Affect of distance on fibre line

I have always been cursed with a poor connection - max 3Mbs - due to being quite a long way from the exchange but the wondrous fibre is now available on my cabinet! I am about 3-400 yards from the cabinet itself, and as far as i can see the copper line follows a straight logical route to my property.

Is anyone able to take a guess as to how quickly the signal will drop over such a distance and therefore what speed I am likely to actually see as a maximum? The BT Checker says 57/20, does that seem reasonable? I have gone for Sky's 80/20 package so would obviously like it to be as close to the max as possible having been on a 24meg service for the last few years and only seeing about 15% of that...

There's a table here http://www.thinkbroadband.com/guide/fibre-broadband.... that says around 45Mbps.

Thanks for that, i hadnt spotted that page - should be good enough for my needs as long as i get decent uploads (want to be able to watch movies from my home server at the other halfs house!)

So you're looking for around 3Mbps upload? Shouldn't be a problem - as long as you have copper cable from the cab and not aluminium.

Everything is a best guess estimate and there will be a lot of factors that can affect it. Cable gauge, actual length, number of joints, amount above ground, background noise and proximity to industrial premises, number of ADSL and VDSL customers in cable, position of your pair in the larger cable ...

I am currently 450m from the cabinet (actual) and am forecast to receive 57/19 - the modem however gives attainable rate figures of around 63/24 - which does vary slightly.

So, if everything is "average" and yours is typical then the checker estimate will be in the right ball park.

I live in quite a small village a very high population of pensioners etc - cant see the uptake of fibre being massive to be honest, no industrial premises etc. The only problem i have had with my current line is that we are so far from the exchange, but other than that its ok so i guess i can just hope for the best with a certain amount of confidence that all will be well!

I know they have no direct bearing on FTTC services but if you can list your router stats: Attenuation, SNR and sync speeds. A quick review will say whether it is a good/bad line for the distance and if it shows good sync speed for the attenuation then you could be looking at the higher end of the estimates.

There is actually quite a difference between 300 and 400 yards, at 300 you may well get maximum possible sync, at 400 it's much less likely but not impossible.

Go and measure the actual distance - pace it out. FTTC cabinet to standard cabinet then along the path you think it takes to the pole, then pole to eaves and eaves to socket. Add on 3 metres for where the wire will go from terminal in FTTC cab, through the base, run underground and then back up into the standard cabinet. Another 8 metres for the vertical on the pole, another 8 metres for the catenary and drop down your wall ... and it soon becomes a little longer than you thought.

I'm 510 metres from mine but sync (during the summer at least at full speed. Just. It's dropped a bit with winter but I'm still getting over 74Mb/s down and 16Mb/s up.

Edit: I really don't understand the figures on that web page. It's possible Google maps is a bit innaccurate but no way is my cab only 200 metres away. It's prolly more than that even in a straight line let alone by pavement.

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&g...

From roundabout at bottom to road at top left.

Edited by Andrue (Fri 14-Dec-12 11:28:38)