3.1 SFP ONT preparation

This section details ONT preparation of a Nokia-Alcatel G-010S-A. Note that the recommended unit on LaFibre is now a FS.com 133619 GPON ONU.

First, a small hardware modification needs to be carried out on the ONT itself, inspired by rsaxvc.net. This enables the ONT to boot with the Dell N20KJ card that I am using. I ordered a conductive solder pen from amazon. I applied the solder to the resistor block by first using the pen on a piece of paper in a small circle, then taking a toothpick, scooping the solder from the paper and carefully applying it around the resistor block. Here is my attempt: IMAGE TBC

Next comes the configuration of the ONT itself. There are multiple ways to boot the ONT and access it. The easiest is to use a TP-Link MC-220L. As my server was not required to be on 24/7, I could use this as a “spare” computer. Plug your SFP+ card into the computer and plug in the ONT into one of the ports. Now we need to somehow access the ONT sitting inside the SFP+ port. I did not have my SFP+/RJ-45 switch at the time, so here is my over-worked solution: using a linux live USB to create a ethernet/SFP+ bridge, and then using my laptop via the ethernet port to SSH into the ONT. A lot of these steps could be short-cut in hindsight, but here we are!

Use a linux live USB to boot into Ubuntu. Connect an ethernet cable from the livebox5 to install the bridge-utils package manager: $ apt-get install bridge-utils Once this is installed, run the nm-connection-editor application: $ nm-connection-editor This will open up the connection editor. You should see your two fibre interfaces, as well as your onboard motherboard ethernet interfaces. More is described in Aaron Kili’s Network Bridge Article, but the general steps you will need to take are:

  1. Add a new connection profile, define it as a bridge
  2. Add the ethernet port and the fibre port into the bridge group
  3. Set a static IP address
  4. Remove the slaves from the network configuration so that only the bridge group remains

Connecting your laptop with a static IP in the same subnet as the server PC will allow you to access the ONT on 192.168.1.10.

SSH into the ONT by:
ssh 192.168.1.10 -l ONTUSER
at the prompt, password is SUGAR2A041

Update the following parameters:
ONTUSER # ritool set MfrID SMBS where SMBS is the vendor ID we identified in the livebox information
ONTUSER # ritool set G984Serial 534d425300000000 where 534d4253 is “SMBS” in hexa, and the rest of the serial number is used as is
ONTUSER #ritool set HardwareVersion SMBSSGLBF114 oddly my ONT did not need this converted to hexa - it accepted this value as shown
ONTUSER # ritool dump this writes the values to the ONT

At this stage software version was not updated (and does not seem required).

ONTUSER # fw_setenv sgmii_mode 5 To activate the Lantiq chipset 2.5 Gbps mode. Mode 4 is for 1 Gbps.

ONTUSER # reboot The reboot cycle takes approx. 60 seconds, comparitavely slower than a TX-6610 or other standalone units.

You can watch the connection status once the ONT boots using: ONTUSER # watch -n 1 onu ploamsg
This should give you a readout as follows: errorcode=0 curr_state=5 previous_state=4 elapsed_msec=37876
As you can see the curr_state is 5, which is authenticated.

The ONT can now be considered ready for use.