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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • Verizon and ATT just rebrand nokia ONTs and roll some of their own software that is mostly enhanced or changed encryption at L1. Can’t speak for Comcast, I only know about the other two as I’m in a smaller ISP that competes with them.

    They use have L2 onts that don’t have any gateway functions, just fiber to ethernet with some extra overhead to monitor the connection between the hose and shelf.

    The ONT-on-a-stick units do the same thing, just a more compact and expensive interface that doesn’t have great support, unless comcast or running all home run fibers where they can just provide a straight SFP instead of doing any optical splitting.


  • No, you are likely looking at an ONT (optical network terminal), and it is not a router. Even with a port that accepts the fiber (sfp or sfp+ for 10g) on your equipment, the OLT (optical line terminal) likely will not provide you with service.

    If you were to match the wavelengths the ISP is using you are likely to become a “rogue” on their PON that can knock out service for other customers that share the same passive network as you.

    I make assumptions about you being on PON since you say AT&T, generally all I have ever seen from them are passive networks (one fiber with splitters for 1 port to many customers) unless you are paying extra for “dedicated” ($$$$$) internet.

    If they are using a ONT with an “RG” (residential gateway) which is the typical “all in one” you can request the gateway service can be removed and replaced with a layer 2 bridge, where you’re router/firewall gets the “external” addressing and there is nothing being done by the ISP equipment other than sending you traffic and OAM (operations, administration, and maintenance; usually check or alert for light levels, software status, if a part of the ONT fails etc).


  • I work for an telco and I have seen a lot of times that a contract for using preexisting underground infrastructure that have lids like this has a section requiring that they are returned to the same location and orientation when the enclosure is sealed.

    Whoever owns that, municipality or private, will probably take a complaint about it, and may pass it to whoever is responsible or owns the plant inside.


  • For indoor cameras, I use TP-Link tapo wireless cameras, and hikvision for outdoor. I put all of them on an isolated camera wlan and vlan without internet. the tapos work fine without internet access, but the status light will always be orange as it tries to reach some tplink aws IP to verify connectivity.

    All the hikvision cameras and tapos support rtsp.



  • typically you only need one power supply to run it, once you move to redundant power you can use the second one in case the first one fails. when you plug both in it will just balance across both until one fails.

    in my opinion, hardware should only be hypervisors that run virtual machines, then you can provision VMs, similar to using VPSs. going this route you will need a vga monitor for initial setup, eventually everything is done over the lan with a web ui or ssh.

    i use proxmox which is Debian based for the hypervisor.

    As far as what you do with it, is that you can in theory replace the VPSs or test software in your lan.

    to compare, i have my router (vyos), homeassistant, a docker server for hosting small services, a network lab (gns3), windows and mac VMs, and more running on a cluster that is using similar hardware.






  • the questions of can they spy, and will they spy are different questions. at some US ISPs (at least the one i am at) the modems usually are only monitoring performance, ie number of packets, errored and discarded packets for troubleshooting. as far as the modem which i will assume is just a layer 2 bridge to your provider, usually not a whole lot going on there due to costs of the hardware. where the privacy violations are going to occur in the access equipment or core. this is what your modem connects to, then your traffic crosses on the way to the “greater internet” if your not using a vpn to outside of your provider, there is no way around it, they can and probably do tap into what your doing. a lot of them it may not be overly nefarious, i know my company does not sell customer data, and we generally only access it for troubleshooting and bandwidth analysis for upgrades, or as ordered by a court for law enforcement.

    if you use a router from your isp almost every manufacturer is trying to sell all these different analytics and dpi that basically tells us what websites customers are visiting and how much/type of traffic to those sites, but directly from the router. same, or greater level of privacy violation as that can see local traffic on your lan, as well as watching wifi connection strength and scanning to see air quality and neighbors for “troubleshooting” or to sell access points.


  • make sure it’s configured for clean shut downs before your battery runs out, auto power up on restoration, and hope it doesn’t happen. you will eventually have an outage that outlasts your batteries.

    I have a large string of batteries from an old telco office, that runs my rack for 14hrs (calculated, I shut everything down around this time) and that did not last for the 2-3 day outage we had after a storm. Without a generator, you will inevitably have an outage, but if you are prepared, then you can mitigate any damage. use NUT if you need to shutdown or power multiple devices from one monitored UPS