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[bogof]

...and we have an engineer on site!  Fingers crossed, pics to follow later.

[burakkucat]

. . . pics to follow later.

Awaits sight of the images. 

[niemand]

I'm almost certain it'll be fine. Relax.

[bogof]

Well, all done and dusted pretty much.

The guy was here at 8am and done by about 11ish.  I'd had some mains sockets put inside the "comms cupboard" (cupboard under stairs) and so I made another little hole with conduit through wall between the understairs area and cupboard, in the hope we could get the ONT sited in the cupboard if the engineer was amenable.  Still a bit of making good to happen after putting in the sockets - and a lick of paint.  The job getting pulled forward caught me a bit unawares.

The engineer was happy to oblige, started by routing the fibre from the inside to the outside, locating the ONT on the wall, a tiny little Nokia unit. 

Then proceeded to pull the fibre through the roped underground duct from the CBT and fitted the CSP on the outside of the house.  He said there wasn't enough room to get an elephant's foot over the duct due to where the duct had come out of the ground in relation to the hole in the wall, so I just have the duct with a bung in it.  It's in a heavily shrubbed bush infront of the house so I'm not really fussed, it's not the very best, but I can live with it.

The fibre cable was clipped along skirting tidily using metal fireproof clips making nice swept bends and going straight into the bottom of the ONT.

A splice later and we were ready to go.  I'm at -13dB on the light level, apparently it leaves the exchange at -11dB and is good all the way down to -26dB or so.

Connected up the Zen router (Fritz box) and... nothing, despite the ONT looking fine.  Call to Zen support, they only activate the line once the engineer issues KCI3 for the job apparently.  Anyway, he closed the job off, and a few minutes later the router had rebooted and connected. 

Speed tests in the region of 900 down with sufficient download threads / 110 up no problem.  Pings seem to vary between 7 and 9 seconds - I guess this depends on exactly what bit of kit the PPPoE session connects to.  You can see the slight step between PPPoE sessions.  Feels very nice and responsive

Won't be using the Fritzbox, but finding the Unifi USG4 Pro is proving a bit of a bottleneck, and am going to have to look into that.  There are lots of options around hardware offload that all seem enabled, and I think I've disabled the things that disable offloading.  More fiddling.

It's very responsive in use. Pleased with the upgrade.

Ping chart is a bit messy as the power in the cupboard has been up and down a couple of times.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Won't be using the Fritzbox, but finding the Unifi USG4 Pro is proving a bit of a bottleneck, and am going to have to look into that.  There are lots of options around hardware offload that all seem enabled, and I think I've disabled the things that disable offloading.  More fiddling.

What I'm seeing is smart queues need to be off as well as iDS/IPS so that everything gets offloaded.

[bogof]

Yes, I had done that.  It looks like it might have been an interaction with the fallback connection (FTTC) and / or the offload settings.  I had disabled all those on the main connection.  I disabled smart queues on the fallback connection too (didn't seem to fix anything), disabled the offload options for the router (same speed as with them enabled, suspicious....!) and then re-enabled them, which seemed to do it.
Getting very close now, so close it's not worth trying for more I feel given this is just with a standard Windows install on a laptop without really trying:


The AppleTV appears to be getting more or less to line rate give or take.

Real world seems Google drive is about the only thing so far getting close to saturating the link, manages to hit over 80 megabytes(!) a second for a large file download.
You almost have to say it again, seems a ludicrous level of speed to have in the home for next to no bucks.

[Alex Atkin UK]

It is amusing compared to my first LAN which was 10Mbit over COAX.  (not counting me playing with serial null modem cables)

I get the same amusement when ripping Blurays on a fast drive, seeing it usually slower than my current download speed.  Then it annoys me because my connection is capable of streaming Bluray quality but I doubt the streaming services will ever do so, they will just move onto the next video codec and halve the bitrate again to save money.

[bogof]

It is amusing compared to my first LAN which was 10Mbit over COAX.  (not counting me playing with serial null modem cables)

Haha, I had a crazy parallel port based local network with mine and a mate's Commodore Amiga when he'd come over and bring his machine.  Ah, the glory days...

[daveesh1]

I was surprised how small the ONT was, had i known it was that small it could of gone in the hallway next to the master socket instead of the other side of the wall in the kitchen

[bogof]

I was surprised how small the ONT was, had i known it was that small it could of gone in the hallway next to the master socket instead of the other side of the wall in the kitchen

Indeed, I think it's probably smaller by volume than the most recent VDSL wall mount NTE I have.  Though I'm glad to have put it where it is, as less chance of it getting battered by kids, pushchairs, etc etc.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Haha, I had a crazy parallel port based local network with mine and a mate's Commodore Amiga when he'd come over and bring his machine.  Ah, the glory days...

As I recall I used parallel networking to get my Amiga floppies moved over for WinUAE back in the day, though serial was SO much more reliable but horrifically slow.

Indeed, I think it's probably smaller by volume than the most recent VDSL wall mount NTE I have.  Though I'm glad to have put it where it is, as less chance of it getting battered by kids, pushchairs, etc etc.

Its probably not the ONT you have to worry about but the fibre.  You don't want anyone unplugging it, EVER, as even a speck of dust can ruin the signal.  So having it hidden away is definitely a good thing.  Not to mention the risk of a kid staring at the laser.

[burakkucat]

Its probably not the ONT you have to worry about but the fibre.  You don't want anyone unplugging it, EVER, as even a speck of dust can ruin the signal.  So having it hidden away is definitely a good thing.  Not to mention the risk of a kid staring at the laser.

All good points. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

All good points. 

Because I totally have never stared down a SPDIF cable, lucky that its own a weakling LED rather than an actual laser.

[bogof]

What a difference a ludicrous excess of bandwidth makes...!

Today on FTTP, no smart queues enabled:


A week ago on FTTC, smart queues enabled:

[Ronski]

Have you got a typo there, shouldn't the second one say FTTC?