Presentation from SIEPON Seminar on 20 April in Czech Republic, sponsored by IEEE-SA & CAG. Opinions presented by the speakers in this presentation are their own, and not necessarily those of their employers or of IEEE.

1. North American MSO –
EPON Deployments
Edwin J. Mallette
04/21/2012

2. Summary
A number of North American Multiple System
Operators (MSOs) are currently deploying EPON.
Some North American MSOs have had EPON deployed
for a number of years.
With initiatives like DOCSIS Provisioning of EPON
(DPoE) and the EPON Protocol over a Coax (EPoC)
PHY, the number of North American MSO EPON
deployments is expected to grow.
EPON implementations to date at North American
MSOs are (primarily) for Commercial and Business
services.
That said, some MSOs have expressed interest in
utilizing EPON for residential first-mile access,
particularly in “green field” deployments.
This talk will cover a number of North American MSO
example service deployments using EPON.

3. C1: Metro Ethernet Services (basic)
North American MSOs are utilizing EPON to provide Metro
Ethernet Forum (MEF) certified metro Ethernet services.
What’s shown below is a MEF E-LINE service (it could be
Ethernet Private Line or Ethernet Virtual Private Line.)
Multipoint services (such as Ethernet Local Area Network,
Ethernet Private LAN/Ethernet Virtual Private LAN) are also
provided using EPON as a first-mile access.
In this simple case (no Ethernet OAM – such as Connectivity
Fault Management or Performance Management as defined in
802.1ag and Y.1731) a basic ONU is often solely utilized as
the carrier demarcation point.

4. C2: Advanced MEF Services
Customer demand for service performance measurement have
driven North American MSOs to offer advanced management for
their MEF services.
Often a specific Network Interface Device (NID) is deployed to
provide the advanced services endpoint.
A Small Form Factor Pluggable (SFP) ONU (rather than a separate
ONU connected via copper twisted pair) is often plugged into the
caddy of the NID to provide access to the PON.
Additionally advanced ONUs have been considered to fill the need
and reduce solution cost.
A wide variety of tools are being used today for service activation
test and certification (e.g. service birth certificate) though Y.1564 is
expected to become widely deployed for this purposes.
Thus we’d expect to see Y.1564 show up in either the deployed NID
or in the Advanced ONU in the future.

5. C3: WiFi Hotspot Aggregation
Hot Spot Aggregation is the service enabling WiFi hotspots to
allow Internet connectivity in a wide variety of (typically)
public venues.
EPON is utilized to provide first-mile access between the CO
and the distributed hotspots.
Many WiFi Access Points / Base Stations used for hotspots are
currently shipping with SFP sockets
As a result EPON SFP ONUs are the ONU of choice for this
application due to space and power constraints.

6. C4: Mobile Backhaul
Some North American MSOs use EPON to provide the first-
mile access to the cell-site for mobile backhaul.
The Mobile Switching Center / Wireless Switching Center first-
mile access is typically provided via another medium.
Below is an exemplary diagram from one North American MSO
for their mobile backhaul physical topology.
Key for this deployment is minimizing delay and jitter – for
instance by reducing the EPON polling interval.
In at least one deployment T-1 clock was provided by using
adaptive clock recovery on the mobile backhaul CPE.
6

7. C5: Managed IP Routed Network
North American MSOs are utilizing EPON to
provide the first-mile access for managed L3VPN
(routed) networks.
EPON SFP ONUs are deployed (when supported)
in the managed routers.
In the case of simple L3VPN service (no managed
router) only an ONU is deployed at the premise.

8. C6: Internet and Voice
Voice Services and Internet Services are very common
bread and butter services for many MSOs.
The diagram below depicts EPON utilized to provide
first-mile access for internet+voice services to both
business/commercial locations and residences.
So far, a very small percentage of North American
MSO residential services utilizes EPON in the first-mile.

9. Converged Access
Converged Access is fundamental to driving access costs down.
EPON is but one piece of the overall puzzle. Provisioning and managing
the shared access elements is often the larger more complex piece.
Today some North American MSOs converge mobile backhaul and all
business services on the same platform.
Whether to converge both residential and business services on the
same access platform and same PON is still TBD by many North
American MSOs.
At least one NA-MSO has indicated the intent to converge residential
and commercial access mechanism with the same access system and
with the same PON.

10. Closing Remarks
There are many types of services being
offered over EPON as a first-mile technology
within a number of North American MSO
networks.
Certainly there’s room to grow into providing
residential services over EPON as MSOs are
generally limited to coaxial cable for the loop
to the home.
Once development is complete in extending
existing provisioning platforms (with DPoE) to
effectively configure advanced services,
EPON is positioned to be even more heavily
utilized by North American MSOs.

11. Thank You!!->