Moving from 40/10 to 80/20

Academic question really, I'm not that fussed, just intrigued.

I've had an FTTC service since Sept 2010. I'm 1km from the cabinet as the crow flies,
so I've been getting 29 Mb/s down, and 8 Mb/s up. When the BT bod installed the modem,
he said my sync speed was 33 Mb/s, which seems about right.

I've just migrated this week to a 80/20 product. Running a few speed tests on a variety of sites give me 33-34 Mb/s down, and 5.5 up.

I wasn't actually expecting any improvement downstream, and not sure why it should have increased at all, but why the upstream drop ?

Changes may not be down to actual line changes, but a re-learning of the DLM settings for the line maybe.

Both products use the same VDSL2 profile 17a so in theory if getting under 40 Meg sync should really see no improvement.

In reply to a post by broadbandjockey:

I wasn't actually expecting any improvement downstream, and not sure why it should have increased at all, but why the upstream drop ?

It looks like you've gained downstream at the expense of upstream. I don't know why this would have happened, some have complained of the opposite effect when moving to a product with a higher maximum upload speed, i.e. they lose downstream speed because of the upload speed no longer being limited to 2Mbps or 10Mbps.

I can confirm that happened to my connection when testing a switch from 2Mb US to 10Mb via Plusnet.

It is probably only noticed as my connection is incapable of maxing out a 40/2 or 40/10 service, due to distance from the cabinet.

I gained around 3MB US & lost around 3Mb DS.

Switching back to 40/2 did indeed restore the slightly higher DS speeds.

Repeated switching provided similar results.

After the long 5 yr wait for FTTC, its Imminent.
50Mb download
11Mb upload
is what the checker says I should get? I am around 550mtrs from cab.

Sorry, not hijacking this thread...
My question is based on this topic, if they are based on the same profile?
If I choose the 80/20, I am estimating something around the figures above.50/11
but if I choose 40/10, does it just halve the speed 25/5.5 or does it max at 40? for download?

Not sure how it goes, surely if its based on the same pofile it will be 40 download? or doesn't it work like that?

It maxes the connection speeds to 40/10, so you should get approx 37/8 real speed after overheads.

Most 40/10 products have fairly low allowances by today's standards, though some have unlimited overnight - would you fit in?

Thanks RobertoS

I currently sync at around 2/0.6, and get realworld of around 1.3, so anything upward of 10mb is going to be great.
Having said that we are a modern family, All the usual stuff.
I would like to have good ping rates for 1st person and a few other games. But otherwise its general surfing with the kids using Youtube and occasional sky download for the movies/iPlayer stuff.

Is it really going to make that much difference having that extra 10 down and 8 up.
I suppose its the flip a coin for unlimited or not.
Whats the current provider recommendations at the moment?

Cheers
Jason

Edited by deleted (Sat 26-Jan-13 15:23:00)

In reply to a post by arg0naut:

Whats the current provider recommendations at the moment?

Plusnet - but I would say that, wouldn't I?

ping rates are very variable on Infinity. Many see 6ms ping to bbc, but many others (including me) see around 29ms.

My 'extra' is mainly down to [1] interleaving, around 8ms and [2] silly routing Winchester->Sheffield->London; add 4/5ms for each hop s->n and n->s. I don't know how much that would vary with another ISP. The interleaving would be the same, as it depends on Openreach DLM.

Edited by StephenTodd (Sat 26-Jan-13 17:02:41)

it can vary even cycling PPP. BT have some unusual routing and on top of that there seems to be multiple paths taken even just pinging, doing a mtr back to my infinity connection from various places shows routing changes every second and this can course small jitter as the routing changes have variable latencies.

Depending on what routing I am taking my pings to bbc can be as low as 13ms or as high as 17ms.

I go from leics to peterborough then to london. .

In reply to a post by arg0naut:

.
Whats the current provider recommendations at the moment?

Sky or Plusnet. BT Infinity is having a dodgy patch, particularly wrt P2P.

My personal opinion of anything to do with Sky is I'd only go there in desperation - because I couldn't get what I wanted elsewhere. (But I managed not to sign up to Sky TV for Formula 1, and tha's pretty important to me).

Plusnet could be best for you, given that mix. They have a traffic management system which is designed to optimise your sort of usage pattern, with no speed throttling on the unlimited package (80/20), and very little on the 40GB one, (40/10).

Relevant Plusnet links:-

Traffic management description. This applies to/within all packages, not just the Unlimited one in its title, and also across the platform - so the aggregate of all user traffic through their system.

Throttling details.

I'm on Unlimited just for the sake of it. Extra cost is £3.50pm over the Essentials. My peak-time usage is under 10GB. Sync speeds in my sig. Click BQM in my sig for latency graph.

I've kept my phone with BT Retail. That's something you can't do with Sky, who LLU your phone. That can be a pain if you want to leave.

Note the PN website looks a bit as though you have to take their (non-LLU) line rental, but you don't. Taking it does get rid of the fibre installation charge though.

Edited by RobertoS (Sat 26-Jan-13 18:14:17)

A Big Thanks all round guys, some good info, and yes I am wary of going to Sky as I don't want to move the phone over.
As for Pings, Wow!!!
I average 45ms going upto 90/250 quite a lot, I used to have to phone Sky weekly to get it back down to 35ms but it only ever lasted a day or two, before their system would readjust it!

So 6ms-40ms is totally livable.

Just wait for the sign up now. 4-6 weeks, Here's hoping.
As for the unlimited being such a small extra cost. I might just go with that on PlusNet...

In reply to a post by arg0naut:

Just wait for the sign up now. 4-6 weeks, Here's hoping.
As for the unlimited being such a small extra cost. I might just go with that on PlusNet...

So have you got your FTTC service yet?
I'm further from cab 76 than yourself, but I'm getting 61Mb down and 17Mb up at the moment - although I do expect it to fall as more people are added.

The 80/20 package has access to higher frequencies.

No it doesn't.

All FTTC customers use the 17a profile, having access to the 17MHz spectrum range.