Sorry for the dumb question and hopefully this is relevant enough to the sub. I have my own firewall and right now it connects to my ISPs provided home router over rj45, their router gets a fiber hookup to their network and it’s the only ISP device in my home. If I have a firewall with a fiber port, can I take the fiber to the modem and hook that straight to my firewall, or is there a reason I need their device?
It depends, and without knowing your ISP I’m not sure there is a way to tell you for sure. I know for example Comcast gigabit Pro has been known to directly connect to an ISP SPF module in your firewall/router, but Verizon FiOS (and most FTTP that I know of) provide an ONT that converts the fiber to Ethernet which you would then connect directly to your hardware.
I would verify if the ISP router you refer to is not really an ONT in which case you are directly connected to the ISP functionally and there isn’t really an advantage to getting an SPF and getting the fiber directly connected if you even can.
ONT SFPs exist, but they’re prohibitively expensive. And hard to find.
Verizon and ATT just rebrand nokia ONTs and roll some of their own software that is mostly enhanced or changed encryption at L1. Can’t speak for Comcast, I only know about the other two as I’m in a smaller ISP that competes with them.
They use have L2 onts that don’t have any gateway functions, just fiber to ethernet with some extra overhead to monitor the connection between the hose and shelf.
The ONT-on-a-stick units do the same thing, just a more compact and expensive interface that doesn’t have great support, unless comcast or running all home run fibers where they can just provide a straight SFP instead of doing any optical splitting.
I kinda hate Verizon, but I didn’t realize there were these other gotcha that I’m avoiding by using Fios hardware. The hardware itself has actually been pretty good. I can’t imagine paying for internet and not being able to just plug in my own router.
I mean you can, an ONT is not a router, it’s essentially a media converter. I use my own router (and have for many years) and had no issues. The FiOS tech even ran a long Ethernet run in my basement to connect the ONT and my router in my rack when they installed service.
Is getting an ONT with Ethernet output normal? The comments were making me think that’s more of best case but maybe not standard.
It wasn’t standard previously, and if you have TV service I think it’s still inconsistent but the past ~5 years it seems to be more common that they are setup that way from the start. If you have internet only service, and a newer ONT (like less than 10 years old) it is the standard configuration and is how the self install guide tell you to hook up the “quantum gateway” router from Verizon.
You can always call and ask to have your ONT converted to Ethernet output if it isn’t already and as long as it supports it I haven’t heard reports of much trouble there. The very early ONTs though don’t support it though IIRC but those should be being replaced at this point anyways.