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FireBrick CQM Helps trackdown faulty GPON Line Card

CQM helps detect faulty GPON Line card

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A&A
2025-10-15

With the help of FireBrick's CQM graphs, A&A were able to help Openreach track down and fix a low level packetloss issue that was affecting multiple FTTP circuits all in the same area.


CQM-gpon-linecard

Timeline of events:

  • January - Customer has problems with existing ISP, slow througput and small amounts of pascketloss showing on pings.
  • Problem reported to the ISP
  • After a lot of back and forth and multiple Openreach engineers, the problem is still not fixed, and the customer decides to leave the original ISP
  • August 22nd - End user migrates circuit to A&A and CQM graphs show packetloss as soon as the line connects
  • September 1st - A fault report and escalation path with BT Wholesale and Openreach starts
  • 3rd September, Openreach confirm they see errors
  • 11th Sept, a fibre connection was cleaned and reset. Does not resolve fault.
  • 18th Sept, SFP changed. Does not resolve fault.
  • A&A were able to add additional information by pinging and monitoring other neighbours in the area, confirming to Openreach the problem was local to the specific area
  • 30th Sept, GPON rebooted. Does not resolve fault
  • 7th October, GPON linecard replaced. Packet loss fixed!

Throughout the process, A&A were able to easily send evidence of the packetloss to BT by sending CQM graphs.

This negated the need for time consuming tests by the end user, and gave the end user confidence that A&A knew there was a problem, that it was not fixed and that A&A staff were managing the fault with the supplier.

the ability to not only monitor LCP echos on PPP connected circuits but also the use of ICMP graphs meant that A&A had a clear picture from the beginning where the problem lay and more importantly where the problem wasn't. A&A had confidence in knowing the problem was not within the A&A network but was localised to a specific area in Openreach's domain.

Although this problem took a long time to resolve, the instant feedback that A&A were able to offer BT and Openrach was invaluable.

The customer was delighted when the problem was eventually fixed.

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