Kitz Forum
Broadband Related => FTTC and FTTP Issues => Topic started by: PhilipD on February 21, 2020, 09:10:03 AM
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Hi
Well I've been on FTTP for a number of months now having ditched the VDSL, was lucky enough for 80/20 on VDSL but was only just holding on to that as it had been a continual decline in margin since I joined the cab some years ago, and was getting close to seeing sync speeds affected, was on an ECI cab.
Most days I would check the VDSL stats and had monitoring set up. There were various issues over the years needing some troubleshooting and the occasional post here for advice, in every case when it went down it was nothing to do with my kit and the connection eventually came back on, much to my annoyance after rebooting things and trying spare modems.
FTTP of course is a different type of connection entirely, for a start there are no stats available to monitor from the ONT and little we could do about them if there were, so very much a black box (well white box) that just works. It's not been power cycled since the engineer plugged it in some 60 days ago, no reason to. Had a thunderstorm the other day and FTTP of course was completely unaffected and I didn't need to worry about it. The copper telephone line is disconnected and will likely never be used again.
So FTTP is reliable, fast, and uncomplicated, all the things we want, however I miss just a little xDSL for the insights I had into it's inner workings, watching error-rates, and each time I checked it feeling pleased I'm still not interleaved and still at 80/20 (just), but no I wouldn't go back to it.
What will happen to forums and communities like this when the vast majority of us are on FTTP? I guess they become a thing of the past or talk about something else. I've already noticed a quietening down in forums such as this and others relating to broadband.
If you have FTTP now how is the reliability, do you miss just a little your xDSL and stat monitoring? Perhaps you will not even being reading this as you have little need to visit here to read up on it or see what the latest tips are to optimise it.
Regards
Phil
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Nearly on FTTP but before that cable and before that FTTC.
I don't really miss xDSL and didn't really watch the stats. If I didn't notice an issue using it or changes in performance there was no need to seek stats.
The more general networking section will get busier I imagine. The ADSL/VDSL issues section less so. People will still have issues but they will be because the service has substantially changed in performance, rather than because they are watching statistics more closely than most major companies watch their global networks.
I'm sure the odd person will start running hourly speed, latency and jitter tests to give themselves something to fixate over but I will be delighted when the age of people watching stats looking for issues, rather than because they have actually experienced them, is largely over.
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Exactly. I don’t look at stats all the time. I think it will be like going from vinyl to cd in the 1980s; no more warps and scratches - it just works perfectly and becomes a black box.
For me it will mean an end to equipment damage and no downtime when there’s an electrical storm.
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I am on FTTP 330/30 currently, well, FTTP on demand. Paid a few thousand for the installation and I guess it took in the region of 6 to 9 months to be completed and go live. I was on FTTC with two lines previously (bonded), one of which was troublesome at times. The troublesome factor is what encouraged me to get FTTPoD, as well as the price being on the lower end of some of the other quotes out there.
Suffice to say that I'm not missing xDSL at all. No more traditional interleaving (INP/delay) to worry about, no more banding and no more DLM interference. An always on connection unless there's some overnight work taking place (rare) or a fault (not had any yet, nearly a year since being live). My FTTPoD minimum term is nearly finished, but I'm keeping an eye on what options may appear when 550/75 and 1000/110 become available. FTTP has been extremely reliable for me but it does mean I post on various related forums much less than I used to unfortunately.
I'm currently with Cerberus, had no issues with their service which is a good thing. I used to be with AAISP but they don't offer FTTPoD and when I can 'regrade' to native FTTP they unfortunately don't offer anything faster than 160/30.
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Exactly. I don’t look at stats all the time. I think it will be like going from vinyl to cd in the 1980s; no more warps and scratches - it just works perfectly and becomes a black box.
Exactly my point though in that many people prefer vinyl and it is still produced and gaining again in popularity. Owners have to tweak tone arms and maintain their turntables and carefully handle their records, but that makes it all part of the experience for some people, it is a hobby, a challenge to get the best you can out of the equipment. Even cassette tapes are becoming popular with some cassette decks from the 80s and 90s being traded for thousands of pounds.
How much time are spent by some here discussing the tweaks and tips and the best cables to use to just get an extra few bits through a second? We wouldn't waste our time on often insignificant gains if it wasn't for some joy we get from it, some little hit of dopamine because we've improved the SNR or managed to get ourselves off being interleaved.
Would I go back to xDSL no I wouldn't. However put it this way though, if we could view some stats on our FTTP connections and we had a forum that shared tips and tricks to get more speed out of it (if such a thing was possible on FTTP), would we be tinkering and trying those tips, I bet we would ;D
Regards
Phil
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Ixel AA are mad to lose you. They need to be ready to handle the top end of the FTTP market and be ready for the mass changes to FTTP and eventually to gigabit otherwise they will become irrelevant. Like what happened to Demon when DSL arrived - they had a superb set up for dialup - with MPPC compression and the fastest dial up speeds 50k even despite my incredibly long but clean copper line.
AA does fast fibre for ethernet customers. And if you want FTTPoD then they should just say yes sir and the customer is king. And this 160Mbps thing is madness. Would they say no if you chose 2 times 160Mbps FTTP bonded?
Just so I understand FTTP 160 wasn’t available to you anyway?
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Ixel AA are mad to lose you. They need to be ready to handle the top end of the FTTP market and be ready for the mass changes to FTTP and eventually to gigabit otherwise they will become irrelevant. Like what happened to Demon when DSL arrived - they had a superb set up for dialup - with MPPC compression and the fastest dial up speeds 50k even despite my incredibly long but clean copper line.
AA does fast fibre for ethernet customers. And if you want FTTPoD then they should just say yes sir and the customer is king. And this 160Mbps thing is madness. Would they say no if you chose 2 times 160Mbps FTTP bonded?
Just so I understand FTTP 160 wasn’t available to you anyway?
I agree.
I haven't asked them what would happen if I ordered 2 x 160's. When I'm able to regrade to native FTTP (soon), before I do I'll contact AAISP and see what they can potentially offer me. I would rather be with AAISP as I know my actual bandwidth limit each month, rather than being on an unknown fair usage policy of 'unlimited' bandwidth. They don't charge extra for multiple IP addresses either, which is nice. I couldn't order FTTP 160 at the time anyway since I needed to go via FTTPoD first, which they aren't offering due to the higher costs of installation usually putting off customers who might be interested I believe.
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Whats the latency like?
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Whats the latency like?
No Time(ms) IP Address Note Name
1 5.429 8.8.8.8 Reply
2 5.277 8.8.8.8 Reply dns.google
3 5.246 8.8.8.8 Reply dns.google
4 5.336 8.8.8.8 Reply dns.google
5 5.258 8.8.8.8 Reply dns.google
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I am pleased to read that once you have FTTP there is no more worry about stats or anything. I am looking forward to getting FTTP. Currently have 2 x VDSL circuits, not bonded, but will be looking to install FTTP as soon as possible. I have a feeling about this time next year it should be available for me. Choice of ISP will be interesting, AAISP I think will no longer be an option, I will be wanting as much speed as I can deem reasonably affordable, given I'm paying £80 for two VDSL circuits today, I would probably be willing to cap at £100 a month for the right service should it be available.
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No Time(ms) IP Address Note Name
1 5.429 8.8.8.8 Reply
2 5.277 8.8.8.8 Reply dns.google
3 5.246 8.8.8.8 Reply dns.google
4 5.336 8.8.8.8 Reply dns.google
5 5.258 8.8.8.8 Reply dns.google
thanks, where in the country are you?
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thanks, where in the country are you?
East Sussex, England.
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I would miss line stats, DLM and all the suspense FTTC makes... though I do not have much problems with FTTC but I keep an eye on the stats from time to time.
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Ixel AA are mad to lose you.
Am I remembering correctly that, fairly recently, CarlT mentioned the Firebrick boxes were not able to cope with the top-end speed of multi-gigabit services? :-\
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I can already say I will not miss stat watching and wondering what sync rate I'm at.
I'm actually hugely looking forward to not having to cut off my broadband during storms and always knowing exactly what speed my service is provisioned at.
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Am I remembering correctly that, fairly recently, CarlT mentioned the Firebrick boxes were not able to cope with the top-end speed of multi-gigabit services? :-\
You could be correct as the specification says routing up to 750 megabits. Still, I'd settle for 550/75 if that was an option this year, depending on price too of course.
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@Burakkucat I agree. There isn’t a 10Gbps Firebrick. Not yet. I would think they’re probably working on it but such a thing might need radical architectural changes, more hardware and less software processing.
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It is good to read threads like this, especially when for years whenever people mentioned full fibre the standard reply was "why do you want that much speed?".
As pointed out in this thread fibre is so much more than speed. You're actually getting the service you've paid for.
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Indeed, and as its TDMA you are guaranteed a minimum time slot so no single user can ever completely drown out other users traffic and latency should be kept better under control.
The one thing I am curious about though is, how does security work on a PON? If every user is getting the entire PONs traffic, how do you prevent a rogue ONT from snooping on other users data?
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Hi
The data is encrypted and only your ONT can decrypt your data, this is why you can't simply replace the ONT for something else of your choosing as only a Openreach engineer can update the encryption to work with a different ONT.
Even if someone does manage to read the data, most important stuff is encrypted anyway via SSL, so still wouldn't be readable.
Regards
Phil
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That's what I'd hoped but I never take data security for granted these days after so many reports of manufacturers doing a half-assed job, or not bothering at all.
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Indeed, and as its TDMA you are guaranteed a minimum time slot so no single user can ever completely drown out other users traffic and latency should be kept better under control.
The one thing I am curious about though is, how does security work on a PON? If every user is getting the entire PONs traffic, how do you prevent a rogue ONT from snooping on other users data?
Not my forte whatsoever .... but to my simplistic mind, each address has a 'forever' NAD key assigned to them. This is unique for each premises.
I have no idea, but would imagine the ONT is pre-built with this key ?? Or, maybe the engineer inputs it at the installation stage ?? Not got a clue though.
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Or, maybe the engineer inputs it at the installation stage ?? Not got a clue though.
Each ONT has an unique serial number, expressed both in digits and as the corresponding bar-code. That serial number is the "magic sauce".
The engineer scans the bar-code with her/his phone and uploads to "somewhere-in-the-BT-Group-land". Within a few minutes the ONT should then be active.
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Each ONT has an unique serial number, expressed both in digits and as the corresponding bar-code. That serial number is the "magic sauce".
The engineer scans the bar-code with her/his phone and uploads to "somewhere-in-the-BT-Group-land". Within a few minutes the ONT should then be active.
Thanks for that B*Cat ..... would I be right to assume that this unique ONT SN, is then aligned with the unique NAD key assigned to that address ??
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<snip> would I be right to assume that this unique ONT SN, is then aligned with the unique NAD key assigned to that address ??
I would say so, yes.
For example: An iffy capacitor, on the PCB of the ONT, goes pop. The ONT ceases to operate. End-user puts in a report to her/his ISP, usual performance (blah, blah).
An Openreach appointment is made; the appropriate person is tasked to visit. A quick check shows the installed ONT is deceased. A new device, from van stock, is installed. The bar-code is scanned, on phone, and the details are uploaded to "somewhere-in-the-BT-Group-land". The relevant database is updated, linking the serial number to the NAD key and a button is pressed. All green LEDs show on the ONT and the service is restored.
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@Burakkucat I agree. There isn’t a 10Gbps Firebrick. Not yet. I would think they’re probably working on it but such a thing might need radical architectural changes, more hardware and less software processing.
Can be done via x86 CPUs quite happily.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Express_Data_Path
Vyatta among others already support it.
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Now on FTTP.
Not a lot has changed, actually. Too early to report on reliability.
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Now on FTTP.
Not a lot has changed, actually. Too early to report on reliability.
Prepare the backhoes!
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Any ISP recommendations for FTTP
As I'm moving from 50Mbps FTTC id quite like to opt for a 150 and ideally the 300Mbps option. So with pricing the biggest factor then stability who should I go with?
P.S. Native OpenReach
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Hi
You get what you pay for really.
As FTTP is pretty stable and you get the line rate speed you buy, the support the ISP gives is probably less important, as you are less likely to need it. But you can still get congestion issues and slow downs if the ISP doesn't have enough capacity.
Do you need a static IP and IPv6? Is it business or pleasure?
Personally I've not used I mainstream ISP for many years and it is has been worth the extra cost to just have people answer tickets in 5 minutes rather than 5 days, it is night and day. It's like most goods and services, you only get to find out how good they are when you have a problem.
If want the cheapest and don't need a extras like static IPs, then like buying Tesco's basic baked beans or Sainsbury's basic baked beans, they are not going to be very different. So you might wish to see what offers they have on and might just come down to who offers the better router?
Regards
Phil
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Any ISP recommendations for FTTP
As I'm moving from 50Mbps FTTC id quite like to opt for a 150 and ideally the 300Mbps option. So with pricing the biggest factor then stability who should I go with?
P.S. Native OpenReach
I wouldn't worry too much about stability on FTTP - it either works or it doesn't :)
BT were offering FTTP 330/50 for around £45/m as a special deal, not that long ago. Might be worth ringing them up to see if they can offer you that deal again, if its no longer available on their website. Unlike smaller CPs, the bigger ones can often give you huge discounts over the phone in exchange for a 18/24 month commitment.
Btw TalkTalk will be launching Openreach based FTTP very soon, they will be selling FTTP tiers up to 330/50. I'd be very surprised if they didn't try to match BT Retail's prices at least, highly likely they will be slightly cheaper.
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This thread's title still makes me chuckle. The idea of missing xDSL because your broadband just works and you don't have stats to look at :lol:
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Ixel AA are mad to lose you. They need to be ready to handle the top end of the FTTP market and be ready for the mass changes to FTTP and eventually to gigabit otherwise they will become irrelevant.
A&A insist on using Firebricks to preserve their line monitoring. Firebrick do not offer any appliances with anything higher than 1G ports. Firebrick / A&A don't have the resources to invest extensively in 10G even though it would seem at first impression to be trivial.
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A&A insist on using Firebricks to preserve their line monitoring.
Just because Adrian Kennard had an idea, years ago, doesn't mean it was a good idea . . . either then or now. Nothing more than an obsession for the obsessives. ::) :-X
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Great idea switched on selectively for troubleshooting purposes but of debatable usage enabled for each and every customer all the time.
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It is hard to see how A&A can continue to be relevant once FTTP becomes more common and so monitoring is completely redundant at that point.
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Hi
It is hard to see how A&A can continue to be relevant once FTTP becomes more common and so monitoring is completely redundant at that point.
I agree, and in my experience you don't need to pay that sort of premium anyway to get excellent service and support, just don't buy from the "stack them high with yet another special offer" ISP and just be prepared to pay more to get more. If people want to that's fine of course and many people have had to in order to get anywhere with bad phone lines with Openreach, but exactly, it becomes much less relevant as time goes on and what becomes their USP then? Still there are always people willing to pay more for quality whether that extra quality is real or perceived, it's why shops like Harrod's exist, but then you don't find a Harrods shop in every town and city. Nothing wrong with a company being a smaller player with a niche customer base.
Regards
Phil
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I use AA’s complete support if I get stuck with issues of configuring kit too. And that won’t go away just because DSL has. There will still be ‘how do I?’ questions, problems with the internet itself further upstream, but they will just be much less frequent, and huge problems with 3G/4G/5G won’t go away. I will still need all the monitoring capabilities because I will want to know what my own machines have been getting up to. Take last night; downloading stuff from Netflix was painfully slow, in the end I had to reboot my iPad as I think something was going crazy doing background downloads for some reason and interfering with the work which I needed to get done. I could look at the clueless.aa.net.uk graphs to see what was going on and I could do a traffic capture as well if need be, which gives me the whole story, more information than a list of flows eg TCP connections shown by the firewall/router.
AA isn’t all about the people answering the phone. Their tools and their range of services is amazing, in a different league compared with Zen; I was with Zen for a year. I can’t imagine being with anyone else - they’re just right for me and what I need. The IPv4 space = whatever you need, FOC, for example. And being able to test your own line yourself when you need to, running a BT copper line test or PSTN test.
And as for the ‘pay premium’ thing, I don’t find AA expensive. Everyone seems to think they are. Are they really any more expensive than say BT Retail? I don’t know. I pay for four copper lines + traffic costs + minor extras like email, 4G data SIMs, DNS hosting and domain registration of many domains now. An additional copper line doesn’t cost much, I forget.
Earlier posters have said AA will no longer be relevant - I see the point. However, they are smart people and they will adapt, and their own costs will go down when they don’t have the same enormous burden of support fixing so very many copper lines all the time, so that will help them, and their staff will be able to handle a higher number of customers on the books per support person. But the reasons I picked them as my ISP will not go away, my reasons were nothing to do with copper.
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But the reasons I picked them as my ISP will not go away, my reasons were nothing to do with copper.
I agree, and if it weren't for the fact they don't currently offer 330/50 or higher (I believe due to the fact their Firebrick hardware, their end, can't handle more than 1Gbps at this time) on FTTP then I would no doubt be with them. Hopefully next year, by the time my next contract has run the year's minimum term, they might be offering such speed variants.
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Traffic captures gets much more costly to do as people move to faster connections, its one of the things holding them back.
Also IMO monitoring what client is doing what should really be done on your home router, although admittedly this is going to take the manufacturer bothering to implement it properly. Even pfSense, its kinda assumed you send the flows to a different machine on the network to monitor stuff like that which is annoying.
Things like IPv4 space, that has to go away eventually. Being able to test your own line will be irrelevant on fibre.
Its not that I want AA to go away, I just think a lot of what they are doing are things that could be completely replaced with software functionality in a good router at home.
For me the peace of mind of not being able to go over a traffic limit and incur charges far outweighs everything else. I can understand your situation is very different, but that's mostly due to the fact you're stuck on crap long ADSL lines. If you had FTTP, I'm not sure you'd need most of what AA are offering.
As for them not being expensive? Well they would cost me a whole lot more for two VDSL lines with a 4G backup than getting those things independently. Granted the AA solution is far more foolproof and definitely makes sense for your situation, but is there enough people who will need all that if they have FTTP?
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A&A are going to have to adapt. A number of the things they have going for them will either be of limited value or aren't scalable.
Case in point their Firebricks being built from the ground up by them rather than using third party software and matching binary modules.
Processing power and ASICs are now more than cheap enough that, other than all the line monitoring they do, Firebricks are insanely expensive and hugely underpowered.
I see a place for this kind of bespoke software in specialist real-time applications however I don't see the persuasive case for other uses.
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Have to agree- When the day ever arrives that I can get FTTP here - I highly doubt it'll be with A&A unless something changes.
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And as for the ‘pay premium’ thing, I don’t find AA expensive. Everyone seems to think they are. Are they really any more expensive than say BT Retail? I don’t know.
They charge more for 80/20 FTTP with a 500 GB/month limit than BT Consumer do for 330/50 unlimited.
They are way more expensive than the mass-market providers for obvious reasons.
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And as for the ‘pay premium’ thing, I don’t find AA expensive. Everyone seems to think they are. Are they really any more expensive than say BT Retail? I don’t know.
I'm paying £37 a month for my VM connection, obviously the support is almost non existent though. I'm sure my brothers BT VDSL connection is much cheaper than that. 2000GB on VDSL with AA would cost me £55 a month, certainly more expensive for me.
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I don’t find it easy to make comparisons because I pay x amount per copper line and then I currently buy 10 download ‘units’ per month, which is a bit too much for what I currently need, The rate at which a ‘unit’ is charged varies by time of day and weekend vs working day. I like this system because I get 1TB download per unit overnight but it’s very expensive in the weekday office hours. It’s also very cheap to add an extra copper line - I can’t remember how much, but vague recollection says something like £20 or ~£30 depending on whether or not line rental is included. I pay line rental to AA, not to BT. I’ve been thinking about changing to one of their modern deals but I don’t understand the economics of it with so many lines. I’ve increased my usage of and reliance on AA because they now handle my email and handle DNS hosting and domain name registrations x many. The worst thing about AA is the terrifying 4G data SIM charges. They’re very convenient and you get one real IPv4 address so ideal for an iPad say, but no IPv6 which is amazing (although AA offers 6over4 tunnelling which I can make use of in the case of failover / fallback with my Firebrick if all dsl lines go down).
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Comparing the price of AAISP vs BT Retail is a bit nonsensical in my opinion.
- Do BT Retail generally have a similar high quality customer support experience compared to AAISP, when it's needed?
- Do BT Retail offer 12 month or 1 month contracts for FTTC or FTTP?
- Do BT Retail offer static IPv4 address(es)?
- Do BT Retail have a similar set of options to choose from in their user control panel?
- Do BT Retail have somewhat detailed graphs indicating the state of the connection?
- Do BT Retail have something like an IRC channel where others can potentially ping members of staff day or night (as long as they are around)?
- Does BT Retail not potentially traffic shape at peak times if they happen to experience congestion in some part of their network? In other words do they have no potential traffic shaping policy in place these days (been a long time since I was on BT so I might be wrong about this point)?
- Do BT Retail support bonding like AAISP offers?
Need I go on.
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I’ve been thinking about changing to one of their modern deals but I don’t understand the economics of it with so many lines.
Presumably you have 1 line on the units tariff, and the other lines on "no quota", which share the quota of the first line.
Have you spoken to A&A about the possibility of moving your first line to a current tariff and keeping "no quota" on the other lines? They don't offer "no quota" lines to new customers any more, but if you ask, maybe they will let you keep yours.
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All your points are very valid, except
Does BT Retail not potentially traffic shape at peak times if they happen to experience congestion in some part of their network? In other words do they have no potential traffic shaping policy in place these days (been a long time since I was on BT so I might be wrong about this point)?
Not that I'm aware of. I don't think there has been traffic shaping since torrents a number of years ago.
I got full throughput 24/7 on Talktalk, BT, Plusnet and now get the same with Virgin.
AAISP don't need to filter the usual banned list of sites (banned by the high court) that the big 6 need to ban.
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Comparing the price of AAISP vs BT Retail is a bit nonsensical in my opinion.
<snip>
Need I go on.
I think you somewhat misunderstood the question, it wasn't one of comparison of services or value, merely price.
And as for the ‘pay premium’ thing, I don’t find AA expensive. Everyone seems to think they are. Are they really any more expensive than say BT Retail? I don’t know.
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Comparing the price of AAISP vs BT Retail is a bit nonsensical in my opinion.
- Do BT Retail generally have a similar high quality customer support experience compared to AAISP, when it's needed?
Once on FTTP, how often will you need customer support?
AAISP are excellent at pushing Openreach to fix problems other ISP's can't be bothered with, but this should completely go away once the copper network does.
- Do BT Retail offer 12 month or 1 month contracts for FTTC or FTTP?
AAISP surely are tied to whatever BT Wholesale allow and why are we focusing purely on BT Retail here?
- Do BT Retail offer static IPv4 address(es)?
BT Retail is not the only option, there will be many other ISPs to choose from.
- Do BT Retail have a similar set of options to choose from in their user control panel?
As I've never been an AAISP customer then I haven't a clue what their control panel is like.
- Do BT Retail have somewhat detailed graphs indicating the state of the connection?
Does anyone really need this on FTTP? This can equally be documented from the customers side with the right hardware.
- Do BT Retail have something like an IRC channel where others can potentially ping members of staff day or night (as long as they are around)?
But again this is support that shouldn't be needed if the equipment "just works". You're paying a premium for this so unless in a very unique situation like Weaver, I don't see it as good value. My argument isn't that their service isn't good for some people, its is it sustainable to run a business on that once less technical support is required because FTTP is more reliable and the number of customers that need that level of support could fall dramatically.
- Does BT Retail not potentially traffic shape at peak times if they happen to experience congestion in some part of their network? In other words do they have no potential traffic shaping policy in place these days (been a long time since I was on BT so I might be wrong about this point)?
Again I'm not quite sure why were only focusing on BT Retail here.
- Do BT Retail support bonding like AAISP offers?
Why would you need bonding on FTTP? The most likely point of failure with fibre is a fibre break, I can't imagine a situation where that would happen and only take down one of your lines. Perhaps ONT failure.
I actually wanted to use AAISP to bond my two lines as I'd read they sell that as a service but could never find it on their site. Now I've been using plain load balancing, I'm not sure I see any value in paying more to bond the lines as the ONLY reason to do that for me is to combine the speed, but as AAISP charge a fortune for bandwidth it negates the whole point.
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As someone who's hardly not a demanding consumer yet has chosen BT Consumer I'll put in my 2p, or indeed 2 Euro cents looking at the exchange rate, or actually 2 USD cents.
Comparing the price of AAISP vs BT Retail is a bit nonsensical in my opinion.
Agreed. Luckily no-one has. Weaver asked a question.
Do BT Retail generally have a similar high quality customer support experience compared to AAISP, when it's needed?
No.
Do BT Retail offer 12 month or 1 month contracts for FTTC or FTTP?
No - caveat that all FTTP comes with a 12 month contract.
Do BT Retail offer static IPv4 address(es)?
Only BT Business. However I made the decision to suck it up and handle it via dynamic DNS and short-lived TTL records.
Do BT Retail have a similar set of options to choose from in their user control panel?
No, though I'm not sure of the value of those for FTTP.
Do BT Retail have somewhat detailed graphs indicating the state of the connection?
No, though I'm not sure of the value of those for FTTP. Can be trivially done via Think Broadband BQM and the home router.
Do BT Retail have something like an IRC channel where others can potentially ping members of staff day or night (as long as they are around)?
No.
Does BT Retail not potentially traffic shape at peak times if they happen to experience congestion in some part of their network? In other words do they have no potential traffic shaping policy in place these days (been a long time since I was on BT so I might be wrong about this point)?
They do not.
Do BT Retail support bonding like AAISP offers?
They do not, however I would point out that they have tier options A&A do not, and it's a non-issue for FTTP as you'll have single points of failure everywhere from the home onwards and there's no shortage of bandwidth. For those wanting failover plenty of home CPE do this now.
Need I go on.
No, though you did answer a question that only you asked.
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To clarify, my post regarding comparing BT Retail's (or BT Consumer) pricing to AAISP's pricing wasn't in response to Weaver but instead to another member mentioning the price of AAISP being much higher than BT Retail. That's why I brought in a type of comparison. It wasn't specifically targeted at FTTP only either, as I did include the mention of FTTC. I doubt virtually anyone would consider bonding FTTP haha :D. On a final note, BT Retail's FTTP contracts appear to not offer 12 month, yes I know FTTP has a minimum of 12 month but I brought up that particular bullet point as BT Retail don't offer 12 month contracts on FTTP from what I can see, while some other ISP's such as AAISP do. However AAISP need to eventually adapt their service to cater for faster connection speeds on FTTP, or eventually risk becoming somewhat outdated.
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> However AAISP need to eventually adapt their service to cater for faster connection speeds on FTTP, or eventually risk becoming somewhat outdated.
Absolutely, couldn’t agree more. And it’s wholly suitable for the ecological niche that they are in to offer highest speeds. They really need to address this.
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To clarify, my post regarding comparing BT Retail's (or BT Consumer) pricing to AAISP's pricing wasn't in response to Weaver but instead to another member mentioning the price of AAISP being much higher than BT Retail.
That was probably me, as a direct answer to Weaver's question as to whether AA were more expensive than BT. Us regulars are well aware why they are. ;)
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Absolutely, couldn’t agree more. And it’s wholly suitable for the ecological niche that they are in to offer highest speeds. They really need to address this.
Then they need to drop the fixation with offering all the pretty graphs and stats or build massively overspecified kit and use most of that power that should be routing to produce pretty graphs.
The compromise is to run BQM-type boxes relying on ICMP separately alongside, perhaps, outputting utilisation data to those BQM boxes from the LNS which will just do LNS duty, not line monitoring.
Could use off the shelf kit with hardware acceleration and loads of capacity rather than their own.
The vibe I have gotten from them is that they are strongly resistant to change. They believe they know best and are not especially interested in the thoughts of others.
They would rather do things 'right' and 'win the argument' by building everything from scratch than terminate connections on cheaper, third party kit from conversations I've had.
There are broadband edge routers / BRAS with terabit capacities now. A&A are using kit with a gigabit port in and one out.
Meanwhile Cisco have routers that can do BNG detail and run with 160 Gbps ports.
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/routers/asr-9000-series-aggregation-services-routers/index.html
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Then they need to drop the fixation with offering all the pretty graphs . . .
<snip>
. . . they are strongly resistant to change. They believe they know best and are not especially interested in the thoughts of others.
They would rather do things 'right' and 'win the argument' by building everything from scratch than terminate connections on cheaper, third party kit . . .
<snip>
So I am not alone. Others have similar thoughts.
As for "knowing best", anyone who has read the Firebrick documentation, with the hope of finding an example of how to configure a particular feature, will come away "having been lectured to" on a totally irrelevant topic! ::)
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So I am not alone. Others have similar thoughts.
As for "knowing best", anyone who has read the Firebrick documentation, with the hope of finding an example of how to configure a particular feature, will come away "having been lectured to" on a totally irrelevant topic! ::)
We only need to look to Plusnet who used a fancy system to do packet shaping in the early days but ditched it once it become completely impractical to scale it to their increasing customer base. They even stopped monitoring bandwidth usage for services like Netflix, etc, as it was too high a load and reducing throughput. Basically what little monitoring they had, has slowly gone away because its a huge waste of resources.
Most monitoring should be done at the customer side, where its up to the end user to take the brunt in increasing hardware and power consumption costs.
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>> Basically what little monitoring they had, has slowly gone away because its a huge waste of resources.
Was that not more to do with the cost of bandwidth? When the Ellacoyas were first implemented, it was at the time when BTw bandwidth was hugely expensive and cost the SP ~£1 per GB on the old centrals. The old MiSP backhauls were originally built for leased lines and bandwidth was at a premium.
Things changed with 21CN - the backhauls were completely redesigned and the use of WDM ensued much cheaper bandwidth as the pipes were now able to carry way more bandwidth at a fraction of the cost. 20CN has now gone and MiSP has been closed down, but in the days when both networks were in use 20CN was still more expensive for the ISP and BTw. In fact BTw even had Ellacoyas on their own backhauls near to the bRAS. One of the rumours was that BT was interested in PN because certain PN staff were considered 'experts' in configuring the ellacoyas... as PN were 'the ISP' that went through all the teething issues at a time when deep packet traffic shaping was a new thing.
Now that everything is 21CN and using WDM, bandwidth is no longer the expensive commodity it once was and therefore the ellacoyas are redundant. 'Unlimited' wasn't really a viable option for any ISP using 20CN IPStream.
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Could be, I left Plusnet originally because for some reason my Usenet traffic was permanently throttled despite it supposed to only throttle after a certain amount of bandwidth per month. This went on for months with no resolution.
More recently though they excluded certain traffic from their bandwidth monitoring (have they ditched bandwidth monitoring entirely now? I can't seem to find it) and I'm fairly sure they said the reason was it allowed the traffic to flow more freely. (makes sense, presumably more diverse routing/caching can be done if you skip the monitoring)
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More recently though they excluded certain traffic from their bandwidth monitoring (have they ditched bandwidth monitoring entirely now? I can't seem to find it) and I'm fairly sure they said the reason was it allowed the traffic to flow more freely. (makes sense, presumably more diverse routing/caching can be done if you skip the monitoring)
Nothing to do with resources or allowing traffic to flow more freely.
The bandwidth usage monitor didn't/doesn't count certain traffic, such as traffic from caches and CDN's, making it a bit useless.
It's traffic shaping that was resource intensive.
A simple bandwidth usage monitor takes very little resources.
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@CarlT
Have you gone for the 500 Mb or 1000 Mbps FTTP service on BT? Very competitive prices, IMHO. I suspect RevK would have to say goodbye to luxury around-the-world cruises if AAISP were to charge similar prices ;D
(https://i.ibb.co/NjK8zKV/sgehrhrtur.jpg) (https://ibb.co/VST78Tj)
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- Do BT Retail generally have a similar high quality customer support experience compared to AAISP, when it's needed?
ISP support becomes almost irrelevant on FTTP.
- Do BT Retail offer 12 month or 1 month contracts for FTTC or FTTP?
The best prices are usually on longer contracts, so for many a 12/18/24 month contract won't be an issue as long as they're getting a good deal.
- Do BT Retail offer static IPv4 address(es)?
Fair point.
- Do BT Retail have a similar set of options to choose from in their user control panel?
Most people just want a solid & reliable internet connection. "options" will be irrelevant.
- Do BT Retail have somewhat detailed graphs indicating the state of the connection?
Again almost irrelevant on FTTP. But you can setup a free BQM on Thinkbroadband or similar site.
- Do BT Retail have something like an IRC channel where others can potentially ping members of staff day or night (as long as they are around)?
ISP support becomes almost irrelevant on FTTP.
- Does BT Retail not potentially traffic shape at peak times if they happen to experience congestion in some part of their network? In other words do they have no potential traffic shaping policy in place these days (been a long time since I was on BT so I might be wrong about this point)?
This is 2020, not 2005. None of the major ISPs traffic shape anymore.
- Do BT Retail support bonding like AAISP offers?
Bonding on FTTP? :lol:
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As you asked I took 900 with Halo 2. I was on 300 with Halo 1 and the upgrade on Halo carries a few options that are beneficial.
Goes live Tuesday.
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Have to admit, £59.99 for 1Gbit.... gimmie! Oh wait...
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It will be indeed the end of an era. People will have to find new hobbies and other things to do with their time.
Most of the vast knowledge people have acquired relating to DSL will be completely worthless, and as we simply can't chose to forget this knowledge, or reclaim the memory space it's claimed in our neurons, this will be a depressing thought for many. We'll only have access to the same troubleshooting steps as Joe average (turn it on and off), as opposed to the multitude of xDSL related troubleshooting steps we can do now.
History has shown us that there will be some that will cling to xDSL for as long as possible, similar to when some folk refused to stop cooking with wooden fires when electic/gas ovens came about. Or maybe those choosing to watch their tried and tested black and white TV's instead of upgrading to colour. The nail in the coffin will be when xDSL is completely turned off, hopefully BT set this date as soon as FTTP/4G/5G are sufficient to cover everyone.
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It will be indeed the end of an era. People will have to find new hobbies and other things to do with their time.
Excellent.
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And again makes me think of people still using vinyl 25 years later.
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It will be indeed the end of an era. People will have to find new hobbies and other things to do with their time.
Most of the vast knowledge people have acquired relating to DSL will be completely worthless, and as we simply can't chose to forget this knowledge, or reclaim the memory space it's claimed in our neurons, this will be a depressing thought for many. We'll only have access to the same troubleshooting steps as Joe average (turn it on and off), as opposed to the multitude of xDSL related troubleshooting steps we can do now.
History has shown us that there will be some that will cling to xDSL for as long as possible, similar to when some folk refused to stop cooking with wooden fires when electic/gas ovens came about. Or maybe those choosing to watch their tried and tested black and white TV's instead of upgrading to colour. The nail in the coffin will be when xDSL is completely turned off, hopefully BT set this date as soon as FTTP/4G/5G are sufficient to cover everyone.
It'll be amazing, can't wait!
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And again makes me think of people still using vinyl 25 years later.
There's a reason to use vinyl. Zero to use xDSL when FTTP is available. :)
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There's a reason to use vinyl. Zero to use xDSL when FTTP is available. :)
Yeap! Plus a bit different since at some point xDSL will be permanently retired by BT. It won't be available to order at that point, no matter if you think it's superior or if you just prefer it. BT will then reclaim some money by stripping the KM's of copper (they're welcome to my craptastic aluminium string cloth line) to sell.
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There are probably going to be some people that'll miss fixating over line stats but on the whole it's a massive improvement for everyone.
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Yeap! Plus a bit different since at some point xDSL will be permanently retired by BT. It won't be available to order at that point, no matter if you think it's superior or if you just prefer it. BT will then reclaim some money by stripping the KM's of copper (they're welcome to my craptastic aluminium string cloth line) to sell.
If my e-side is anything to go by it will just be dust when they rip it out of the conduit. I'm still amazed I ever got a decent ADSL2+ service out of it.
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I got told by Openreach that I won't get FTTP due to not having one of those wooden poles where fibre runs to the houses so I'll be stuck with VDSL forever. :'(
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I don’t see how it can literally be forever as there won’t be any VDSL2/FTTC one day. Your forever might be about the same as mine though ;)
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I got told by Openreach that I won't get FTTP due to not having one of those wooden poles where fibre runs to the houses so I'll be stuck with VDSL forever. :'(
Not the case, we don't have poles on our estate as it's all underground, yet they were out surveying the ducts and spraying on all the pavements in readiness for FTTP.
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I don’t see how it can literally be forever as there won’t be any VDSL2/FTTC one day. Your forever might be about the same as mine though ;)
The waiting game is horrible though but what i do know if ever it happens one day i'm jumping ship to FTTP like a fly on a window asap. :lol:
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Not the case, we don't have poles on our estate as it's all underground, yet they were out surveying the ducts and spraying on all the pavements in readiness for FTTP.
Not sure why Openreach told me that i just think he didn't know like when they came over i asked for a DLM reset which he didn't do but stated he did. If he did my speed would of picked back up straight away. ::)
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Yeah all underground here, too.
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I got told by Openreach that I won't get FTTP due to not having one of those wooden poles where fibre runs to the houses so I'll be stuck with VDSL forever. :'(
They're in the process of installing FTTP to my street.
No poles here.
Instead of having those wooden poles where copper and fibre runs to the houses you probably have underground ducting... induced if these copper and fibre are run to houses.
Seems a very odd comment for an engineer to make.
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They're in the process of installing FTTP to my street.
No poles here.
Instead of having those wooden poles where copper and fibre runs to the houses you probably have underground ducting... induced if these copper and fibre are run to houses.
Seems a very odd comment for an engineer to make.
Very strange indeed but I think he was a strange guy in the first place. :D
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I doubt virtually anyone would consider bonding FTTP haha :D.
I came back to this thread having seen it linked on another and the quoted made me laugh.
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I came back to this thread having seen it linked on another and the quoted made me laugh.
Seeing your comment made me smile. :)
It's a case of those that can will do so. (And why not?)
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Seeing your comment made me smile. :)
It's a case of those that can will do so. (And why not?)
I'm obsessed but moving to Gigabit for as much as I'm paying for 2xVDSL + Three 4G seems like a pretty good deal, no need to double the price just because I could. Although being a few years away, who knows, maybe 2Gbit will have launched by then? ::)
Although it did make me laugh with Carl saying Gigabit wasn't transformative, then he goes and gets a second one.
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I would be interested to know what the performance is like at say 04:10 and 05:50; not on a whole hour boundary in case activity is triggered by timed jobs that start at that exact integer hours time. When no one is around then it will be testing the ISP’s network, not much of a challenge of course. It will also be testing TCP. I’d love to know how well TCP handles a 2 × 1 Gbps link.
@CarlT What did you say, what router h/w are you using now?
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They're in the process of installing FTTP to my street.
No poles here.
Instead of having those wooden poles where copper and fibre runs to the houses you probably have underground ducting... induced if these copper and fibre are run to houses.
Seems a very odd comment for an engineer to make.
There are two versions of 'underground' feeds .... ducted and DIG (Direct in ground).
Ducted is straightforward.
A percentage of the DIG surveys we do will be omitted from the build due to high-costs (to be picked up at with future programmes such as FVR or the final 10%), but before it gets to that stage we will ask if going overhead (installing poles) is a preferred solution with the local community. If it's a yes, then it will get built.
So the engineer may have been alluding to that scenario with his comment ??