*** Official Hyperoptic Discussion Thread ***

[hellarda]

So, im getting this sometime soon (preordered).

However, looks like I might prefer a wireless connection from the router to my desktop to avoid unnecessary cabling around the walls.

What solution do I need to ensure that I can download/upload at full whack from my desktop without a drop in speed due to the wireless connection?

There aren't any. You are almost definitely never going to get gigabit speeds over wireless, unless you were next to an incredibly good AC router with a very good AC card. If you want the full gigabit speeds then cat5e/6a is the only way to go.

can anyone suggest an ssd that can keep up with a 1gbps download speed? will any ssd do?

Any SSD will be fine. In fact most harddrives nowadays will cope with 112.5MB/s which is what your gig speed is in megabytes

 

[monkehhh]

They're meant to be putting this in to my building and I can't bloody wait, currently the best we get in central Leeds is 8 meg.. painful. Not holding my breath though as the lift has been broken for two months, so management aren't the sharpest bunch.

 

[asim18]

So, im getting this sometime soon (preordered).

However, looks like I might prefer a wireless connection from the router to my desktop to avoid unnecessary cabling around the walls.

What solution do I need to ensure that I can download/upload at full whack from my desktop without a drop in speed due to the wireless connection?

If I were moving to hyperoptic I'd be looking to get rid of as much WiFi as possible. I find it funny you want to invest more in WiFi.

You're never going to get anywhere near full whack on WiFi.

Unless you're 3 feet from the router and even then it will be nowhere near full whack. With that in mind the general rule is:

Less than 3 feet - Ethernet.
More than 3 feet - Ethernet.

 

[Caged]

I think the 'quality' of the installation back on page 4 says a lot about the company. A TP-Link media converter velcro'd into a plastic box? Granted they would have had to work with whatever they were left by the developers, but that's a dirt-cheap media converter with no ability to report anything back to the ISP. It's also quite wasteful of fibre because it needs a separate Tx and Rx.

Openreach's CPE seems to have had more thought put into it, but obviously that's a less ambitious rollout.

I fully commend Hyperoptic for what they are doing, but I can't help but wonder if it's going to come back and bite them. Presumably when they wire a building from scratch they go copper ethernet to the individual unit and handle the media conversion in an equipment cupboard.

 

[ntg]

thx for the replies guys..didnt know its not practical/possible to get full gigabit speed over wifi. At least makes the decision easier - ethernet it is.

 

[Jez]

Presumably when they wire a building from scratch they go copper ethernet to the individual unit and handle the media conversion in an equipment cupboard.

Yep, ethernet around the block to a single fibre termination point.

 

[ChrisD.]

Is this being rolled out anywhere other than London?

 

[OllyM]

I fully commend Hyperoptic for what they are doing, but I can't help but wonder if it's going to come back and bite them. Presumably when they wire a building from scratch they go copper ethernet to the individual unit and handle the media conversion in an equipment cupboard.

We get packet loss and slow speeds almost every evening at peak times - I'm convinced they run their transit and peering links very hot, plus to compound the issue further I think the link from my development is congested too. They increase capacity every now and then which fixes the problem for about a week, then we're back to square one again.

I'm a bit fed up with them really.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share-large/b14b4c816393affe523e14efdd53c97b-07-12-2014.png

That was last night's packet loss...

If we were planning on staying long enough to see a 12/18 month contract out I'd be very tempted to dump them and order a BT based FTTP service instead, at least that wouldn't grind to a halt every evening

 

[Caged]

I'm not sure what people expect for a £60 service rated at a gigabit. 100Mbps for £25 should be perfect for pretty much anybody - the only users paying £50 a month for a gigabit service are those who are going to absolutely hammer it. When you consider that backhaul over BT's wholesale network is £48 per megabit then it doesn't take a maths degree to work out that there is going to be some contention, because whatever Hyperoptic are paying, it's isn't 1000 times less than what BT would cost.

I think the gigabit claim is just there to grab headlines. Nobody would have a problem paying £50 per month for a 100Mbps synchronous service, and it might help keep the network load down.

 

[OllyM]

I don't think we use more than about 200GB a month? I also don't expect full Gigabit speeds at all times but packet loss makes browsing sluggish and the connection generally horrible to use.

Sky On Demand can take over 2 hours to download a one hour HD program when it's bad.

 

[Caged]

Yeah sorry that wasn't aimed at you. Presumably you'd be happy with a 100Mbps service for the 1Gbps price without the packet loss though?

 

[OllyM]

Absolutely!

 

[FrankJH]

We get packet loss and slow speeds almost every evening at peak times - I'm convinced they run their transit and peering links very hot, plus to compound the issue further I think the link from my development is congested too. They increase capacity every now and then which fixes the problem for about a week, then we're back to square one again.

I'm a bit fed up with them really.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share-large/b14b4c816393affe523e14efdd53c97b-07-12-2014.png

That was last night's packet loss...

If we were planning on staying long enough to see a 12/18 month contract out I'd be very tempted to dump them and order a BT based FTTP service instead, at least that wouldn't grind to a halt every evening

Im having the same issues - and its starting to really annoy me.

Even trying to watch a single SD iplayer program on a tablet , the actual connection falls over multiple times (even during non-peak hours).

Im on the 100MB package, had a 1GB three month trial for free recently and that topped out at around 450MB most of the time. I mentioned it to them a few times and they kept on saying that the line was testing perfectly but only their internal test engine was reliable for testing the speed (which is a load of bs of course) , and they wouldnt even look at line tests done on any other external test.

Unfortunately Im stuck with them, or I go back to BT broadband at ~2MB , I dont have any other choice where I am.

I would happily invest in a better router than the default HO one (which Im sure will improve the wireless when streaming offline content), but with the actual line going up and down so often Im not convinced its worth it.

I'm not sure what people expect for a £60 service rated at a gigabit. 100Mbps for £25 should be perfect for pretty much anybody - the only users paying £50 a month for a gigabit service are those who are going to absolutely hammer it. When you consider that backhaul over BT's wholesale network is £48 per megabit then it doesn't take a maths degree to work out that there is going to be some contention, because whatever Hyperoptic are paying, it's isn't 1000 times less than what BT would cost.

I think the gigabit claim is just there to grab headlines. Nobody would have a problem paying £50 per month for a 100Mbps synchronous service, and it might help keep the network load down.

IF the 100MB service worked reliably that would be perfect. The fact that it doesnt is what is annoying. To be honest I wouldnt care if they charged me for 100MB and only got a reliable 50-75MB , as long as it was reliable it would be great.

Its when its not reliable and they deny there is any issue that it gets frustrating

 

[OllyM]

Great service tonight







Even their own speedtester is giving a dreadful downstream result:

Spoiler

And almost 6% packet loss!

--- bbc.co.uk ping statistics ---
106 packets transmitted, 100 packets received, 5.7% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 6.589/11.040/14.539/1.583 ms

 

[megakid]

My building management company have been in talks with both BT Openreach and Hyperoptic over the last 6 months regarding an FTTP install. Cut a long story short, BT Openreach have said they won't install FTTP unless they have exclusivity in the block (There's just over 200 flats in the block). This means that on Tuesday next week, shareholders (aka me) are being asked to vote on the choice, BT Openreach or Hyperoptic.

I'm a big internet user so whatever the provider, I'd go for the fastest package up to £75pm or so. After being attracted to the headline figure of 1Gbps, I was set to vote for Hyperoptic, but then I saw Olly's (I assume 'Olly_' is the same as the above poster? ) post on thinkbroadband and did some more research.

I then checked out peeringdb.com for Hyperoptic (https://www.peeringdb.com/private/participant_view.php?id=4507) and saw they only have 7Gbps of links! For a company that offers 1Gbps internet packages, that does not seem anywhere near enough!

I'll find out more details during the meeting on Tuesday but BT Openreach seems to do an absolute maximum of 330Mbps but with *plenty* of capacity on their network, it might be the better long term option?

FYI I currently use Relish 4G broadband and get 35-40Mbps download on a regular basis for £20 a month. I think I would still pay double for a reliable wired connection as the 4G connection can be a little flaky. FTTC isn't an option (Exchange Only wiring) and our current ADSL speeds are maxed at 6Mbps - and drop out regularly.

 

[OllyM]

Yes, I'm the same person!

I'd be very wary of Hyperoptic - I get the impression that everything is thrown together as cheaply as possible and their network is not particularly good. Last week there were a few occasions when half the internet vanished for 30 minutes at a time where some peering or transit died.

Since getting it in August I'd say it's been congested more than not in the evenings, with packet loss and horrible speeds a regular feature. They upgraded the backhaul from our development about 10 days ago but Sunday night's TBB graph shows a horrible ramp up of the base latency:

Not every destination was as bad as that but I think traffic to TBB goes via LONAP and clearly their LONAP link is still congested.

We have Openreach FTTP and Hyperoptic available and if I was planning on staying here for 12 months plus to see out a contract I would order a FTTP service and dump Hyperoptic. Remember that if you get Openreach FTTP installed you have a free choice of ISP - I know not many ISP's provide GEA-FTTP connections at the moment but in time that will change. If you go with Hyperoptic, you're stuck with them forever with no alternative, so they can run a rubbish congested service and hike prices and there's nothing you can do other than go back to ADSL or 4G.

 

[megakid]

Yes, I'm the same person!

I'd be very wary of Hyperoptic - I get the impression that everything is thrown together as cheaply as possible and their network is not particularly good. Last week there were a few occasions when half the internet vanished for 30 minutes at a time where some peering or transit died.

Since getting it in August I'd say it's been congested more than not in the evenings, with packet loss and horrible speeds a regular feature. They upgraded the backhaul from our development about 10 days ago but Sunday night's TBB graph shows a horrible ramp up of the base latency:

Not every destination was as bad as that but I think traffic to TBB goes via LONAP and clearly their LONAP link is still congested.

We have Openreach FTTP and Hyperoptic available and if I was planning on staying here for 12 months plus to see out a contract I would order a FTTP service and dump Hyperoptic.

Thanks for the comments. On your last point, are you saying that Openreach FTTP contracts are only on a 12 month basis? (I know very little about this option, can you sign up to resellers like you can with FTTC or is it only served by BT?) I found this: http://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/hom...6rNZujnCs99NbIKJZPD9hXYmiijxH6wr CQm97GZMyQ== but unsure if it's the correct sheet to look at for Openreach FTTP residential contracts.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, that latency looks horrific. Are you of the opinion that the problem lies in their core infrastructure vs your own building installation?

 

[OllyM]

At the moment only a few ISP's let you order FTTP - BT Retail are one, Plusnet are running a trial I think and a few other niche ISP's like AAISP offer it. It's an open network, anybody can provide service over it if they want to. Contracts are up to your ISP but I think Openreach impose a 12 month minimum term for FTTP so that's the standard length of contract you'll find.

In time, Sky, TalkTalk etc. will all jump on the bandwagon too as there are new housing estates being built that have FTTP and no copper. There's no technical reason why they aren't offering fibre broadband delivered by FTTP right now, they just haven't got round to offering it yet I guess as the number of premises served is quite small, but growing.

Going back to Hyperoptic, the link from my development was congested for about a month and they upgraded it about 10 days ago. That graph was from Sunday just gone, so after that upgrade took place. The latency was only showing up to certain destinations so I can be pretty sure that it was their core network (their connection to LONAP probably) that was struggling. I've spoken to other residents in different blocks with exactly the same complaints so it's not just my connection!

They don't plan far enough ahead - I fully expect the backhaul from our development to be congested again within a month or so. The worrying thing is it's only about half occupied at the moment so god only knows what will happen when more people move in.

 

[megakid]

Understood. I'll keep the thread updated with developments. Needless to say, I'll probably be voting for BT at this rate. That'll save you some contention in the long run

 

[mrk]

At first I was excited, but then I was not so excited. Seems a more reliable option is to stick with VM 152Mbit and see what their 300Mbit deal is like later this year/next year