FTTPoD quotes, prices and general chat thread Part 5

As the last thread is now getting rather long, I reckon it's time for a new one. Especially as it's taken four long threads before my service has, at long last, gone live!

Previous parts are here:

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/fibre/f/4595298-ftt...
http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/fibre/f/4604719-re-...
http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/fibre/f/4612934-ftt...
https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/fibre/4615393-fttp...

Now, it may have taken 15 months but the story isn't over. Originally an engineer was booked two weeks ago, but I had to cancel (but nobody told the poor engineer, who turned up at an empty house).

A different chap turns up today, takes one look at the copper wire and says he'll need to replace it with a combination fibre/copper drop cable. Only thing is, he has none with him (as he was told cabling was in place), so he has to pop off to the stores.

40 minutes later, he's back with a friend. New cabling is duly strung up, with a new ONT installed. He seems surprised when after asking where my router is ("BT should have supplied one"), I tell him I'm not with BT, I'm with Cerberus.

He asks me to check, as light levels are good (under 18, whatever that means!) and it should all work. And it does - kind of.

As you can see, it's not exactly great. In fact, it's awful!

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/15607722145...

We have tested the speed of the connection and have recorded an average download speed of: 6.24 Mbps
Your average upload speed was recorded as: 5.29 Mbps.

The Ookla speed tester is better, but still nowhere near what my old FTTC connection was getting....

https://www.speedtest.net/result/8343827350
Download 8.88 mbps, Upload 30.93mbps.

After I pointed this out, he checked the light levels again, said they're good and that I should pass on to Cerberus that the light levels were good. And off he went (he also tried taking the Openreach FTTC modem, but I stopped him as I'm still paying - and using! - that connection).

So, while this is coming from my new Cerberus connection, I'll be switching back to my old Merula FTTC connection for now (as that still tests at 74 down, 19 up).

Let's see what Cerberus can do...

Edited by Retron (Mon 17-Jun-19 13:08:28)

First of all welcome to the ever growing FTTPoD club

I also had similar slow-ish speeds as soon as my FTTPoD service went live, however a few hours later i was hitting > 300 Mbps after reporting this to my CP (FluidOne). It won't be an issue at Openreach's end, it willl require some tweaking at Cerberus' end.

In reply to a post by Retron:

He asks me to check, as light levels are good (under 18, whatever that means!) and it should all work.

This refers to the measurement of the loss of light levels between your ONT and the exchange - OR aim for a loss of less than 20dB apparently so your 18dB loss is fine - mine was 15dB.

Edited by brookheather (Mon 17-Jun-19 13:30:17)

In reply to a post by brookheather:

This refers to the measurement of the loss of light levels between your ONT and the exchange - OR aim for a loss of less than 20dB apparently so your 18dB loss is fine - mine was 15dB.

Ah, that makes sense (I hadn't realised light levels were also measured in dB, as copper lines are). The engineer wasn't at all talkative, so I didn't fancy asking all the questions I had!

I've reported the speed issue to Cerberus and they've passed it onto their support team. Hopefully my next post will be to say that at last everything is up and running as it should be.

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

First of all welcome to the ever growing FTTPoD club

I also had similar slow-ish speeds as soon as my FTTPoD service went live, however a few hours later i was hitting > 300 Mbps after reporting this to my CP (FluidOne). It won't be an issue at Openreach's end, it willl require some tweaking at Cerberus' end.

Thank you!

To their credit, Cerberus responded very quickly. There's no quick tweak this time, though, as they said the order is still flagged as open on their systems, i.e. the engineer hasn't yet marked the install as complete. Until that's done they can't fiddle with any settings.

They've asked me to check again tomorrow, so hopefully by then the order will have been flagged as completed.

Cerberus got back to me and suggested I try connecting the Ethernet cable from the ONT directly to a PC, then creating a dial-up PPPoE connection. Lo and behold, I was getting over 200Mbps downloads via the various testing sites.

Plug it all back in to the Netgrear XR500 router - one I bought as reviews said it could handle fast connections - and bam, back down to 5Mbps or so.

So it's the router. The default MTU is 1492, which should be fime, and I've disabled QoS... no difference. Looks like I'll be spending the afternoon on Google, rather than enjoying a nice, high-speed connection.

EDIT: On second thoughts, as the BT speed checker says I don't have FTTP, I'll wait until tomorrow.

Edited by Retron (Mon 17-Jun-19 15:17:30)

The XR500 should easily handle a 300 Mbps line -it’s a R7800 but running Duma os.
Do a hard reset on it and reconfigure from scratch.

Hi

The Netgear should be putting a lot more through than 5Meg. Have you tried resetting to defaults? Are you testing the speed on the Netgear via Wi-Fi or a wired connection to your PC?

If when wired up to the router you are still seeing such slow speeds, try different network cables, a fault in the cable could see the link speed at 10Meg rather than 1Gig on the network ports.

Regards

Phil

You and baby_frogmella get a gold star - bizarrely, despite only just having set up the router a hard reset has solved the problem. (I was using a known good patch lead and it was showing a 1Gbps connection in Windows, so cabling or using wifi wasn't the issue).

I'm now getting the speeds I should be, which is wonderful!

https://www.speedtest.net/result/8344462765
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/15607879606...

"Faster than 99.9% of tests in South East England"

As my journey through FTTPoD has now reached a temporary conclusion (not the final destination, as I'll regrade and perhaps move to a cheaper ISP once my 12 months is up), I'd just like to say thank you to everyone on here - I've learned so much through these boards and I'm sure there's plenty more to come!

Edited by Retron (Mon 17-Jun-19 17:20:42)

Hi all,

Got my quote back from Cerberus as below.

Openreach provided an estimate of the build charges at £8,800.00 + VAT.
The confirmed build charge is £8,144.00 + VAT.

This includes the reduction for the survey and a deduction of £1,100.00 for premises passed. A breakdown of the charges is below:
Labour £4,722.00
Stores £3,527.00
Contract Labour £0.00
Civils £750.00
Civils Stores £0.00

Tree cutting £0.00

BT Connection Charge £495.00

-£250.00
Deductions -£1,100.00

£8,144.00

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Disappointed with that price, the surveyor has told me the agg node was close, all underground ducts to the pole were clear., 40-50 premises passed (as previously explained he thinks premises passed were those easily served by FTTPoD from the agg node).

See the picture here https://ibb.co/bzGSfsj

Fibre agg node on the right, pole middle and my home on the left. 80m node to pole, 20m pole to house.

I have replied querying the quote but will not be going ahead at that price. Was hoping for something in the 2.5-3k region. I don't see how candlerb can require 34m of new duct in road verge and it be 2k cheaper than my quote.