the PON Architectural Choices?

Mike: What is Centralized Splitting?

Mike: What is Distributed/Cascaded Splitting?

Mike: What are some of the Protocols and Standards used with PONs?

Mike: What are the Outside Plant Components?

Mike: What’s an ONT?

Mike: Are Technicians typically terminating fiber in the field?

Component and Technology Pictures:

Verizon PON FiOS Splitter: 1 Fiber In -> 32 Fibers Out!

Verizon PON FiOS Splitter with Cover Removed: Optical Splitting is done by fusing fibers

Verizon PON FiOS 1->32 Splitter Detail

Verizon PON FiOS 1->32 Fiber Detail - Note Fibers Are Numbered

Verizon FiOS CO Hindged Panel Showing WDM Modules

Verizon FiOS Fiber Distribution Hub (FDH)

Verizon FiOS Optical Network Terminal (ONT) - Cover Closed

Verizon FiOS Optical Network Terminal (ONT) - Cover Open

Reference List:

FiOS: Our Future
James Armstrong, Chris Cote, Stan McCoy, James Todd
STCC Verizon NextStep Class of 2008

Passive Optical Network Splitter
Lawrence Graham, Mike Thompson, Jodi Lewandowski, Jeremy Dillensneider, Stephen Booher
STCC Verizon NextStep Class of 2006

FTTH Explained: Delivering efficient customer bandwidth and enhanced services
http://www.iec.org/online/tutorials/fiber_home/
Michael Kunigonis, Product Line Manager: Access Corning Cable Systems

Peer-to-Peer File Sharing

[Here's a recent piece I wrote for my monthly technology column in La Prensa, a Western Massachusetts Latino newspaper. To read a few of my previous La Prensa technology columns go here.]

Peer-to-peer (commonly referred to as “P2P” or “PtP”) networks are commonly used to share music and video files on the Internet. Much of the illegal file sharing you hear about in the news is handled using P2P networks. These networks are also used for legal file sharing and, in some ways, they have got a bad name because of the sharing of copyrighted materials.

You may recall the early version of Napster, a software program developed by Northeastern University student Shawn Fanning in 1999. Napster worked using a variation of a P2P network (some call it hybrid P2P) that used a centralized server to maintain a list of who was online and who had which MP3 music files for sharing. Because Napster used a centralized server, it was easy to trace users and effectively shut the service down which the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) did in the fall of 2001, after filing a lawsuit against Napster.

As Napster was going through the legal battle, programmers were working to develop other file sharing programs that did not use a centralized server. The first of these new programs was named BitTorrent, and created by Bram Cohen in the summer of 2002.

Hundreds of additional P2P programs have been created and they are almost all based on the BitTorent model. Some of the more common BitTorrent type applications include Gnutella, Bearshare, Morpheous and FastTrack.

BitTorrent type programs are true P2P programs, using ad-hoc connections so there is no central server. Every computer running a P2P program provides storage space, bandwidth and processing. As more people install and run the P2P program, more files are being uploaded and downloaded and more computers are participating in the file sharing process.

Here’s details on how a P2P program works. Let’s say you want to download a song (let’s also say this song can be legally distributed) and you’ve got one of these P2P programs installed on your machine. You start the P2P program and type in the name of the song you want in a search box. The program then goes out and looks for other users sharing that song. As users are found the song starts to download to your computer. As more users sharing the same song are found, additional connections are made (each connection is often referred to as a torrent) and the download speed to your computer increases. Also, as you download the song, you start sharing the song with others connected to your computer.

Popular songs and videos can have hundreds of torrents involved in a single download.

If you use P2P programs, you need to be very careful to only download content that can be legally shared. If downloading illegal content, you can be caught and lately some huge fines have been given out to violators.

Also be sure you are running up to date antivirus software and scan your system for spyware weekly. P2P networks can be used to spread malicious software.