[AusNOG] 10G CPE (1RU?) recommendations?

[Michael Kahl]

I've dealt with this one pretty extensively and there's arguments both
ways, from both the carriers perspective, and the customers perspective.

>From the carrier side:

Advantages:

 - A service test/demarc point is provided to allow troubleshooting and
value add services such as enhanced reporting (Y.1731, TWAMP, SAA, etc).
 - Complex optical solutions that benefit the carrier can be shielded from
the customer (single working fibre, xWDM optics, long range optics, etc)
allowing customers to use a cheap copper or short range optical interface,
instead of having for fork out thousands for long range/coloured optics
 - Multiple services can be provided over a single physical infrastructure
 - Copper interfaces can be provided. Keep in mind that even with a carrier
edge device within a building, usually by the time a service has been run
up a riser to the customer demarc point the allowable distance over copper
has been reached or is borderline, installing the demarc device at the hand
off point allows the media conversion to take place adjacent to the
customer CPE. (Same applies to anything but the smallest of data centres)

Drawbacks:

 - Cost of the device and additional optics
 - Additional failure point
 - Additional overhead for service provisioning/teardown

>From a customers perspective:

Advantages:

 - No need to deal with complex/expensive optics
 - No need to worry about in building cabling, customer CPE can be directly
connected to the demarc device
 - Additional visibility generally leads to a lower MTTR when faults are
reported
 - Additional reporting can be provided
 - Complex upper layer functions can be managed by the carrier.

Disadvantages

 - Space/Power requirement to house the device
 - Additional point of failure
 - Complex upper layer functions can be managed by the carrier. (good for
some, horrible for others) :)

It's really an each to their own sort of scenario, some customers love
having a demarc device and see it was a requirement for a "premium" service
and almost feel cheated if they don't have one, some customers hate them as
they take up space and power that could be used for something else and in
some instances they are basically a requirement (ie, where a media
conversion is required), ie It's a lot different handing off an LX/LR
connection within a major data centre to handing off a TX interface at the
end of a 30km fibre run.



On Mon, Aug 12, 2013 at 4:05 PM, Luke Smith <luke at smith.name> wrote:

> Why bother selling "CPE" to a customer? Why not drop them a fibre and let
> them figure it out? As a customer I get a bit erked by Telcos insisting
> that they drop some kit in my rack when I've got something that will take
> the fibre directly already.
>
> All the arguments about "we want something we own at your end so we can
> troubleshoot it" seem a bit of a poor trade-off against the extra cost,
> complexity and reduced reliability.
>
> It seems to me that its just a legacy idea left over from the days when
> the telco had to supply an ISDN NTU that matched their network.
>
>
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