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[spaace]

Hello

A few weeks ago Nexfibre started digging in our town. I understand this is Virgin Media behind the scenes. Having read up some articles it looks like it will potentially be wholesale for other ISP's to join and resell on, are there any alternatives to VM yet via nexfibre?

Also hopefully this is not the old coax type fibre VM use? will this be similar to the FTTP Openreach would roll out?

TIA!

[dee.jay]

Hello!

Yes indeed, nexfibre is building XGS-PON capable FTTP, and Virgin Media is being sold off that back of that. Wholesale to other ISP's will not be this year, so Virgin Media will be the only choice for now.

It is definitely not coax, it is full fibre right the way down to the VM supplied CPE (Router).

The massive downside to all this of course, is that Virgin Media is the only choice. They cannot even effectively sell or upgrade people to symmetric connections... As delighted that I am they built my street in October, I still cannot order anything from Virgin Media, but I am not sure I want to!

[spaace]

Hello!

Yes indeed, nexfibre is building XGS-PON capable FTTP, and Virgin Media is being sold off that back of that. Wholesale to other ISP's will not be this year, so Virgin Media will be the only choice for now.

It is definitely not coax, it is full fibre right the way down to the VM supplied CPE (Router).

The massive downside to all this of course, is that Virgin Media is the only choice. They cannot even effectively sell or upgrade people to symmetric connections... As delighted that I am they built my street in October, I still cannot order anything from Virgin Media, but I am not sure I want to!

thanks for the reply! Will be interesting to see if/when other ISPs get on board. I must say i was very happy to see the digging start and my heart sank when i saw the VM branding on the pavement plates.  Glad to hear it will not be coax, how does XGS-PON fare with latency/gaming compared to OR FTTP?

[Alex Atkin UK]

In theory XGS-PON has lower latency than GPON I believe.  In reality I'd suspect it to be margin of error difference, as most of the latency once on FTTP is purely down to getting to the ISP core network and their peering onwards.

[dee.jay]

I mean I have heard of people who are 150 miles away from London complain about latency, there's not a great deal we can do about the laws of physics at that point

[spaace]

I mean I have heard of people who are 150 miles away from London complain about latency, there's not a great deal we can do about the laws of physics at that point

that is true, i am 100+ miles from London. Would just be somewhat annoying to move from my 70 year old copper phone line to brand new full fibre and have worse latency

[Alex Atkin UK]

In theory your ISP could have a split network so all traffic doesn't have to go to London first, but 99% of the time that would make no difference as most peering and data centres are in or connect via London anyway.

When I was on Origin Broadband in their early days they connected directly to ASK4 in Sheffield.  I had a VPS in the same data centre and the latency was insanely low as you'd expect, although it was over FTTC so probably quite similar to FTTP to Zen now.

However when accessing the Internet itself it was actually higher than it is now on Zen, as ASK4 had much more limited connectivity to the Internet than Zen do, so the routing was not always as optimal.  The latency to a local friend of mine was something like 1ms however, as the ISP core network was so close and we were on the same ISP.

We've seen where complicating backhauling and PoP can actually make things worse, as you can end up with an even less optimal route down to London then (eg Zen going via Manchester instead of straight to London).

[spaace]

In theory your ISP could have a split network so all traffic doesn't have to go to London first, but 99% of the time that would make no difference as most peering and data centres are in or connect via London anyway.

When I was on Origin Broadband in their early days they connected directly to ASK4 in Sheffield.  I had a VPS in the same data centre and the latency was insanely low as you'd expect, although it was over FTTC so probably quite similar to FTTP to Zen now.

However when accessing the Internet itself it was actually higher than it is now on Zen, as ASK4 had much more limited connectivity to the Internet than Zen do, so the routing was not always as optimal.  The latency to a local friend of mine was something like 1ms however, as the ISP core network was so close and we were on the same ISP.

We've seen where complicating backhauling and PoP can actually make things worse, as you can end up with an even less optimal route down to London then (eg Zen going via Manchester instead of straight to London).

I have had this issue before on a previous ISP (not Zen but sounds very similar), sometimes i would auth via Manchester and my latency would be double. A few PPP redials until i hit London fixed this.

From what i have read previously it seems Virgin's backhaul is often slower where latency is concerned as it is not as direct as OR?

[Alex Atkin UK]

I had actually wondered, how far into the network do you have to go before routing occurs on VM DOCSIS?  As I have noticed in the past that traceroutes seem to show very fine-grained regional host names.

By that I mean will two people on the same network segment doing P2P stay on that segment rather than having to backhaul off to the core network?

[Chrysalis]

wrong thread sorry guys.