Is fibre more stable than adsl?

I had a pretty decent adsl2+ connection. It randomly loses sync before resyncing a minute later and can do this every few days or can go a few week without losing sync. Ive done everything my end to help such as replacing the internal cables, using shielded cable etc, but i think its from running tests that the line has noise spikes that cause the signal to drop. Can be anytime of the day so hard to pinpoint

However, im happy with the stability of it. My question is would having fibre make my connection more stable or wouldnt it really change much?

Cheers

If the cause of the stability issue is between the cab and the exchange then that would disappear on installation of FTTC.

If it is between you and the cab then it could get worse or better. Difficult to say.

My own FTTC connection has been rock solid and the only issues I have seen have been with the home hub 5 - which I replaced.

In addition to what Ian says ...

If the instability is due to issues with your internal wiring, stability could get significantly worse with FTTC. In particular, if you have star wiring with an extension taken from junction box before the master socket. A good installer should be able to check/fix things like that; but if you get a subcontractor they are very unlikely to be willing or bothered.

If I got fibre all internal wiring would be redone anyway as atm I have a long rj11 cat5 cable from the master socket to my router in my room. With fibre I would move the router to the master socket and use a long ethernet cable to my pc

Yea I would. I would do it now but all the wiring I did was under the carpets and floorboards and too lazy to change it

Edited by bobble_bob (Thu 04-Sep-14 15:45:01)

Back in early June, I changed from ADSL2+, ( EE/Orange) to FTTC, 40/10, (continuing with EE/Orange), without any problems.

The ADSL2+ was consistently around 16 Mbps/900Kbps.

The routing from the FTTC 10 metres from my front door, to the PCP, 50 metres from door, is actually approximately 350 metres long, due to the quirks of the 1967 underground cabling.

Within the house, the 10 Metres from the very ancient, simple NTE to the Brightbox 2 is very like yours, under carpets, ordinary extensions etc. The NTE reamains that ancient one, no Test Socket, only one outlet.

I have not had to change any of it; but did replace the ADSL Splitter at the BB2 with the VDSL Splitter supplied with the BB2.

Also changed the ADSL Splitter to VDSL at the "cordless" phone Base Unit; but subsequently changed back to the ADSL one, as I wanted to experiment with the VDSL Splitter.

No obvious problems and consistently get around 37 Mbps and 9 Mbps.


As others have said, that final D-side wiring from the PCP to your house plus its new extension "backwards" to the FTTC are the important external elements when you change over.

So having the router next to the master socket, or having a long phone cable and the router in my room wouldnt make much difference?

Ive read different things online. Some say a long phone cable (even when its cat5) can make your connection more unstable and sync lower, while others have said aslong as its not a really long cable then its ok. Mine is about 5-10 metres

Edited by bobble_bob (Thu 04-Sep-14 17:29:03)

Evening Bob

Unfortunately, it is one of the "it all depends" situations.

I can only reiterate my own experience.

Just looked in the Brightbox 2-

Broadband Type Fibre
Broadband State Connected
Internet State Connected
Time Connected 362:28:33
Downstream Rate 40.00 Mbps
Upstream Rate 10.00 Mbps

So it has stayed connected for about 15 days.

The BB2 has been switched off several times, whilst playing about with it (new toy); but I do recollect one reading in the 400 hours region.

It is located beside my main PC at the back of the house, about 10 M under carpet, extensions etc from the NTE which is close to the front and the entry point for the phone line.

My opinion and advice would be to ensure that your phone line etc, both external and internal, are in "fine fettle" using ADSLx, to maximise the potential of FTTC/VDSL.

One of the easiest and only costing your time, is the QLT (Quiet Line Test).

Also try to accurately establish the copper wire length from your house to the PCP traditional "green" street junction box, as this is generally the limiting factor on VDSL speeds.

From postings on this forum, a few, unfortunately, have found FTTC/VDSL turns out to be slower and/or problematic than ADSL.

The cable might not follow "the obvoius route", as I have already indicated.

Cheers. Yea im not looking to move to fibre straight away, as i can get a around 8meg at present and apart from the odd large file i download, i dont really use my connection to its fullest to warrant paying the extra per month

My experience is that, if anything, FTTC is less stable than ADSL2. After a nightmare few years where BT just wouldn't listen, we finally got a BT bloke to remake the connections along the 1 mile route to the exchange, and after that consistently obtained 17Mbit @ 6dB for months on end. Literally. The longest period without a resynch was nearly 3 months. Rock solid, even through winter, thunder storms, the lot.

FTTC though, pushes the capacity of the remaining wire a lot harder, meaning it is more susceptible to noise, which might be weather induced, crosstalk from other lines, or cables being moved around in the cabinet. It seems to resynch every fortnight or so, although just had a 3 week period when it dropped back to interleaved mode, with it going back to fastpath a couple of days ago.

at the same time tho loop loss most likely will reduce meaning more tones that are stroner, and they will be more resistant to external rfi.

When I was on adsl. my tones would get battered at night, that doesnt happen on my vdsl.

Sadly tho my vdsl hasnt been fault free, and right now I am massively annoyed with openreach which I ranted about on kitz forum.

Hi,
I had both of my lines on ADSL only managed about 2 Meg on each of them, they used to re-sync several times a week.
Zen Fibre installed 4 weeks ago on both lines and both sync at 79999 19999 and have been that way from the start. I can only assume that because the cab is only 210 meters away that is the reason it is stable!

Going from 2 Meg to 74 Meg is quite literally life changing and I am one very pleased Zen customer.

Paul.

I used to get a sync of 6.5Mbit on ADSL (not 2) on a 3.5KM line. Any sign of a thunderstorm and my connection would resync on every lightning strike.

3 years on FTTC and its not battered an eyelid.

For me at any rate if we never had lighting i wouldn't have noticed a difference i dare say.

To summarise most of the above.
FTTC is more prone to suffer as a result of problems on the line; but it only has the line from the cabinet to contend with.

If you are close the the cabinet and not close to the exchange, FTTC should be more stable and much faster.
If you are a long way from the cabinet, FTTC may be less stable.
If you have wiring issues in the house, FTTC may be less stable.

Remember in modern parlance

1. If you say estimate people think you are guaranteeing what you just said
2. If you say may or there is a risk, every assumes it will happen to them
3. If you say 90% will get something, people are shocked when they don't get it
4. If you say up to something, people assume you will get that all the time.

regarding #1 no a guarantee as such but I think its reasonable for someone to at expect to at least get close to the estimate.

#4 the isps have themselves to blame, to the original meaning of up to in broadband advertising was the speed can vary due to congestion levels. But then adsl providers changed the expectation to meaning it can be a variable in connection speed and now people expect to hit their line speed all the time. But that is not a that bad expectation, a service having no visible contention doesnt mean its 1:1 it just means the contention is low enough that there is no congestion.

What is classed as stable anyway? Is it reasonable to expect no disconnections on a line or is a resync expect now and again due to rf interference?

Edited by bobble_bob (Fri 05-Sep-14 12:23:39)

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

#4 the isps have themselves to blame, to the original meaning of up to in broadband advertising was the speed can vary due to congestion levels. But then adsl providers changed the expectation to meaning it can be a variable in connection speed and now people expect to hit their line speed all the time.

Going to need some substantial citations for this bit of thinking. All the widely available last mile technologies have had variable connection speed except for arguably cable (it's still variable but the variation tends to be fairly small). A 56k "analogue" modem didn't get 56k for most people most of the time, and having been a very early (engineer installed, guy hadn't done many before us) DSL user it was already true there too.

maybe but back then "up to" wasnt used on the headline name of dialup services I paid for.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

maybe but back then "up to" wasnt used on the headline name of dialup services I paid for.

I think that because "back then", all speeds related to the achievable modem speed - not line speed.

Edited by deleted (Sat 06-Sep-14 15:39:29)

You could use this with you landline number (wont work on Sky/TalkTalk)
https://www.btwholesale.com/includes/adsl/main.html

Depends.

The DLM on FTTC I think is far more aggressive than ADSL2+ which can help in some situations.

As far as speed is concerned, FTTC will definitely be more stable at the same speed as ADSL because it will have more headroom.

Have you checked to see whether there's a fault on your line by doing the quiet line test?

It could be a high resistance fault - We had one a few years ago and suffered from constant random disconnections.

With any luck the fault (If there is one) could be on the D-Side of the Local Loop you're on.

Noticed any change in reliability since FTTC was installed in your cabinet?

I agree. Dialup was just sold as internet access. You just got told what the modem banks were capable of.

My first ADSL service was a fixed 2Mbps service, supplied by Demon as a trial service, when BT were first introducing DSL.

Because I was connected so early, I didn't pay too much attention to the adverts, but I don't recall that the 512Kb, 1Mb or 2Mb fixed services were ever sold as "up to". I thought that label came along later with ADSL Max.

They were a fixed connection sync with the 50:1 or 20:1 contention ratios. On ADSL Max and later those ratios no longer apply and the sync speed became variable, with the throughput even more so. Barring FTTP.

The "up to" AIUI has always applied to the sync speed, not the throughput, except when badly trained CS staff wrongly believe otherwise.

Regarding the 56 K Modems, my one consistently achieved around 47 K, with occasional excursions up to 53 Kilo Baud.

The owner of the local computer shop lived in a town about 11 miles away, its own exchange etc; and his modem could only achieve about 30 K, occasionally 33 K.

Done the quiet line test, abit of noise there but nothing major (used a cordless phone too and read this can affect the quiet line test)

Noticed any change in reliability since FTTC was installed in your cabinet?

Yes actually, any reason for that? Ive noticed less disconnects since we have been able to get fibre, never really thought about it until you mentioned that

Ah yes - that's about right, I reckon.

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

Done the quiet line test, abit of noise there but nothing major (used a cordless phone too and read this can affect the quiet line test)

Hmm can you try with a corded phone by any chance?

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

Yes actually, any reason for that? Ive noticed less disconnects since we have been able to get fibre, never really thought about it until you mentioned that

It could be that since people have been adopting FTTC in your area, the D-Side cable is now suffering from less crosstalk due to the lower number of people signed up to ADSL (Which uses the D-Side cables).

I'd try and do a quiet line test when your line resyncs and see whether you can hear crackling which could be the sign of a fault.

Only got a cordless phone.

Id be surprised if there was a fault, considering now i can go 10 days+ without a single resync. Thats just an average though

Maybe a daft question, but during the quiet line test is there meant to be zero noise on the line? Or is some minimal noise expected

Edited by bobble_bob (Sun 07-Sep-14 17:31:07)

In reply to a post by bobble_bob:

Only got a cordless phone.

Id be surprised if there was a fault, considering now i can go 10 days+ without a single resync. Thats just an average though

Maybe a daft question, but during the quiet line test is there meant to be zero noise on the line? Or is some minimal noise expected

Fair enough.

Minimal noise can be expected - I've had an engineer out before because I have a faint buzz on my line (Which was introduced with a loss of SNR) and he said it wasn't an issue. I think if there's sudden crackling or noticeable noise then it can be classed as a fault.

Yea its pretty faint.

On a side note, i typed my postcode into http://www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/ to see where my cabinet was. The map on that website isnt where my cabinet is. Not sure on the location but its not where openreach claim it is, as ive been there and there is nothing

Edited by bobble_bob (Sun 07-Sep-14 22:08:38)

Your cabinet may be down the road a bit or around the block. I believe all that shows up is your postcode and the exchange status - Doesn't show your cabinet.

Doesn't for me at least...

The map on that website isnt where my cabinet is.

The flag is the "centre" of the postcode, not the cab location.

Ah i see. Is there anyway to know where the cabinet is? I know im on cabinet 4, but is it just a case of wondering around the area until i find it?

Which exchange?

Crofton - WF4

It's outside No.9 Harrison Road

Thanks for that. 5 mins walk away then