My switch from Madasafish ADSL to Plusnet FTTC begins...

So, after my fun and games getting my domain transferred from Madasafish to Plusnet ended in taking it to another hosting service, I'm now getting ready for the switch to fibre!

My Plusnet Hub One arrived today. It's tiny, white and has springy pink feet! Let's hope the transfer goes well - not scheduled until 23rd, so as a fallback if it all goes horribly wrong, I've bought a 30m Ethernet cable to plug into my neighbor's router over Christmas

The Plusnet hub one router is a BT homehub 5a internally, it do not have Bt fon/Wi-fi and it don't have smart setup, which is not a bad thing,
The hub is produced by Sagem.

My mate got one and it is ok, certainly better Wi-fi than his old Speedtouch. Tiny is not a word I would use, in fact the shape of it is strange, just like the BT homehub.,

I hope your internal wiring is good as VDSL is a bit more sensitive than ADSL.

Are you sure that isn't the Hub Zero that you've been sent - it's the "tiny" part of your description that has got me thinking. The label on the underside will say "ROUTER 2704N PLUSNET" if it is. In which case you'll be getting a BT Modem from the engineer.
Do you know if your Cab is a Huawei or ECI?
The 2704N with Plusnet Firmware has nothing more than very basic Router functionality. If your Home Network is anything other than basic, you'd better play with the Router now to ensure it will meet your needs.

No, definitely a Hub One made by Sagemcom for self install. I say tiny as I thought the BT Hub was a lot bigger than that.

Not sure who made my cabinet - Will take the dog for a walk and have a look!

Found this site which should help. Which is 'better'?

How true this I do not know but:
regarding you connecting to the neighbour's router with an ethernet cable, check to see if both houses are on the same mains power phase.

Often the phasees are distributed to one in three houses.

If you have a fault on the network cables and there is a mains related signal on them then you could get a phase to phase connection and you could have a problem.

How likely - I do not know, is it likely I do not know but the story in today's The Register
1 percent chance of a problem

made me think of it. You may be safer with a WiFI connection.

Huawei

If you've got live mains on your network wiring you're in big trouble anyway. It would take 2 separate and serious faults to get aphase to phase fault. In any case an ethernet PHY has galvanic isolation.

If you got 2 different phases at each end of a CAT5 cable you'd blow a lump out of it. Probably before any fuses blew.

It's a Huawei. Now I'm part of the cabinet cognoscenti, I can say with confidence it's a Huawei 288 FTTC cabinet

Powered up the router this morning (directly connected to the laptop) - all seems to work.

Well.... Time for an update...

It all went ok!

Was a bit surprised to get a call from an Openreach engineer to say he'd be here in 25 minutes, as I expected to do a self install with a PlusNet Hub One.

He'd tested the line and needed to upgrade the Master Socket faceplate to a Mk3, but was nice and quick doing it.

Was only getting about 18Mbps down / 20Mbps up at first (ADSL gave me c. 13-15Mbps down), and needed to chat to PlusNet to get them to change my profile. I wonder how long it would take otherwise?

Now getting about 76Mbps download which is most excellent! Even through Powerline-based Wifi AP from the Study where the Router is, I'm getting 45-50Mbps in the lounge.