Re: High Speed Internet Access for Kings Cliffe! Technical Discussion Thread

[PhilT]

It also is affected by contention, i.e. at 4pm when the kids go online most people experience a drop in speed as too many people are using the service.

Contention is of course not unique to phone line broadband, as the 10 Gbit/s core network capacity of Gigaclear illustrates.

Is there a CIR on the service to compare with the Openreach offerings ?

[Russell Brown]

Oh? Do BT publish CIR (loosely translated as minimum guaranteed speed) for Infinity?  I didn't think they did but stand ready to be corrected if anyone can tell me where to look (and please do tell me; I'm interested).

Contention is, of course, a can of worms and in reality somewhat meaningless. I see no real difference between my BT residential broadband lines (50:1 contention) and my business ones (20:1 contention); they're all less than wonderful

However, it can't be argued that with fibre to each premises (FTTP) the Gigaclear offering, from both a technical perspective and bang-for-your-buck, knocks BT's Infinity (or any other FTTC product with the 'last leg' copper connection) for six.

[PhilT]

Openreach FTTC has a CIR that is in the relevant SIN http://www.sinet.bt.com/sinet/SINs/pdf/498v5p1a.pdf

"A downstream prioritisation rate of 15 Mbit/s or 30 Mbit/s (depening on the
product variant purchased) or line rate, whichever is the lower"

A 288 line FTTC cab has 6 * 1 GigE fibres, so 48 lines on 1 Gig = 20 M each was the original concept. When the faster services came in I think the CIR went down on the slower ones to allow more for the faster etc.

Obviously higher contention is less of an issue if the starting point is much faster, but I object to xDSL being characterised as contended and fibre as uncontended when neither are fundamental characteristics of the different media / technologies.

Is Gigaclear PON or P2P ?

I'm paying £35 a month for my daughter's uni house FTTC all up inc line rental so Gigaclear have a competitive price point but there'll still be a group of diehards who don't want to pay more than £20 or whatever - Cliffe is a good opportunity with no LLU services to compete with.

[Russell Brown]

Openreach FTTC has a CIR that is in the relevant SIN http://www.sinet.bt.com/sinet/SINs/pdf/498v5p1a.pdf

Thanks for that. Small wonder that a quick Google for BT & CIR didn't produce much though - it's a 77 page technical document that doesn't actually say CIR in it

"A downstream prioritisation rate of 15 Mbit/s or 30 Mbit/s (depening on the
product variant purchased) or line rate, whichever is the lower"

The important bit of that sentence being 'or line rate'. There are many many folk complaining that their shiny new FTTC service doesn't provide the headline rate because they don't live next door to the cabinet or they have iffy copper wiring.

Don't get me wrong - if FTTC or the status-quo were the only options on the table then I'd be pleased to see FTTC in the village as a (possibly modest for a lot of folk) upgrade to the current broadband.

However - there's now a better option. I guess it's like being an east German before the wall came down; the only car available was a Trabant and folk were pleased to get hold of one. Now, Gigaclear seem to be flashing a BMW brochure under our noses with the possibilty of a real 'gold standard' infrastructure for Kings Cliffe and the Trabant is looking rather shabby by comparison.

Obviously higher contention is less of an issue if the starting point is much faster, but I object to xDSL being characterised as contended and fibre as uncontended when neither are fundamental characteristics of the different media / technologies

Couldn't agree more.

Is Gigaclear PON or P2P ?

P2P from what i've read - so every house gets a fibre back to the connection point of the backhaul. I must admit that I really like that as it's as future-proof as anything reasonably can be.

Gigaclear have a competitive price point but there'll still be a group of diehards who don't want to pay more than £20 or whatever

And just in case anyone's worrying.... the existing broadband won't be effected by Gigaclear's scheme so such folk can just carry on as they are.

[PhilT]

BT appear to call it "downstream prioritisation rate" in their docs.

There are many many folk complaining that their shiny new FTTC service doesn't provide the headline rate because they don't live next door to the cabinet or they have iffy copper wiring.

There must be some part of rate adaptive they don't understand, if they even know what their line rate is (as opposed to a speed test over crap wifi or something). The average line rate of 40M FTTC services is well over the 15M CIR which is the only point at which that clause would become relevant - and in any case a sub 15M line rate is a fault condition. From memory it was about 33M average last time I looked. The distribution of line lengths from cabinets is skewed towards the short.

You're right, fibre is way preferable in the long term and if they have a model that doesn't require a grand or two up front then that's better still.

It'll be interesting to see how the demand stimulation goes - do you know if they're riding on the back of the Vtesse fibre dig that passes through Cliffe (and Wansford & Nassington).

[Russell Brown]

Is the Vtesse fibre the one that runs to the data centre round the back of Rockingham Raceway? If so, I (indeed the PC) was told that those fibres were strictly private and wouldn't be used for public services. There was some excitement when then were being put in though; folk thought Cliffe was going to get fibre installed.

As far as I know, Gigaclear hook onto the Vodafone backbone. Quite where that is in relation to Cliffe I don't know; but will be interested to find out.

[PhilT]

That's the one - 4 fibre tubes each carrying a 288 fibre bundle in two duplicate diverse paths from Corby to Peterborough. For Barclays Bank I believe, has "tax relief" written all over it. Almost infinite capacity.

Vtesse did indeed say it was purely private which might be a tax or rates thing or perhaps just convenient as they don't do retail connections to households and didn't want the bother. Bit like the HP gas mains that pass 200m from villages without gas.

Gigaclear are looking at several villages based on CityFibre's "Peterborough Core" project but they aren't contiguous to Cliffe. Vodafone bought C&W who have fibre along the A47 and into Wansford. BT's connection to Cliffe was via Nassington from Wansford I think but they did add ducting up the hill back to Wansford in the recent past so they have options now.

I think they're being canny with a Market 1 exchange opportunity that isn't on Superfast Northants plans and has no LLU, no 21CN and a fairly lean connection from the exchange.

[Russell Brown]

1152 fibres? Sheesh!  You'd have thought that terminating a couple as they came past each village wouldn't have killed them It's not like the 1,000 fibres they'd have left would put a limit on the capacity.

On Gigaclear's targeting - yes from what I understand, that is exactly their business model. Go for the areas with a reasonable size population that aren't due to get brought into the 21^st century in the foreseeable (even though we're now on the BDUK funded survey list for FTTC; it's only one cabinet which really doesn't seem to be anywhere near enough to cover the  village and even that one cabinet is still only a 'maybe').

I don't know how much it will cost to 'fibre' Kings Cliffe but let's guess at £2-300,000. With their 30% connection minimum, and allowing for backhaul and overheads, that's a ROI in five years or so which isn't bad and probably explains the venture capital they've had invested in the company.

Sigh... why we, as a country, don't invest in 'fibreing' up everywhere instead of spending billions on building victorian technology railways that'll knock 20mins off a London to Birmingham journey I cannot understand.

By the time the railway's built we'll all be using 3D holographic projection for meetings not wasting hours traveling around... well; those with enough bandwidth will. Let's hope Cliffe falls into that category.

[PhilT]

Sigh... why we, as a country, don't invest in 'fibreing' up everywhere instead of spending billions on building victorian technology railways that'll knock 20mins off a London to Birmingham journey I cannot understand.

People hate teleconferencing and like travelling. I probably don't like either, and I would happily wring the neck of people that think a "webinar" involves a telephone call ;-)

HS2 involves a massive loan backed by the Govt, I guess nobody asked for one to do a fibre equivalent.