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Author Topic: Who's on FTTP, how is the reliability, are we missing xDSL?  (Read 11828 times)

psychopomp1

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Re: Who's on FTTP, how is the reliability, are we missing xDSL?
« Reply #30 on: March 14, 2020, 10:18:43 AM »

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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niemand

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Re: Who's on FTTP, how is the reliability, are we missing xDSL?
« Reply #31 on: March 16, 2020, 02:58:46 PM »

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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niemand

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Re: Who's on FTTP, how is the reliability, are we missing xDSL?
« Reply #32 on: March 16, 2020, 03:05:09 PM »

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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burakkucat

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Re: Who's on FTTP, how is the reliability, are we missing xDSL?
« Reply #33 on: March 16, 2020, 04:01:26 PM »

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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niemand

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Re: Who's on FTTP, how is the reliability, are we missing xDSL?
« Reply #34 on: March 16, 2020, 05:53:14 PM »

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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Alex Atkin UK

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Re: Who's on FTTP, how is the reliability, are we missing xDSL?
« Reply #35 on: March 16, 2020, 08:16:56 PM »

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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PhilipD

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Re: Who's on FTTP, how is the reliability, are we missing xDSL?
« Reply #36 on: March 17, 2020, 08:16:29 AM »

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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Weaver

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Re: Who's on FTTP, how is the reliability, are we missing xDSL?
« Reply #37 on: March 17, 2020, 07:12:05 PM »

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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Ixel

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Re: Who's on FTTP, how is the reliability, are we missing xDSL?
« Reply #38 on: March 18, 2020, 10:20:37 AM »

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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Alex Atkin UK

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Re: Who's on FTTP, how is the reliability, are we missing xDSL?
« Reply #39 on: March 18, 2020, 10:31:39 AM »

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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niemand

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Re: Who's on FTTP, how is the reliability, are we missing xDSL?
« Reply #40 on: March 18, 2020, 01:14:02 PM »

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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dee.jay

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Re: Who's on FTTP, how is the reliability, are we missing xDSL?
« Reply #41 on: March 18, 2020, 03:55:21 PM »

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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niemand

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Re: Who's on FTTP, how is the reliability, are we missing xDSL?
« Reply #42 on: March 18, 2020, 05:28:52 PM »

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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Ronski

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Re: Who's on FTTP, how is the reliability, are we missing xDSL?
« Reply #43 on: March 18, 2020, 08:26:31 PM »

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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Weaver

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Re: Who's on FTTP, how is the reliability, are we missing xDSL?
« Reply #44 on: March 18, 2020, 09:00:35 PM »

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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