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[Chrysalis]

I can provide a ZIP file containing a few selected images which clearly show that ECI HiFOCuS M41s have been deployed by Beattie.

Anyone interested? The file is 9.4 Mbytes in size, so please send me a PM containing your e-mail address to which it may be sent.

I can provide a ZIP file containing a few selected images which clearly show that ECI HiFOCuS M41s have been deployed by Beattie.

Anyone interested? The file is 9.4 Mbytes in size, so please send me a PM containing your e-mail address to which it may be sent.

I sent pm thanks.

is it possible eci started with m41's but now using v41 for new eci cabinets? or do you think its m41 all the way, because unless the m41's are somehow able to use vectoring maybe with an upgrade or something then BT are about to spend money replacing all the ECI cards or vectoring (nightmare scenario) will be HG cabinets only.

[ColinS]

Thank you Walter, that's very informative indeed. I should really have said capacity rather than size.

Possibly because Glasgow was an early rollout location, all of the cabinets (that I have seen open) that are served by WSWESTERN appear to be Huawei, and they were all commissioned in the same rollout.  Hence my total ignorance of the ECI ones until now.

On behalf of my former BTOR colleagues, quite a few of whom are still allegedly planners of this kind of stuff, I offer you my  and  about what they seem to have done, or rather not done, down your way. OK, if I ever needed any more convincing that £££ is driving short-termism there these days, your tale tells it all sadly. 

  Thanks for the contribution to my education. 

[Chrysalis]

Yeah I think a scenario where the ECI are all swapped out is unlikely, not only is it money which BT hate spending but its going to cause a MSO in every area when done.  Maybe its possible BTs contract with ECI allows a upgrading without full cost for the new kit, and maybe they have a way of swapping out the hardware so outages are minimal but there is no going away from the cost of manpower to do the work.  I long suspected the HG hardware was better and the ECI used in the latter part of rollout does smack of cost cutting, this new news is possibly going to create a gulf between HG and ECI areas.

[c6em]

Is it not possible to install vectoring for both adsl & vdsl...?

Sent from my Sony Xperia Miro on Tapatalk

No, because vectoring requires the customer modem to be vector friendly and to cooperate with the DSLAM's vectoring actions and descramble the mess resulting.
No ADSL modem/router unit is. So to implement it, that means "someone" developing new ADSL modems and 'giving' them to end users.
That's a lot of work on what is a now fast becoming redundant tech'. so it ain't going to happen.  Much the same way that no development is being done to improve 20CN exchange equipment - its old tech superseeded by 21CN.

It would be more worthwhile to look at the cost/benefit implications of forcibly moving everyone onto FTTC as soon as the cabinet feeding their line is activated - to remove all ADSL/ADSL2+ signal from the data stream in the cable bundle, and to enable the closing down of existing ADSL equipment in the exchange more quickly with associated cost saving benefits.

[waltergmw]

@ c6em,

VERY sadly many folk think the usual urban FTTC design is bound to be optimum in all circumstances. The truth is long lines abound everywhere; some for historical reasons in urban areas so a VDSL service may hop over two newer PCPs to connect to the first much earlier and quite noisy one over a km away. I know of a service impossible to improve, above a throughput speed around 20 Mbps, without re-wiring the town. Many many more rural ones with D side lines from 2 km upwards have already demonstrated VDSL services are quite useless. In Ewhurst, even with the sample data I know of, there are two VDSL services syncing at sub 2 Mbps. All these folk would actually be far better off with ADSL 1 or 2 fed from the FTTC DSLAMs. So now we need future-proofed DSLAMs capable of vectoring as well as backdating them to ADSL merely to remove 4 to 5 km of E side twisted pairs.

I suppose one day somebody might have a brilliant idea of using a transport mechanism unaffected by distance !
Did I hear a Lancastrian whisper of FTTP from those "Cheeky Monkeys" @ B4RN ?

However there is another much more fundamental problem though. You will note that Ofcom et al are happy counting premises passed rather than premises connected because BT want to save money and won't use common sense and engineer for the total PCP capacity but only populating what's required. Instead just look how they are already squandering the significant additional costs involved in duplicating FTTCs.

Just in case you're curious it's perfectly possible to engineer a FTTC with 500 capacity as the then Rutland Telecom did using MPF (Isolated D side lines) after a major confrontation with BT, and as Vtesse Network had defined in our Ewhurst project. This would mean BT would lose revenue due to line hire and call charges but what a golden opportunity that was to increase the fibre charges to compensate.

EDIT Perhaps of very significant concern for the accountants, that method would significantly reduce the copper inventory required and would allow them to recover a goodly chunk of capital with the scrap value. Not only would that help support the pension fund instead of reaming the consumers, but there would be significant cost benefits in not having to emergency-replace and then reconnect all those consumers left without phones for maybe a couple of weeks after the greedy industrial-type cable thieves have done the dirty on UK plc. They prefer E side cables as there are far fewer joints to be cut away and far fewer pit covers to lift too. E.g. They recently had a go in Ewhurst at 03:00 in the morning removing 600 m of three E-side cables of between 200 & 500 prs. The cable winching and stowage necessary indicates a highly sophisticated industrial operation. Only those very few who have managed to get a VDSL service survived as the thieves knew there was no point in stealing just for melted glass. Apparently some of the gangs turn up looking like subcontractors (perish the thought !) complete with forged authorising paperwork to show PC Plod. They will even repeat the exercise a few weeks later !


Gentlefolk, I'm sorry to say we have so much spilt milk we could run a butter factory or three !

Kind regards,
Walter

[ColinS]

Well argued Walter. 

Just for my education, what is B4RN's capital expediture per premises connected? Do you have a figure for that yet?

Best regards, Colin

[Black Sheep]

I've had a quick wade through the in-depth docs we have, and as far as I can see there are only M41's (ECI). 'Searching' doesn't even recognise the term, 'V41' ?? 

[burakkucat]

I've had a quick wade through the in-depth docs we have, and as far as I can see there are only M41's (ECI). 'Searching' doesn't even recognise the term, 'V41'

Thank you for checking from "your end".

[waltergmw]

@ Colin,

You'll have to listen to Prof Barry Forde's lecture you'll find buried here:-

https://www.facebook.com/pages/B4RN-rural-broadband/105319176241916

However I think my creaking grey cells tell me it was around £1,000 per property.
Also remember that does not mean £1,000 of real cash capital outlay as all the volunteers get "Type B shares" but don't actually get any real money immediately for the work they've done. Some cash has to go on plant & materials and some on bought-in labour for things such as road crossings where you must have code powers and full insurance. I would expect B4RN's insurance to be far less as field works don't usually have major utility damage risks.

Kind regards,
Walter

PS Sorry folks for diverting the real purpose of this thread but it will be difficult now to extract the "foreign material".
Perhaps we should start a side-track one for this ?

[Chrysalis]

I've had a quick wade through the in-depth docs we have, and as far as I can see there are only M41's (ECI). 'Searching' doesn't even recognise the term, 'V41' ?? 

can you raise the subject internally in regards to vectoring and ECI?  Obviously I am aware you cannot disclose here what they tell you but maybe you can try and nudge BT in to enabling it on ECI cabinets as well.

[Chrysalis]

@ c6em,

VERY sadly many folk think the usual urban FTTC design is bound to be optimum in all circumstances. The truth is long lines abound everywhere; some for historical reasons in urban areas so a VDSL service may hop over two newer PCPs to connect to the first much earlier and quite noisy one over a km away. I know of a service impossible to improve, above a throughput speed around 20 Mbps, without re-wiring the town. Many many more rural ones with D side lines from 2 km upwards have already demonstrated VDSL services are quite useless. In Ewhurst, even with the sample data I know of, there are two VDSL services syncing at sub 2 Mbps. All these folk would actually be far better off with ADSL 1 or 2 fed from the FTTC DSLAMs. So now we need future-proofed DSLAMs capable of vectoring as well as backdating them to ADSL merely to remove 4 to 5 km of E side twisted pairs.



Kind regards,
Walter

I think the main reason for this is the power cutback on vdsl to protect adsl services.

vdsl still uses the same frequencies that adsl does except the upstream and downstream frequencies are moved around as well as that it has a bigger range on top of the adsl range.  However openreach cut the signal power down severely so adsl lines dont get crosstalk from vdsl, this means if you have a vdsl line that has no signal power above the adsl frequencies you either going to get no sync or a very low sync.

if openreach moved 'some' adsl customers to the cabinet they expect for the same reason would have to apply the power cutback to protect the exchange customers which of course voids the reason for moving them, if they moved them all to the cabinet then there is no longer a need for the power cutback? whuch means they probably will be just as well served by vdsl?  In effect I see this problem caused by having services split between cabinet and exchange.

[waltergmw]

@ chrysalis,

Points taken !

FTTC will never mange to please all of the people all of the time.
When we have access to FTTP then ......

Kind regards,
Walter

[ColinS]

This link http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2013/04/bt-confirm-first-uk-trial-areas-for-superfast-broadband-fttc-vectoring-tech.html reveals that those lucky people in Barnet and Braintree will be the first to trial vectoring.

Anyone here on FTTC in either of those two areas?

[Bald_Eagle1]

Well, my connection is now in sync at only 20764/4859 Kbps.

It has reduced in 3 steps to that level since December 2012.

In December, sync speeds were 29430/5704 Kbps, where they had more or less been for the 7 months since my connection was finally repaired near the end of May 2012.

DS Attainable rates have gone from 34Mb to 21.5Mb




Here's a before & after set of snapshot graphs:-





The really obvious differences are Bitloading, QLN & SNR.
However, I can also see slight deterioration in the Hlog graph, along with slightly increased attenuation as reported via the pbParams data.

I also notice that TX Power has reduced slightly.

Right up to May 1st 2013, Interleaving depth had been around 400-500 DS & 1 US since it was applied a few days after DLM was reset back in May 2012.


When the connection resynced on the fly at 04:54 May 1st at speeds of 24802/5172 Kbps, DS Interleaving was switched off completely.
INP & delay were also set to zero at the same time.

This was quite surprising as my 1000m connection does usually seem to need Interleaving, INP & delay to be applied at reasonably low levels.

There had been quite a few resyncs since 1st May, until appearing to settle at such low sync speeds.

I presume such low speeds no longer require Interleaving, INP & delay setting.


I disconnected all internal extension telephony wiring, switched the mains power off in my house & actually ran the connection for a while via a car battery & a battery powered laptop.
This made absolutely no difference to the stats obtained when fully mains powered, so I assume nothing in my own house can be causing such deterioration in speeds & stability.



Now, my question is, can this really all be down to increased crosstalk or is it possible that either something else has gradually caused QLN to deteriorate or is some sort of a line 'fault' brewing?


I have no idea how many users between the cabinet & my house have broadband connections or even which flavour(s) of DSL they are using.
I also have no idea how to discover if there has been an increase in the number of broadband users, coinciding with the dates I noticed a deterioration.


Does anyone have any ideas/suggestions?

I don't believe requesting DLM to be reset would have any mileage (even in the unlikely event that such a request would be granted), particularly as Attainable rates are so low & there doesn't really appear to be much in the way of spare SNRM.

[Black Sheep]

Further to the PM chat we had, BE, and for your information, I ran a remote GEA test against my circuit and it still shows a 'Bridged tap' fault, even though I've upgraded from 'dongle' config to 'SSFP' !!! So, I'm going to have to delve further myself.

If you had your OGEA******* reference, I could possibly check your data on the 'Baseline comparison' page. It's rather hit and miss, but it sometimes shows the, 'Then and now' characteristics of your circuit, from initial start-up. IE: The number of circuits on VDSL (Not ADSL), speed, SNR etc etc.

As you reside in a different part of the country to myself, I don't have the relevant access to locate your OGEA number ?? It's basically the unique VDSL circuit identifier, much like your landline telephone number is your unique PSTN identifier.