Fibre to the Premises (FTTP)

[MYstIC G]

Cabling.

I mean, once you've got 900 meg to your PC, do you want/need 900meg to other devices? Noticeable difference for all that effort and investment?

I've got a google mesh wifi setup, it's not amazing but then neither's my 60meg internet (over 4G out here in deepest darkest) - but my PC is fine. The rest of my devices -work laptops / phones / my personal laptop - all of them run fine on WiFi. So I wasn't going to bother with wiring the place up.

Ah, that's an easy one. I'm not putting in significant investment

I've run a single 20m CAT6 cable around the property by putting holes through the walls between rooms, I've not put sockets into every room. What I was going to do was put RJ45 connectors on either side of the walls so that cables could be replaced if damaged more easily or go off in different directions if needed but when I couldn't get the bits I wanted that went right out of the window. So what I've got right now is one very long cable from the router to my PC.

So, previously it went:
Router -> Into Powerline -> Out from Powerline Wi-Fi
Router -> Into Powerline -> Out from Powerline -> Lounge TV Switch
Router -> Into Powerline -> Out from Powerline -> Main PC Switch

What I've done is change it to:
Router -> Into Powerline -> Out from Powerline Wi-Fi
Router -> Into Powerline -> Out from Powerline -> Lounge TV Switch
Router -> 20m CAT6 through the brickwork -> Main PC Switch

That new cable is slightly too short but it passes by the Lounge TV switch, so I'm going to change it to.
Router -> Into Powerline -> Out from Powerline Wi-Fi
Router -> CAT6 -> Lounge TV Switch -> 20m CAT6 through the brickwork -> Main PC Switch

But given the Wi-Fi is shit what I want to do next is eliminate the Powerline completely, maybe by hanging AP(s) off the switches. Mostly because the wife and I are both remote working at present with a lot of teams based stuff. She's got the lounge where the router has always been so the Wi-Fi is workable there but it's been a pain in my backside most of the year on the work laptop. It's so rubbish that at the start of lockdown I tended to tether to the work mobile as it was more reliable and that was fine on the odd day but that got old when it was clear this was in for the long haul. Also a lot of my work stuff is also reliant on VDI which tends to use any old excuse to drop the connection if it's shaky, which it is almost guaranteed to be with the Powerline adapters.

I think this is mostly because the Powerline adapters aren't great at handing off between one another. Like if you connect to one point and move across the building next to another, you'd expect it to jump but more often than not everything claws onto the first access point for dear life.

 

[Scouse]

Ignore me. Carry on!

 

[SilverHood]

Paying for the full thing? If not - could be encoding if you've got HDR stuff going on - they leave it as non-accelerated HDR encode unless you've ponied up for the full thing

I think Netflix 4k is about 15mbps, so lets say double that - 30mbps. Plenty for 4k at 30mbps through your WiFI, no?

Hah, that probably explains it. it was the free version. Once I started running cable from PC to router, so there was no wifi involved, all the buffering messages went away.

 

[smurkin]

I think Netflix 4k is about 15mbps, so lets say double that - 30mbps. Plenty for 4k at 30mbps through your WiFI, no?

Hah, that probably explains it. it was the free version. Once I started running cable from PC to router, so there was no wifi involved, all the buffering messages went away.

It probably depends on the compression. Netflix is lossy. An uncompressed blue ray (eg. from make mkv) is probably on average 40-60 kbps depending on the bitrate. I imagine a 4k movie runs into the hundreds of kbps. The raw transport stream for a 4K movie runs into Gbps.

 

[Scouse]

Yeah, but how many uncompressed blue rays are available to download even if you wanted to pirate your disk space to death

 

[Embattle]

My mkv rip of Apocalypse Now (4K) weighs in at 57.9 Mb/s for video stream alone, overall bit rate is up to 64.6 Mb/s.

 

[smurkin]

Yeah, but how many uncompressed blue rays are available to download even if you wanted to pirate your disk space to death

Home made. I keep them on my NAS. They are usually 28-35 Gb per title. I have perhaps 12 Tb of mkv movies. All the sound tracks and titles. No 4k movies mind.

 

[smurkin]

My mkv rip of Apocalypse Now (4K) weighs in at 57.9 Mb/s for video stream alone, overall bit rate is up to 64.6 Mb/s.

Seems oddly low, but I suppose its the vbr and you need also to look at the maxima. How much on disk?

 

[Embattle]

@smurkin Around 79 GB.

 

[smurkin]

ok, I see. 4K BD video is compressed with HEVC. 64 Mb/s seems roughly consistent with other sources suggesting about 80 Mb/s for 4K. Including some overhead for buffering.

 

[BloodOmen]

ooo may soon have good internet, 5 year project like but its something

Openreach to upgrade tens of thousands rural North East homes to Full Fibre

Openreach today outlined plans to build ultrafast, ultra-reliable Full Fibre broadband to at least three million more homes and businesses – including around 160,000 in the North East - in some of the UK’s hardest to serve communities[1]. It means fewer homes and businesses will require...

www.openreach.com

 

[Embattle]

My BT contract ended so switched to Vodafone, a tad less bandwidth but a lot cheaper.

 

[MYstIC G]

My BT contract ended so switched to Vodafone, a tad less bandwidth but a lot cheaper.

They use their own fibre don't they?

 

[Embattle]

They use their own fibre don't they?

They do under Gigafast but they also added services under Openreach which I'm using.

 

[Moriath]

They do under Gigafast but they also added services under Openreach which I'm using.

So yr using bt. But not bt?

 

[Embattle]

So yr using bt. But not bt?

In a way yes, after all BT do own Openreach.

 

[Embattle]

So just for comparison:

BT Full Fibre 100 - Claimed 150/30 - Actual 135/31 - Cost £43 (After contract ended so probably could of got it down to £35 again with another contract)
Vodafone Superfast 100 - Claimed 100/20 - Actual 107/22 - Cost £25

 

[smurkin]

I think I pay £39.99 for full fibre 300 - it a 2 year tie-in introductory actual 304/52. Fibre100 on offer is £29.99. I think you can get this on a renewal if you have the full land line package but its all in the small print. Not as cheap as vodaphone.

 

[Z^^]

We had introduction fee of €300, montly price is like €40. Speedtest by Ookla - The Global Broadband Speed Test
Have had some wierd slowdowns where the overall speed is just 30/30 tho, Apperantly my router is quite shit (was provided by my isp).

 

[Raven]

So just for comparison:

BT Full Fibre 100 - Claimed 150/30 - Actual 135/31 - Cost £43 (After contract ended so probably could of got it down to £35 again with another contract)
Vodafone Superfast 100 - Claimed 100/20 - Actual 107/22 - Cost £25

We are going with Vodafone, getting installed Friday, went for 100mb too as it was pretty cheap, and I have no real need for stupid fast, I could get up to 980mb but just don't see the point.

 

[Embattle]

We are going with Vodafone, getting installed Friday, went for 100mb too as it was pretty cheap, and I have no real need for stupid fast, I could get up to 980mb but just don't see the point.

It does bring back memories of 33.6 kbit/s followed by 56 kbit/s dial up and eventually a move to BT highway and whether I should use both channels for a mighty 128 kbit/s but double the cost, then I moved to Telewest Blueyonder cable and followed that with assorted ADSL action then on to FTTC and now FTTP. To me 100 Mb is more than enough for the majority of what I do and even the larger stuff only takes an hour to download in the background versus the days it used to take. I would snap up a faster speed at the right price but I put price/value at number 1 in my list not the short lived bragging rights to a high speed, even if it is funny using Speedtest to make some people cry

 

[smurkin]

It does bring back memories of 33.6 kbit/s followed by 56 kbit/s dial up

Memories of BarrysWorld

 

[Rubber Bullets]

Memories of not being able to play Counterstrike cos there was a fucking huge 32mB update to download, and that would take all evening

 

[Raven]

104d 107u atm, but the guy said it would be up and down then settle.

 

[Embattle]

Memories of BarrysWorld

I've got a vague memory of upgrading the firmware on my modem to take it from 33k to 56k.

 

[Embattle]

At the moment my Vodafone BB is collapsing in the evenings, got just under 1 Mbps an hour ago and 1.34 Mbps just now. Also found out that unlike moving energy supplies BT will bone you a for a early cancellation charge if you fail to notify them.

 

[MYstIC G]

At the moment my Vodafone BB is collapsing in the evenings, got just under 1 Mbps an hour ago and 1.34 Mbps just now. Also found out that unlike moving energy supplies BT will bone you a for a early cancellation charge if you fail to notify them.

Ouch, that's a hefty drop. Assume they're investigating that one?

 

[Raven]

Mine seems to have settled at around 110 down 105 up. Pretty happy with it for now!

 

[Embattle]

Hadn't realised until yesterday our home phone hadn't been working, in essence it was still setup with the previous BT method so the phone was plugged into TEL1 socket which isn't the way vodafone do it. They require it plugged into there own router so after spending nearly 2 hours in live chat they still believe something is wrong with it so a ticket has been created, I've also had to reset my Orbi network to AP mode which took more time since it was being fickle.

 

[MYstIC G]

Hadn't realised until yesterday our home phone hadn't been working, in essence it was still setup with the previous BT method so the phone was plugged into TEL1 socket which isn't the way vodafone do it. They require it plugged into there own router so after spending nearly 2 hours in live chat they still believe something is wrong with it so a ticket has been created, I've also had to reset my Orbi network to AP mode which took more time since it was being fickle.

It's likely a VoIP line now. Our BT one is and it's never been plugged in since we upgraded