My home broadband has been out-of-contract for over a year. Although my 1 Gbps plan was good enough, I was in intrigued by all the new plans, particularly the XGSPON-based 10 Gbps plans. Currently, ViewQwest seems to have one of the sweetest deals, so I jumped on it, and I want to share my experience, especially with using XGSPON.
This post is mostly for advanced users. My experience with ViewQwest may be interesting to a wider audience, but my focus topics would really be more relevant to advanced users.
If you didn’t know, Singapore’s home broadband is quite a lot more advanced than most other countries. Gigabit Ethernet is like the most basic thing we have. 2 Gbps service has already been around for 10 years. This year, the Singapore government announced an investment to help upgrade home broadband infrastructure to support 10 Gbps nationwide, so you can expect that 10 Gbps adoption will pick up pace and become commonplace much sooner than later.
A new development is XGSPON. The home broadband we have had all these years is based on something called GPON — Gigabit Passive Optical Network. Speeds are asymmetrical, providing more “download” speed than “upload” speed, which generally makes sense to most home users.
XGSPON, which stands for 10-Gigabit Symmetric Passive Optical Network, supports 10 Gbps download and 10 Gbps upload speeds. The downstream and upstream speeds are the same, hence symmetric. I still don’t think most homes would need 10 Gbps. I don’t even think I would need 10 Gbps. But why did I go for it?
I was intrigued by one of ViewQwest’s options for “Advanced Home Network”. They were offering a no-frills 10 Gbps SFP+ Module Home Broadband Plan with a 10 Gbps SFP+ transceiver. There is no ONT (the optical network terminal), and they don’t provide any router. Instead, the fibre from the wall goes into a SFP+ transceiver that plugs directly into my own router. This is perfect for users who already have their own router and don’t want any from the broadband service provider. This plan from ViewQwest even does away with the need of an ONT.
The SFP+ transceiver is an ONT-on-a-stick. So, technically, there is still an ONT, except that it’s been squeezed into a slightly oversized SFP+ transceiver which you can plug into a SFP+ cage of your router. This transceiver is a Huawei OptiXstar S800E SFP+ Module. It is a bit longer than a typical SFP+ transceivers and thus sticks out of the SFP+ cage slightly more.
(You may also hear about ONU. ONU = Optical Network Unit. ONT = Optical Network Terminal. They are essentially the same thing in terms of their role in the optical network.)
The big question, when I was doing my research, was whether this SFP+ transceiver will work with my MikroTik router. SFP+ is supposed to be interoperable. But I’ve been in networking long enough to see Cisco switches purposely identifying non-CIsco transceivers and refusing to work with them, or FortiGate firewalls that purposely flags a warning in their management system when it finds an unapproved transceiver even though it will still use it. I know it is unlikely that MikroTik would do this, but I was trying to be diligent to check this out before committing to a contract.
Unfortunately, no one at ViewQwest could answer this question. Funny enough, at one time when I spoke to their technical support, I was almost hoping they would have an answer. Alas, the technical support could not do any better than give a general wishy-washy answer about ensuring that my router can support 10 Gbps and that it “usually should work”.
Let me get to the point, in case you came here for this answer. Yes, the Huawei OptiXstar S800E SFP+ Module works with my MikroTik RB4011. I had to disable auto-negotiation on the SFP+ port. Yeah, so it didn’t quite work out-of-the-box, but that’s the only change needed.
(Interesting, with RouterOS 6.43.x, which I also happened to have a device running it lying around, the Huawei OptiXstar S800E SFP+ Module works out-of-the-box.)
Here’s some observations:
- The Huawei OptiXstar S800E SFP+ Module runs very hot. Just something to take note. (Update: Not really actually. It was very hot when I plugged into a 10/2.5 GbE switch earlier, but now in my MikroTik it seems normal.)
- The module is really like an actual ONT, which takes time to boot up and set itself up when connected/powered. It takes as long as an actual separate ONT device. Thus, it will take some time before the link comes up, much longer than a typical optical SFP+ transceiver would.
- The device that the SFP+ module is plugged into doesn’t see any operating data from the transceiver. There’s no brand/model information, no optical power information, etc. Basically, the SFP+ module acts as an ONT and hides all the optics away.
- ViewQwest assigns private IP addresses in the 10.0.0.0/8 range! It is not quite the reserved CGNAT block. I’m surprised because I’ve been reading online that it should be in the 100.64.0.0/10 range. You can, however, pay $4.03 per month for a static public IPv4 address.
- Static IPv6 with /56 prefix delegation is available upon request. (I’m not sure if this is only applicable for static public IPv4 subscribers.) I received a static IPv6 IP and /56 prefix delegation, but they aren’t provisioned via DHCPv6, and thus require manual configuration on my end.
Let me share some thoughts about my customer experience with ViewQwest. Their online chat and email support are very bad. Online chat never worked. Email support takes maybe a day, often longer, to turnaround.
Surprisingly, phone works very well for them. I almost always get to talk to a human within 2 minutes. Whether the matter gets resolved or not, of course, is a totally different matter. Things gets passed around a lot, and any “real work” (i.e. that delivers results) will take a day or more.
Technical support is probably as bad as any other broadband service provider. When I called about the XGSPON not working initially (because it did not work out-of-the-box with my MikroTik), I got the sense that the ViewQwest technical support staff didn’t seem to know about their own products/services. He wanted to know how the SFP+ transceiver was connected to my router. He established that I have a cable from the FTP (fibre termination point) to the transceiver, but he didn’t understand that the transceiver is something that goes directly into my router. It’s quite sad that technical support cannot understand basic technical things.
The XGSPON SFP+ Module plan is for “advanced users”. If you sign up for this, expect to be mostly on your own. The kit that ViewQwest shipped to me to setup my broadband provided instructions that were completely irrelevant. Yes, you’re on your own. You got to know what to do.
Another aspect that was a disappointment was the signup experience. The only appointment I was aware that needed to be scheduled was for the delivery of the above kit. After all, it was a home delivery, that makes sense right? It turns out it was really for NetLink Trust’s (NLT) contractors to come “check” my fibre termination. I don’t understand why when I moved into my current home a few years ago, I could transfer my StarHub broadband over without any need for NLT to send anyone down. So I was initially a bit confused about the appointment from NLT. I had thought they were ViewQwest, and perhaps due to poor communication, my confirmation bias led me to believe they were from ViewQwest. I was really confused about there being 1st and 2nd appointments, implying there are two distinct appointments, but I was only aware of one.
Later, I thought something was amiss, so I called ViewQwest to clarify, and they told me that, yes, NLT needs to come, and that, yes, my other scheduled appointment is still on. That, I assumed, was for the home delivery.
On the actual day, no one showed up during the appointment slot. I called ViewQwest, where it was finally clarified to me that the appointment I made with them during sign-up was for NLT, and it seems they still didn’t know NLT had already come 5 days earlier, and that the “home delivery” was simply any time between 9 am to 9 pm! I didn’t even need to be around since their 3rd-party courier would just drop off the “kit”.
On hindsight, the process seems largely fine. The gap is mainly in properly communicating the process to me. It wasn’t clear to me when and what was to be expected. Earlier phone calls to clarify didn’t seem to help much.
The XGSPON 10 Gbps SFP+ Module Home Broadband Plan from ViewQwest works out fine. It is for advanced users who are know how to setup their own network, because you’re going to be on your own.