FTTC , Finally!

Got connected last Friday and to my complete disappointment I ran a speed test expecting at least 40 Mbs down and over 10 up, lol.

Getting 17 Down and just under 5 mb up, yes a very stark contrast from 6 mb down off peak and 250 Kbps up, I can actually stream music from my Nas now.

As good as the speed increase is I am about 100 meters +- from the exchange and though I should get much more I am greatly disappointed after waiting a year later for FTTH.

When I do a line check on Vodafone.ie it says I get 18 Mbs which is exactly what the modem tells me my downstream is and 5 up however my neighbour is 12 Mb and my mother is 100 mb which is about the same distance from the exchange even though they only installed 70 Mb cabinets, WTF is going on ?

pegasus1

Deleted User wrote: »

WTF is going on ?

You could be connected to another Cabinet or direct to exchange

Your speed says your 1.2 km away from either cab or exchange..

Remember its not by the crow flies

galljga1

Deleted User wrote: »

Got connected last Friday and to my complete disappointment I ran a speed test expecting at least 40 Mbs down and over 10 up, lol.

Getting 17 Down and just under 5 mb up, yes a very stark contrast from 6 mb down off peak and 250 Kbps up, I can actually stream music from my Nas now.

As good as the speed increase is I am about 100 meters +- from the exchange and though I should get much more I am greatly disappointed after waiting a year later for FTTH.

When I do a line check on Vodafone.ie it says I get 18 Mbs which is exactly what the modem tells me my downstream is and 5 up however my neighbour is 12 Mb and my mother is 100 mb which is about the same distance from the exchange even though they only installed 70 Mb cabinets, WTF is going on ?

I dream of speeds like that!!!
When you say stream from your NAS, do you mean when you are away from home?

pegasus1

pegasus1 wrote: »

You could be connected to another Cabinet or direct to exchange

Your speed says your 1.2 km away from either cab or exchange..

Direct to exchange ? that's about 1.2 kms away, so what does this mean ?

The Modem says it's connected via Vdsl.

pegasus1

Deleted User wrote: »

Direct to exchange ? that's about 1.2 kms away, so what does this mean ?

The Modem says it's connected via Vdsl.

Your line is direct fed from the exchange as in it doesn't come from the cab...

galljga1

galljga1 wrote: »

I dream of speeds like that!!!
When you say stream from your NAS, do you mean when you are away from home?

Yes don't get me wrong it's a lot better and Netflix is much better quality and loads a lot faster along with youtube and the ping gone from about 60 ms to 10ms but my frustration is that you pay for "up to" 100 Mbs and will in reality never get this I know but they didn't even install 100 mb cabinets in the first place.

Yes I can finally stream from my NAS here in work, I have Spotify but there's a lot of stuff I listen to that's not on Spotify like some older 90's Rave and Dance/trance and other stuff.

My plan was to be able to stream HD movies from it also because the upload is only 5Mbs that won't be possible because the NAS does not transcode on-the-fly.

I have an Nvidia Shield TV also and would have liked to be able to stream games from Nvidia's servers in PC quality but unless I can get the speed issue resolved this won't happen either.

We're on the Rural Fibre to the home list by the end of 2018. But I hope to have moved by then. Typical !

pegasus1

pegasus1 wrote: »

Your line is direct fed from the exchange as in it doesn't come from the cab...

That would be strange considering the cabinet is so close.

It must come from the Cabinet because the exchange has been enabled for over a year but I could never get it until the Cabinet was installed and activated.

I just got off the phone to Vodafone Broadband tech support, they told me that they start pople on a low profile to see if the line is stable then bump the speeds up automatically, smells of BS.

When I do a random line check on Vodafone a lot of people in my estate are 12-18 Mbs and in the new estate up to 70 + including my mothers house which is not in the new estate but about the same distance to the Cabinet.

ItHurtsWhenIP

Fire your phone number in here: http://business.digiweb.ie/linechecker/

This will tell you what open eir have prequalified your line at.

Also, if you log into your modem and access the statistics - give us the Downstream attenuation figure. We can tell you what your line length actually is.

Exchange Code: Unknown

DSL Enabled: Yes - 15 MB

NGB Enabled: Yes - 15 MB

Fibre Enabled: Yes - 25 MB

LLU Enabled: No

So I guess they did bump it up to 25 Mbs ? I'll check it later when i get home or might log into the NAS and see if I can download something to try it out.

This is really strange,

When I put my Aunt's number in this is what comes up and she's further from the cabinet than I am, so why is mine and a few others in my estate I checked showing such low download figures ?

Exchange Code: Unknown

DSL Enabled: Yes - 17 MB

NGB Enabled: Yes - 17 MB

Fibre Enabled: Yes - 90 MB

I'll check the attenuation on the modem tonight if I get a chance.

ItHurtsWhenIP

Deleted User wrote: »

Exchange Code: Unknown

DSL Enabled: Yes - 15 MB

NGB Enabled: Yes - 15 MB

Fibre Enabled: Yes - 25 MB

LLU Enabled: No

So I guess they did bump it up to 25 Mbs ? I'll check it later when i get home or might log into the NAS and see if I can download something to try it out.

This is really strange,

When I put my Aunt's number in this is what comes up and she's further from the cabinet than I am, so why is mine and a few others in my estate I checked showing such low download figures ?

Exchange Code: Unknown

DSL Enabled: Yes - 17 MB

NGB Enabled: Yes - 17 MB

Fibre Enabled: Yes - 90 MB

I'll check the attenuation on the modem tonight if I get a chance.

It is possible that your physical copper pair come directly from the exchange and your aunt's comes from the cabinet. I know you said the exchange went live last year and that you couldn't get VDSL broadband until the cab went live. Did you actually check if you could have ordered VDSL last year?

There was somebody on here recently who was extremely upset, that in his entire estate, he was connected to the exchange that was on the outer limit of VDSL, whereas the rest of the estate was connected to a cab a couple a hundred meters away. You could very well be in the same boat.

The attenuation figure will tell us what the story is.

I logged into the NAS and just like that getting about 24 Mbs aad the upload is about 7 mbs form 5, unreal.

I forgot to say they also told me the max on the line is 56 Mbs but they won't put me on this profile yet to see if the line is stable, it will be an incremental process. What's that all about ? crap lines ?

MMFITWGDV

MMFITWGDV wrote: »

It is possible that your physical copper pair come directly from the exchange and your aunt's comes from the cabinet. I know you said the exchange went live last year and that you couldn't get VDSL broadband until the cab went live. Did you actually check if you could have ordered VDSL last year?

There was somebody on here recently who was extremely upset, that in his entire estate, he was connected to the exchange that was on the outer limit of VDSL, whereas the rest of the estate was connected to a cab a couple a hundred meters away. You could very well be in the same boat.

The attenuation figure will tell us what the story is.

Yep I called 2 months ago and was told no chance, the cabinet isn't live I was told even though my friend had Sky Broadband at the time I called and they would not believe me. So I wonder was there something going on with Eircom and Sky ?

I'll get the attenuation tonight.

ED E

This is pretty cut and dry tbh.

Exchange was built back in 19xx. Houses were connected including yours. More houses needed to be connected further out, so cabs were constructed for copper distribution and your aunts etc were connected.

Come to today, she gets 90Mb, you get 25Mb. Thats unfortunately life.

My guess would be the exchange had extra racks to be done that weren't added until when they came back to finish commissioning cabs thus the delay for you.

It's rather strange that if the line can support 56 Mbs that they are raising my speed slowly to check stability, I wonder if they would actually increase it for those unaware ? and they're doing it for me because I'm making a fuss ?

There's a massive difference from 70 odd to 25 Mbs.

One solution is to install the NAS in my mothers which should give an upload of about 18 odd Mbs which is perfect for streaming higher bitrate 1080P movies, this is if I can't get my speed issue resolved.

What all this tells me is that people are getting way over charged for broadband while telecoms companies charge them full price and offer a quarter of the bandwidth, I get there are instances where it's not possible but in my case it clearly is and I find this completely dishonest.

ED E

The reason it costs you €50 / month and not €80-90 / month is because OpenEir can drop it in on top of the existing infrastructure, if they had to re-wire everything they wouldn't do it.

Nothing really that dishonest(except vodafones website), every gets the max their line can take.

Well I'm clearly not getting the max my line can take.

So here's the data from the modem

Line standard VDSL2
Channel type
None
Downstream line rate (kbit/s) 25599
Upstream line rate (kbit/s) 7167
Downstream SNR (dB) 19.1
Upstream SNR (dB) 8.9
Downstream line attenuation (dB) 20.7
Upstream line attenuation (dB) 10.1
Downstream output power (dBmV) 14.2
Upstream output power (dBmV) 7.1
Downstream CRC 552
Upstream CRC 14
Downstream FEC 2720
Upstream FEC

pegasus1

1.5 km away from exchange or cab

pegasus1

pegasus1 wrote: »

1.5 km away from exchange or cab

1.2 or so kms from the exchange (probably longer for the wires) but that doesn't make sense considering Eircom and Vodafone insisted that the local cabinet was not live, however the exchange has been live a year or more and only when the cabinet showed connected did the tests show I can receive fibre. So why it's going to the exchange and not the cabinet is beyond me or could this attenuation figure be wrong and due to a bad line ?

pegasus1

1.5km from exchange is the limit for vdsl from the exchange..maybe you are just above that distance and exchange was vectored...possibly..

I find it rather a conscience that all of a sudden the 2nd cabinet went live and then I could get fibre and pass the line tests.

Seems like a ridiculous waste now if that cabinet does not serve this estate.

ED E

Vectored, or second rack. The overseeing engineer would have been in the area to do the cab so its not a conspiracy against you.

Ok So Vodafone finally confirmed I'm connected to the exchange and not the Cabinet, typical. Seems a real waste of a cabinet ! Those out the country 1K + won't get the full speed that connect to the cabinet and I'm 100 meters away and not even connected to the damn thing !

So the dilemma now is , do I install the NAS in my Mothers , and stream to my house and the internet when I'm out and about ? this leaves me without being able to send files from my laptop to the NAS at only 6 mb up.

2nd thing would be to get a 2nd NAS for home but will probably save everything on the laptop and upload it to the NAS when I'm in my Mothers probably makes the most sense.

bk

Deleted User wrote: »

Ok So Vodafone finally confirmed I'm connected to the exchange and not the Cabinet, typical. Seems a real waste of a cabinet ! Those out the country 1K + won't get the full speed that connect to the cabinet and I'm 100 meters away and not even connected to the damn thing !

Unfortunately just the reality of how the telecoms network developed over the years.

That is why it will be so nice when they go full FTTH, a nice, consistent, well planned network with low opex and maintenance costs.

I do wonder if Eir might look to start doing network re-organisations to move lines like your to the closer cabinet, like BT in the UK does, now that they are coming to the end of the FTTC cab rollout or will they instead focus on FTTH exclusively.

Deleted User wrote: »

So the dilemma now is , do I install the NAS in my Mothers , and stream to my house and the internet when I'm out and about ? this leaves me without being able to send files from my laptop to the NAS at only 6 mb up.

2nd thing would be to get a 2nd NAS for home but will probably save everything on the laptop and upload it to the NAS when I'm in my Mothers probably makes the most sense.

Well 6Mb/s up isn't too bad. Another option would be a new NAS that supports Plex (preferably an Intel CPU powered NAS) or alternately an always on PC attached to your existing NAS running Plex.

Plex will transcode the video to match the upload speed, at 6Mb/s it should only be slightly less then good quality HD.

Another option would be to encode your videos to HEVC/H.265 if you have a client device that supports HEVC/H.265. Plex should be able to direct play such videos in full HD quality at less then 6Mb/s if you have a client the supports it.

You can play around with Plex before investing in a new NAS/PC by simply installing it on your existing machine and try it out. For instance, put Plex on your existing pc attached to your NAS in your house and then try the plex client on another pc in your mothers house. I think you might be pleasantly surprised with the results over even 6Mb/s with transcoding from Plex.

You probably wouldn't even notice a difference versus 10Mb/s on a smaller screen like a laptop, smartphone, etc. Give it a try anyway.

The NAS is a Qnap-TS231 and does have plex but does't have the power to transcode on-the-fly but does have the option to transcode as a background task which would take forever given it's a dual core Arm device.

I don't want to use a laptop/PC to transcode, minimum power consumption was the idea when I bought the NAS.

The other problem is I won't have a static IP from Vodafone which I think should be a free option I would't pay the extra. The Nas can be accessed through qnap without a static IP because it has it's own DDNS and to find the IP would always be easy but a pain in the ass to enter every time I want to watch something through Kodi.

Recoding to H.265 isn't an option, it would struggle even on the I5 mac, which isn't really powerful for that purpose. Transcoding on-the-fly would be a better option here but my NAS doesn't support it.

The other Idea is to get another Intel based NAS and use the current one in my mothers as a backup. I don't use RAID on the NAS because RAID isn't a backup and shouldn't be someone's idea of a backup. It's a waste of disks for home use.

We're on the FTTH list but have to wait another 2 years at least but hey, 20 Mbs and 6 Mbs up is a lot better than 3-6 Mbs down and 200-250 Kbs up !

I downloaded 50 GB last night, amazing !

My other obvious option would be to run Qnap's own apps to connect to the NAS, it works brilliantly and you don't have to enter the IP manually every time it changes. I'd really prefer to use Kodi.

Here's a speed test in work only on "Wifi"



Maybe I'll hide the NAS in here lol.

On the LAN !

Just imagine these speeds with FTTH or even close !

ItHurtsWhenIP

Deleted User wrote: »

Here's a speed test in work only on "Wifi"



Maybe I'll hide the NAS in here lol.

Deleted User wrote: »

On the LAN !

Just imagine these speeds with FTTH or even close !

Why do you even go home? :rolleyes:

MMFITWGDV

MMFITWGDV wrote: »

Why do you even go home? :rolleyes:

Yeah sometimes I wish they had dorms for the shift workers.

That speed doesn't even reflect what we have coming in and out of the building, I couldn't even guess , several hundred GB probably.

bk

Deleted User wrote: »

The NAS is a Qnap-TS231 and does have plex but does't have the power to transcode on-the-fly but does have the option to transcode as a background task which would take forever given it's a dual core Arm device.

I've a QNAP TS430 myself, so in the same boat, I use a Mac Mini in conjunction with it for Plex streaming and transcoding.

Deleted User wrote: »

I don't want to use a laptop/PC to transcode, minimum power consumption was the idea when I bought the NAS.

I agree, but you have the work out the cost of a new Intel CPU NAS versus the cost of the extra power used by an old PC you might have laying around. Of course it completely depends on the power usage of the PC.

My Mac Mini is pretty low powered and I already had it, so I worked out that it would take about 30 years for a new NAS to pay back for itself in power savings.

Worth doing the maths on it before splurging on a new NAS.

Deleted User wrote: »

The other problem is I won't have a static IP from Vodafone which I think should be a free option I would't pay the extra. The Nas can be accessed through qnap without a static IP because it has it's own DDNS and to find the IP would always be easy but a pain in the ass to enter every time I want to watch something through Kodi.

Plex works fine with dynamic IP's. It uses an account and a free cloud service to ensure plex clients can attach to the Plex server even behind dynamic IP's etc.

Deleted User wrote: »

The other Idea is to get another Intel based NAS and use the current one in my mothers as a backup. I don't use RAID on the NAS because RAID isn't a backup and shouldn't be someone's idea of a backup. It's a waste of disks for home use.

Haha, it feels like you are reading my mind! While I can't justify a new intel NAS based on power savings, I have been toying with the idea of putting the old one in my parents house as a backup and buying a new intel one for home.

And yes, you are absolutely correct about RAID not being a backup. Just last week the firmware on my QNAP got messed up! I've spent the last week copying everything off it to external USB HDD's over scp, super slow and painful! *

* I actually already had all important stuff already backed up, only non essential stuff wasn't backed up, but I'd still rather not lose it all still.

ItHurtsWhenIP

Deleted User wrote: »

...

The other Idea is to get another Intel based NAS and use the current one in my mothers as a backup. I don't use RAID on the NAS because RAID isn't a backup and shouldn't be someone's idea of a backup. It's a waste of disks for home use.
...

bk wrote: »

...
And yes, you are absolutely correct about RAID not being a backup. Just last week the firmware on my QNAP got messed up! I've spent the last week copying everything off it to external USB HDD's over scp, super slow and painful! *

* I actually already had all important stuff already backed up, only non essential stuff wasn't backed up, but I'd still rather not lose it all still.

OT - Sorry, but ...

I know RAID isn't a backup, but it does give some resilience to disk failures. I'd prefer to lose a bit of space so I don't have to worry about losing a disk with all of the data on it.

@bk - granted in your scenario RAID would have made your life much more difficult.

My approach is to have RAID on my NAS, but I keep all critical and volatile data backed up to the cloud and have the non-volatile stuff on disconnected external drives.

ED E

Three is two, two is one, one is none, but you'd be nuts not to have RAID/SW Redundancy on #2 if you've a large dataset.

#VeryOT

bk

MMFITWGDV wrote: »

OT - Sorry, but ...

I know RAID isn't a backup, but it does give some resilience to disk failures. I'd prefer to lose a bit of space so I don't have to worry about losing a disk with all of the data on it.

@bk - granted in your scenario RAID would have made your life much more difficult.

My approach is to have RAID on my NAS, but I keep all critical and volatile data backed up to the cloud and have the non-volatile stuff on disconnected external drives.

Oh I agree, and that is one of the reasons I'm using a NAS. RAID can certainly add redundancy (it is in the name after all and can certainly play an important part of a 3-2-1 backup strategy. However it is definitely not the silver bullet of backups that some people assume it is.

This is about the third time I've had a serious issue with my NAS. Problems with dodgy disks and the older Arm QNAP NAS's are just badly designed and RAID 5 and dodgy firmware can just end up creating far more headaches then a simpler setup.

I've never lost data, but you need to be an expert to fix them and it just takes so blooming long!

My backup strategy is similar to yours. Everything on a NAS, with about 2/3rds on external HDD's and cloud services (the most important stuff), but I didn't have enough external HDD's for the last, least important, 1/3rd, so now I'm spending ages copying that off.

BTW also be careful of external HDD's if they are kept in the same building as your NAS. They are no help if you suffer a fire, flood or burglary.

My dream setup is:
- Home Intel Based NAS, 6 to 8 drives in RAID 6
- Parents house, old arm NAS (4 disks RAID 5) acting as a backup of the Home NAS.
- Cloud backups of most important stuff (projects, home photos and videos, etc.)

Just need €€€€ for such a setup now, donations welcome

BTW for normal people I recommend a simpler setup of a two disk RAID 1 (mirroring) NAS. Far less expensive, complicated and time consuming.

RAID has advantages but it's of little use in a small scale domestic environment.

bk

bk wrote: »

I've a QNAP TS430 myself, so in the same boat, I use a Mac Mini in conjunction with it for Plex streaming and transcoding.

I agree, but you have the work out the cost of a new Intel CPU NAS versus the cost of the extra power used by an old PC you might have laying around. Of course it completely depends on the power usage of the PC.

My Mac Mini is pretty low powered and I already had it, so I worked out that it would take about 30 years for a new NAS to pay back for itself in power savings.

Worth doing the maths on it before splurging on a new NAS.

Plex works fine with dynamic IP's. It uses an account and a free cloud service to ensure plex clients can attach to the Plex server even behind dynamic IP's etc.




Haha, it feels like you are reading my mind! While I can't justify a new intel NAS based on power savings, I have been toying with the idea of putting the old one in my parents house as a backup and buying a new intel one for home.

And yes, you are absolutely correct about RAID not being a backup. Just last week the firmware on my QNAP got messed up! I've spent the last week copying everything off it to external USB HDD's over scp, super slow and painful! *

* I actually already had all important stuff already backed up, only non essential stuff wasn't backed up, but I'd still rather not lose it all still.

It's years since I've had a PC and I've no other machine capable of the task and I wouldn't use the Macbook for this.

I discovered there's a plex plugin for Kodi, but I still got the problem where the NAS doesn't have the power to transcode. But if it worked it would at least solve the static IP problem.

The Qnap TS 251+ now has a quad core celeron which might be up to the task of on-the-fly transcoding of 1080p ? Expensive buggers though.

You'd build a PC for that but it would be a lot more power hungry, but at least I got the advantage of night rate leccy for the car. I don;t really want a PC.

I created a new thread here.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=99973861#post99973861

JohnC.

What is involved with an FTTC install, at the customer end, not the exchange? I've booked an upgrade and I assumed it would basically be a modem swap at my end. But the confirmation e-mail mentions "the technician will upgrade your phone connection for Fibre Broadband" (changing the master socket?) and mentions the possibility of new wiring from there to the modem.

Does this mean the phone line from the master socket to the current modem gets replaced with something else or could the current line be fine and they're covering themselves for other circumstances?

The socket will be changed, other than that not much else will change provided the line is ok, they will want access to wherever the line comes in to make sure if it's split that it's done properly.

In my Mothers the job was done in 30 mins or less, for me it was 3.5 hrs because there was some issue with the line.

pegasus1

JohnC. wrote: »

What is involved with an FTTC install, at the customer end, not the exchange? I've booked an upgrade and I assumed it would basically be a modem swap at my end. But the confirmation e-mail mentions "the technician will upgrade your phone connection for Fibre Broadband" (changing the master socket?) and mentions the possibility of new wiring from there to the modem.

Does this mean the phone line from the master socket to the current modem gets replaced with something else or could the current line be fine and they're covering themselves for other circumstances?

How is the existing phone line brought into your house?
If overhead and through a window..more than likely they will run the fibre through your wall, with perhaps a box on the outside wall and on the inside wall right behind the outside box, they will stick your new modem there...

If going underground through a duct and your master socket is on an inside wall in the hallway etc.they will want to pull that fibre through the duct and hopefully will be able to pull it to your master socket, if duct is blocked or they cant pull it to the master socket or even not be able to pull it into postition on an inside of an external wall then they will ask you to to get someone in to make a route from their duct to your internal point..

Your master socket will be changed and if your modem is on an extenstion socket then new cable will have to be run to your modem, probably by yourself getting someone to do it..

Good luck you lucky bugger!!

ItHurtsWhenIP

pegasus1 wrote: »

How is the existing phone line brought into your house?
If overhead and through a window..more than likely they will run the fibre through your wall, with perhaps a box on the outside wall and on the inside wall right behind the outside box, they will stick your new modem there...

If going underground through a duct and your master socket is on an inside wall in the hallway etc.they will want to pull that fibre through the duct and hopefully will be able to pull it to your master socket, if duct is blocked or they cant pull it to the master socket or even not be able to pull it into postition on an inside of an external wall then they will ask you to to get someone in to make a route from their duct to your internal point..

Your master socket will be changed and if your modem is on an extenstion socket then new cable will have to be run to your modem, probably by yourself getting someone to do it..

Good luck you lucky bugger!!

This seems to be an FTTC install and not FTTH (it's in the thread title too), so no pulling in new cabling. Just changing the master socket.

pegasus1

MMFITWGDV wrote: »

This seems to be an FTTC install and not FTTH (it's in the thread title too), so no pulling in new cabling. Just changing the master socket.

Opps my bad!

The word fibre through me off....stoopid marketing

jca

If you tried for a new phone number would you get a line that's connected to the cabinet? I skimmed over a lot of the thread as it was irrelevant so apologies if it has been suggested already.

jca

jca wrote: »

If you tried for a new phone number would you get a line that's connected to the cabinet? I skimmed over a lot of the thread as it was irrelevant so apologies if it has been suggested already.

That's a good question. Though I suppose all they'd do is apply the new number to the same line.

jca

No harm to try I suppose.