BT Infinity & FTTx Discussion

[adam cool dude]

Here's a real sting. Imagine where this country could have been by the year 2000.

"At that time, the UK, Japan and the United States were leading the way in fibre optic technology and roll-out. Indeed, the first wide area fibre optic network was set up in Hastings, UK. But, in 1990, then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, decided that BT's rapid and extensive rollout of fibre optic broadband was anti-competitive and held a monopoly on a technology and service that no other telecom company could do."


https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-lost-the-broadband-race-in-1990-1224784

In my Wow days most people in Scandinavia had 50-100mb connections and I was rocking 2mb. That was 18 years ago. I mean 100mb is plenty today let alone back then.

I am one of the lucky ones and have 1gig up and down now.

 

[krooton]

Here's a real sting. Imagine where this country could have been by the year 2000.

"At that time, the UK, Japan and the United States were leading the way in fibre optic technology and roll-out. Indeed, the first wide area fibre optic network was set up in Hastings, UK. But, in 1990, then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, decided that BT's rapid and extensive rollout of fibre optic broadband was anti-competitive and held a monopoly on a technology and service that no other telecom company could do."


https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-lost-the-broadband-race-in-1990-1224784

I never had strong feelings regarding Thatcher (given I didn't grow up here), but now I do!

 

[V F]

In my Wow days most people in Scandinavia had 50-100mb connections and I was rocking 2mb. That was 18 years ago. I mean 100mb is plenty today let alone back then.

I am one of the lucky ones and have 1gig up and down now.

I remember back in the Quake 3 days in 1999/2000 saying to American people I used to play regularly with each night on 56K saying, in a few years time I'll have what you lot have got. Some of them were on cable at the time while some others were on T1/T3 connections. Then it wasn't until 21/22 years later I got their speeds.

How different it could have been if 500Mb/1Gbps was possible in the year 2000-05 by the time they could have started rolling out the infrastructure from 1990 onwards.

To also think once in the year 2000-04 the fastest you could have gotten in London with BT was 2Mb - 8Mb.

Imagine if most of the UK population was rocking 500Mb/1Gbps in 2000-05.

 

[ChrisD.]

How different it could have been if 500Mb/1Gbps was possible in the year 2000-05 by the time they could have started rolling out the infrastructure from 1990 onwards.

I would have thought back then the limit would have been 100 Mbps as most DC switches were 100 Mbps, it wasn't until a good deal later that 1 Gbps switching became widespread.

 

[TheVoice]

Imagine if most of the UK population was rocking 500Mb/1Gbps in 2000-05.

It's a struggle to max out a 1Gbps connection in 2022, let alone finding any use for it back then! I can't imagine home PCs and networking equipment of that era would've even coped anyway.

 

[Turn]

It's a struggle to max out a 1Gbps connection in 2022

Not really, most reputable sites you can download at 1Gbps+ nowadays.

 

[g67575]

Applying SQM affects the IP layer between your router and the ISP's LNS and has no direct impact on the DSL link. I guess you might alleviate a problem with the DSL line through applying QoS higher in the stack; but to jump straight to the conclusion that applying QoS to the IP layer making things better means there's a problem with the DSL link would be wrong.

Thanks for your analysis. I'm sure you are correct in technical terms, regarding the IP layer. I just tend to think that packet loss like this seems quite unlikely to be caused by the ISP itself, considering it's occurring 24/7. Additionally, there's no G.INP on the line, nor interleaving applied to the upstream part of the connection.

What I've done with SQM only mitigates the issue (fingers crossed it keeps working well). I used another online tool (that must not be named ) to check the amount of retransmissions while making these adjustments, all I can say is that limiting the upstream to 2mbps gave the best results - 0% retransmissions (but not the most usable connection on Stadia in terms of latency, 4mbps upstream worked better).

The most interesting thing was that temporarily limiting the download speed to 1mbps while setting the upstream to full speed still resulted in retransmissions, which seems to suggest the problem is related to the upstream part of he connection, but difficult to be sure.

Regarding bufferbloat, the online tests I've run previously for bufferbloat were getting very good results, with very little change in the line under full load - I will see if this is still the case with the current SQM settings.

I wonder if there are any consequences to setting such a large per packet overhead (256) to the VDSL connection, aside from reduced bandwidth?

 

[Christmas themed thank]

A lot of activity in Wandsworth at the moment from Openreach, FTTP well on the way

 

[TheVoice]

Not really, most reputable sites you can download at 1Gbps+ nowadays.

Plenty don't though, such as game downloads from Microsoft and Epic Games Store. MS are the worst, download speeds are absolutely all over the place so it's not like they're even being capped at a consistent rate for bandwidth management.

 

[Turn]

Epic Games Store

Yeah Epic doesn't for me, I think it relies more on the Disk or something that's what I've heard.

 

[Rainmaker]

There was also a discussion about it over in the Virgin Media thread here which is worth going through. I'm not sure exactly where it starts (this post https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/posts/35234668 is somewhere in the middle I think). @Rainmaker can you suggest a point to jump in to that thread - I believe you are also using OpenWRT and reached a good SQM configuration?

Yes, I had a very enjoyable and thorough discussion with on of the contributors to and founders of the bufferbloat movement (and various congestion control algorythms and CeroWRT), Dave Taht. He left a lot of great info in that thread about OpenWRT, CAKE and bufferbloat etc. The discussion starts HERE, but look out for Dave's first reply (and ensuing discussion) a few posts further down from my initial post for the real meat and bones of the thing.

As an aside, OpenReach reckon my street will get full fibre sometime between this year and next year, all being well. Goodbye and good riddance, VM!

 

[V F]

Plenty don't though, such as game downloads from Microsoft and Epic Games Store. MS are the worst, download speeds are absolutely all over the place so it's not like they're even being capped at a consistent rate for bandwidth management.

PSN doesn't seem to either. I see it capping out at 320Mbps. Downloads are still fast though.

As an aside, OpenReach reckon my street will get full fibre sometime between this year and next year, all being well. Goodbye and good riddance, VM!

Funny. There was a time Virgin was all the rave many years ago.

 

[MissChief]

Here's a real sting. Imagine where this country could have been by the year 2000.

"At that time, the UK, Japan and the United States were leading the way in fibre optic technology and roll-out. Indeed, the first wide area fibre optic network was set up in Hastings, UK. But, in 1990, then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, decided that BT's rapid and extensive rollout of fibre optic broadband was anti-competitive and held a monopoly on a technology and service that no other telecom company could do."


https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-lost-the-broadband-race-in-1990-1224784

In my Wow days most people in Scandinavia had 50-100mb connections and I was rocking 2mb. That was 18 years ago. I mean 100mb is plenty today let alone back then.

I am one of the lucky ones and have 1gig up and down now.

I never had strong feelings regarding Thatcher (given I didn't grow up here), but now I do!

Not only did she put the Fibre roll out back decades it was the fact she allowed all the expertise that had been created in the UK and all the state of the art equipment to be asset stripped by companies in the Far East who likely couldn't believe their luck, or that The UK was being so stupid, and allowed it all to be taken out of the UK and the plants closed down. The likes of Korea and Japan got massive boosts from the UK expertise and assets. Look where they are now compared to us.

 

[V F]

Not only did she put the Fibre roll out back decades it was the fact she allowed all the expertise that had been created in the UK and all the state of the art equipment to be asset stripped by companies in the Far East who likely couldn't believe their luck, or that The UK was being so stupid, and allowed it all to be taken out of the UK and the plants closed down. The likes of Korea and Japan got massive boosts from the UK expertise and assets. Look where they are now compared to us.

Pretty sure I read a year or two ago they're over 100Gbps? and thinking, Daaaaaaamn!

Though their buildings/houses are all grouped together versus our country all spread out.

 

[MissChief]

Pretty sure I read a year or two ago they're over 100Gbps? and thinking, Daaaaaaamn!

Though their buildings/houses are all grouped together versus our country all spread out.

It's true their population density for most of their population is through the roof compared to us but there are still decently sized towns and parts of some cities in the UK that are stuck with 20mbps or less.

 

[V F]

Imagine the thought of that though. Having a 50Gbps connection and your downloads are faster than copying hard drives. Just the other night when I was copying stuff to some drives and thinking, imagine downloading at 150 - 200MB/s.

 

[g67575]

I look forward to 10gbps connections, or 1 Gigabyte connections. I doubt I would ever 'need' anything more than that.

I'm not sure connections this fast will be affordable for most customers in the next 5-10 years, though.

 

[Rainmaker]

Funny. There was a time Virgin was all the rave many years ago.

Definitely. When the choice as a content consumer was between dial up or paltry DSL, and $(much faster) cable, then cable was attractive. Nowadays, when VM's customer service is junk, the prices are going up and up and up, and the network is crippled with over utilisation, jitter and bufferbloat? Give me fibre any day of the week...

Not to mention the upstream boost. I'd give my left nut for symmetric 10Gbps. I have friends in Asia and Scandinavia paying buttons (less than I pay for VM BB alone, never mind the rest of the package) for full symmetric unmetered 10Gb plus IPTV and phone. I run multiple servers, and a Tor bridge and relay, and rclone encrypted offsite backups throughout every day. I have the hardware and network gear to handle it, just no option for it. Alas, for now OR fibre > VM.

 

[TheVoice]

PSN doesn't seem to either. I see it capping out at 320Mbps. Downloads are still fast though.

Is that PS4 or PS5? I get pretty-much max speeds on the PS5 but I do recall people saying that the PS4 sometimes struggled with faster connections.

 

[V F]

Is that PS4 or PS5? I get pretty-much max speeds on the PS5 but I do recall people saying that the PS4 sometimes struggled with faster connections.

PS4. Maybe their 1Gb Ethernet wasn't fully capable? I couldn't get it to go over 320Mbps.

Or maybe it's a PS4 thing?...

"While the PS4 does have a Gigabit Ethernet card and should be capable of speeds up to 1000Mbps, you’re never going to see that. The reason? PlayStation Network. It acts as a choke point, ensuring nobody’s speed is high enough to give them an unfair advantage in online play. Most PS4’s and XBox Ones cap out at around 500–600Mbps for this reason. It’s why we didn’t like using them for speed tests at my old job."



"As others have already stated: PSN won't max out your internet (at least not North American PSN).

I also have Gigabit internet, and the PSN network test never shows anywhere near the right value. The network test will generally show above 100 but nowhere near 1000 on my PS4. The test itself is likely not very accurate and only provides a very rough estimate.

A better test is to download an actual game. I have found that download speeds will vary depending on WHEN i am downloading an actual game from PSN. For example late last night (1AM EST) i was able to get the previous months PS+ freebies before they were gone today. My download speeds last night for a ~35GB game were at about 400Mbit/s total average (based on time it took for complete download). During the download i did notice that the initial part of the download up to the portion required to play the game, was much faster (~ up to 600Mbit), then it slowed down to finish the remaining bulk of the download.

The speeds you will get will be highly dependent on the amount of total traffic that PSN is experiencing at the time that you are downloading, as well as the region your connecting from. My guess is that today being PS+ freebie day downloads are going to be much slower.

TL;DR Just because you have Gigabit internet, it does not mean that the servers you connect to can always provide you with Gigabit speeds."