| JP Vossen via plug on 28 Oct 2025 11:40:19 -0700 |
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| Re: [PLUG] OT: FiOS ONT replacement |
Wow, that's a lot, thanks! It sounds like I'm worried about nothing, so I'm delighted to be wrong. "I think you have a Tellabs 611" = Yup, now that I know what to search for it's this: https://sundance-communications.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/640265/re-verizon-fios-tellabs-611-ont-vs-alcatel-lucent-i-211m-l#Post640265 at the bottom. Verizon is telling me the upgrade is not optional, my kit will stop working at some point. For the new kit, as long as it's plain old Ethernet out, I'm happy. I don't care about coax, or TV, or cables, I ran 4,000 feet of CAT-5 myself when we built the house, that's all long done, and we've been internet only for a LONG time. (MythTV with an antenna, Roku, VoIP.ms, etc...) Speed upgrades might be interesting, but whatever we have now (I don't even know) works just fine, and the price isn't terrible. I can live with a few mins to download an ISO every 6 months, if that. Thanks again! On 10/27/25 08:42 PM, Jonathan Caicedo via plug wrote:
I'm not an ONT expert, so take what I will with a grain of salt, but all of the ONTs FiOS has currently has in service all have Ethernet RJ-45s - if you upgrade, you won't lose that, for sure. Even the newest ONTs they use with FiOS 2-gigabit service (the Nokia TW-210X-a) spits out 10 gigabit Ethernet - that particular ONT comes with some other issues - more on that later. With that said, some background on what I do know - from what you describe, I think you hve a Tellabs 611 (or 612, but that doesn't matter much) - that's an older BPON ONT. IIRC, FiOS started phasing those out during the transition to GPON circa 2010-ish? Depends on the region. Anyway, I digress, the reason they're probably pestering you so much is they probably want to (finally) phase out the BPON equipment at your local central office. At this rate, you don't have much to lose - in fact, you might even gain as you can finally upgrade to the newer speed packages (at roughly the same price, but that might also depend - I'm on 300/300 now for the same price I was paying about 10 years ago for 50/50). I think some of your worries come from the fact, that at one point, you could opt for either Ethernet out or MoCA out from your ONT. I remember my first encounter with FiOS was on a 100/100 plan and my ONT was configured for MoCA out to the Verizon-provided G1100 router. It provided the path of least resistance for most installs as you didn't have to run CAT5/6 somewhere else in the home. At the time, most ONTs in service (I'm thinking primarily the Alcatel-Lucent I-211M-L) only support MoCA 1.0/1.1 out, even though the G1100 supported non-bonded 2.0 - that meant that a <100/100 subscription was connected via MoCA and any higher speed subscription required an Ethernet connection between the ONT and the router. Where things get kinda interesting, a few years ago, FiOS started to offer 2 gigabit service - that moves us to NG-PON2 from GPON - the primary ONT in use for that service, if a customer opts for it, is the Nokia TW-210X-a I mentioned earlier (you might see a Calix 812NG-V as well for 2 gigabit service, from what I've quickly gathered through Googling...) - those ONTs don't have a coaxial port, which basically breaks existing FiOS TV service (which is delivered with RF-over-fiber to your ONT and out of your ONT as QAM channels over coax for your set-top boxes to consume) - to fix this, FiOS is starting to transition to IPTV with their new set-top boxes just being Android boxes with that connect to your home network for TV. AFICT, POTS phone service should work the same, it's only TV that's impacted on the move to 2 gigabit. Probably missing some stuff, or got some parts wrong (going off fuzzy memories for some things) - this is all random knowledge I've built up since I've been a FiOS customer. TL;DR - upgrade, you'll probably make your local FiOS tech at your CO very happy. -- Jonathan On 2025-10-27 19:45, JP Vossen via plug wrote:Replied merged, thanks! Jonathan, no model number is jumping out at me. This is an OLD install, pretty close to when FiOS first came out, at least around here. It's 3 cream colored units mounted on a 25x18" black board mounted to the basement wall: 1. ONT is 12.5 x 12.5" and output looks like 1x Ethernet RJ-45, 1x coax, and 4x POTS RJ-11 terminals 2. Separate power brick, more-or-less brick size 3. Separate UPS about 9.5 x 7.5" Carl, that sound encouraging. Maybe I'm carry too much old baggage, I just recall some horror stories about various carriers trying to force use of their own black box crap. On 10/27/25 05:38 PM, Carl Johnson wrote:If you're already provisioned for ethernet, that should carry forward. It used to be that you'd have issues like you're saying when everything was using coax MoCA for the WAN side. That's not the case so much anymore, especially with GPON ONT's.On 10/27/25 05:25 PM, Jonathan Caicedo wrote:What’s the current model of your existing ONT, or what does it look like? Is it one of the black Nokia ones with green lights? — JonathanOn Oct 27, 2025, at 17:19, JP Vossen via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote: Verizon keeps bugging me about replacing our FiOS ONT. I've been putting it off, because what we have now has Just Worked for a *long* time, and more because it is configured with a simple Ethernet jack, into which I plug my pfSense FW WAN interface. No black boxes or any crap like that, just Ethernet. I'm worried that a) when I call them they will say, "What's Ethernet" and b), no matter what assurances they give on the phone, the guy who shows up will either say "What's Ethernet" or "We can't do it that way anymore." Clues or local experiences? (For reference, I'm in Collegeville.)
Thanks, JP -- ------------------------------------------------------------------- JP Vossen, CISSP | http://www.jpsdomain.org/ | http://bashcookbook.com/ ___________________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug