25 Gbit/s Fiber Blog

[!bluetonic!]

As I sit here with my 80 Mb/s connection and it seems like my neighbours were against Gigaclear's connectivity, I dream of the day of this:

https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2022-04-23-fiber7-25gbit-upgrade/

This came up in my Google News feed so I'd thought I'd share.

 

[WJA96]

We’re running 25Gbps on our internal network. We’re waiting on the new 100Gbps MikroTik switches we’ve ordered as well. It’s 99.9% ePeen though as we’ve got nothing to move at those speeds.

We definitely have customers asking about 10, 25, 40 and 100Gbps internal networks though. We have one prospective customer who has specified a 10Gbps leased line to their Leicester area home.

This is feasible in the UK, just not cheaply.

 

[Rainmaker]

I read this when Michael published it last year. It's a very nice read! I was particularly interested in the router7 OS and the build side. Pushing symmetric 25Gb through a 5600X without breaking a sweat was impressive, especially in the Go based router7. It reassures me that my own x86 router will likely outlast me, certainly at the rate UK ISPs roll out upgrades.

 

[Caged]

From the testing on that blog it seems that you can get a nice 25Gbps into the ISP network but most off-net stuff comes down at a much lower rate than that. It's nice to be sure you're not the bottleneck and in their UKNOF presentation they explained that they were only doing this because the costs were pretty much the same as going 10Gb.

Some of the ping results from the Speedtest.net stuff look a bit off - 18ms to a destination within Switzerland seems fairly high but that might just be routing issues on the day of the test.

 

[WJA96]

It’s utterly pointless. I seem to recall we had this same conversation last year when (possibly the same person) posted on here that they had a 10Gbps home connection and when you got right down into it there was nothing they could actually talk to at that speed because no-one else had that rapid a connection.

I’ve recently got 1Gbps symmetrical at home and other than being able to download stuff from my NAS as fast as whatever remote network I’m plugged into will allow it, even 1Gbps is a bit pointless because only truly massive web businesses have the capacity to let a single user have 1Gbps download bandwidth to themselves. Sky gives me a maximum download speed for movies of about 700Mbps and Amazon Prime seems to max out about 650Mbps.

 

[!bluetonic!]

I haven't posted about this topic before. I thought it was a good blog read, showing progression of internet speeds.

 

[Rainmaker]

It’s utterly pointless. I seem to recall we had this same conversation last year when (possibly the same person) posted on here that they had a 10Gbps home connection and when you got right down into it there was nothing they could actually talk to at that speed because no-one else had that rapid a connection.

I’ve recently got 1Gbps symmetrical at home and other than being able to download stuff from my NAS as fast as whatever remote network I’m plugged into will allow it, even 1Gbps is a bit pointless because only truly massive web businesses have the capacity to let a single user have 1Gbps download bandwidth to themselves. Sky gives me a maximum download speed for movies of about 700Mbps and Amazon Prime seems to max out about 650Mbps.

It's utterly pointless to you. I could easily make use of such a connection, as could loads of people I know. Most decent Usenet providers will saturate >10G then add in offsite realtime backups to a cloud storage provider (using rclone crypt obviously), half a dozen media and code servers and mirrors, Plex, and a Tor relay with a Gb or two limit, and you're well on your way before you even launch qBittorrent.

 

[Gimpymoo]

It’s utterly pointless. I seem to recall we had this same conversation last year when (possibly the same person) posted on here that they had a 10Gbps home connection and when you got right down into it there was nothing they could actually talk to at that speed because no-one else had that rapid a connection.

Maybe he a has a very large family who are huge Linux fans and they they often have 50 distros being downloaded at once?

It's utterly pointless to you. I could easily make use of such a connection, as could loads of people I know. Most decent Usenet providers will saturate >10G then add in offsite realtime backups to a cloud storage provider (using rclone crypt obviously), half a dozen media and code servers and mirrors, Plex, and a Tor relay with a Gb or two limit, and you're well on your way before you even launch qBittorrent.

That is how I see it too, it is not about single connections but the ability of how effectively multiple connections can be used, we have just been conditioned over the years as our connections have not permitted such bandwidth.

 

[Turn]

We have just been conditioned over the years as our connections have not permitted such bandwidth.

Not really, it's just a fact that 99%+ of people don't need it, you're speaking about a niche, I think it makes sense if you do want a connection like that you should be paying more - leased line prices, that's what that market is there for.

 

[Rainmaker]

Not really, it's just a fact that 99%+ of people don't need it, you're speaking about a niche, I think it makes sense if you do want a connection like that you should be paying more - leased line prices, that's what that market is there for.

You do realise this is a tech forum, right? Should be paying more?! Why? That guy (and everyone else in Switzerland, Nordic countries, Bulgaria, Romania and half of Asia) are paying half the price for >10G than we do for ADSL. Why does this country have such a strange, regressive attitude to the Internet? You want to use graphics cards for playing games, when that's a niche. Most people just want to watch YouTube and write Word documents. All these fancy cards and RGB, you should be paying server/enterprise prices... Weird attitude tbh. *shrug*

Rather than saying 'that's what that market is there for', how about demand modern infrastructure like all those other countries, so we don't have to worry about it? Every granny and their cat can order >10G fibre in such countries and pay buttons for it, but over here if you want symmetric fibre you're a weirdo who deserves to be extorted. Just strange, imo.

 

[Caged]

We can discuss the UK being behind but it's simply not true that "everyone in Switzerland, Nordic countries, Bulgaria, Romania and half of Asia are paying half the price for >10G than we do for ADSL". Init7s tariffs for example are all £630/year whether they deliver you 1Gbps or 25Gbps or VDSL. If you want to pay monthly rather than annually and get a static IPv4 then it's £73 a month - we had a thread started the other day suggesting Zen were too expensive, you can't have it both ways. If you want ISPs to invest then you need to run services priced at a level where that investment is possible.

If you want to seek out keenly priced services with limited availability and use that as representative of a whole country then B4RN will do you 10Gbps for £150/month, Community Fibre will offer 3Gbps for £89.

 

[Turn]

Should be paying more?! Why? That guy (and everyone else in Switzerland, Nordic countries, Bulgaria, Romania and half of Asia) are paying half the price

I pay £31/mo for 900Mbps, so not every ISP is ripping people off, the situation is definitely getting better with all these new AltNets - CommunityFibre offers 3Gbps, not for £10/mo though.
The market has been quite stagnant with just VM & BT, so things are definitely shifting now.

Keep in mind in those countries a lot of costs for ISP's is significantly lower than it is for us.
The cost for engineers & potentially the cost of equipment (Asia) is much lower than it is here, and the overall cost on the ISP to have a presence in each location (building/racks etc)
It's a capitalistic society in the end of the day, you'd be foolish to expect things to cost the same as they do in Romania or Estonia.

I like how Init7 does it actually with the high setup fees on order, then a reasonable monthly fee.
I think that's acceptable and the way I'd propose for it to be done here.

 

[Deleted member 77746]

25 Gbit/s TTP my gosh. nuts.

 

[Rainmaker]

We can discuss the UK being behind but it's simply not true that "everyone in Switzerland, Nordic countries, Bulgaria, Romania and half of Asia are paying half the price for >10G than we do for ADSL". Init7s tariffs for example are all £630/year whether they deliver you 1Gbps or 25Gbps or VDSL. If you want to pay monthly rather than annually and get a static IPv4 then it's £73 a month - we had a thread started the other day suggesting Zen were too expensive, you can't have it both ways. If you want ISPs to invest then you need to run services priced at a level where that investment is possible.

If you want to seek out keenly priced services with limited availability and use that as representative of a whole country then B4RN will do you 10Gbps for £150/month, Community Fibre will offer 3Gbps for £89.

I was clearly being somewhat fatuous, but it's not true to say it's limited in availability per se. I mean, maybe init7 specifically but not good fibre infrastructure generally. In a similar way that you can or can't get VM or BT FTTP or whatever over here, in Sweden and Norway you can (or can't) get 10Gb fttp for about £20 a month, or in Romania 1 or 10Gbps are £10-20 per month, and it's the same in many parts of the world. It's not the pricing I'm taking issue with, it's the peculiarly British (and certainly OcUK) attitude that our creaking infrastructure is fine, and that because that individual can't see their own use case for better Internet, others either shouldn't have it or should empty their wallets for what is - ultimately - a very cheap product.

Many people think dedicated GPUs are pointless - the one built into most CPUs works just fine for 'normal' things after all. My wife was shocked that a GPU could cost £200... Yeah, I have news for you... lol...

That doesn't mean I think someone on here ought to bend over and grit their teeth because most people don't 'need' a new gen dedicated GPU. Rather I think modern technology and information sharing is there to be used, and we should be developing the infrastructure to support it accordingly.

If it wasn't for Thatcher the whole country would have FTTP everywhere already, and we'd not be having this conversation. With widespread symmetric fibre the whole discussion goes away, it's just there and you can use as much - or as little - as you wish. Our Internet is behind much of the world, and our attitude is also, seemingly, moulded to fit. I just don't understand the 'That's pointless' thinking, especially as a geek. Rather 'What new uses can I find or make for this?'.

If it wasn't for Openreach rolling out here soon, I would very much have paid for FTTPoD with a leased line. The Internet is one of the most important utilities after food and shelter. We were in the process of obtaining quotes when the rollout was marked. So, as it happens I probably won't need to. Meh.

I pay £31/mo for 900Mbps, so not every ISP is ripping people off, the situation is definitely getting better with all these new AltNets - CommunityFibre offers 3Gbps, not for £10/mo though.
The market has been quite stagnant with just VM & BT, so things are definitely shifting now.

Keep in mind in those countries a lot of costs for ISP's is significantly lower than it is for us.
The cost for engineers & potentially the cost of equipment (Asia) is much lower than it is here, and the overall cost on the ISP to have a presence in each location (building/racks etc)
It's a capitalistic society in the end of the day, you'd be foolish to expect things to cost the same as they do in Romania or Estonia.

I like how Init7 does it actually with the high setup fees on order, then a reasonable monthly fee.
I think that's acceptable and the way I'd propose for it to be done here.

I didn't say I expected them to be the same price, I was pointing out that the attitude of 'well if you want this niche, you should pay enterprise rates for it' is wrong. If our country had blown fibre when we had the chance, we'd be on par with the many countries where fast symmetric Internet is a given. We blow billions of pounds on nonsense in this country every year, it's a shame we're still so behind on what is a modern necessity.

 

[Caged]

I'd class water, sewage, electricity as more important than internet but I take your point.

It's not that I am opposed to point-to-point fibre being deployed everywhere with an incumbent forced to provide open access, it's that in my opinion it is far more important to get the entire country to a certain level than to push the boundaries in limited locations (I'm aware this was broadly the point of BDUK but IMO that should never have been providing public funds for copper, it should have been FTTP or nobody gets the contract). Init7 somehow can survive as an ISP pricing all their tiers at £57/month, now while I would have no issue paying that for a quality provider, I doubt the UK market is receptive to that. Where FTTP is available I think people are buying 80/20 because they want to spend under £25 wherever possible. You can speculate why the UK seems to want to pay so little for such an important service but it doesn't change the market. Personally I don't agree with "free" installs because it devalues the job and encourages people to put up with low quality work, but charging £60 to run a fibre neatly would be seen as blasphemy to people who religiously hunt around for cashback deals and retention offers.

The opportunities for the country that can be unlocked with improved connectivity would come from every premise having a low latency 100Mbps each way, not a handful of people in urban areas on 25Gbps.

 

[WJA96]

It's utterly pointless to you. I could easily make use of such a connection, as could loads of people I know. Most decent Usenet providers will saturate >10G then add in offsite realtime backups to a cloud storage provider (using rclone crypt obviously), half a dozen media and code servers and mirrors, Plex, and a Tor relay with a Gb or two limit, and you're well on your way before you even launch qBittorrent.

I just don’t see it, sorry. People talk about these things but in reality it’s just not happening.

 

[Rainmaker]

I'd class water, sewage, electricity as more important than internet but I take your point.

It's not that I am opposed to point-to-point fibre being deployed everywhere with an incumbent forced to provide open access, it's that in my opinion it is far more important to get the entire country to a certain level than to push the boundaries in limited locations (I'm aware this was broadly the point of BDUK but IMO that should never have been providing public funds for copper, it should have been FTTP or nobody gets the contract). Init7 somehow can survive as an ISP pricing all their tiers at £57/month, now while I would have no issue paying that for a quality provider, I doubt the UK market is receptive to that. Where FTTP is available I think people are buying 80/20 because they want to spend under £25 wherever possible. You can speculate why the UK seems to want to pay so little for such an important service but it doesn't change the market. Personally I don't agree with "free" installs because it devalues the job and encourages people to put up with low quality work, but charging £60 to run a fibre neatly would be seen as blasphemy to people who religiously hunt around for cashback deals and retention offers.

The opportunities for the country that can be unlocked with improved connectivity would come from every premise having a low latency 100Mbps each way, not a handful of people in urban areas on 25Gbps.

Quite, but how do you get symmetric 100Mbps? Fibre. Once that's laid, the differentiation between 100/1000/10000 is almost semantic, and based primarily on needless segmentation and differentiation aimed solely at wringing out customers. Yes, the head end would need appropriate switch gear and cards, but if an ISP is laying anyway then nowadays 10G, 40G or even 100G would be quite normal and the cost in the scheme of the install (and recouped subscriptions) is negligible. We seem to be much of the same mind, just saying things differently.

As for Init7, I don't see how they'd struggle at that price tbh. Charging £57/month is actually quite expensive, even for 10G, when looking more broadly at the market. When, as established earlier, the majority of customers will be pulling miniscule amounts of bandwidth per month and upstream peering is often unmetered in reciprocal agreements, it's actually rather generous.

The miserly attitude/cashback culture etc you speak of is indeed endemic here, and it drives me nuts when it comes to things like this. By all means, for commodity products look to the cheapest supplier, but for a service you often get what you pay for (generally speaking). My wife's uncle asked for a security camera installing last week, after a carer stole thousands of pounds from his home safe while he was in hospital. His only stipulations? It must record in 4K, have storage for a month, have a 12 hour battery, and cost under £20 fitted. Jesus. It's not difficult to see how this results in a race to the bottom across various industries.

 

[Rainmaker]

I just don’t see it, sorry. People talk about these things but in reality it’s just not happening.

Really? I push and pull a couple of TB a day just on VM, bursting up to 10TB/day. I'm very much limited by the line. Again, just because *you* don't see it...

 

[Caged]

As for Init7, I don't see how they'd struggle at that price tbh. Charging £57/month is actually quite expensive, even for 10G, when looking more broadly at the market. When, as established earlier, the majority of customers will be pulling miniscule amounts of bandwidth per month and upstream peering is often unmetered in reciprocal agreements, it's actually rather generous.

That's sort of what I'm getting at - when I said they can survive I mean in terms of being able to support a large enough customer base at those price points to make their business viable.

FWIW, Init7 are using a point-to-point fibre network. That's not what is being deployed widely in the UK where every major network is using GPoN. I think the only point to point deployments (ignored leased lines) are Gigaclear and B4RN, but that's only uncontended back to their cabinets.

Really? I push and pull a couple of TB a day just on VM, bursting up to 10TB/day. I'm very much limited by the line. Again, just because *you* don't see it...

I'm not here to be a cop but there's no chance you're pushing 10TB of data around each day without it being copyrighted content.

 

[visibleman]

Really? I push and pull a couple of TB a day just on VM, bursting up to 10TB/day. I'm very much limited by the line. Again, just because *you* don't see it...

You make it sound like @WJA96 is in the minority