FTTH GPON Interoperability
Interoperability is number two in the operators’ ONU selection criteria (30%) just below the cost per unit (41%) and far above the maintenance costs (10%).
source: Informa Telecom & Media 2013
The lack of interoperability between OLT and ONT vendors imply a long internal testing of several months (sometimes over 5 months) that directly impact on the time to choose an ONU vendor (in some cases from 7 months to over 1 year).
It is also a cause to be excluded from RFP bids.
The Broadband Forum Launched the GPON Interoperability Test Plan under the TR-255. This certification helps but all vendors and service providers are still reluctan to go over it due to the uncertainty over benefits, as this process has time-to-market impact as well as cost implications. Besides, there are different OLTs with different firmware versions (some of the ad-hoc to operators’ requirements). What it is demanded is “Interoperability” with the OLTs that the operator has in its network, including proprietary implementations.
In fact, most of operators demand all contendants ONUs to pass their internal test plan before being accepted in a tender.
By an appropriate interoperability test procedure, the ONU selection process by operators could be reduced by about 40%
GPONDoctor Interoperability test procedure
The combination of GPON protocol analyser plus a traffic generator/analyser enables and OLT-ONU interoperability setup where in a very fast and simple way it is possible to find all the issues that impact in the optimum behaviour.
With a GPONDoctor Analyser it is possible to identify if whether the problem is at physical, GTC or OMCI layer.
Besides, even if the ONU is correctly provisioned, it is also mandatory to check if the traffic flowing through the PON is according the setting configured. A GPONDoctor Analyser can extract the user traffic from the PON, thant together with the traffic injected and extracted from the OLT and ONU allows to identify any possible deviation, its cause and responsible.
ONU vendors usually test their systems against their potential customers’ OLT during a limited time. Thier need is to be able to relicate they behaviour in their lab so that technicians can provide a new firmware version in the shortest time.
Capture & replay
By capturing the information by means of a GPON Doctor Analyser and further process it with our “Capture & Emulate” software, it is possible to make an OLT Emulator (like GPONDoctor OLT-e) behave in the similar way as the target OLT that you will like to make your system interoperable with.
