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I own a FTTH connection to Telekom since 2018, as the only provider in my street, allowed to install an internet connection (only glass fiber). Since then, I h
by madduci 9mo ago
I own a FTTH connection to Telekom since 2018, as the only provider in my street, allowed to install an internet connection (only glass fiber).
Since then, I have always used my own device and I maintain a GitHub Snippet in how to connect OpenWRT modem (and by extension, any other modem that supports pppoe), rather than their Huawei SpeedPort crap or the more expensive Fritz Box). Link to Gist : https://gist.github.com/madduci/8b8637b922e433d617261373220be44c https://gist.github.com/madduci/8b8637b922e433d617261373220b...
I use PiHole in my own network, circumnavigating the DNS limitations, using Quad9 as my main DNS provider, but Unbound is on my to-do list.
The most concerning limitation in the German market is the unavailability of native Glass Fiber modems, that can accept as input a Glass Fiber connection: at the moment, providers install their own Glass Fiber modem. Without it, you can't actually have an internet connection at home
- retired 9mo agoIs it possible to use a media converter from glass fiber to RJ45/Ethernet? Those are commonly available and then you can use whatever modem/router you like.
- progbits 9mo agoThey most likely use GPON so the optic is going to see return traffic for your neighbors. So they make it hard (but not impossible) to bring your own optic or media converter.
- vladvasiliu 9mo agoAFAIK GPON uses encryption, so you actually get the traffic intended for all your neighbors but can't do anything with it. If you bring your own converter, you wouldn't be able to handle your own traffic either.
- progbits 9mo agoUsually yes, but it depends: https://pierrekim.github.io/blog/2016-11-01-gpon-ftth-networks-insecurity.html https://pierrekim.github.io/blog/2016-11-01-gpon-ftth-networ... Also the authentication might rely on weak secrets. I know my ISP provided FTTH router has a six letter password and a guessable username (derived from my last name), and I can't change either. Though the research is quite old now. Couldn't find anything recent specifically for DT.
- zhouzhao 9mo agoYou can bring your own modem. You just have to register it.
- madduci 9mo agoBut how? There is no information about it, which means, it can't be done without any form of reverse engineering
- nandomrumber 9mo agoYou’d need to be able to replicate whatever configuration the ISP provided device has, and they won’t give you that. FTTH here in Australia is the same, you’re stuck using the network providers device, which just provides an Ethernet port, and a POTS port if you’re in to that sort of thing, with your LAN device connected behind it. There was fierce lobbying back in the day (shout out to Simon Hackett / Internode) for our national broadband network to be simple dark fibre and that ISPs could build on top of that to provide innovation and differentiation. Instead what we got was a bunch of ISPs that resell the National Broadband Network’s expensive wholesale plans with little in the way of either differentiation or innovation. Edit to add: what the sibling comments said too.
- retired 9mo agoThanks. I have an ISP provided media converter with my own router behind that, using the correct VLAN was enough to get it working. I thought those media converters were pretty dumb devices but it seems they are not.
- DannyBee 9mo agoThey are not dumb but are very standardized. Unless they are issuing and verifying device certs you can almost certainly use your own PON equipment with very little effort. If they are using certs youd have to extract it. The vast majority of ISPs don't bother or care.
- Youden 9mo agoFWIW, the incumbent ISP in Switzerland, Swisscom, tried to roll out XGS-PON but our "Internode", Init7, fought them in court on the grounds that it was anticompetitive, since it locks every provider into a single technology. They won. Now customers can choose. Nearly every ISP chooses the easy way and has the customer connect through Swisscom's XGS-PON but Init7 in particular has instead built out their own routers in POPs around Switzerland so that customers can have a physical fibre directly to their network. It's just plain ethernet with DHCP so you can use whatever equipment you want. It's also allowed Init7 to do something none of the other providers can do: offer 25Gbps symmetric service at no extra cost (beyond a one-off installation cost for the more expensive SFP modules).
- Namidairo 9mo agoIf I recall, for something like GPON or XGS-PON, you end up having to clone the various attributes of the original for it to work properly. This typically includes serial number, hardware id, firmware identifiers, etc.
- retired 9mo agoQuestion out of curiosity. I once swapped a TPLink media converter between two homes, both using the same ISP, to debug internet issues and to see if that would improve the situation. Did I do something incredibly illegal? And did my ISP get confused seeing my media converter on the other side of town?
- fc417fc802 9mo agoIllegal? No, at least not in any sane jurisdiction. It's no different than moving a SIM card between phones. Confused? Maybe but probably not. It depends on how they track things. An ISP I had in the past tagged subscriber accounts on the OLT side.
- direwolf20 9mo agoThis wouldn't be criminally illegal anywhere unless done with some sort of fraudulent intent, but maybe in some places the ISP could make you swap them back.
- ewoodrich 9mo agoWhen I was a kid I used to pack my house's cable modem in a backback and bring it to my friend's house a couple miles away when I'd visit to play Xbox Live. My dad had a back-up dial-up connection for emails and mom didn't use the internet very much so usually wouldn't mind unless he needed to work. I remember this working at greater distances in other places occasionally too. Earlier, in the dial-up era, my dad didn't feel like paying for internet at home and work, so after school I would call his office and ask his secretary if he had left for his evening meetings yet. If so, she'd disconnect his dial-up connection and I'd get a couple hours to myself after school. We didn't have two phone lines at home so I'm not sure what happened if he needed it unexpectedly. I think he also had a by-the-minute service as a backup or maybe his partner in the office had a separate plan? This was all done under agreed rules I only vaguely remember so must not have been a frequent problem. Always funny to think back to that era when internet wasn't assumed to be a 24/7 thing and losing internet for a day wasn't the end of the world...
- vladvasiliu 9mo agoI don't know if it's the case in Germany, but here in France consumer FTTH networks are of the GPON persuasion. These need to handle encryption and be able to properly register on the tree, so I'm not completely shocked they require some form of ISP-provided device to terminate the fiber connection. There's also a EU law which says that users should be able to bring their own modems / routers, so AFAIK providers say that this particular terminal device is still "on their side of the network". I've seen such devices come in two varieties. One is a separate device which plugs on the optical network, does the encryption and stuff, and then exposes an ethernet port which is connected to the actual router which does wifi, etc. With SFR and Bouygues, it was trivial [0] to replace the ISP-provided router with one of your choosing. You get the normal external IPs and you do your thing. The ISP router sleeps in its box in storage. This was my setup up until a few years ago, with both these providers. Now SFR has moved to CGNAT, but the setup is the same, so I expect users to still be able to switch routers (but I haven't tested, since I'm not a client anymore). Then there's Free, who provides a single device that connects to the fiber, does routing, wifi, etc. In this case, it's possible to flip a switch in its settings for it to act as a bridge (don't know how wifi behaves in this case, if it stays on). It then only accepts a single downstream client, which gets the external IP. SFR had a similar setup for DOCSIS. I'm not familiar with how Orange, the biggest operator, functions. But I understand they have a general tendency to be a PITA so YMMV with them. --- [0] For Bouygues, this device only talked on a tagged VLAN100 for some reason. On the SFR, the network expected you to send a client id in the DHCP request.
- B1FIDO 9mo agoThe term you're looking for is "demarc" or: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_point This is the physical boundary of a network, in telecommunications. This is the junction where the service provider can point and say "that's our equipment on this side". So it helps to narrow down the troubleshooting. Often, if you have a telephone landline, you will see your demarc take the form of a gray RJ11 box with a small self-plug in it. It would be common practice to plug a phone into that box directly, then you've eliminated the "inside wiring" in the house.
- DannyBee 9mo ago
- DannyBee 9mo agoYes, with right kind of PON SFP stick this is possible. Most kinds of PON sticks are still in the $150-300 range though for XGS-PON (I use an XGS-PON stick with AT&T instead of their modem)
- fc417fc802 9mo ago> providers install their own Glass Fiber modem It's the same in the US. The ISP fiber network falls inside their security boundary in my experience - you can't BYOD. They install a modem (these days often including an integrated router, switch, and AP) and you receive either ethernet or wifi from them. I think the only major change in that regard has been that coaxial cable providers here will often let you bring your own docsis modem these days. I never found any of this concerning until quite recently. With the advent of ISPs providing public wifi service out of consumer endpoints as well as wifi based radar I'm no longer comfortable having vendor controlled wireless equipment in my home.
- Semaphor 9mo agoI don’t have fiber access, but at least for cable, my provider (formerly Kabel Deutschland, now Vodafone) allows me to put the modem/router into "modem only" mode, which then allows me to use my own router. Outside of Fritzbox (which is again a whole integrated thing; with questionable features) there aren’t many DOCSIS modems freely available, and the no-name china devices don’t seem much better than my Vodafone Box.
- NekkoDroid 9mo ago> allows me to put the modem/router into "modem only" mode, which then allows me to use my own router. Telekom Speedports also have a modem only mode (the ones for non-fiber, dunno about the ones for fiber, but it looked like those are only modems and not a router as well). I don't make use of it since I manage the wifi for my family, but I do know it exists.
- hdgvhicv 9mo agoIn the U.K. you get a PON which gives you a cat5 gig or mgig port, you then connect your router and pppoe to your ISP. Most ISPs offer a managed router but the ISPs I’ve chosen have always allowed the pppoe option.
- fc417fc802 9mo agoSame thing here except when they last upgraded the ONT I had to turn PPPoE off - it's just plain old ethernet service now. But the ONT seems to be performing the equivalent authentication role from what I was able to gather by shoulder surfing the tech. They had to start offering routers that integrate the ONT because the common consumer gear is 1G or 2.5G ethernet but they sell up to 10G service here.
- juliangmp 9mo ago> The most concerning limitation in the German market is the unavailability of native Glass Fiber modems, that can accept as input a Glass Fiber connection: at the moment, providers install their own Glass Fiber modem. Im actually quite okay with that. Why should I have to pay for specialized hardware that won't be usable if I move and the new apartment uses DSL or docsis. Give me an rj45 (or sfp for some fiber connections) and let me put whatever Router I want behind it.
- MarkusWandel 9mo agoThe "glass fiber modem" is an inherent part of the GPON network. These are complicated. The "P" stands for "passive". Yours and and up to 127 other houses are all on the same "light domain" i.e. the downstream is passively split, and the upstream is passively combined, in optical boxes that don't even have electrical parts. This needs crazy accurate timing for the upstream. The head end needs to know the exact delay to your particular box to give it a "grant" to transmit at exactly the right time so transmit bandwidth is not wasted by idle time or multiple boxes transmitting at the same time and corrupting each other. You don't want brand X modems with dodgy configurations in this. Of course as a consumer you'd want "as little modem as possible" i.e. just give me an ethernet port running DHCP or PPPOE and let me do the rest.
- stephen_g 9mo agoThey are complicated, but standardised and commoditised. Ubiquiti, for example, sells an ONT (fibre modem) in a SFP form factor for US$39 [1], or a little standalone unit with an Ethernet port for US$49 [2]. 1. https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/fiber-gpon/products/uf-instant https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/fiber-gpon/products/uf-i... 2. https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/fiber-gpon/products/wave-fiber-onu https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/fiber-gpon/products/wave...
- direwolf20 9mo agoFor comparison: you can bring your own DOCSIS modem to a cable network, even though all the houses on the street are connected to the same cable and you could jam it, or send a voltage spike to break everyone's modem.
- zhouzhao 9mo ago>The most concerning limitation in the German market is the unavailability of native Glass Fiber modems, This is not true for everwhere. You can totally use your own ONT or fiber modem with DTAG.
- lwde 9mo agoYou have the right to router freedom even with FTTH. And fortunately, with DTAG FTTH, you can also book 1und1 with good peering (:
- madduci 9mo agorouter freedom yes, but the Telekom Black Box that takes as input the Fiber cable is still a real "black box" that needs to be installed
- Fnoord 9mo agoHere in NL I've been able to replace router (Zyxel in my case) and ONT (Huawei in my case) with one SFP+ (went with some South-Korean one). Only had to register the serial of my SFP+.
- lwde 9mo agonope, just remove the Telekom Black Box/ONT and get a GPON SFP (Like Luleey or FS) and register that mac.
- ckbkr10 9mo agoSorry to say but how you are framing things is simply not true anymore. You are not required to buy their "Glasfaser Modem 2" you can buy any ONT Modem. You are not required to use any of their equipment, they give you the data to connect via PPPOE directly. I bought a house with FTTH in 2023 and never used any Telekom hardware. Nobody forces you to use the peer DNS. The telekom DNS isn't complying to https://cuii.info/anordnungen/ https://cuii.info/anordnungen/ because they want to but to avoid being sued everytime some company wants to block an illegal streaming site.
- iggldiggl 9mo ago> Nobody forces you to use the peer DNS. For practical purposes there's the problem (at least a few years ago?) though that Akamai in particular uses DNS to steer you to the correct portion of its CDN and the default IPs returned by independent DNS resolvers tended to have relatively abysmal peering with the Telekom network that was getting completely overloaded at peak times. Unfortunately "use <insert favourite DNS provider here> everywhere except for Akamai CDN, for which use the Telekom DNS" isn't something that consumer routers support, so you'd have to start running your own custom DNS resolver to work around that problem…
- madduci 9mo agoDon't you have the small black glass fiber box that takes as input the fiber glass cable and outputs a rj45 port?
- bobmcnamara 9mo agoFor PONs you can get a programmable SFP+ and clone the manuif, devid, and password into it.
- TacticalCoder 9mo ago> I use PiHole in my own network, circumnavigating the DNS limitations, using Quad9 as my main DNS provider, but Unbound is on my to-do list. Why is PiHole necessary to dodge DNS limitations: can't you just put Quad9 as the DNS in your router/FritzBox? Now I switched from PiHole to running unbound on a... Pi! I did that years ago: do it, you won't be disappointed. I don't have the shiny PiHole UI anymore but I don't care: unbound supports wildcards to blacklist domains and that's what I care the most about. So a Pi with unbound then dnsmasq on my Linux desktop: this makes for very speedy lookups (as most queries are hitting the cache).
- MaKey 9mo agoYou might be able to switch to a different ISP, e. g. 1&1. They rent the line from Telekom but you still get their peering.
- jon_adler 9mo agoAs a fellow OpenWRT user who tried many DNS solutions including unbound, also consider NextDNS. They are pretty awesome.