BT Full Fibre 900 (FTTP) with AC Tri-band or WiFi 6 Mesh

robj20 · 13 Jun 2020 at 14:36

MaDMaX** said:
not sure i understand your statement, "ready terminated" what does that mean ? , my optical cable is already pulled thru from u/g box and curled up outside my door so not sure im going to be able to run it anywhere 1st !

That will be the external cable, that joins the internal cable in a little grey box on your wall outside.

Like this, i ran the cable from the otherside of the house all the way under the floorboards. You literally see 4 inches of it as it pops up through the floor and into the ONT.

The internal cable is much more flexible and has the ONT end already terminated so if your capably of running that and screwing 1 screw into the wall you can do all the internal work and put it where you like.

MaDMaX** · 13 Jun 2020 at 14:42

robj20 said:
That will be the external cable, that joins the internal cable in a little grey box on your wall outside.

Like this, i ran the cable from the otherside of the house all the way under the floorboards. You literally see 4 inches of it as it pops up through the floor and into the ONT.

The internal cable is much more flexible and has the ONT end already terminated so if your capably of running that and screwing 1 screw into the wall you can do all the internal work and put it where you like.

thanks for the quick reply and photo, good to see what it looks like,

Thanks think i understand what you mean, but i take it you will be governed by how much of the internal cable there is to where it can go ?

robj20 · 13 Jun 2020 at 14:45

MaDMaX** said:
thanks for the quick reply and photo, good to see what it looks like,

Thanks think i understand what you mean, but i take it you will be governed by how much of the internal cable there is to where it can go ?

Think he gave me a 20M one. I bet they carry different lengths.

MaDMaX** · 13 Jun 2020 at 14:48

oh ok, yep, when the guy turns up, I will say i wanted it upstairs, but happy to move it myself, so hopefully he will be grateful of a quick install and give me enough cable for what i need,

cheers for the insight

robj20 · 13 Jun 2020 at 14:51

MaDMaX** said:
oh ok, yep, when the guy turns up, I will say i wanted it upstairs, but happy to move it myself, so hopefully he will be grateful of a quick install and give me enough cable for what i need,

cheers for the insight

There would be no reason they wont just drill the hole to outside, route the cable through there then leave you with it all the otherside of the wall loose.
Only downside to this is if you then ran it you might end up with loads of spare optical cable. Plus any holes youd need to make would need to be much bigger to fit the terminated end through. The ONT mounts with 1 or 2 screws, but i see no reason you couldn't double sided tape it or velcro it weighs nothing.

MaDMaX** · 13 Jun 2020 at 15:15

robj20 said:
There would be no reason they wont just drill the hole to outside, route the cable through there then leave you with it all the otherside of the wall loose.
Only downside to this is if you then ran it you might end up with loads of spare optical cable. Plus any holes youd need to make would need to be much bigger to fit the terminated end through. The ONT mounts with 1 or 2 screws, but i see no reason you couldn't double sided tape it or velcro it weighs nothing.

thanks also for the advice,, its a month away, so plenty to think about, i guess if nothing else i could just have it in the hallway and run an internal cat 5 to tv etc and external one to upstairs, least then it would cut down my wifi devices being used

robj20 · 13 Jun 2020 at 15:41

MaDMaX** said:
thanks also for the advice,, its a month away, so plenty to think about, i guess if nothing else i could just have it in the hallway and run an internal cat 5 to tv etc and external one to upstairs, least then it would cut down my wifi devices being used

Only if you had the router there as well, dont forget the ONT then needs to connect to the router, so you could easily have them in different places, my ont connects directly to my patch panel, then at the other end is the router in the livingroom, then thats again connected to the network and back to the patch panel, all so i can have the wifi in the livingroom.

MaDMaX** · 13 Jun 2020 at 15:47

robj20 said:
Only if you had the router there as well, dont forget the ONT then needs to connect to the router, so you could easily have them in different places, my ont connects directly to my patch panel, then at the other end is the router in the livingroom, then thats again connected to the network and back to the patch panel, all so i can have the wifi in the livingroom.

got ya, just not sure where i want the router, its probably more important the pc upstairs is connected direct, the only thing downstairs that needs any real hi speed connection is the apple TV, but as was stated earlier, BT are not currently installing upstairs in properties, hence why it would make sense i guess to have it in the hallway, both the pc and tv are roughly equal distances apart,

WJA96 · 13 Jun 2020 at 17:41

cgk said:
Interesting thread - I'm also moving onto BT fibre 900 next week and have been doing the same research - my conclusion was that I could spend a lot of money on AX mesh kit to not much impact given I only have a few devices capable of accessing that sort of speed. I'm going to stick to my Orbi RBK50.

Instead I'm concentrating on making sure the two desktops in the home office are hard-wired to the router to get the maximum benefit and not worrying about the wifi side as much...

indeed, as has already been stated in this thread, the real benefit is the upload speed. For people like me who run offsite backups 110Mbps upload is an incredible improvement.

cgk · 13 Jun 2020 at 19:33

WJA96 said:
indeed, as has already been stated in this thread, the real benefit is the upload speed. For people like me who run offsite backups 110Mbps upload is an incredible improvement.

That is also why I am paying for it...

Earth[Tera].bin · 16 Jun 2020 at 15:07

Fwiw I've actually been trying to squeeze the most out of my Fibre 900 over Wi-fi in the last few days, I have a couple of AX capable smartphones and no doubt this years consoles will be Wifi 6 compatible so I sold/upgraded in my existing setup for some ZenWifi AX routers. Connected one directly to the ONT and then a dedicated 5G backhaul to the other. Not bad so far and definitely shows the potential there.

Over AC ( non-Wifi 6 device )

Over AX ( Wifi 6 device )

cgk · 20 Jun 2020 at 13:01

Earth[Tera].bin said:
Fwiw I've actually been trying to squeeze the most out of my Fibre 900 over Wi-fi in the last few days, I have a couple of AX capable smartphones and no doubt this years consoles will be Wifi 6 compatible so I sold/upgraded in my existing setup for some ZenWifi AX routers. Connected one directly to the ONT and then a dedicated 5G backhaul to the other. Not bad so far and definitely shows the potential there.

Over AC ( non-Wifi 6 device )

Over AX ( Wifi 6 device )

Nice! I looked at the ZenWifi AX - Overall seems a good package...

/\ndy · 20 Jun 2020 at 14:11

This just became available near me, it's tempting but I don't see any real world applications. I mean after you get over the initial test of downloading things for the heck of it and watching the progress bar, what's the point really? No hate just interested to know how people are genuinely taking advantage of this sort of bandwidth. I'm leaning towards the 150 option, not too much per month and gives me speeds 4x faster than what I do now.

Zeebedy · 20 Jun 2020 at 14:24

/\ndy said:
This just became available near me, it's tempting but I don't see any real world applications. I mean after you get over the initial test of downloading things for the heck of it and watching the progress bar, what's the point really? No hate just interested to know how people are genuinely taking advantage of this sort of bandwidth. I'm leaning towards the 150 option, not too much per month and gives me speeds 4x faster than what I do now.

Yeah, this is the case most the time, once downloaded, is the speed really needed..?

But still, its nice to get updates and such from COD MW etc without waiting too long.

MaDMaX** · 20 Jun 2020 at 15:28

Zeebedy said:
Yeah, this is the case most the time, once downloaded, is the speed really needed..?

But still, its nice to get updates and such from COD MW etc without waiting too long.

/\ndy said:
This just became available near me, it's tempting but I don't see any real world applications. I mean after you get over the initial test of downloading things for the heck of it and watching the progress bar, what's the point really? No hate just interested to know how people are genuinely taking advantage of this sort of bandwidth. I'm leaning towards the 150 option, not too much per month and gives me speeds 4x faster than what I do now.

you guys obviously dont play the latest Call of duty then lol, honestly i have virgin 100meg and the size of some of the updates i have to download, fibre 900 will do nicely

robj20 · 20 Jun 2020 at 15:51

/\ndy said:
This just became available near me, it's tempting but I don't see any real world applications. I mean after you get over the initial test of downloading things for the heck of it and watching the progress bar, what's the point really? No hate just interested to know how people are genuinely taking advantage of this sort of bandwidth. I'm leaning towards the 150 option, not too much per month and gives me speeds 4x faster than what I do now.

That's why I went with the 150mb package.
Just wanted FTTP for it's stability.
I was downloading the windows 10 installation before and got it fluctuating between 148-151mbps so you get exactly the died you pay for.

Plan on having 4k at someone so the speed will come in handy when streaming and downloading at the same time. I actually don't see me going faster for the foreseeable.

I'm also making sure any hardware I buy has cable network, ie Nvidia shield over fire TV.
WiFi isn't great really.

cgk · 20 Jun 2020 at 16:20

/\ndy said:
This just became available near me, it's tempting but I don't see any real world applications. I mean after you get over the initial test of downloading things for the heck of it and watching the progress bar, what's the point really? No hate just interested to know how people are genuinely taking advantage of this sort of bandwidth. I'm leaning towards the 150 option, not too much per month and gives me speeds 4x faster than what I do now.

As mentioned before - for many of us - it's the upload - so my 900/110 is on and it's been great for me this week. For my work, I'll create a number of HD videos over the week - sometimes the file sizes get pretty big - on my old connection - I would have to build into my planning the time it would take to upload - now when I upload to our Microsoft Streams site (which can take advance of the speed) - it's just so quick - for my personal productivity that is fantastic and what I pay for.

/\ndy · 20 Jun 2020 at 17:44

robj20 said:
That's why I went with the 150mb package.
Just wanted FTTP for it's stability.
I was downloading the windows 10 installation before and got it fluctuating between 148-151mbps so you get exactly the died you pay for.

Plan on having 4k at someone so the speed will come in handy when streaming and downloading at the same time. I actually don't see me going faster for the foreseeable.

I'm also making sure any hardware I buy has cable network, ie Nvidia shield over fire TV.
WiFi isn't great really.

Makes sense. I suspect in terms of actual download speed you're looking at roughly 18mb/s which is pretty good.

cgk said:
As mentioned before - for many of us - it's the upload - so my 900/110 is on and it's been great for me this week. For my work, I'll create a number of HD videos over the week - sometimes the file sizes get pretty big - on my old connection - I would have to build into my planning the time it would take to upload - now when I upload to our Microsoft Streams site (which can take advance of the speed) - it's just so quick - for my personal productivity that is fantastic and what I pay for.

Can definitely see how the top tier package would come in handy for your work, good use case.

I think for your average Joe who might use their connection for streaming, playing games online and the occasional download then the lowest tier fttp package would suffice. Don't get me wrong I'd love to order the 900 package but don't see the value for what I'll be using it for. As Rob pointed out the only the reason I'd even opt for the 150 service is for the added reliability and regidity of an FTTP connection.

/\ndy · 20 Jun 2020 at 20:31

There's only 3 tiers to choose for me, the 150, 300 and 900

Was hoping there would be a middle ground with 500, that would be great if the price was right

the-evaluator · 21 Jun 2020 at 08:17

When I signed up for FTTP about a month ago there was a 500Mbps tier but it was apparently a limited offer where you got 500Mbps for the price of 300Mbps. I don't remember if there was a 300Mbps tier available to me.