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GPON vs. GEPON Discussion at Lightreading

For some reason, an Optical Solutions deployment article at Lightreading from 1 1/2 years ago just recently caught someone’s attention and touched off a lengthy debate in the comments. I’m quoting out of the comment that seems to me to be the most impartial summary of the GPON vs. GEPON debate:

GPON is more efficient than an EPON when running GEM mode. GEM is essentially GFP over PON. Its nice and works well for Ethernet transport. GPON in traditional ATM mode is no different that APON/BPON and carries all of the ATM overhead and inefficiencies and is much less efficient than EPON for Ethernet transport.

The Ethernet protocol legacy was carried over to EPON for a number of reasons. Probably the most important reason is that it allows vendors to use standard Ethernet pieces when building EPON chips/ONU. This has allowed for relatively inexpensive EPON ONUs. In Japan the EPON ONU price is under $100.

As always, Ethernet is less efficient but cheaper than ATM based systems. In addition, GPONs attempt to resolve everyone’s problem has made it overly complicated and, at least initally, more expensive. Pick your poison.
 
GPON came at the wrong time and had to be slotted in to word alongside older infrastructure, it was a mix of very new and extremely old technologies that came before its time. With 21CN under its belt and a true IP infrastructure to build on then BT’s next generation of fibre networks (if it builds them) should slot in without as many complications.

Just my opinion of course, too much abbreviated jargon in any one sentence makes your head explode :) .
 
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