What is OLT (Optical Line Terminal)?

Before explaining what an OLT is, we first need to talk about what a PON (Passive Optical Network) is.A PON is a network that uses optical fiber with optical splitters along the path to provide point-to-multipoint data transmission, that is, a beam of light exits one end, passes through a splitter, and splits into n paths, without requiring electrical power along the path—only at the transmitters at the ends (OLT and ONT/ONU): What are the main advantages of a PON network? As mentioned above, there is no need for active components along the path, which would consume electricity.Other advantages include the fact that, since it is built with optical fiber, there is no risk of equipment burning out due to an electrical discharge passing through the cable; it supports high speeds; and it is not affected by electromagnetic interference, since it transmits light signals rather than electrical ones, and are therefore insulated; they experience less signal attenuation over distance—meaning they can reach farther than metallic cables—and they suffer less deterioration, offer greater safety, and have lower maintenance costs. So, what exactly is an OLT? The OLT is the brain of the entire PON network; it’s located at the internet service provider’s end. It controls and manages the PON network, determines the timing and upload bandwidth for each ONU, and sets the priority for each service.In short, it is the OLT that defines the services, their bandwidth allocation, and the priority of each one at the ONUs, sending parameters such as the VLANs and their respective interfaces, whether the port will be “transparent” or “tagged,” etc. The OLT can also send extra parameters to the ONUs, such as which ports will perform NAT, if the ONU will be PPPoE, DHCP, Bridge and etc… even Wireless parameters, however these extra parameters, outside the definition of the protocol, generally only work integration when the OLT and ONU are from the same manufacturer, since each one ended up doing it their own way. What is an ONT (Optical Network Terminal) / ONU (Optical Network Unit)? ONTs or ONUs are the devices at the far end of the PON network that receive commands from the OLT; they are typically located in the subscriber’s home (FTTH), in a building (FTTA), or at a business (FTTB). There are several types of ONUs from different manufacturers, such as Huawei, Fiberhome, Datacom, Intelbras, Nokia, Zhone, DasZhone, Furukawa, and many others, and all are theoretically compatible with any OLT, provided that both use the same protocol. Can a Huawei OLT send PPPoE configuration settings to a Fiberhome ONU? Unfortunately, this is not possible. What it can send are parameters defined in the protocol, such as which VLANs the ONU will have and their respective interfaces. Some OLT support this, but in the example between OLT Huawei and ONU Fiberhome it does not. Can a Huawei, Fiberhome or Datacom OLT send extra parameters to ONUs from the same manufacturer, such as PPPoE login and password for the ONU to dial, SSID and wifi password? Generally yes, each one ended up defining its structure to be able to send this type of extra information/configuration to the ONU. But how do I go about uploading PPPoE between different manufacturers? One option would be, since VLAN parameters are included in the protocol standards, simply enable the ONU on the OLT as if it were in bridge mode, set the desired VLAN, and then manually add the extra parameters to the ONU (via the web interface, for example), such as the subscriber’s PPPoE settings, Wi-Fi configurations, and so on.But of course, there are other ways to perform this type of configuration, such as via TR069, which our Made4Graph system also supports—because, imagine if for some reason the ONU resets; how will the PPPoE parameters be uploaded to it again? If the OLT doesn’t have this information (in this case), we’ll either need another protocol to send these parameters—in this case, TR069—or we’ll have to enter them manually through the ONU’s interface. Which OLT manufacturer should I choose, and which one is the best? There isn’t a “best” or “worst” option; it depends on your specific scenario and network.Our recommendations are: OLT Datacom OLT Fiberhome OLT VSolution It is a simpler OLT with few PON ports, but it works well in smaller environments and networks Doubts remain? Get in touch with us and we’ll help you as best we can 🙂 Zanclair Ferrari Junior | Network ConsultantJNCIS-SP | CCNA | HCIA | MTCRE

How can an ISP manage its users?

We know that every small ISP starts with Mikrotik equipment and that it has a very intuitive “graphic” interface (via its own application). Many ISPs grow with these facilities in hand and end up using them for various operational and often administrative tasks. There have been instances where I’ve encountered ISPs that based their entire management system on the features provided by “Winbox,” including user authorization. Eventually, these providers grow, and the capacity of Mikrotik equipment no longer meets certain performance and scalability requirements—such as the number of users a single router can support while ensuring quality of service—which ultimately forces them to adopt other solutions to meet their business needs. When an ISP reaches this point, we know it ends up purchasing equipment from manufacturers such as Huawei, Juniper, Cisco, and the like. I once read something along the lines of “Huawei is the new bacon for Brazilian Internet service providers” (author unknown) at the Brazil Peering Forum; however, we know that this equipment lacks a “graphical interface” and is managed entirely via CLI, This ends up being one of the major obstacles preventing small companies from replacing their routers, since having to manage the equipment via CLI entails a series of other issues, such as staff training and development, changes to internal processes to make them compatible with the capabilities and information provided by the router, and so on. Thus, Made4Graph was born. Made4Graph came from the need of one of our customers, precisely, to deal in a more “calm” way with a BNG that only had access via CLI. Far from wanting to be a similar software or “imitate” Winbox, in Made4Graph we bring a single point of management for BNGs with support for the main manufacturers in the market and recently support for the TR069 protocol for managing even the end user’s CPE Underneath, we have a software that “talks” with the Radius of the ISP and also with the BNGs/B-RAS of the network, orchestrating a precise collection of information from the assets involved and bringing all of this in a coherent and simple to understand way on a page WEB. As I said, far from wanting to be a “Winbox”, we bring in Made4Graph a tool to add to the ISP’s support body with data and actions that aim to minimize the operational cost of support and “make everyone’s life easier”. In Made4Graph, which is accessible via the web, the home screen provides an overview of the status of the network as a whole. When you log into the software, you’ll see a graph showing the number of users connected across the entire network, and on the right, a “pie chart” showing the proportion of those users per PPPoE concentrator. And yes, it’s also compatible with Mikrotik (even if you still use Winbox or something else to manage it). Below, we also have information regarding the addressing of clients on the network. Made4Graph brings us very important data on the proportion of users with CGNAT IPv4 (RFC6598) or with public IP addressed in the CPE, in addition to IPv6. This data is of great value, especially for those who are deploying IPv6 on the network, guaranteeing and helping the future of the Internet. Made4Graph main dashboard. Top section. Scrolling down a little further, we have the exact number of clients registered per NAS (or BRAS/BNG/Access Concentrador or whatever you prefer to call your authentication equipment) in addition to a “top 10 users disconnected in the last 24 hours ”. In the report of disconnected customers, Made4Graph presents the customers that most disconnected in the last 24 hours, already delivering users who are possibly having problems to the support and level 1 of the ISP. We know that customers with a large number of disconnections and reconnections in a short period of time is a strong indication of problems in the CPE or those involved, giving support the possibility of being proactive in these critical customers (getting in touch, already opening a ticket for verification, etc.) which increases the end customer’s confidence in the ISP’s availability and delivery quality. Imagine you as an internet user noticing that your internet is disconnecting frequently and out of nowhere you receive a call from support saying that you noticed this requesting your authorization for a verification. It’s really quite a draw for the ISP. One of the most used features of Made4Graph is the real time graph. With it, we can have real-time data on the end user’s bandwidth consumption in an intuitive graph and with action buttons such as “Release Bandwidth” and “Disconnect” the user. It is also possible on this screen to access a “Consumption History” of the referred customer. If you, for example, want to know what the user’s bandwidth consumption was in the last 24 hours, Made4Graph brings this possibility. The action buttons are widely used by ISPs in their support/N1 that makes the first contact with the customer, since they allow to quickly and effectively diagnose common problems either with a “Ping” (Made4Graph can directly ping the end user on the verification screen) or freeing up the user’s bandwidth so that he can fully test the “throughput” of his connection, already showing any possible bottleneck in the network. On the same screen, a little further down, we also have information about the TR069 module. For ISPs that implement Made4Graph with support for TR069 (and that have their CPEs managed by it) we have a general overview of the user’s CPE with data such as physical port status, wireless signal strength, devices connected to the router, among other information. Made4Graph is not limited to a graph visualization tool. We have a dedicated section for “reports” where, with his ability and overview of the network, he manages to bring data of great value to the ISP’s operational body. One of the most used by support staff is the “Lost Carrier” report. Here, Made4Graph reports an overview of users disconnected in a given time interval due

Espírito Santo Law 11,201: Charts on Subscriber Bills—What Now?!

If you work for an internet service provider (ISP) in the state of Espírito Santo, you may not have seenState Law No. 11,201, which was enacted on October 26, 2021, and was also upheld by the Federal Supreme Court (STF) in recent days. Here’s what the law says—and it’s actually quite simple: But what does she really mean? Let’s outline the main points here: I understand the law, and I understand its consequences, but now, how can I solve this problem? We at Made4it have the perfect solution to address this problem: Made4Graph, our software designed to assist support teams, NOCs, and call centers by providing real-timeand historical usage charts for PPPoE or IPoE customers. It also provides insights into customer behavior; using the historical usage chart, you can access the information required by this law with just a few clicks. But doing this manually—collecting each customer’s usage chart to include on their invoice—is impossible for my operation. With that in mind, our development team provides an API that allows you to integrate with your management system, such as ISP Integrator, IXC, RBX (Routerbox), SGP, Mk-auth, MKSolutions, TopsApp, HubSoft, ReceitaNet, or any other software you use—allowing you to easily automate your invoicing process so that invoices are issued with your customer’s historical usage chart already included. Made4Graph also includes TR069, which allows you to manage customer routers, generate reports to help you be more proactive with customers, and perform many other functions. It’s very easy to learn more—just contact us via WhatsApp, and one of our consultants will assist you and answer all your questions. Click here to contact us directly: 43 98485-4013

Why just having Zabbix doesn’t solve your network problem?

To understand this question, let’s remember how Zabbix works. Zabbix is ​​an open-source monitoring software, with it we can monitor our assets in different ways, with SNMP protocol, via Zabbix Agent, HTTP/S, with external scripts, and so on…. When we install and configure Zabbix, we see several templates ready to be able to monitor equipment of different brands and models, with them we have items, discovery rules, triggers, graphics all to be applied to the host, but it is logical that we can always improve what already exists and add even more. However, even adding your host in Zabbix, selecting the correct template and starting monitoring it, it’s no use if there is no one to follow this monitoring. We need someone who is always keeping an eye on the incidents, the hosts’ charts, the data collected, to identify any possible problems. Just imagine! During your working hours, you always monitor the graphs of your links contracted with upstreams, but after your working hours, during peak hours, one of your links starts to hit the contracted maximum and affects internet delivery to your end customers, or a port of one of its equipment arrives at maximum capacity with the growth that has occurred in recent months. This could be avoided if there was someone ready to act when unexpected behavior was found in monitoring. We even have the possibility of creating several dashboards as well and adding graphs, incident history and everything else to facilitate this monitoring, but without someone keeping an eye on the monitoring when something like this happens, it becomes useless. One of our services, Made4NOC, is designed for this purpose. Our monitoring team is always available; they work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and are constantly keeping an eye on the assets in our Zabbix system. In addition, whenever an incident occurs or our team encounters unexpected behavior, it is prepared to take action, whether calling our consultancy, contacting the customer, whatever is necessary so that we can resolve everything as soon as possible.

Issues with local CDN traffic and BGP advertisements.

Hello. My name is Gabriel; I’m a network analyst here at Made4it, and today I’m going to tell you about an interesting situation involving CDN and traffic engineering that we came across here on the consulting team a few days ago. We received a call from a customer with a case where the traffic of a local CDN had a drastic decrease after a traffic engineering change. After extensive validations by the customer they were unable to find the root cause of this behavior and so they called our team. We started there on 11/04 with a strange decrease in Inbound traffic on the interface with the local CDN. It was very succinct and represented 1Gbps less traffic on the interface. With that information in hand, the first thing I did was go to the Made4Flow to help me understand what happened, using, of course, my favorite chart, the“Interface by ASN.” I made sure to select a time range covering exactly the event from the 3rd to the 4th, specifically to understand which ASNs were no longer being “served” by the local cache. With that in hand, I noticed 2 things right away: – The “Laranja” ASN is no longer being “served” by this CDN; this is evident from the clear drop in traffic shown in the graph.– The “Blue” ASN(s) (a set of specific ASNs custom configured in our software) also showed a significant decrease in the graph. The “Blue” ASN is who hosts the cache. The fact that the “Orange” ASN is also a Made4it customer allowed us to conduct a more efficient test within its network. Since the “Blue” ASN and the “Orange” ASN are partners, they gave us complete freedom to troubleshoot and validate whatever was necessary on both sides. After some checks, we used the content provider’s own tool to validate which “node/cache” was “serving” this traffic that stopped coming from the local CDN of the “Azul” ASN. That traffic is no longer coming from the “Azul” ASN’s CDN, but it has to be coming from somewhere, don’t you agree? In the image above, 2 things caught my attention:– A node in Guarulhos, part of this content provider’s network, is now delivering the traffic that was previously supposed to come through the local CDN of the “Azul” ASN– x.x.x.0/25? At the time, a very important piece of information about ads for this content provider’s CDNs came to mind. They obey a rule that says: – Direct ads (ASN hosting cache) node accepts up to /27 for direct influence on traffic engineering and content delivery eligibility.– Indirect advertisements (ASNs adjacent to the ASN hosting the cache) the node only accepts up to /24 for direct influence on traffic engineering and content delivery eligibility. Alright, for the ASN “Azul” traffic I already had the possible cause of the problem. When trying to induce this local node to deliver more traffic, they ended up announcing /25 blocks to the cache node, implying that the content provider network would “serve” this traffic via its nodes in Guarulhos. However, we still have a decrease in traffic on the “Azul” ASN, what happened? The “Blue” ASN in this case was actually three ASNs, a configuration that was custom-built within the Made4Flow software. Interestingly, two of these ASNs were “injecting” /25 prefixes into the CDN node, where the behavior observed was exactly the same as that reported above for the “Orange” ASN. With all this information in hand, we set out to get to work and adjust the announcements in accordance with what the content provider requires (and has documented) for its CDN. After making the necessary adjustments, here’s the result:

How to configure CGNAT

A step-by-step guide on how to configure a CGNAT

What is CGNAT? (Carrier Grade Network Address Translation)

What is a CGNAT?

Court Order Requiring Internet Service Providers to Provide Information

Many service providers are unsure of how to respond to requests for customer information from authorities; here, we outline some best practices to help service providers navigate these situations in their day-to-day operations.

Blackhole BGP – Juniper (Juniper MX5/10/40/80/104, MX204, MX240/480/960)

To summarize the Blackhole, it is a technique of sending a route to the “black hole” or simply making the router discard packets directed to that IP. In this article you will learn step by step how you can configure Blackhole on Juniper routers.

Blackhole BGP – Mikrotik

How to configure a BGP blackhole in Mikrotik