switching to sky fiber from adsl. worried about latency?

I was on Be for years and had an amazing latency. Then i moved to virgin fiber in 2012 to be horrified by the throttling. was getting 0.3mb downloads till 2am. pings were usually in the 150-250 range but virign refused to acknowledge it.

With sky ADSL now. latency decent, speeds 3mb. expected. with my bad experience of fiber i'm very hesitant to go again. worried about the ping being higher than my ADSL latency mostly.

Here is a screen of the BT cabinet checker results.
http://i60.tinypic.com/2mml4h.jpg

Is it worth a try? keep in mind latency is the biggest issue here.

The Openreach FTTC that Sky are selling is a totally different beastie to Virgin Fibre.

This comes in over your existing phone wiring, unlike the VM one that had its own coax cable coming from a pavement connection to its own box on your outside wall. The underlying technology is completely different. Have a read of this page for a bit more info.

Your bad experience with VM fibre is irrelevant. You can relax on that front .

I can't help re latency I'm afraid, but wouldn't expect it to be a lot different from what you have now. Sky users who have upgraded with Sky are the best to advise on that.

thank goodness!

i'm eager to hear from upgraded customers, hopefully there are a few here.
I think the most important things would be consistency, and a good latency. Having used 2.5mb or less download all my life, i can handle slow connections by now!!

However, i am interested if someone can analyse the results in the picture i posted. maybe it could give some sort of idea of my line quality?

Edited by deleted (Wed 14-Oct-15 17:21:31)

All one can say from the picture is the speed will be in the 25 Mbps to 50 Mbps for downloads.

Tells us nothing about the latency, but likely to be similar to what you have from ADSL2+.

As MrSaffron says, except I suggest you don't really consider the higher speed "Pro" option from Sky. The Sky Fibre Unlimited is likely to run at between 38Mbps and 40Mbps if we help you optimise your home wiring.

It could be as low as the 25Mbps if your home wiring is poor or there are significant external factors.

Speeds on the "Unlimited" and the 25GB monthly allowance product will be identical. For many people on FTTC their usage rises quite dramatically because of the extra things they can easily do.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

As MrSaffron says, except I suggest you don't really consider the higher speed "Pro" option from Sky. The Sky Fibre Unlimited is likely to run at between 38Mbps and 40Mbps if we help you optimise your home wiring.

It could be as low as the 25Mbps if your home wiring is poor or there are significant external factors.

Speeds on the "Unlimited" and the 25GB monthly allowance product will be identical. For many people on FTTC their usage rises quite dramatically because of the extra things they can easily do.

thank you.
Is there any way to test the quality of home wiring?
I know that it was very bad a few years back due to a botch job installation. That was back when I was getting only 0.5mb download speed on ADSL 2. A fella came round and improved the wires on the house and then onward i got a solid 3mb download.

Re checking the house wiring, do you know how to get the line stats from your router? Things called Sync or Connection speed, attenuation and SNR or Noise Margin?

First VM are horrific at capacity management, they oversubscribe some areas, and you was a victim of that.
Second sky have in my opinion the best consumer network in the country, exchange backhaul capacity vs capacity sold to the end user is way way higher than what VM do.
Third SKY FTTC uses openreach DLM, that DLM defaults to fast path on ECI cabs which is the lowest latency possible, although on hauwei cabs I am not sure if interleaved is now default for new lines or fast path but regardless if you have a compatible modem it will put you on g.inp after a short time which has good latency also.

I am on sky FTTC and here is my latency to the bbc. When I was on ukonline adsl using the same backhaul I also had 9ms latency. My cabinet is ECI and I am on fast path.

C:\Windows\system32>ping bbc.co.uk

Pinging bbc.co.uk [212.58.244.18] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 212.58.244.18: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=56
Reply from 212.58.244.18: bytes=32 time=8ms TTL=56
Reply from 212.58.244.18: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=56
Reply from 212.58.244.18: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=56

Ping statistics for 212.58.244.18:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 8ms, Maximum = 9ms, Average = 8ms

The risk is really if you on an ECI cab AND your line isnt stable enough to stay on fast path. Then interleaving would bump up your latency. Sky use the standard DLM profile which is the middle profile, its not as leniant as the speed profile which most other isp's use.

Edited by Chrysalis (Fri 16-Oct-15 15:09:51)

The DLM in both ECI and Huawei works very similarly, but with slightly different band plans. The only major difference I know of is over G.INP, which the Huawei ones all support. I believe the ECI ones may do soon, that subject has gone rather quite recently.

The normal interleaving first step on FTTC adds exactly 8ms to latency. G.INP normally removes nearly all interleaving and removes the 8ms completely.

Edited by RobertoS (Fri 16-Oct-15 15:31:09)

The best way by far (assuming you've got a modern master socket) is to compare the line stats from the router plugged into it's normal location and then do the same plugged into the test socket.

To get to the test socket you have to unscrew the faceplate and pull it out (which should disconnect any extensions - it might be worth double checking by listening for dial tone on any extensions if the wiring has been bodged in the past).

The important stats to compare are the sync speed and other line stats (SNR/Noise Margin and down/up attenuation). It's also probably worth doing a (cabled) speed test too.

If the sync speed and other stats in the "normal" location are similar to those measured at the test socket (say sync speed is less than 5% different), then you are probably OK, although VDSL is more sensitive than ADSL so if you do go for it then it's a good idea to retest with the new service.

http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/13567...

nb. I should add you don't want to keep doing this of line management might kick in and change settings if it thinks the line is unstable which will muddy the waters.

Edited by deleted (Fri 16-Oct-15 16:39:09)