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Re: [LUG] Router question

 

 On 22/10/2013 16:40, Rob Beard wrote:


On 22/10/2013 16:25, lug@xxxxxx wrote:

I am in Paignton and from looking at the BT Wholesale site it seems the
exchange is due an FTTC upgrade in the next couple of months. Does
anyone know if those upgrades benefit everyone on ADSL or just people
paying for fibre?


Just those who opt for the FTTC services such as BT Infinity (from BT) or whatever other ISPs call their FTTC offerings. Basically they run fibre to a new cabinet which links to the old cabinet, the idea being that it reduces the length of copper from the DSLAM (the bit in the cabinet or exchange) to your modem. You'd also need a new modem too although at the moment a VDSL modem is supplied as part of the service which then connect to a router or maybe a PC running as a firewall/router. At least this is what we got at work with one of our FTTC connections.

Even if a cabinet is enabled for FTTC, anyone with an ADSL connection will still connect back to the exchange unless they switch to an FTTC service (or maybe if they're lucky and can afford it, a Fibre on Demand FTTP service where fibre is laid straight to the premises at the customers expense).

There is still the issue of backhaul though as mentioned previously.

It's no better on Virgin either. Sure you can get up to 120Mbit/sec if you want, but the cabinets only have so much bandwidth which is distributed across say a couple of streets, so if everyone is using it then it slows down. I have 60Mbit/sec cable broadband from Virgin and some days I do get the full speed, other days it can go as slow as 5 or 6Mbit/sec (generally I find at stupid o'clock in the morning it runs at near enough full speed).

Rob

The other factor of course is that the Internet is global, so after midday here the US Eastern seaboard starts waking up, and every hour for the next 3 another timezone in the US joins in until after 1600 you have ~300 million additional users online. Past 2200 you have Australia waking up (tomorrow) to add to the mix, and in between everyone else, so with heavy hitters like the USA in the picture website access - especially YouTube which I find varies from acceptable to unobtainable depending on the time of day - will be very varied, and that, as others have mentioned, depends on the bandwidth the website had available to start with. BTW I'm on a 60Mb Virgin connection too so I don't have the ADSL issues to deal with but as Rob says obviously contention is an issue, albeit I live in a fairly quiet lane without many Internet hogs around - except me of course! :)

Julian

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