Is GFast Unreliable?

Hi,

Upgraded to Gfast from 80/20 FTTC a couple of weeks ago. Get about 250/45.

TBB Ping Monitor: My Broadband Ping

Have noticed a couple of blips. Yesterday it was up and down a bit, and today there's some spikes too. But we've got some heavy building works going on (right under the overhead cable!) so I'm also happy to put dodgy broadband down to building work interference if that's the cause.

Is Gfast inherently any less reliable than FTTC?

Thanks

The way I see it, g.fast , is using a copper twisted pair to almost its complete max.
If you run anything absolutely flat out, then it is likely to be less stable ...... an F1 car will not run reliably to Scotland and back .... a sprinter, not a stayer. (analogies over)

I get the full 330, with a theoretical max over 400 .... but the connection IS finicky.

If I wanted rock solid, I’d probably downgrade to FTTC again.

I took the product out of curiosity.

In reply to a post by Westyfield2:

Is Gfast inherently any less reliable than FTTC?

G.fast uses only the higher frequencies in the spectrum, above both ADSL and VDSL, so as not to interfere with them. These higher frequencies are the ones which attenuate *much* more with distance; there's also potentially more RF interference around.

If you're sat right next to the cabinet, or up to say 100m away, it will be pretty solid because there will be a large noise margin. Beyond that, it's really using telephony-grade cable in a way that it wasn't designed for, *and* purposely avoiding the frequencies where telephony cable works best.

Get a weeks worth of data and post the links to each day.

What I can see there is nothing untoward, yes three drop out but all late evening or overnight, which could be a network based issue or the BT hub deciding to do a full firmware upgrade. Several days of data would allow a better interpretation.

I'd describe mine as solid as a rock; its been installed around a year now and haven't had a single outage other than 2 reboots of the BT Smart Hub for firmware updates.
But I do have a healthy SNR which gives me an attainable of around 400MBit due to being less than 150m from the PCP. Have you got any stats from your router or do you have an openreach modem with no stats?

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by Westyfield2:

Is Gfast inherently any less reliable than FTTC?

G.fast uses only the higher frequencies in the spectrum, above both ADSL and VDSL, so as not to interfere with them. These higher frequencies are the ones which attenuate *much* more with distance; there's also potentially more RF interference around.

If you're sat right next to the cabinet, or up to say 100m away, it will be pretty solid because there will be a large noise margin. Beyond that, it's really using telephony-grade cable in a way that it wasn't designed for, *and* purposely avoiding the frequencies where telephony cable works best.

That’s what I said ! (less eloquently I grant you)

G.fast are a waste of time. FTTC is more reliable one.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

G.fast are a waste of time. FTTC is more reliable one.

Hi Max

For those who are using G.fast and getting good download speed and where its also stable I'm sure its not a waste of time. If I had a choice of G.fast or FTTP sure I would pick FTTP but most people don't so G.fast is a good interim solution for those lucky enough to be able to order it.

Maybe you should try it.

I don't see anything troubling on your TBB Ping Monitor. The very brief outages all occur at night and could easily relate to BT network maintenance.

Earlier in the year I was asked to look at the reliability of a G.Fast connection in London with a BT Fibre 250 service because there were lots of connectivity problems at the site.

I installed a Fingbox which performed six automated speed tests every day and gave continuous connectivity monitoring. I could also monitor it remotely.

For the whole of July the results were;

• 263.4Mbps average download
• 49.2Mbps average upload
• 2 outages of one minute each (>99.995% uptime)

I wouldn't call that unreliable.

The frequent connectivity problems turned out to be related to the DHCP server on the Smart Hub 2 and have been resolved by putting in a firewall which acts as a DHCP server, among other functions. There haven't been any significant outages since putting the firewall in.

That's my real world firsthand experience of testing G.Fast for reliability and performance. Unbdoubtedly there will be others with much more experience and some with zero.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

G.fast are a waste of time. FTTC is more reliable one.

I am interested in getting G.fast when it becomes available would you care to share your bad experience as i have FTTC and dont want to swap to G.fast if i would be better staying with FTTC?