[AusNOG] NBN FTTC services and power hits

Tue Jan 4 12:15:25 AEDT 2022

I’m pretty sure that as a layer-2 device, there is no account/premises specific configuration in NCDs.  When NBNco swapped mine over, they just took one out of their van and I plugged it in.  DPUs may be a different kettle of fish but the general public shouldn’t be touching these!

From: Sean Burford <sburford at google.com>
Date: Tuesday, 4 January 2022 at 11:38 am
To: Chris Chaundy <chris.chaundy at gmail.com>
Cc: Anthony Schofield <anthony.schofield at vocus.com.au>, "ausnog at ausnog.net" <ausnog at lists.ausnog.net>
Subject: Re: [AusNOG] NBN FTTC services and power hits

Hi,

Straying further off topic, I have an NCD on the wall (powered down, disconnected from copper) and an FTTP box next to it.  I would lend the NCD to my neighbours when their FTTC gets taken out by lightning (which is why we got FTTP), however I'm concerned that this wouldn't go smoothly (either interfering with their assertion that their NBN is down or because the NCD is connected to my accounts in some way).  Are NCDs generic transferable commodities or are they custom to your premises/accounts once initialized?

On Tue, Jan 4, 2022 at 11:31 AM Chris Chaundy <chris.chaundy at gmail.com> wrote:

OK - NBNco has visited, replaced my NCD (with another Netcomm for better or worse) and took a look at the DPU.  They have also removed the bridge back to the copper PSTN (they said that some surges or hits can cause the DPU to switch the circuit back to the PSTN and not revert to the NBN!).

Anyway, it's working again so we will see how it goes...

Thanks for the comments/ideas, Chris

On Tue, Jan 4, 2022 at 9:21 AM Anthony Schofield <anthony.schofield at vocus.com.au> wrote:

Hi Chris - Hope you're well.

My (inner city) FTTC service was extremely unstable after it was first delivered. Lots of short duration drop outs. Not good for Zoom meetings when working from home. It took 5 separate NBN tech visits to resolve the problem over two months. We also had to "phone a friend" at NBN assurance to get it escalated. I have the Nokia DPU in a pit. The last thing that was done to resolve my issue was a hard reset of the DPU - by applying a magnet to the reset switch. The DPU is environmentally hardened and sealed (to protect from water) so the internal reset switch uses a magnet to activate it. I've had no issues since that was done.  One thing that was also done (visit number ~3) was removing the "bridge tap" of the old copper PSTN lines back to the exchange (as mentioned by Alex Morrehouse).

Regards,

Anthony Schofield 

On Mon, 3 Jan 2022 at 20:56, Chris Chaundy <chris.chaundy at gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Greg,

Thanks for the info (a fair bit I was already aware of though) but up where I am, pretty much everyone has their own DPU (big properties along a dirt road.  No concern with pits full of water though - everything is on power poles including the DPUs and the fibre that connects them back to the network (plus the copper feed into my house)!  It does go underground further down the mountain near the township but I'm not sure where the next 'active' kit is located (there is a lot of reading in the document the link you sent :-).

These are not brief hits but outages that have lasted for days.  Your comment about the DPU losing its configuration is interesting though and may well be the issue.  I hope they replace it when NBNco visits me tomorrow!

Cheers, Chris

Sent from my iPhone

On 3 Jan 2022, at 19:55, Greg Lipschitz <glipschitz at summitinternet.com.au> wrote:

Hi Chris,

The nbn DPU (the "mini-vdsl/gfast dslam" which lives in the pit) is reverse powered (about 6-14W) from the NCD (the nbn box inside your house). nbn use a mix of Netcomm and more recently Nokia DPU's. The DPU only needs 1 customer NCD connected to it to supply the power.

The DPU can connect up to 4 premises and the interesting thing is that any of the RSP's who have a customer connected to the DPU can initiate a DPU reset via the nbn API.

So, you might be with Telstra, and your neighbours with Aussie Broadband, TPG and Optus and any one of them can essentially cause your service to drop momentarily if they contact their RSP who initiates the DPU reset as part of the troubleshooting.

We've found that the DPU's often suffer the same fate as the old ADSL copper services when the pit fills up with water, the DPU goes off to la-la land (who would have thunk power and water didn't mix!) or the copper between the DPU and the customer gets corroded and needs to be cleaned up or replaced.

I've not heard of power issues causing the DPU to have issues. It sounds like the DPU is perhaps losing its config when there's a power interruption (we've certainly seen that with the Telstra EA MRV OS904 NTU's over the years).

If you're interested how it all comes together, nbn publish their design docs - https://www.nbnco.com.au/content/dam/nbn/documents/sell/sau/network-design-rules-20210630.pdf

Cheers

Greg

Greg Lipschitz | Founder & CEO | Summit Internet
glipschitz at summitinternet.com.au

summitinternet.com.au

1300 049 749

Unit 2, 31-39 Norcal Road, Nunawading VIC 3131
Error! Filename not specified.

Error! Filename not specified.

Error! Filename not specified.Error! Filename not specified.

From: AusNOG <ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net> on behalf of Chris Chaundy <chris.chaundy at gmail.com>
Sent: 03 January 2022 09:26
To: ausnog at ausnog.net <ausnog at lists.ausnog.net>
Subject: [AusNOG] NBN FTTC services and power hits 

Is there anyone from NBNco on this list willing to discuss this with me?

It seems that every time there is a power hit in our locality (which with Ausnet is pretty regularly), the FTTC services die and don’t come back until you log a fault through the provider (in my case, Telstra) and then wait for them to go through the hoops of dealing with NBNco.

This has happened four times in the last couple of months (thankfully I have 4G backup).  There must be some aggregator kit that has no power backup or cannot recover from power outages - pretty crap really. :-|

Sorry if this is a little OT for the list but I’d be interested if other FTTC areas see the same problem.

Sent from my iPhone
_______________________________________________
AusNOG mailing list
AusNOG at lists.ausnog.net
https://aus01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists.ausnog.net%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fausnog&data=04%7C01%7Cglipschitz%40summitinternet.com.au%7C7d3675defb8a4be9a6ab08d9ce3ef1a0%7C0838a12f226e43dfa6e4bb63d2643a7e%7C1%7C0%7C637767592012923616%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=eaYK8fpeVKh%2FCKcTW5KgKBQOB32TYug2Q5GLkCN7xLo%3D&reserved=0

_______________________________________________
AusNOG mailing list
AusNOG at lists.ausnog.net
http://lists.ausnog.net/mailman/listinfo/ausnog

_______________________________________________
AusNOG mailing list
AusNOG at lists.ausnog.net
http://lists.ausnog.net/mailman/listinfo/ausnog

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ausnog.net/pipermail/ausnog/attachments/20220104/26003b8e/attachment-0001.htm>