I’m working on long range stuff so I’m not so familiar with PON specifically. Maybe I made some bad assumptions. Stable at -30 dBm receive sounds really impressive.

The one I was talking about is this, with 18.5 dB total budget, that is, min +4.5 dBm transmit, and min -14 dBm receive. This one is built with an APD.

In my kind of application, without splitter, this will get you about 30-40 km. We’ve got one of a slightly older type with 18 dB budget running between Fribourg and Bern for example.

I realize that PON stuff is quite different with the time slitting and I think wavelenght splitting too, at least in XGS-PON, but I was thinking the pure laser and diode physics would need to be the same.

For -25 dBm minimum the most similar of the ones we currently have would be this one which manages -26.9 dBm and is one of the ones with a SOA built in, or for the 10G stuff this one, which manages min -23 dBm but with only an APD and no SOA.

I’m thinking their 50G stuff must be closer to 100G than 10G transceiver design. So I wonder if they manage to make it without SOA.

I wonder if they use semiconductor optical amplifiers in the receivers, or if they can make do with avalanche photodiodes.

The 100G stuff I’m looking at has 18.5 dB budget with APDs, that seems rough considering you want a few kilometers of fiber, a few splices and a few connectors (probably LC/APC) as well.

I’m sure I have the same ISP as you, but so far I didn’t splurge to buy 10G or 25G gear.

If you don’t mind telling, what router and switches did you go for?

Or did you go the Michael Stapelberg route?