Turning My vCMTS into a PON OLT – Live Fiber Demo with multi-Gbps ONU Speed Test!

Hey everyone—welcome back! You usually see me talking coax, DOCSIS, MER… but today we’re flipping the script: it’s fiber time. Join Brady Volpe and Andrii Vladyka, Vice President, Growth and Technologies at Harmonic, for a LIVE fiber lab demo like no other! In this session, we’re turning a virtual CMTS (vCMTS) into a PON OLT (Optical Line Terminal) and connecting an ONU (Optical Network Unit) — all live and in real time.

After our last chat on PTP-less timing, Andrii asked if I’d be up for playing with fiber in the lab. Naturally, I couldn’t say no. He sent over an SFP and a fiber modem—technically an Optical Network Unit, or ONU. I dropped the SFP into a spare port on my RPD, hung the ONU with a 10 dB optical pad and… boom: PON up and running right here in the lab. I honestly didn’t realize a vCMTS could do this—it’s wild to see, and the real-world implications for deployments are huge.

We’ll walk through how we went from coax to fiber in the lab, how the vCMTS now supports both DOCSIS and PON, and show a full-speed 5 Gbps ONU test. Whether you’re a DOCSIS engineer, cable operator, or broadband nerd, this session is packed with insights into real-world fiber deployment from the node.

As always, this isn’t a sales pitch—just an honest look at the tech. I’ve got questions for Andrii, I know you’ll have questions, too, so drop them in chat and we’ll hit as many as we can.

What you’ll learn:
• How a vCMTS can act as a DOCSIS CMTS and a PON OLT
• What an OLT and ONU are (quick explanation)
• How we configured and connected the fiber network
• The role of Harmonic’s FIN 10G SFP+ OLT module
• Why deploying PON from the fiber node matters
• Live speed test, modem provisioning, and internet access demo
• What this means for the future of fiber and DAA

References:

Harmonic FIN 10G SFP-based OLT: https://www.harmonicinc.com/broadband/fin-10g-sfp-based-olt/
Fiber for Cable Operators (PON from the node): https://www.harmonicinc.com/broadband/solutions/fiber-for-cable-operators/

No vendor pitches. Just tech.
Ask your questions in the chat — we’ll cover them live.
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