Chorus RGW ONT withdrawal (Chorus fibre box will stop working as a router)

Forums › New Zealand Broadband › Chorus RGW ONT withdrawal (Chorus fibre box will stop working as a router)

havenplaygame

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#317509 22-Oct-2024 20:49

On 2024-10-24 or 2024-10-31, depending on who you ask, Chorus is going to stop the router-capable fiber ONT boxes from working as a router (e.g. the Nokia one, here: https://www.chorus.co.nz/help/ont/hyperfibre-type-110).

Internet about it:

https://sp.chorus.co.nz/product-update/rgw-ont-withdrawal-changes

https://sp.chorus.co.nz/consultation/rgw-ont-withdrawal

https://assets.ctfassets.net/7urik9yedtqc/3X8I9IqHohbcSkhvtVwoBz/43d4e86c073717a89eb90923d3ece3f8/chorus-RGWwithdrawal-Hyperfibre-CPE-incentive-terms.pdf

ISP's are scrambling to send their fiber customers standard routers to add to their network, with instructions such as (Zeronet):

Zeronet:

We’re reaching out to inform you that your Optical Network Terminal (ONT), also known as a "fibre box," will stop working on 24/10/2024. To ensure you stay connected, we’ll be sending you a free-rental router ahead of this date.

Here’s what you need to know:

What’s an ONT?
The ONT, or fibre box, allows the fibre optic cable to connect your home to the fibre network. It serves as the link between your broadband service and the wider internet. However, it’s important to note that the ONT is different from a router, which is the device we’ll be providing you.

What do you need to do?
Once you receive your new router, simply connect it to your ONT:
For standard fibre: Plug the router into GE1/LAN1 on your Chorus fibre terminal.
For Hyperfibre: Connect the router to the 10G port on the terminal.

It's all a bit weird. I mean, I'm all for Chorus no longer intrusively controlling how my home network works (very locked down settings), but the instructions read like I can just plug in the new router anytime. However the new router arrived with DHCP enabled, and the Chorus box also has DHCP enabled on the same range, so I'm not sure how they expect that to work. Anyone got more insight into what's intended to happen with the LAN settings, especially how they will change on the Nokia router?

mentalinc

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#3300143 22-Oct-2024 20:58

You note the first link you shared is dated in August last year... this is hardly a surprise. Any "scrambling" is 100% self inflicted.

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havenplaygame

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#3300144 22-Oct-2024 21:00

mentalinc:

You note the first link you shared is dated in August last year... this is hardly a surprise. Any "scrambling" is 100% self inflicted.

Sure. Many end-users have been advised of this much more recently. I'm surprised how little I could find on this happening online. I wanted to create a public infodump on it, and have a place for people to share their experiences of the transition.

havenplaygame

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#3300146 22-Oct-2024 21:07

I am shocked to see that the new router I was issued (Asus AC1500 RT-AC59U) only has a 1 Gb WAN port, which means with 2 Gb hyperfiber, my maximum speed is being effectively cut in half, so I'm getting half the bandwith I'm paying for. Absolutely unacceptable and I will be asking for an alternative.

KiwiSurfer

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#3300150 22-Oct-2024 21:31

havenplaygame:

I'm surprised how little I could find on this happening online.

That's likely because very few customers actually used this product -- hence the reason why it is being withdrawn.

quickymart

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#3300152 22-Oct-2024 22:06

havenplaygame:

Sure. Many end-users have been advised of this much more recently.

This will be down to how well - or poorly - your provider manages this transition. After seeing a few of the poor reviews Zeronet (your provider) has had on here, this sort of feedback/scrambling doesn't surprise me.

xpd

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#3300184 23-Oct-2024 07:41

havenplaygame:

I am shocked to see that the new router I was issued (Asus AC1500 RT-AC59U) only has a 1 Gb WAN port, which means with 2 Gb hyperfiber, my maximum speed is being effectively cut in half, so I'm getting half the bandwith I'm paying for. Absolutely unacceptable and I will be asking for an alternative.

Thats your ISP to deal with, not Chorus.

Probably find that the reason they gave you that, is 95% of their customer base only use 1Gbps or less connections. Also check if a router is actually part of your contract with them, not all ISP's offer a router.......

XPD / Gavin

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Jase2985

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#3300189 23-Oct-2024 08:06

havenplaygame:

I am shocked to see that the new router I was issued (Asus AC1500 RT-AC59U) only has a 1 Gb WAN port, which means with 2 Gb hyperfiber, my maximum speed is being effectively cut in half, so I'm getting half the bandwith I'm paying for. Absolutely unacceptable and I will be asking for an alternative.

There are 2 (possibly more) use cases for hyper fibre:

a single device gets all the bandwidth, meaning you need greater than gigabit networking
multiple devices get their own gigabit network connections, meaning they all get fast speeds and don't need to share the bandwidth..

If i was getting hyper fibre i wouldn't be relying on an ISP provided router.

Spyware

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#3300195 23-Oct-2024 08:49

havenplaygame:

Anyone got more insight into what's intended to happen with the LAN settings, especially how they will change on the Nokia router?

Router WAN has a vlan tag on it.

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Wheelbarrow01

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Chorus

#3301236 24-Oct-2024 22:27

The official withdrawal date is indeed 31 October and as @mentalinc pointed out, this was signalled to the industry over a year ago.

Chorus has been engaging with the affected RSPs for an extended period of time to get their migration plans underway. I would say that in the OP's case, Zeronet has chosen to complete the OP's migration on 24 October - this will be to ensure it is done before the current RGW service stops working altogether. RSPs with affected connections all selected their preferred migration dates, with many being completed some months ago.

Assuming the migration schedule has been adhered to (and I've heard nothing to the contrary), I estimate less than 50 remain on the RGW service as of right now. I'll be getting an update tomorrow morning so I will edit this post if I am wrong.

The views expressed by me are not necessarily those of my employer Chorus NZ Ltd

raytaylor

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#3302147 27-Oct-2024 18:56

The fee chorus charged was about $2.50 per month.

With an expected amortization of 36 months, that doesnt give them much of a budget to supply a decent router, ship it to you and pay support staff to manage the transition.

Someone has to configure the new router to have the same ssid/password as the existing ONT, then sit there and place the order to remove the RGW mode and then talk the subscriber through plugging in the new router.

Ray Taylor

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BarTender

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#3304956 3-Nov-2024 19:41

raytaylor:

The fee chorus charged was about $2.50 per month.

With an expected amortization of 36 months, that doesnt give them much of a budget to supply a decent router, ship it to you and pay support staff to manage the transition.

Someone has to configure the new router to have the same ssid/password as the existing ONT, then sit there and place the order to remove the RGW mode and then talk the subscriber through plugging in the new router.

Shouldn't that all be managed by TR-069 if the RSP was using a proper managed router? The router boots then the ISP's CWMP TR-069 determines the connection based on the Radius logs and comparing it to the HTTP request coming in and can push down the router profile.

That's how I set it up at Spark. Took me about 2 weeks to get most of the main configuration working in the lab. So I can't see why any other ISP wouldn't be able to do exactly the same. Depending on the CPE chosen there would also be the option to send back the URL using DHCP Option 60/124 or whatever. This is the standard method of CPE management so I would hope it should already be in place.. as that is how the existing VoIP ATAs area already managed on Chorus so the RSP should already have a CWMP/TR-069 server in place today.

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yitz

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#3304966 3-Nov-2024 21:12

The Hyperfibre Nokia ONT+RGW was quite an elegant solution where I saw it, worked great on MyRepublic and they would've been the largest consumers I would think.

Now think of the extra trees they will need to plant in order to offset this needless change 😢

raytaylor

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#3305056 4-Nov-2024 08:47

BarTender:

Shouldn't that all be managed by TR-069

Quite possibly.

Though still in our case, we had to send out routers and then talk customers through plugging them in at a scheduled time after putting through the order to disable RGW mode.

In our case we were using RGW mode for elderly or more difficult-to-support customers that needed hand holding.

Ray Taylor

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