10gb fiber box nomenclature and access questions

[rknop]

In the attached picture, on the left there's a thin white box that connects to the fiber outside; there's a fiber connection from it to the black box on the right. A RJ45 connection comes out of the middle bottom of that and goes into a 10Gb ethernet card in my computer. My computer asks for an address via DHCP, and it gets an external IPv4 address. (The only IPv6 address it gets starts with fe80, which means it's link local, so I'm not getting an external IPv6 address.)

Is the box on the left anything other than just a junction box? If it is, what is it called? What is the model name and number of this box? (I haven't found anything on the box that seems obviously that, but I may not have looked in the right place.)

Is the box on the right an ONT?

Since there are just two ethernet ports on the black box (one labelled 10GE, one labelled GE), I'm guessing that this box will not function as a router.

Previously, with the Sonic fiber I had over the Internet connection, there was a modem that could serve as a router. I set it up in passthrough mode, or whatever the right name is for the mode where the computer gets the IP address of the modem and can connect directly to and from the Internet. However, there was still an IP address (I forget exactly what, but looking at the routing tables I could find it, and if memory serves was a 192.168 address) where I could get to an http interface to that modem. Is there something equivalent for the ONT, or whatever the right term for the Sonic black box is? I'd like to take a look at the config, if there is any, to see what's going on in there.

[ngufra]

White box is just to hide the cable. it's optically connected to the central office.
The black box is the ONT that convert from optical to electrical.
It also has an ATA (analog telephone adapter) feature to plug some wired phones.
The typical usage is to connect a router to the ONT. It is not recommended that you connect your computer directly into it.
As you tested, you get a public IP.
Sonic can rent you a router/mesh system or you can provide your own.

[brandonc]

In the attached picture, on the left there's a thin white box that connects to the fiber outside; there's a fiber connection from it to the black box on the right. A RJ45 connection comes out of the middle bottom of that and goes into a 10Gb ethernet card in my computer. My computer asks for an address via DHCP, and it gets an external IPv4 address. (The only IPv6 address it gets starts with fe80, which means it's link local, so I'm not getting an external IPv6 address.)

Is the box on the left anything other than just a junction box? If it is, what is it called? What is the model name and number of this box? (I haven't found anything on the box that seems obviously that, but I may not have looked in the right place.)

Is the box on the right an ONT?

Since there are just two ethernet ports on the black box (one labelled 10GE, one labelled GE), I'm guessing that this box will not function as a router.

Previously, with the Sonic fiber I had over the Internet connection, there was a modem that could serve as a router. I set it up in passthrough mode, or whatever the right name is for the mode where the computer gets the IP address of the modem and can connect directly to and from the Internet. However, there was still an IP address (I forget exactly what, but looking at the routing tables I could find it, and if memory serves was a 192.168 address) where I could get to an http interface to that modem. Is there something equivalent for the ONT, or whatever the right term for the Sonic black box is? I'd like to take a look at the config, if there is any, to see what's going on in there.

Hi there, as stated by ngufra above, the white box is simply a plastic cover that we use to make the Fiber Spool nice and neat inside the home and also protect the fragile cable from being broken by mistake. The black box is your Sonic ONT, which essentially acts as your "Fiber modem" to plug a router into so that you can connect your devices.

Looking over your account, it looks like you opted out of renting one of our routers, so if you have your own router, you just need to plug that into our ONT and then connect your devices to the router's Ethernet/WiFi connection for service. If you do not have your own router, we can definitely ship out one of our Eero Mesh routers that we rent to our customers.

Once you have a router connected, you will need to configure the router so that it can request/receive an IPv6 address. Otherwise, it will default to just receiving a normal singular IPv4 address.

If you have any questions, please let us know!

Kind regards,

[rknop]

Yeah, I use my computer as the gateway; it's got a second ethernet card in it that connects to an AP / switch, and everything else connects to that. I run all the various packet filtering and firewall stuff, as well as my internal DHCP server for the private subnet (that the second ethernet card is on), on the computer I have plugged into the ONT; it does my NAT stuff.

What I was wondering if there is an admin interface or anything like that on the ONT itself;

[ngufra]

Behind the ONT it's ethernet, so your computer is not really a gateway, just a router.
I don't believe there is an admin interface for you on t he ONT.
There may be one on sonic's side for configuring and troubleshooting.

What sofware are you using on that computer? pfSense?
It may be hard to route at 10 Gbps

[brandonc]

Yeah, I use my computer as the gateway; it's got a second ethernet card in it that connects to an AP / switch, and everything else connects to that. I run all the various packet filtering and firewall stuff, as well as my internal DHCP server for the private subnet (that the second ethernet card is on), on the computer I have plugged into the ONT; it does my NAT stuff.

What I was wondering if there is an admin interface or anything like that on the ONT itself;

We don't have an interface for the customer side as everything up to the ONT is managed by Sonic. I'm unsure if the set-up you are currently running will work as we are only trained on supporting the Sonic equipment, but I would encourage you to continue asking others here on the forums for help as a lot of our customers are very knowledgeable on customized DIY set-ups.

These threads might help you achieve what you're trying to do :

viewtopic.php?p=62510&hilit=pfsense#p62510

viewtopic.php?t=17472&hilit=guide

Kind regards,

[rknop]

The setup does work. I just have a Linux box as the first router after the upstream connection; I've done things this way for years with various ISPs in various different states (and countries...). Setting up the NAT (once you know how to do it) using Linux netfilter/iptables (and the ufw front-end) is not too hard. With the Sonic fiber, it's actually easier to set it up directly, because I just plug in the cable; previously, to get it to work the way I wanted, I had to figure out how to get the cable modem or router (usually they were one box) into passthrough mode, or whatever they called it.

I don't actually route at full 10gb. I only have Wifi 5, and the couple of machines connected via ethernet only have 1GB ethernet cards themselves. I do take advantage of the faster connection with my machine, the one connected directly.

(What I still have to figure out, as I haven't thought about it enough to figure it all out, is how to pull in the IPv6 prefix delegation and get machines other than mine connected via IPv6. But, even though I remember worrying in the 1990s that IPv4 would stop working before the end of the century, not having IPv6 is not yet actually a hindrance....)

[klui]

That white box has many names depending on the vendor of the enclosure. You can call it a fiber demarcation enclosure if you'd like.

A long time ago my parents had Sonic fiber installed and they were given a FET1G-01RSAN from Tii Technologies. Tii calls it a "Fiber Entrance Terminal Demarcation Enclosure."

https://tiitech.com/product/fet1/

The enclosure delineates Sonic's infrastructure from yours much like legacy copper NIDs. The link above contains an installation PDF and shows telco/customer boundaries. The Sonic-"branded" enclosure will have a similar topology. All of them have guides for managing fiber slack. The slack is important when the fiber gets damaged and it needs to be respliced using a fusion splicer. Try not to damage the fiber going into the enclosure on Sonic's end. The telco portion is more rugged. The cable coming out of the enclosure to your ONT is just a regular patch cord which is easily replaced.

Refrain from removing the fiber from the enclosure adapter/ONT. If you do so and don't have any fiber cleaners you risk dust contamination which may negatively affect the signal. It will be fine most of the time and I did not recall the techs that have installed fiber for my parents and me inspect/clean them before they attached them. But it is best practice to inspect, clean (if necessary, followed by reinspection, reclean, if necessary, ...). If it's not obvious one shouldn't blow or wipe the fiber ferrule on a piece of clothing or finger as methods for cleaning.