FTTP reliablity?

Yesterday AFAIK all those in village on FTTP lost t'internet again, this is the second time in less than a year, couldn't ask OR engineers why, but last I saw they were working chamber to chamber back towards exchange looking for the fault. I'm wondering if this is likely to be a faulty install or faulty equipment. It certainly makes the claims of fault free(or at least less faults) internet with FTTP look a bit silly.

Cannot help you there but I can say that I have been on FTTP since 2013 having originally been on the Plusnet FTTP trial and have never had a single fault or loss of internet it has been a rock steady connection.

Not all of us have been saying FTTP is fault free, faults are still possible just should generally be less.

How many connections in the village? It could be just a poor joint in a splitter if its affecting a small village. Also things can happen to still break fibre, be that animals nibbling cable to a tree falling onto some overhead fibre.

Presume the ONT was showing its fault LED colour, since if that was its usual green suggests not a local light issue at all.

For comparison, in the year i've had FTTPoD my line has been stable throughout, not a single noticeable drop in service and speed test have always been great.

No issues here, had FTTPoD for almost a year. Only gripe is how long it's taking to process a simple regrade, but otherwise the connection is working fine and has done so for the duration of the service.

Its been fine here since end of 2016, nothing is fault free, sure its resistant to noise, but the fibre cables can still break.

Paul

Physical Failures
As with all physical failures they will follow the bathtub curve (Google it if not familiar).

Early life failure - faulty install/equipment
Random Failure - Digging through cable, something just breaking
End of Life Failure - Stuff gets old and dies e.g. corrosion of metals holding something

You are potentially in early life failure zone, Copper has been through early life failure. I would say that the chance of physical faults are going to be about the same except for some nuances around age of equipment. The chances of someone digging your fibre/copper or tree falling on fibre/copper remain constant.


Non-Physical Failure
The, it just needs a reboot, noise on the line, stuff is likely to be a lot less due to the reduced factors that can affect the system.

So I would say it is likely to be more reliable in operation, until it breaks physically, and then it is the same.

Fibre optic cables are enclosed in some pretty strong stuff, the way they were pulling at them and tugging them through the pipes round our way is testament to that.

Yes, they are strong, just don't like being bent around a tight radius. In data centres fibre optic cabling is used for all sorts of networks.

They were pulling and tugging the empty tubes. The fibres are blown in when all the huffing and puffing has been done.

The chances of someone digging up fibre tubes is higher than copper in my view.

You can't detect fibre tubes with a common or garden cable avoidance tool and many operators are digging in unprotected direct in ground at extremely shallow depths that are in danger from the initial angle grinder cuts before the spades come out.

Not the case around here.

The modern fibre bundles with kevlar can be pushed pulled.

The push pull of the old blown fibre tubes even though no fibre in them was sometimes a problem since pinch points could be created making blowing the fibre later harder.

As a rough guess 50 properties have access to FTTP, might be more, I think at best half have so far taken it, some will be like me waiting to see what Sky and TalkTalk will be offering, or still on a FTTC contract, or it seems some might well not know yet.
As for the 'fault free' that came from BT saying they would be employing less when it's all FTTP.

The chances of someone digging up fibre tubes is higher than copper in my view.

Agreed .......

The bigger issue is the amount that’s being strung overhead , it won’t take the same degree of rubbing and stretching that branches meter out to copper.

Kevlar, thats the stuff I just couldnt remember the name. Thanks.

been scratching my head and rubbing my chin in deep thought trying to think of anything that is 100% reliable 100% of the time,and I do mean anything,and I cant think of a single thing that is:-even our sun will die at some time in the future,so even that isn't!:-things can and do go wrong,accept it,luckilly most things can be fixed or replaced

Edited by steve195527 (Fri 03-Apr-20 10:07:04)

Most, but not all, direct bury fibre has a locator wire within its construction so that it can be detected using the usual methods.

As I posted in the OP, less faults. so far in our village the reverse has been true.

You are talking about a single installation - which sounds like it may have been installed badly - so it doesn't prove whether FTTP suffers fewer faults overall.

One of the good things about FTTP is that basically it either works at full speed, or not at all. So when it fails, there's a clear fault which can be easily reported, and quickly isolated and fixed. Any speed problems are either with your ISP or your home network.

With copper you get degradation from water ingress, increasing crosstalk, impulse noise etc. These sorts of problems are much harder to get fixed.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

One of the good things about FTTP is that basically it either works at full speed, or not at all. So when it fails, there's a clear fault which can be easily reported, and quickly isolated and fixed. Any speed problems are either with your ISP or your home network.

Or the server(s) at the far end unable to cope for a variety of reasons

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by candlerb:

One of the good things about FTTP is that basically it either works at full speed, or not at all. So when it fails, there's a clear fault which can be easily reported, and quickly isolated and fixed. Any speed problems are either with your ISP or your home network.

Or the server(s) at the far end unable to cope for a variety of reasons

Also the equipment used our end, our first Smarthub (built in network switch) acquired a fault where it would for no reason drop the link speed to 100Mbits, I connected to the ONT via a PC for several hours and was all fine.

So to rule out our hardware I replaced our Main Switch and replaced all cables to it with CAT6 and CAT6a cables and it still had the issue after a couple of hours, so I knew it wasn't our hardware.

BT ended up sending out a new Smarthub which never had the issue.

Paul

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

The chances of someone digging up fibre tubes is higher than copper in my view.

Agreed .......

The bigger issue is the amount that’s being strung overhead , it won’t take the same degree of rubbing and stretching that branches meter out to copper.

The connectorised stuff should though. When I had my training for it I concluded it was stronger than most copper cable Openreach uses due to the coating.

Edited by deleted (Sat 04-Apr-20 15:32:04)

In reply to a post by burble:

Yesterday AFAIK all those in village on FTTP lost t'internet again, this is the second time in less than a year, couldn't ask OR engineers why, but last I saw they were working chamber to chamber back towards exchange looking for the fault. I'm wondering if this is likely to be a faulty install or faulty equipment. It certainly makes the claims of fault free(or at least less faults) internet with FTTP look a bit silly.

Luck plays a part, but don't think I've seen one drop of connection in a year and a bit of FTTP..

Does that go for 36 fibre cables between the splitters, track nodes and DP’s ?