Informer 268: 17 July 2015

An issue has been identified with Chorus' new Optical Network Terminal (ONT) that may affect end-customers using DHCP relay functionality in their local or wide area network.

What's happening?

As part of our wider network upgrade programme, we last year advised you of our plan to deploy a new type of Optical Network Terminal (ONT) for ultra-fast broadband (UFB) installations. Despite rigorous testing of the new ONT before it was deployed a problem has come to light. 

What's the detail?

Within the last few weeks, a number of business and enterprise end-customers started experiencing network problems after installing the new Chorus ONT for their UFB service. Working alongside the impacted retail service providers, we have discovered a problem with the new Chorus ONT that affects customers using the DHCP relay feature within their network. DHCP Relay is often used to provide customers a simple solution for IP address assignment across their WAN.

Using the results from our joint troubleshooting efforts, Alcatel Lucent, the OEM for the ONT, has been able to replicate the issue and get urgent work underway to create a software patch to resolve it. The patch is expected to be available in one or two business days and, after testing is complete, it can be deployed remotely to update ONTs experiencing problems.

While this software patch is an emergency fix, it's planned that the permanent software code fix will be included in Chorus’s next scheduled firmware upgrade for the new ONT in September.

Who do I contact?

If you suspect you have a customer experiencing problems with the new ONT, or you'd like further information, please contact your Service Delivery Manager.