[redhotsonic]

Hello, all. Finally, Fibre optic broadband is available in my local area, but there's a catch. It seems it's fibre optic from the exchange, to the green box cabinet thingamajig, but from there to my flat, it's still copper. Luckily, I literally live a 20 second walk from the green box, so the copper wire should be nice and short.


At the moment, I've got (upto) 20MB broadband (all copper) and getting these results:





Not bad in my opinion.



Anyway, according to http://www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/ , they're accepting orders for fibre optic. BT and Plusnet are typically saying the best I can get is 80Mbps-down and 20Mbps-up. True or not, I won't find out until I get it.



For my needs like online-PS3 gaming, Catch-up TV (iplayer for example, and 3D HD movies at times) and downloading large games to my PS3 and/or Android phone, is it worth me paying more money (paying £22, getting fibre will be typically £10 more a month) and getting tied down to an 18-month contract to get FTTC fibre?



I'm also worried, because other sites like Sky and Virgin are saying I cannot get fibre yet, though OpenReach, BT (I know they're almost the same) and plusnet are saying yes. Maybe Sky and Virgin only do FTTP and/or use different wiring to BT.


Basically:

• Is it worth the extra £10 a month getting this for my needs?
  
• Will I really get 80Mbps-down/20Mbps-up or do they just say that to everyone?
  
• Has anyone upgraded themselves and seen the improvement that they wouldn't go back?

Any advice I would be grateful.

redhotsonic

[winterhell]

I don't know about the UK, but in Bulgaria the speeds are guaranteed (and no bandwidth cap) and they offer up to 100 Down/50 Up Mbit/s international for home users. The fiber goes to the basement in a 1 Gbit switch/router and from there a copper to the home, pretty standart. Its a nice upgrade from ADSL which has similar speeds to what you show. Fiber would often reduce latency. My ADSL router adds something like 25-30ms delay so even to my town I have 30-35 ping, while people with fiber-to-the-basement have 5ms with cities from neighbor countries.

This post has been edited by winterhell: 28 December 2012 - 08:28 AM

[Flygon]

Given you seem to live so close to the node, how expensive would it be to have the final leg of the journey upgraded to pure fiber? Or would they try to pull shenanigans on you and pull a $1,500+ fee?

[redhotsonic]

winterhell, on 28 December 2012 - 08:27 AM, said:

My ADSL router adds something like 25-30ms delay so even to my town I have 30-35 ping, while people with fiber-to-the-basement have 5ms with cities from neighbor countries.

Mine is already 13ms. Using this fibre will probably improve it. I'm just worried about the last bit of copper ruining it all. But as it's so short, maybe it won't. Who knows.

Flygon, on 28 December 2012 - 09:31 AM, said:

Given you seem to live so close to the node, how expensive would it be to have the final leg of the journey upgraded to pure fiber? Or would they try to pull shenanigans on you and pull a $1,500+ fee?

No idea, but that's not an option. Due to the fact I rent the flat and the Letting Agency and/or the landlord will more than likely will say "no". And even if both did say yes, like you said, the fee will probably be huge that I won't be able to afford it (especially with Christmas just passing).

[Wolf Rogers]

A more interesting question, how OLD is the copper? If it was installed recently in the past 10 years or so, it will be perfectly fine with bringing you the best speeds it can, it's when a line is 15 years or more it starts to do some serious degrading. A great example of this is a house a friend moved into recently, phone line was ancient, we're talking 40 years here, and on his ADSL package (up to 20MB) he was only getting speeds of 11MB and latency around 60ms (when being tested to nearest hub). Anyway, few months later, new windows get put in, this installation causes the old phone line to snap, so they had to get onto the phone to their ISP, who in turn got onto BT, etc, and a few days later a new line was fitted, tests done after and still to this day, he gets around 19MB and latency of 39ms, this is on the same ADSL package, same router, etc, the only change was that one wire leading from the Houses Master Socket to the Neighborhood pole.

[Overlord]

Hello. Actual UK resident who used to work for an ISP here =P

Virgin Media runs a completely different physical setup to everyone else. Ignore anything about what Virgin says regarding FTTC, that just means THEIR kit isn't in your area. Everyone else uses BT's (well, Openreach's, but they're PART of BT) kit. I'm not sure why Sky is saying no, maybe they're leasing Virgin's lines?

Quote

For my needs like online-PS3 gaming, Catch-up TV (iplayer for example, and 3D HD movies at times) and downloading large games to my PS3 and/or Android phone, is it worth me paying more money (paying £22, getting fibre will be typically £10 more a month) and getting tied down to an 18-month contract to get FTTC fibre?

I've done a few installs at work now of BT's Infinity platform and the VDSL routers we're using (one of these bad boys: http://www.draytek.c.../vigor2750.html - it's businesses we sell to who need VPN lines, you'll be fine with the standard Infinity modem) tend to sync solidly at 50MB/s down - how much of that you'll see in actual speed is debatable but it will almost certainly be a good 10/15 MB faster than your current speeds. Whether you think this is worth the tenner is up to you - be wary also of any bandwidth caps, be sure to ask about those before you buy.

Quote

* Is it worth the extra £10 a month getting this for my needs?
* Will I really get 80Mbps-down/20Mbps-up or do they just say that to everyone?
* Has anyone upgraded themselves and seen the improvement that they wouldn't go back?

1) See above
2 & 3) I've seen some drastic speed improvements, albiet on lines at sites with a worse initial speed & DSL sync times that can occasionally be measured in minutes rather than hours - though these may have been fucked-up lines that have high db interference on them anyway. Because Infinity is all-new wiring it removes a lot of historical line problems - which would be nice for me especially as I'm not even on bloody copper, I'm on aluminium. Sadly my area doesn't have Infinity, despite living less than 1km from an exchange - my line goes to the next fucking village and back before reaching me. OpenReach™.


tl;dr - so long as you're wary of any potential extra bandwidth caps, if you think a about-doubling of your current speed is worth the extra £10 a month, than yes, Infinity is worth it. Choose your ISP first though, shop around - as you noted, Plusnet also do a fibre platform, I didn't know this until relatively recently. Stay clear of Virgin simply because if you have to switch down the road you'll have to switch EVERYTHING.

[redhotsonic]

10-15Mb faster than I already got wouldn't be good enough for an extra £10 a month, especially if I am paying to get an estimated 80Mb. Although, in plusnet's terms, it says if I'm not getting anywhere near the expectation (within 90 days), they will let me cancel the contract and refund me, so I suppose it's worth a shot? I will thoroughly shop around though before buying anything and getting tied down.

Thanks for all the advice guys.

[redhotsonic]

Double post, but thought it might be interesting to know.


I decided to take the plunge and bought fibre optic (FTTC) from Plusnet. 3 reasons why from plusnet

• I'm already with plusnet for normal broadband and it's not a hassle to change package and stay with them
  
• It's cheaper with them than anywhere else (hardly much but meh)
  
• It's only £3 extra a month more than what I'm already paying

For an extra £3 a month, I will get (from normal to fibre):

• From 20mbps-down to 80Mbps-down
  
• From 2Mbps-up to 20Mbps-up
  
• From 60GB-bandwidth to unlimited-bandwidth

I found out (from Google Maps) that my cabinet is 80 metres away from my home. I found a useful site that has helped answer my questions. Hopefully, because of my short distance to the cabinet, I should get the maximum of 80Mbps down.




Anyway, the bloke to install the new routers and shit is coming in 1 weeks time. Next week, I will post my new speed results and then people can read this topic to see if it's worth themselves getting fibre.

[TmEE]

My ISP does 120Mbit with up to 150Mbit boost or download and 10M to 20M for upload. The boost lasts for very little time...
Hopefully you have 80/20Mbit as a sustained speed rather than something temporairly happening.

[redhotsonic]

Nice, I guess that's FTTP? That would be nice for me to have, but 80Mb should be plenty for my needs. Although knowing my luck, I won't get the 80Mb-down. 70Mb-down or higher, I'm happy with. 15Mb-up or higher, I'm happy with.


EDIT: Although, the gits have e-mailed me changing the installation date to the 9th of Jan, d'oh.

This post has been edited by redhotsonic: 03 January 2013 - 04:02 AM

[TmEE]

EuroDOCSIS 3.0 setup here. Cable TV internet.

[redhotsonic]

Well, I've been on fibre for almost a week now. And the results are almost good:



The upload is always around 17-19Mbps. I have no complaints here. The download at this moment is looking good, but it normally ranges from 40Mbps - 75Mbps. Averagely, 65Mbps. Here, I'll do it again (1 minute later, same server):




How on earth did I lose 14.20Mbps within 1 minute?



Also, my pingtest results, ever since fibre, I (sometimes) get packet loss of 2%. Most of the time, I don't, but sometimes I do. This could explain the 14Mbps loss? I don't know. I've used the supplied router and my old router, and even connected the laptop directly into the BT-OpenReach modem, and I still get the same results. So I know it's not my problem.


Now, I don't really beleive in this "wait 10 days for stabalisation" shit, but for now, I will wait 'til Friday. But before I ring up Plusnet about the packet loss, is there anything I could try that might be causing the issue? Search on google, I've tried everything, and apparently anything above 0% is a worry. Although these speed-tests can never really be relied on, I never got a packet loss with ADSL2+.

I have tried pinging certain places like google.com, sonicretro.org, and even sony.jp in cmd.exe and never got any loss.

Spoiler

The reason for no pingtest result pictures is because I tried 10 times and I kept getting 0% packet loss, so I couldn't prove it. Like I said, it happens sometimes. Will try again later and then show the 2% loss. I may just be over-thinking all this.

This post has been edited by redhotsonic: 14 January 2013 - 01:48 PM

[Overlord]

While you're right to assume the 10-day-stabilisation is bollocks (in practise, 99.9% of lines will be at their final speed in under 72 hours), the main thing here might simply be line contention. Also, a 2% packet loss isn;t the end of the world either, unless it gets worse. Honestly, I'd be happy with 65MBits, that's more than 6 times what my DSL is. =P

[redhotsonic]

Overlord, on 14 January 2013 - 02:41 PM, said:

Also, a 2% packet loss isn;t the end of the world either, unless it gets worse. Honestly, I'd be happy with 65MBits, that's more than 6 times what my DSL is. =P

Oh yes, when researching using Google, I saw people with worse packet loss (30% or higher), but when others said anything more than 0% should cause concern, I started getting concerned; especially when I never had this before the move.

And yes, 65Mb would be okay but as I paid for 80Mb, and I have seen it as high as 76Mb, I would like it higher. Just thought maybe the packet loss was to blame for it's huge-ass loss in a matter of seconds.

[Meat Miracle]

CAT5e can deliver a gigabit with proper cables, 100mbit with older ones.

If you can't max out your 80mb line, don't worry: few things can max it out. In fact even your own network hardware may be incapable of it. I'm on a 80mb fiber line (fiber to the switchbox in the house, cat5e from there to me), and I get 40-50mbit because my router can't handle more. If I connect the cat5e directly to my computer, I get 10mbyte/sec easily though. But only with torrents, I've yet to see a SINGLE connection that could max out my line. Nor am I concerned about it.