Understand the difference between optical modem industrial PON and enterprise router

Light cat

The optical modem (also known as ONU equipment) in our home is connected to the operator’s network through an industrial-grade PON (passive optical network), connected to an optical splitter, and then connected to the PON port of the operator’s OLT device, using Protocol data completely different from traditional LAN. The optical modem converts industrial-grade PON data into Ethernet data, which acts as a protocol conversion, that is, a gateway.

Enterprise router

Enterprise routers generally have optical ports, and they are dual-core (one sending and one receiving). Essentially, they are still Ethernet ports. The transmission of Ethernet data is incompatible with PON network data.

How to use corporate routers?

Enterprise routers are powerful, with a large amount of computers, and strong data forwarding capabilities. For example, the H3C ER5100G2 router mentioned in the subject question has 250-350 computers, which can meet the needs of a small and medium-sized enterprise, and supports flow control and Internet access. Functions such as behavior control and AC management are suitable for building corporate networks.

For small enterprises or Internet cafes, enterprise routers can be used as the lower-level routing equipment of optical modems to form enterprise networks, and the network performance is more stable.

In short, enterprise routers cannot replace optical modems, and their functions and roles are different. The optical modem belongs to the networking equipment of the industrial-grade PON network, and the enterprise router belongs to the Ethernet networking equipment. The enterprise router can be used as the subordinate routing equipment of the optical modem.