So why exactly? The short answer is, because the VoIP part of the Fritz!Box is moved to an isolated virtual LAN (VLAN) with no Internet access, so the Fritz!Box VoIP part cannot reach any alternative VoIP services as these are somewhere on the Internet.

But why is this necessary? The LuxFibre product is designed to provide all services over IP. This includes any telephone services (analogue, ISDN) which were previously delivered directly via copper. Telephony over IP cannot deliver the same quality and availability out of the box as traditional telephony services. The regulation however requires all operators to provide the same level of quality and availability on telephony over IP services, hence the requirement to differentiate services on the LuxFibre product. EPT selected the way of 1 VLAN per service:

• Internet access VLAN 35
• Voice VLAN 39
• TV VLAN xy
• etc

Using different VLANs makes it quite easy to prioritize one VLAN over another and to configure guaranteed bandwidth. By these means EPT can meet the regulatory requirements for quality and availability of their Telephony service. Additionally as all the services are produced within the EPT network, none of the VLANs need to provide Internet access (except for the Internet access VLAN itself). So the Voice and TV VLANs do not provide any Internet access at all. This also allows EPT to completely isolate their VoIP and IPTV systems from the Internet, hence protecting the systems themselves but also the users from being attacked. The Fritz!Box supports this kind of setup by allowing the usage of different VLANs for the different services provided via the Fritz!Box. The sad thing about it is that you cannot select the VLAN per VoIP service but only for all VoIP accounts.

The consequences are that you can either use your EPT VoIP service or reconfigure your Fritz!Box to support all other VoIP services beside EPT, but you can never run both from the same Fritz!Box.

A common work-around is to use your old Fritz!Box (in case you had one prior to ordering LuxFibre) and connect it as a client behind your LuxFibre Fritz!Box (aka P&T HomeServer). The 2nd Fritz!Box will use the regular Internet access just like any other device you connect to the Fritz!Box (e.g. PlaySation, Wii, Laptop, etc). You could even daisy-chain your EPT VoIP Service via the S0 (ISDN) interface on the P&T HomeServer to the second Fritz!Box, giving you access to all your telephony services from any phone connected to the 2nd Fritz!Box.

Another work-around is the usage of VoIP telephones (e.g. Gigaset IP DECT), as before you may even daisy-chain your EPT VoIP service via the FON1 (anlaog) in case the chosen telephony support an analog line.

I have been following several LuxFiber related threads on different Social Networks (Facebook, Twitter, Google+ etc) and people seem frustrated by the level of information they can get from the ISP’s sales helpdesk personnel.

Can I have FTTH (fibre) or VDSL (copper)?

Most ISPs do provide an online eligibility test, when you can only get the 30Mb/s variant than your connection will be VDSL over Copper.

What are the advantages/disadvantages of a fibre connection?

A fibre connection has quite a few option due to the physics of the fibre. Very low signal attenuation usually results in the availability of the subscribed bandwidth at all times, very low latency, extremely low jitter and packet loss.

On the other side the “optical network termination” (ONT) (the device converting the optical signal into Ethernet) is always installed within a few meters of the end of the EPT fibre cable. In older buildings this usually happened in the basement, far far away from the place where you had installed your DSL modem before. This usually means 2 things:

• you install the Fritz!Box in the basement near the ONT and you risk having almost no WiFi and DECT coverage, or
• you use the current telephone copper cable from the basement to the place you want to install the Fritz!Box, this also limits you to 10Mb/s as these telephone cables are most often Category 3 cables at best, or
• you exchange the copper telephone/Category 3 cable against a Category 5e or 6 shielded twisted pair cable.

Of course the last option will incur more costs. I’m also unaware of EPT extending their fiber cable during the installation of LuxFiber.

In recent buildings, more and more often a direct fibre connection from the basement to your apartment is pre-installed, so the above issues become irrelevant.

As you see in some cases it’s a good idea to stick with the VDSL over copper variant (max 30Mb/s) until you’re ready to invest into re-cabling parts of your house/apartment.

What are the advantages/disadvantages of a copper connection?

As described before, the copper connection has some advantages concerning in-house cabling. However the physics of the copper cable provide for some disadvantages like:

• much higher attenuation (compared to fibre)
• signal interference with frequencies on another copper cable or from the air (radio and TV broadcast, DVB-C, mobile, etc)
• asymmetric bandwidth
• higher latency and jitter
• the maximum bandwidth decreases rapidly with distance of your home from the central office (or intermediate distribution point)

Depending on the situation, the question might not be for the best technology, but for the right technology for the job.

So in case you are currently using the LuxFibre product and you have quality issues with VoIP applications, you might be affected by this bug. The workaround implies the intervention of an EPT technician.

As an operator of currently one AS112 ANYCAST Node and several NTP POOL servers I know how true and necessary this RFC really is.

Luxembourg’s Regulator just released its latest decision to approve the P&T Luxembourg (EPT) Reference Offer for Very High Bandwith Access Lines based on VDSL and FTTH (fibre to the home).

Visual online already published their own prices for their LuxFibre clone called VOFiber. Prices are 0,09 to 5,00 EUR / month cheaper, the basic offers include an Internet flate rate and the possibility for 3 concurrent calls without any additional fees.

Now I’m curious to see prices from Luxembourg Online, ORANGE, TANGO etc!

Prices for FTTH based LuxFibre prices are as follows:

• Down   30 Mb/s – Up 10 Mb/s: 54,99 EUR incl VAT / month
• Down   50 Mb/s – Up 25 Mb/s: 59,99 EUR incl VAT / month
• Down 100 Mb/s – Up 50Mb/s: 74,99 EUR incl VAT / month

These prices do not contain a volume flat-rate, this is available for 9,99 EUR / month or within the Integral package.

The telephone service comes with the capacity for 1 concurrent call, an upgrade to 3 concurrent calls is available at 6,00 EUR / month. Unfortunately the 3 concurrent calls limit is the absolute maximum, on a fibre access delivering up to 100 Mb/s, limiting telephony to 384 Kb/s seems somewhat arbitrary!

Beside that, the pricing is high compared to our european neighbors:

• in France Orange charges 33,99 EUR / month for 100 Mb/s flat, telephony flat and IPTV
• in Germany Telekom charges 39,95 EUR / month for up to 50 Mb/s flat and telephony flat

So I wanted to go a step further and loaded a full IPv6 routing table via BGP into a linux box. Mine unfortunately had a limit in the kernel, actually net.ipv6.route.max_size was set to 4096. The BGP feed I used delivered 6419 prefixes and only 4068 were loaded into the kernel table.

I added the following line to sysctl.conf

net.ipv6.route.max_size = 32768

and then cleared the BGP session, the kernel routing table now contained 6401 lines. So in case you are running into IPv6 routing issues on your linux box, check for this limit. Also keep an eye on the BGP IPv6 table size, in the future the table might outgrow the limit you have set.