Fibre link bandwidth to FTTC

Hi,

Does anyone here know what the maximum fibre link capacity/bandwidth Openreach would install to a full FTTC cabinet?

I currently live in an area that has one large PCP and two FTTC cabinets, one smaller than the other, along with a g.fast pod on the side of the PCP. So I'm pretty sure at least the oldest cabinet is at full capacity and that's the one I'm on.

The cabinet type is Huawei MA5603T 288 connections, it could be the 384HD type but I haven't had a closer look.

Basically what I'm trying to find out is how Openreach scale the fibre bandwidth from the exchange to the cabinet, is it still only 1gb links and is that per line card or for the whole cabinet and 288 connections?

At peak times I get what I think is Openreaches's best effort when it comes to throughput, and after multiple ISP engineers and exchange checks the congestion/contention can't be coming from anywhere else.

Does anyone know if there is any kind of process where I can get moved onto a different line card inside the cabinet? Or even better, get Openreach to increase to 10gb DSLAM connections.

Thanks

FTTC cabinets use 1Gb/s links or multiples in a LAG group , so 2 links would be 2Gb/s across the whole cabinet.
G.fast t cabinets get 10Gb links.

Edited by witchunt (Sat 29-Aug-20 18:39:08)

Thanks, I get terrible peak time throughput. Had BT come out and check everything. They checked utilization rate of SVLAN. All came back ok. Utilization rate was 23%. They now have another level of team looking into it. I'm guessing it's actually the full to capacity Openreach FTTC cabinet though. Even with a 6gb link, 288 connections on a Friday night all using IPTV etc would soon saturate it enough for the DSLAM to drop my poor TCP packets. I expect it costs some to swap to 10gb, maybe even an upgraded DSLAM and given Covid, they probably don't want to jump the gun.

I'm guessing it's why BT Wholeale give business customers a guarenteed 20mb throughput rate on some plans. 6gbits (6000)% 288 is 20.8mbits guarenteed per business user. Funny enough that's the exact speed I get at peak times 8pm-10pm. Think I must be on a very busy line card or something. At one point it was really really bad and the BT speed tester took an age to run and finally output 19.99mb.

I just hope Openreach upgrade to 10gb links or something, not even sure if BT can ask them to do anything. All they can offer me is to leave me contract, but I actually got a decent price with them. BT also seem to be taking the new Ofcom rules more seriously. Their plans come with Halo 1 now and on the mobile app it does a throughput test from their node somewhere to the hub itself and then also to the device, to rule it out. If the throughput speed is less than the minimum the advertised they automatically open a fault.

Just found this: https://aastatus.net/search.cgi?search=CAPACITY&orde...

Looks like BT are upgrading areas from 1g to 10g. Not sure if that means cabinet or exchange though, but lots going on the last month or so. https://aastatus.net/36331

I doubt they support 10Gb links,at least not without a major hardware upgrade . Some of these DSLAMs have been out there 10 years now and that's a long time in IT .

Think they maybe cablelinks.

Do you have any neighbours with an FTTC service on the same cabinet that you can ask?

That sounds like the only way to determine if the issue is an ISP.

Well I was on TalkTalk and actually moved to BT because of the issue. Haven't spoke to neighbours yet though, but pretty sure it's not an ISP issue. I think the houses built around here are about 12 years old, so not sure when the first FTTC cab was put in.

Edited by deleted (Sun 30-Aug-20 04:05:17)

I did a WinMTR test earlier when it was really bad and found that the packloss started at a private IP address, that after Googling, seems to be either the DSLAM or the Edge router. It's the address for whatever creates the public IP address for my broadband. From then on the latency goes up really bad, like it's bufferbloat or something.

Edited by deleted (Sun 30-Aug-20 04:16:28)