Re: [nznog] openwrt capable routers for NZ?
I understand as its generic firmware, I assume there will be many different compatible hardware options. The big thing though is the voip needs to be capable which may reduce your compatibility list.
The market in NZ has dramatically changed with computer stores selling less and less routers, and the home users just using the router issued free from their ISP.
And to make it work for an ISP in a fibre world, it needs to have a built in voip ATA
Software:
- WAN/LAN bridge mode
- uPNP
- IPv4 / IPv6
- Programmable 0.0.0.0/0 or gateway address when lan + wan in bridge mode
- voip must work when in bridge mode. Have had problems with zyxel and others having no gateway address breaking voip when in bridge mode
- router must be accessible from behind another nat gateway via a port forward. Enabling WAN admin access doesn’t always make this work with many routers
Hardware:
- Price point of $40-$50 so we can issue them free with service
- A higher priced, higher speed option would be good for fibre based services
- 3dbi antenna, 18db tx power
- 802.11n 2.4ghz option. We don’t see the need for ac for at least 3 years
There was recently a project between geekzone and telecom to build a "standard router for NZ" which was designed to be the perfect one with all the features that the GZ community wanted, could be issued for free by telecom and was capable of being used for DSL and fibre.
They got as far as taking bids for the project from companies like huawei and the likes.
Most of the features that the GZ community were proposing I found to be useless as an isp supplied router, but it would be worth looking at the feature list.
I think a bit of googling might be needed to get to the feature voting page in the forums - it may have been deleted.
Ray Taylor
Taylor Communications
ray(a)ruralkiwi.com
Ph 021-483-280
Network status 06-929-9082
-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Taht [mailto:dave.taht(a)gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, 10 March 2015 11:45 a.m.
To: Ray Taylor
Subject: Re: [nznog] openwrt capable routers for NZ?
always helpful to have that list. And have that list discussed publicly.
This is the only public talk I have given about wifi... see second half.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wksh2DPHCDI
On Mon, Mar 9, 2015 at 3:43 PM, Ray Taylor
-- Dave Täht Let's make wifi fast, less jittery and reliable again! https://plus.google.com/u/0/107942175615993706558/posts/TVX3o84jjmb
What I found really astounding about your email - (and of many others
besides) - is *my first focus* is on reliability. This kind of device
is mission critical. It MUST stay up. Always. And never crash. And
doing that right, is really, really, hard. (once you get to a few 9s,
life gets easier)
https://plus.google.com/u/0/107942175615993706558/posts/TVX3o84jjmb
It took us 3 years to get to where we had a box that did not
dissassociate on a whim, that took enormous loads and stayed up, and
the current recordholder for uptime is 140 days or so.
https://lists.bufferbloat.net/pipermail/cerowrt-devel/2015-March/004193.html
(sorry about the bad cert)
Most of the lower uptimes reported by my userbase are due merely to
losing power, or some reconfiguration.
I have been able to crash most other devices (ISP supplied or not)
inside of a few hours of stress testing. (and all the work on cero is
now in openwrt chaos calmer. (and tons more besides, the openwrt
people really outdid themselves with barrier breaker) I am really
happy with their stability so far, but we are about to go break some
things with make-wifi-fast )
On Mon, Mar 9, 2015 at 4:04 PM, Ray Taylor
I understand as its generic firmware, I assume there will be many different compatible hardware options.
Although it is default (generic) firmware, your life becomes a lot easier if you just pick one or three devices that meet your needs, and debug the heck out of them before you ship. It is really impossible to test dozens or hundreds of semi-compatible devices. And thus, you end up with nzwrt, as a commonly supported brand on X number of devices... Sure, try as many as you want - try getting stuff directly from china off of alibaba, for example, but consult with the openwrt folk as to what devices you should use to best meet your country's needs.
The big thing though is the voip needs to be capable which may reduce your compatibility list.
I have to admit that onboard voip has not been on my radar at all. A lot of that stuff used to be (back when I still paid attention to voip in my asterisk days), very binary blob, very proprietary. Maybe with the rise of FON that ended, but I don't know. adding in a FON guy.
The market in NZ has dramatically changed with computer stores selling less and less routers, and the home users just using the router issued free from their ISP.
just using the *crappy* router issued free from their ISP. There, fixed that for you. I agree that the aftermarket router biz is in decline, and it's in decline for a variety of reasons, notably, firmware that is often worse than the ISPs, big promises not kept, and general unreliability, and low uptake of 802.11ac clients. I was saddened to find every new home router I tested last month wouldn't even let you turn off nat nor had any routing protocols. I would like it if more routers (both home and ISP-supplied) let you route rather than bridge everything. (which is why babeld - the current default ietf homenet routing protocol) is standard in cerowrt and homewrt.
And to make it work for an ISP in a fibre world, it needs to have a built in voip ATA
I was under the impression that voip ATA was only needed by 50% or so of the marketplace. Me, I long ago switched to skype, and now, webrtc.
PCP also
yep. Getting the NAT right for voip can be a pita. Getting prioritization to work right is a solved problem with fq_codel, tho. Voip calls just cut through other traffic like butter.
- router must be accessible from behind another nat gateway via a port forward.
Yes, was shocked to see nat-only routers. In the case of the cable industry they are not providing devices with real IPs by default, and you have to call them to get them to bridge it for you. so you end up double-natted, just to start with. The future I wanted to live in had a standard jack in the wall that you plugged your own bought-at-the-store gear into. I wanted to keep competition in the marketplace. Sigh.
Enabling WAN admin access doesn’t always make this work with many routers
Remote access is how I maintain my family and several friends routers.
Hardware: - Price point of $40-$50 so we can issue them free with service
wholesale cost qty 1000? 100? 10? This would include the fiber adaptor itself?
- A higher priced, higher speed option would be good for fibre based services
I can certainly see a basic wireless-n version and an -ac version.
- 3dbi antenna, 18db tx power - 802.11n 2.4ghz option. We don’t see the need for ac for at least 3 years
Not clear to me what you are saying here. In big cities at least, 2.4ghz is pretty saturated so I generally recomend a dual radio router.
There was recently a project between geekzone and telecom to build a "standard router for NZ" which was designed to be the perfect one with all the features that the GZ community wanted, could be issued for free by telecom and was capable of being used for DSL and fibre.
Well, what got me on this email list is jed laundry's talk thursday night at nznog on his conception of creating "NZWRT" to replace the residential gateways now being supplied. *I like very much an entire country tossing the default firmware on their residental gateways*, and wouldn't mind replacing the fiber converters too... but the only way I've ever been able to figure out how to pay for continuous updates (fixes for, example, openssl, and other hacks) ... is for the ISP devices to be rented to the customer, and a portion of that revenue assigned to the ongoing maintenance and support teams. At these low hardware costs, the real cost of software development and maintenance starts to outweigh the cost of the hardware. And the real costs of security breaches like dnschanger and friends, very, very high. IF NZ can get together on standardizing a few hardware platforms for custom firmware to meet NZ's needs, then you can amoritize that, most of this hardware can last for 7-10 years or more in the field, but will always be in dire need of updates from day #1. My colleague, Jim Gettys, has been focusing on the security issues in home routers for a few years now. Here he is at Berkman Center, with Bruce Schneir: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykhFDyPfxzE Be afraid. Be very afraid... Happily, openwrt has now got features like signed packages, and better forms of updating, but it still will take effort to do right, and roll out new features and bugfixes to userbases counted in the 10s or 100s of thousands.
They got as far as taking bids for the project from companies like huawei and the likes.
That was the first wrong move.
Most of the features that the GZ community were proposing I found to be useless as an isp supplied router, but it would be worth looking at the feature list.
Well, if you can find it and post here... archive.org might have it....
I think a bit of googling might be needed to get to the feature voting page in the forums - it may have been deleted.
-- Dave Täht Let's make wifi fast, less jittery and reliable again! https://plus.google.com/u/0/107942175615993706558/posts/TVX3o84jjmb
It will be interesting to see how POTS over fibre plays out in NZ. Most ISPs (with the exception of a few) choose NOT to use ATA ports on the ONT, instead opting for ATA ports on an ISP supplied RGW. Why? We'll, I suspect that this was mostly because of "time to market" drivers. ISPs could do VoIP over UFB using on device across all for Local Fibre Companies. (LFCs). This saved them having to do testing and provisioning integration (TR-69 anyone?) with 3 different ONTs and 4 different companies.
But all that haste to begin with now means a more expensive RGW (with ATA ports on board) and, because VoIP is on the same device as Wifi, an ongoing requirement retest VoIP with each new RGW that comes out with "bigger/better/faster" wifi. Your typical RGW seems to go end-of-life within 12 months. Maybe some of those ISPs will start to rethink using the ATA ports on the ONT?
And with Spark soon to release their Voice over fibre offering with UFB (they've been using POTS on copper alongside fibre up to now), it will be interesting to see if the tide will turn on using ATA ports off the ONT. And of course, in the longer term, who will care about POTs at all?
Mark
-----Original Message-----
From: nznog-bounces(a)list.waikato.ac.nz [mailto:nznog-bounces(a)list.waikato.ac.nz] On Behalf Of Dave Taht
Sent: Tuesday, 10 March 2015 2:37 p.m.
To: Ray Taylor
Cc: NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz; John Crispin
Subject: Re: [nznog] openwrt capable routers for NZ?
What I found really astounding about your email - (and of many others
besides) - is *my first focus* is on reliability. This kind of device is mission critical. It MUST stay up. Always. And never crash. And doing that right, is really, really, hard. (once you get to a few 9s, life gets easier)
https://plus.google.com/u/0/107942175615993706558/posts/TVX3o84jjmb
It took us 3 years to get to where we had a box that did not dissassociate on a whim, that took enormous loads and stayed up, and the current recordholder for uptime is 140 days or so.
https://lists.bufferbloat.net/pipermail/cerowrt-devel/2015-March/004193.html
(sorry about the bad cert)
Most of the lower uptimes reported by my userbase are due merely to losing power, or some reconfiguration.
I have been able to crash most other devices (ISP supplied or not) inside of a few hours of stress testing. (and all the work on cero is now in openwrt chaos calmer. (and tons more besides, the openwrt people really outdid themselves with barrier breaker) I am really happy with their stability so far, but we are about to go break some things with make-wifi-fast )
On Mon, Mar 9, 2015 at 4:04 PM, Ray Taylor
I understand as its generic firmware, I assume there will be many different compatible hardware options.
Although it is default (generic) firmware, your life becomes a lot easier if you just pick one or three devices that meet your needs, and debug the heck out of them before you ship. It is really impossible to test dozens or hundreds of semi-compatible devices. And thus, you end up with nzwrt, as a commonly supported brand on X number of devices... Sure, try as many as you want - try getting stuff directly from china off of alibaba, for example, but consult with the openwrt folk as to what devices you should use to best meet your country's needs.
The big thing though is the voip needs to be capable which may reduce your compatibility list.
I have to admit that onboard voip has not been on my radar at all. A lot of that stuff used to be (back when I still paid attention to voip in my asterisk days), very binary blob, very proprietary. Maybe with the rise of FON that ended, but I don't know. adding in a FON guy.
The market in NZ has dramatically changed with computer stores selling less and less routers, and the home users just using the router issued free from their ISP.
just using the *crappy* router issued free from their ISP. There, fixed that for you. I agree that the aftermarket router biz is in decline, and it's in decline for a variety of reasons, notably, firmware that is often worse than the ISPs, big promises not kept, and general unreliability, and low uptake of 802.11ac clients. I was saddened to find every new home router I tested last month wouldn't even let you turn off nat nor had any routing protocols. I would like it if more routers (both home and ISP-supplied) let you route rather than bridge everything. (which is why babeld - the current default ietf homenet routing protocol) is standard in cerowrt and homewrt.
And to make it work for an ISP in a fibre world, it needs to have a built in voip ATA
I was under the impression that voip ATA was only needed by 50% or so of the marketplace. Me, I long ago switched to skype, and now, webrtc.
PCP also
yep. Getting the NAT right for voip can be a pita. Getting prioritization to work right is a solved problem with fq_codel, tho. Voip calls just cut through other traffic like butter.
- router must be accessible from behind another nat gateway via a port forward.
Yes, was shocked to see nat-only routers. In the case of the cable industry they are not providing devices with real IPs by default, and you have to call them to get them to bridge it for you. so you end up double-natted, just to start with. The future I wanted to live in had a standard jack in the wall that you plugged your own bought-at-the-store gear into. I wanted to keep competition in the marketplace. Sigh.
Enabling WAN admin access doesn’t always make this work with many routers
Remote access is how I maintain my family and several friends routers.
Hardware: - Price point of $40-$50 so we can issue them free with service
wholesale cost qty 1000? 100? 10? This would include the fiber adaptor itself?
- A higher priced, higher speed option would be good for fibre based services
I can certainly see a basic wireless-n version and an -ac version.
Not clear to me what you are saying here. In big cities at least, 2.4ghz is pretty saturated so I generally recomend a dual radio router.
There was recently a project between geekzone and telecom to build a "standard router for NZ" which was designed to be the perfect one with all the features that the GZ community wanted, could be issued for free by telecom and was capable of being used for DSL and fibre.
Well, what got me on this email list is jed laundry's talk thursday night at nznog on his conception of creating "NZWRT" to replace the residential gateways now being supplied. *I like very much an entire country tossing the default firmware on their residental gateways*, and wouldn't mind replacing the fiber converters too... but the only way I've ever been able to figure out how to pay for continuous updates (fixes for, example, openssl, and other hacks) ... is for the ISP devices to be rented to the customer, and a portion of that revenue assigned to the ongoing maintenance and support teams. At these low hardware costs, the real cost of software development and maintenance starts to outweigh the cost of the hardware. And the real costs of security breaches like dnschanger and friends, very, very high. IF NZ can get together on standardizing a few hardware platforms for custom firmware to meet NZ's needs, then you can amoritize that, most of this hardware can last for 7-10 years or more in the field, but will always be in dire need of updates from day #1. My colleague, Jim Gettys, has been focusing on the security issues in home routers for a few years now. Here he is at Berkman Center, with Bruce Schneir: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykhFDyPfxzE Be afraid. Be very afraid... Happily, openwrt has now got features like signed packages, and better forms of updating, but it still will take effort to do right, and roll out new features and bugfixes to userbases counted in the 10s or 100s of thousands.
They got as far as taking bids for the project from companies like huawei and the likes.
That was the first wrong move.
Most of the features that the GZ community were proposing I found to be useless as an isp supplied router, but it would be worth looking at the feature list.
Well, if you can find it and post here... archive.org might have it....
I think a bit of googling might be needed to get to the feature voting page in the forums - it may have been deleted.
-- Dave Täht Let's make wifi fast, less jittery and reliable again! https://plus.google.com/u/0/107942175615993706558/posts/TVX3o84jjmb _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog
Isnt the FXS port on the fibre ONT something like $25 a month to use (I could be wrong), and requires a separate handover?
I imagine the cost of using a FXS port on the RGW to pay for itself in a few months at that rate and with broadband margins being so "slim", I would imagine only a few ISPs using it.
I could be completely wrong on that price point though. I seem to remember it from the pricebook I have printed a couple of years ago floating around my desk somewhere here.
So with the likes of Orcon saying it takes two years to become profitable on a customer (though with DSL) I cant see why they would want to use the ONT port when they can be more innovative with their fancy RGW.
The RGW have less complicated cables to deal with, and can sometimes have a built in DECT base station so setup is more simple for the customer.
Unless the LFC's are offering a service with the fibre install where they disconnect the incoming copper and connect it to the ONT ?
Ray Taylor
Taylor Communications
ray(a)ruralkiwi.com
Ph 021-483-280
Network status 06-929-9082
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Frater [mailto:mark.frater(a)compass.net.nz]
Sent: Tuesday, 17 March 2015 10:11 a.m.
To: Dave Taht; Ray Taylor
Cc: NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz; John Crispin
Subject: RE: [nznog] openwrt capable routers for NZ?
It will be interesting to see how POTS over fibre plays out in NZ. Most ISPs (with the exception of a few) choose NOT to use ATA ports on the ONT, instead opting for ATA ports on an ISP supplied RGW. Why? We'll, I suspect that this was mostly because of "time to market" drivers. ISPs could do VoIP over UFB using on device across all for Local Fibre Companies. (LFCs). This saved them having to do testing and provisioning integration (TR-69 anyone?) with 3 different ONTs and 4 different companies.
But all that haste to begin with now means a more expensive RGW (with ATA ports on board) and, because VoIP is on the same device as Wifi, an ongoing requirement retest VoIP with each new RGW that comes out with "bigger/better/faster" wifi. Your typical RGW seems to go end-of-life within 12 months. Maybe some of those ISPs will start to rethink using the ATA ports on the ONT?
And with Spark soon to release their Voice over fibre offering with UFB (they've been using POTS on copper alongside fibre up to now), it will be interesting to see if the tide will turn on using ATA ports off the ONT. And of course, in the longer term, who will care about POTs at all?
Mark
-----Original Message-----
From: nznog-bounces(a)list.waikato.ac.nz [mailto:nznog-bounces(a)list.waikato.ac.nz] On Behalf Of Dave Taht
Sent: Tuesday, 10 March 2015 2:37 p.m.
To: Ray Taylor
Cc: NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz; John Crispin
Subject: Re: [nznog] openwrt capable routers for NZ?
What I found really astounding about your email - (and of many others
besides) - is *my first focus* is on reliability. This kind of device is mission critical. It MUST stay up. Always. And never crash. And doing that right, is really, really, hard. (once you get to a few 9s, life gets easier)
https://plus.google.com/u/0/107942175615993706558/posts/TVX3o84jjmb
It took us 3 years to get to where we had a box that did not dissassociate on a whim, that took enormous loads and stayed up, and the current recordholder for uptime is 140 days or so.
https://lists.bufferbloat.net/pipermail/cerowrt-devel/2015-March/004193.html
(sorry about the bad cert)
Most of the lower uptimes reported by my userbase are due merely to losing power, or some reconfiguration.
I have been able to crash most other devices (ISP supplied or not) inside of a few hours of stress testing. (and all the work on cero is now in openwrt chaos calmer. (and tons more besides, the openwrt people really outdid themselves with barrier breaker) I am really happy with their stability so far, but we are about to go break some things with make-wifi-fast )
On Mon, Mar 9, 2015 at 4:04 PM, Ray Taylor
I understand as its generic firmware, I assume there will be many different compatible hardware options.
Although it is default (generic) firmware, your life becomes a lot easier if you just pick one or three devices that meet your needs, and debug the heck out of them before you ship. It is really impossible to test dozens or hundreds of semi-compatible devices. And thus, you end up with nzwrt, as a commonly supported brand on X number of devices... Sure, try as many as you want - try getting stuff directly from china off of alibaba, for example, but consult with the openwrt folk as to what devices you should use to best meet your country's needs.
The big thing though is the voip needs to be capable which may reduce your compatibility list.
I have to admit that onboard voip has not been on my radar at all. A lot of that stuff used to be (back when I still paid attention to voip in my asterisk days), very binary blob, very proprietary. Maybe with the rise of FON that ended, but I don't know. adding in a FON guy.
The market in NZ has dramatically changed with computer stores selling less and less routers, and the home users just using the router issued free from their ISP.
just using the *crappy* router issued free from their ISP. There, fixed that for you. I agree that the aftermarket router biz is in decline, and it's in decline for a variety of reasons, notably, firmware that is often worse than the ISPs, big promises not kept, and general unreliability, and low uptake of 802.11ac clients. I was saddened to find every new home router I tested last month wouldn't even let you turn off nat nor had any routing protocols. I would like it if more routers (both home and ISP-supplied) let you route rather than bridge everything. (which is why babeld - the current default ietf homenet routing protocol) is standard in cerowrt and homewrt.
And to make it work for an ISP in a fibre world, it needs to have a built in voip ATA
I was under the impression that voip ATA was only needed by 50% or so of the marketplace. Me, I long ago switched to skype, and now, webrtc.
PCP also
yep. Getting the NAT right for voip can be a pita. Getting prioritization to work right is a solved problem with fq_codel, tho. Voip calls just cut through other traffic like butter.
- router must be accessible from behind another nat gateway via a port forward.
Yes, was shocked to see nat-only routers. In the case of the cable industry they are not providing devices with real IPs by default, and you have to call them to get them to bridge it for you. so you end up double-natted, just to start with. The future I wanted to live in had a standard jack in the wall that you plugged your own bought-at-the-store gear into. I wanted to keep competition in the marketplace. Sigh.
Enabling WAN admin access doesn’t always make this work with many routers
Remote access is how I maintain my family and several friends routers.
Hardware: - Price point of $40-$50 so we can issue them free with service
wholesale cost qty 1000? 100? 10? This would include the fiber adaptor itself?
- A higher priced, higher speed option would be good for fibre based services
I can certainly see a basic wireless-n version and an -ac version.
Not clear to me what you are saying here. In big cities at least, 2.4ghz is pretty saturated so I generally recomend a dual radio router.
There was recently a project between geekzone and telecom to build a "standard router for NZ" which was designed to be the perfect one with all the features that the GZ community wanted, could be issued for free by telecom and was capable of being used for DSL and fibre.
Well, what got me on this email list is jed laundry's talk thursday night at nznog on his conception of creating "NZWRT" to replace the residential gateways now being supplied. *I like very much an entire country tossing the default firmware on their residental gateways*, and wouldn't mind replacing the fiber converters too... but the only way I've ever been able to figure out how to pay for continuous updates (fixes for, example, openssl, and other hacks) ... is for the ISP devices to be rented to the customer, and a portion of that revenue assigned to the ongoing maintenance and support teams. At these low hardware costs, the real cost of software development and maintenance starts to outweigh the cost of the hardware. And the real costs of security breaches like dnschanger and friends, very, very high. IF NZ can get together on standardizing a few hardware platforms for custom firmware to meet NZ's needs, then you can amoritize that, most of this hardware can last for 7-10 years or more in the field, but will always be in dire need of updates from day #1. My colleague, Jim Gettys, has been focusing on the security issues in home routers for a few years now. Here he is at Berkman Center, with Bruce Schneir: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykhFDyPfxzE Be afraid. Be very afraid... Happily, openwrt has now got features like signed packages, and better forms of updating, but it still will take effort to do right, and roll out new features and bugfixes to userbases counted in the 10s or 100s of thousands.
They got as far as taking bids for the project from companies like huawei and the likes.
That was the first wrong move.
Most of the features that the GZ community were proposing I found to be useless as an isp supplied router, but it would be worth looking at the feature list.
Well, if you can find it and post here... archive.org might have it....
I think a bit of googling might be needed to get to the feature voting page in the forums - it may have been deleted.
-- Dave Täht Let's make wifi fast, less jittery and reliable again! https://plus.google.com/u/0/107942175615993706558/posts/TVX3o84jjmb _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog
On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 10:49 AM, Ray Taylor
The ATA is bundled with the BS2/2a service. So there is no extra cost for using it. Plus you can deliver Voice over the same handover as you deliver the Broadband UNI Port. The ATAs do a DHCP request, and if it's a Chorus one they need some DHCP Option 43 values back to point the ATA to the TR-069 server, along with telling the ATA what it's Serial Number is to use when registering. So I know as my employer are going to be using it very shortly. Since I built the stack to authenticate and manage it. Plus setup the TR-069 server the Chorus ATAs are going to use too.
The cost of the first POTS port on a UFB ONT is $nill because it is priced in with the data connection. No it doesn't require a separate handover however some RSPs/LFCs may want to do this.
You can't get a primary connection data service without a POTS port.
There is a price for a second POTs port and from memory Chorus does offer a 2 POTs port product.
The are some LFC products for connecting the POTS port into the existing premises wiring.
I agree that looking way forward, Dect on the RGW and VoIP phones may become more common and therefore make the POTS port redundant.
Peter.
-----Original Message-----
From: nznog-bounces(a)list.waikato.ac.nz [mailto:nznog-bounces(a)list.waikato.ac.nz] On Behalf Of Ray Taylor
Sent: Tuesday, 17 March 2015 10:49 a.m.
To: NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz
Subject: Re: [nznog] openwrt capable routers for NZ?
Isnt the FXS port on the fibre ONT something like $25 a month to use (I could be wrong), and requires a separate handover?
I imagine the cost of using a FXS port on the RGW to pay for itself in a few months at that rate and with broadband margins being so "slim", I would imagine only a few ISPs using it.
I could be completely wrong on that price point though. I seem to remember it from the pricebook I have printed a couple of years ago floating around my desk somewhere here.
So with the likes of Orcon saying it takes two years to become profitable on a customer (though with DSL) I cant see why they would want to use the ONT port when they can be more innovative with their fancy RGW.
The RGW have less complicated cables to deal with, and can sometimes have a built in DECT base station so setup is more simple for the customer.
Unless the LFC's are offering a service with the fibre install where they disconnect the incoming copper and connect it to the ONT ?
Ray Taylor
Taylor Communications
ray(a)ruralkiwi.com
Ph 021-483-280
Network status 06-929-9082
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Frater [mailto:mark.frater(a)compass.net.nz]
Sent: Tuesday, 17 March 2015 10:11 a.m.
To: Dave Taht; Ray Taylor
Cc: NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz; John Crispin
Subject: RE: [nznog] openwrt capable routers for NZ?
It will be interesting to see how POTS over fibre plays out in NZ. Most ISPs (with the exception of a few) choose NOT to use ATA ports on the ONT, instead opting for ATA ports on an ISP supplied RGW. Why? We'll, I suspect that this was mostly because of "time to market" drivers. ISPs could do VoIP over UFB using on device across all for Local Fibre Companies. (LFCs). This saved them having to do testing and provisioning integration (TR-69 anyone?) with 3 different ONTs and 4 different companies.
But all that haste to begin with now means a more expensive RGW (with ATA ports on board) and, because VoIP is on the same device as Wifi, an ongoing requirement retest VoIP with each new RGW that comes out with "bigger/better/faster" wifi. Your typical RGW seems to go end-of-life within 12 months. Maybe some of those ISPs will start to rethink using the ATA ports on the ONT?
And with Spark soon to release their Voice over fibre offering with UFB (they've been using POTS on copper alongside fibre up to now), it will be interesting to see if the tide will turn on using ATA ports off the ONT. And of course, in the longer term, who will care about POTs at all?
Mark
-----Original Message-----
From: nznog-bounces(a)list.waikato.ac.nz [mailto:nznog-bounces(a)list.waikato.ac.nz] On Behalf Of Dave Taht
Sent: Tuesday, 10 March 2015 2:37 p.m.
To: Ray Taylor
Cc: NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz; John Crispin
Subject: Re: [nznog] openwrt capable routers for NZ?
What I found really astounding about your email - (and of many others
besides) - is *my first focus* is on reliability. This kind of device is mission critical. It MUST stay up. Always. And never crash. And doing that right, is really, really, hard. (once you get to a few 9s, life gets easier)
https://plus.google.com/u/0/107942175615993706558/posts/TVX3o84jjmb
It took us 3 years to get to where we had a box that did not dissassociate on a whim, that took enormous loads and stayed up, and the current recordholder for uptime is 140 days or so.
https://lists.bufferbloat.net/pipermail/cerowrt-devel/2015-March/004193.html
(sorry about the bad cert)
Most of the lower uptimes reported by my userbase are due merely to losing power, or some reconfiguration.
I have been able to crash most other devices (ISP supplied or not) inside of a few hours of stress testing. (and all the work on cero is now in openwrt chaos calmer. (and tons more besides, the openwrt people really outdid themselves with barrier breaker) I am really happy with their stability so far, but we are about to go break some things with make-wifi-fast )
On Mon, Mar 9, 2015 at 4:04 PM, Ray Taylor
I understand as its generic firmware, I assume there will be many different compatible hardware options.
Although it is default (generic) firmware, your life becomes a lot easier if you just pick one or three devices that meet your needs, and debug the heck out of them before you ship. It is really impossible to test dozens or hundreds of semi-compatible devices. And thus, you end up with nzwrt, as a commonly supported brand on X number of devices... Sure, try as many as you want - try getting stuff directly from china off of alibaba, for example, but consult with the openwrt folk as to what devices you should use to best meet your country's needs.
The big thing though is the voip needs to be capable which may reduce your compatibility list.
I have to admit that onboard voip has not been on my radar at all. A lot of that stuff used to be (back when I still paid attention to voip in my asterisk days), very binary blob, very proprietary. Maybe with the rise of FON that ended, but I don't know. adding in a FON guy.
The market in NZ has dramatically changed with computer stores selling less and less routers, and the home users just using the router issued free from their ISP.
just using the *crappy* router issued free from their ISP. There, fixed that for you. I agree that the aftermarket router biz is in decline, and it's in decline for a variety of reasons, notably, firmware that is often worse than the ISPs, big promises not kept, and general unreliability, and low uptake of 802.11ac clients. I was saddened to find every new home router I tested last month wouldn't even let you turn off nat nor had any routing protocols. I would like it if more routers (both home and ISP-supplied) let you route rather than bridge everything. (which is why babeld - the current default ietf homenet routing protocol) is standard in cerowrt and homewrt.
And to make it work for an ISP in a fibre world, it needs to have a built in voip ATA
I was under the impression that voip ATA was only needed by 50% or so of the marketplace. Me, I long ago switched to skype, and now, webrtc.
PCP also
yep. Getting the NAT right for voip can be a pita. Getting prioritization to work right is a solved problem with fq_codel, tho. Voip calls just cut through other traffic like butter.
- router must be accessible from behind another nat gateway via a port forward.
Yes, was shocked to see nat-only routers. In the case of the cable industry they are not providing devices with real IPs by default, and you have to call them to get them to bridge it for you. so you end up double-natted, just to start with. The future I wanted to live in had a standard jack in the wall that you plugged your own bought-at-the-store gear into. I wanted to keep competition in the marketplace. Sigh.
Enabling WAN admin access doesn’t always make this work with many routers
Remote access is how I maintain my family and several friends routers.
Hardware: - Price point of $40-$50 so we can issue them free with service
wholesale cost qty 1000? 100? 10? This would include the fiber adaptor itself?
- A higher priced, higher speed option would be good for fibre based services
I can certainly see a basic wireless-n version and an -ac version.
Not clear to me what you are saying here. In big cities at least, 2.4ghz is pretty saturated so I generally recomend a dual radio router.
There was recently a project between geekzone and telecom to build a "standard router for NZ" which was designed to be the perfect one with all the features that the GZ community wanted, could be issued for free by telecom and was capable of being used for DSL and fibre.
Well, what got me on this email list is jed laundry's talk thursday night at nznog on his conception of creating "NZWRT" to replace the residential gateways now being supplied. *I like very much an entire country tossing the default firmware on their residental gateways*, and wouldn't mind replacing the fiber converters too... but the only way I've ever been able to figure out how to pay for continuous updates (fixes for, example, openssl, and other hacks) ... is for the ISP devices to be rented to the customer, and a portion of that revenue assigned to the ongoing maintenance and support teams. At these low hardware costs, the real cost of software development and maintenance starts to outweigh the cost of the hardware. And the real costs of security breaches like dnschanger and friends, very, very high. IF NZ can get together on standardizing a few hardware platforms for custom firmware to meet NZ's needs, then you can amoritize that, most of this hardware can last for 7-10 years or more in the field, but will always be in dire need of updates from day #1. My colleague, Jim Gettys, has been focusing on the security issues in home routers for a few years now. Here he is at Berkman Center, with Bruce Schneir: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykhFDyPfxzE Be afraid. Be very afraid... Happily, openwrt has now got features like signed packages, and better forms of updating, but it still will take effort to do right, and roll out new features and bugfixes to userbases counted in the 10s or 100s of thousands.
They got as far as taking bids for the project from companies like huawei and the likes.
That was the first wrong move.
Most of the features that the GZ community were proposing I found to be useless as an isp supplied router, but it would be worth looking at the feature list.
Well, if you can find it and post here... archive.org might have it....
I think a bit of googling might be needed to get to the feature voting page in the forums - it may have been deleted.
-- Dave Täht Let's make wifi fast, less jittery and reliable again! https://plus.google.com/u/0/107942175615993706558/posts/TVX3o84jjmb _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog ################################################################################## Attention: This e-mail message is privileged and confidential. If you are not the intended recipient please delete the message and notify the sender. Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author. Scanned by MailMarshal - M86 Security's comprehensive email content security solution. ##################################################################################
participants (5)
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Dave Taht
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Mark Frater
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Peter Ensor
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Peter Lambrechtsen
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Ray Taylor