FTTH ONTs and routers

[jared at puck.nether.net (Jared Mauch)]

On May 15, 2014, at 1:11 PM, Jean-Francois Mezei <jfmezei_nanog at vaxination.ca> wrote:

> 
> It had been my impression that ONTs, like most other consumer modems,
> came with built-in router capabilities (along with ATA for voice).
> 
> The assertion that ONTs have built-in routing capabilities has been
> challenged.
> 
> Can anyone confirm whether ONTs generally have routing (aka: home router
> that does the PPPoE or DHCP and then NAT for home) capabilities?
> 
> Are there examples where a telco has deployed ONTs with the router
> built-in and enabled ? Or would almost all FTTH deployments be made with
> any routing disabled and the ONT acting as a pure ethernet bridge ?

Some are and some don't.  For example the ZHONE active ethernet boxes are Linux on the inside and you can do a variety of different things with them, either making them do the NAT or be bridged back to the aggregation gear.

- jared