Hawuei 4 port ONT

[TobyOneKenobi]

Hi, 

don't come across many of these but I recently visited a property that was having issues with no BB and they had one of these  ONT's. They had a EE Hub Plus 7 that was connected to the ONT via port 1 and via the wan port on the EE hub, according to the customer they had been getting BB ok but then it just stopped and the Hub went solid orange. They had several engineer visits and their opinion was that it was a serial number mismatch. On the 2 port ONT's it's usual to use port 1 to connect to the wan port on the hub but the 4 port hubs do not have an accessible wan socket as it's internal to the ONT. I did manage to resolve the issue by using port 2 to connect to the EE Hub so looks like it was a failed port not serial number mismatch. But thinking about it should the EE Hub be using the  lan ports to connect to the ONT  lan ports? It works this way and the speed was fine but there are differences between lan and wan?

[WSH]

Not really something I know a lot about but more likely ONT LAN to router W AN I would have thought.  The ONT WAN port would be the connection to the service provider surely?

Edit: In fact, the ONT WAN port will be the optical port.  I'm not sure I understand your question here?

[gg30340]

The Lan port 4 on the hub can be used as a WAN port in order to connect to the ONT but it needs to be turned on inthe hubs management settings.

https://ee.co.uk/help/broadband/fix-problem/check-your-full-fibre-wiring-and-set-up#:~:text=Check 

[WSH]

@gg30340   I believe the EE Hub Plus 7 has a dedicated WAN port.

[TobyOneKenobi]

Correct, 4 LAN and a dedicated WAN

[TobyOneKenobi]

@WSH The point is that there is no WAN port on these ONT's just LAN ports as they seem to have a 4 port switch built in so when connecting to the EE Hub is there going to be any issues if one of the ONT's LAN ports is connect to the WAN port on the EE Hub? Or perhaps the WAN port on these Hubs has some sort of auto sensing because afaik you should put the Hub into bridging mode if you are not using the the WAN for internet connection? 

[WSH]

The optical port on the ONT will be the WAN port.

If the WAN port on the hub is used, (or if it is configured as WAN when it is a dual-purpose port), then it will already be configured for input from the ONT.

It’s not really bridging mode in that sense.  Bridging is more configuring the Hub so it only acts as a modem and passes its output to a separate router, so that’s not the issue in this case.  If anything, the ONT is acting as a bridge.  I don’t think the EE routers offer a bridging mode.

Edit:  Actually, you might be better posting this on the EE forum here: https://community.ee.co.uk/t5/Broadband-Landline/bd-p/broadband

[licquorice]

The ONT doesn't strictly have either a WAN or a LAN port, it is a modem. As @WSH has said, if anything the optical port can be considered a WAN port in as much as it is the connection to the outside world.

The 4 ports are to provide 4 discrete services and are not any form of Ethernet switch.

[iniltous]

Probably a Huawei HG 8240 Echolife ,  very  early generation FTTP equipment, no longer used as it’s Huawei , and that particular model hadn’t been used for years even when Huawei were not a banned vendor, OR using single port ONTs and on the rare occasions where multiple services were needed , providing two or more single port ONT’s , one for each service.

These 4 port ONTs were typically used in a Small Office /Home Office (SoHo) situation rather than single ordinary residential dwelling….4 port in that it can handle up-to 4 separate services ( from 4 different ISP if that was what was required) instead of 4 separate lead in fibres , 4 separate ONTs with 4 power units etc ….  if only one service was provided , it’s was usually allocated on port 1 , if  the customer had 2 services (for example) the business ISP configured on port 1 , residential ISP on port 2 , that would be two individual routers but both served from the same 4 port ONT .

As far as the OP’s observation, it makes no sense, if the EE service were provided on port 1 (the LAN/WAN designation on the ONT pretty irrelevant, basically the ONT has 4 ‘addresses’ one for each port  ) moving the router to port 2 should not just work without the administrator also reassigning the EE service to the the ‘address’ for the second port .

Openreach have recently introduced a new 4 port ONT ,

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/01/a-look-at-openreachs-future-4-port-ont-for-fttp-broadb...

If this customer was having issues and Openreach visited , it’s incredible they didn’t simply remove the 4 port if it were considered the problem , and replace it with a modern single port ONT from an allowed manufacturer, and just authenticate the new single port ONT to the headend .

[TobyOneKenobi]

@iniltous  Yes I believe it is

I drew a blank on line trying to find information about these 4 port ONT's,  the majority of ONT's have one port, seen a few with 2 ports and usually the 2nd port is marked as for future expansion.  As for making no sense, possibly, but in this case and with this particular ONT port 2 does work if connected to the WAN port on the Hub whereas port 1 did not. As far as I know the customer had not had a visit from an Openreach engineer(BT/EE are very reluctant to escalate to Openreach and quite often internal engineers keep being sent back for the same fault) so I suspect that if they had they would have changed the ONT. As this ONT only has 1 Fibre input how could it be configured to run different services from different ISP's? I deal with predominately  residential customers only so I don't have any experience of commercial fibre.