Talk Talk FTTP Questions

Hi all,

Only this August I went with talk talk (FTTC). BT FTTP was in my area, but I read too many horror stories about their speeds that I decided to go with regular faster broadband (about 63mb). Anyway today I was checking, and talk talk were offering FTTP for 500mb/75mb for £40. I didn't think they were offering this before, but then again depending on what page your put your postcode in on their site, it will give you different results. Anyway I rang them up hoping I could upgrade mid contract (rather than wait 18 months), and I was able to upgrade to this, and my old contract of 4 months will just terminate one my new service goes live. I have to wait until the 28th Jan for installation.

I've also recently bought an ASUS router (RT-AX82U). I had to buy a separate openreach modem off ebay to get it working with my router, and it all worked fine automatically (no setup). However I did ask talktalk if I could use my own router and they said yes.

So my questions are:

1. Can I just plug in the ethernet cable from the new box they install into my routers WAN port and it will just work?

2. Will I require usernames and passwords to setup the WAN connection?

From what I understood with talktalk, is they automatically sent these details to the modem on FTTC, hence why I didn't require needing to setup the openreach modem from ebay. Is it the same with FTTP?

Access point questions:

Talk talk asked if I want to be required when the surveyor comes in the next couple of days. I said yes, because I want them to install the access point on the side of my house (where my drive is), rather than the front of my house where my telephone point is. This is because I'm currently using gigabit powerlines for the WAN, whereas the side of my house, which leads directly under the stairs, is where my pc & router are located.

3. How fussy are the engineers usually if I ask them to do it on the side of my house (which will require digging up the drive I assume) vs the front of my house (digging up the front garden)? Will they try to fob me off possibly because the difference in work involved?

4. Inside the house, I don't want to move the desk. This is because all my wiring slack go around the back two table legs. I can easily remove the amplifier in the middle and my desk chair, and theres plenty of room if the engineer sits down on his bum to do the installation. Do you think this would be a problem, or do you think they'll expect the area to be totally clear?

5. There is no date for the surveyor except they'd be around to look in the next couple of days. Because I requested I be present, if I happen to miss the surveyor, will they leave a card at all, or contact us to rearrange? Note this is the BT surveyor and not the installation booked on the 28th Jan.

Speed questions:

Talk talk said my average speed will be 416-516mb with a guaranteed speed of 250mb. I had to ask about upload speed (as it isn't advertised anywhere), which they said is 75mb.

6. Does anyone have any experience on whether they get close to the average download, or more the guaranteed download speeds?

7. Specifically the upload speed. Has anyone gotten less than what was advertised? Because the upload speed is quite less than the download, I'm wondering if there isn't any fluctuation in this speed particularly, or whether it's nearly constant to it's advertised speed?

I'm more interested in the upload speed as I am into streaming games across the internet from my PC.

8. Has anyone noticed a drop in speed using their own 3rd party router? Mines fairly new I think (ASUS RT-AX82U). However I've seen some comments online about asus routers and speed fluctuations.

9. Is there any settings in an ASUS router that I should enable/disable for the best speeds? I've heard of enabling NAT acceleration, and disabling QOS and Ai protection. Do these setting have any effect, and is there anymore I should be aware off when it comes to FTTP?


Sorry for the long and thorough post and questions. I'm a bit of a newbie to all these things, and hope anyone can help me with some of them.

Also I hope if no one else knew it was possible, you are able to upgrade midway in an 18 month FTTC contract to FTTP with talktalk without any fuss. What's funny is they had to activate my line for me (free of charge) as previously I was using 3/unlimited 4g router before, and also sent me a talktalk router, so it was definitely a surprise I could upgrade only 4 months later.

I don't know the answer to your questions, but that s a nice price for an excellent speed. Is this over Openreach FTTP or Cityfibre's network? Or anyone else for that matter.

1. yes

2. I don't know. With Talktalk FTTC they use DHCP/IPOE target than PPP. There is no username or password. I'm not sure if FTTP is the same I haven't seen anyone post on this. I'm curious. That is Talktalk residential, Talktalk business has a username and password on both.

3. You will need to describe your street layout to get an answer to this. If the line is overhead fed then the fibre will likely come overhead.
If the current line is ducted to the property they will use this ducting.
Only in areas where the current line is directly buried in the ground should they need to dig your driveway.

4. Try make the job as easy as you can for the engineer. What they are willing to do will vary if your request is unreasonable. Remember there's a pandemic going on.
There are a few engineers on the forum who can answer this better.

5. No idea.

6. Depends how good the ISP is. There hasn't been much posted about Talktalk FTTP in the forum.
For my BT connection OpenReach FTTP gives full throughput every minute of the day for my package.

7. You should get full speed on the upstream provided Talktalk do their bit with your traffic.

8. If the router is powerful enough you will get identical speeds.

9. The question isn't just FTTP specific, but you do need to think about it a bit more with the faster speeds as any router bottleneck will be more obvious.
The router will have a better time if Talktalk don't use PPP like they do on FTTC.
Any features that inspect the traffic will cause extra load on the Asus, including those you mentioned.
Personally I think that Asus model might be ok with the whole lot enabled.

Regarding the last comment, most ISP's let you upgrade at any point mid contract. It's downgrading that isn't so easy.

In reply to a post by Mitchy_mitch:

I don't know the answer to your questions, but that s a nice price for an excellent speed. Is this over Openreach FTTP or Cityfibre's network? Or anyone else for that matter.

OpenReach.

Talktalk are only available in specific areas or I would have jumped on that package.
That's the standard price I believe.

Inside the house, I don't want to move the desk. This is because all my wiring slack go around the back two table legs. I can easily remove the amplifier in the middle and my desk chair, and theres plenty of room if the engineer sits down on his bum to do the installation. Do you think this would be a problem, or do you think they'll expect the area to be totally clear?

Yes, they will expect the area to be clear.

Hi guys thanks for the replies.

I’ll try to keep you updated on what happens, but the engineer won’t be coming until the 28th of Jan so it will be a while.

I did find a post on the talktalk forum of someone using their ASUS router with this fibre, they even posted a PDF of the settings, which seem to be the default automatic WAN settings.

https://community.talktalk.co.uk/eigde79682/attachme...

Seems like I forgot to bookmark the original thread page, but I’m 99% sure it was for the future fibre.

I’m going to ask the engineer when he comes if he can do under the stairs. There is a gap between my desk and the stairs which is currently occupied by my pc and this cube storage thing which I can easily move. However if they refuse, I’ll just get it put where the phone line is. This is because even though my modem is connecting to my router via gigabit power lines, I’ve still been able to stream games no problem on my 17mb upload on other people’s WiFi, it’s quite miraculous how good quality and performance game streaming from your own pc has become now, I was playing halo online just fine. And my power line utility says they are connecting at 734mbps, so I assume I will be able to get the full speed no problem even though it’s going through them. But I think there’s enough room for him to work next to the table for it not to be a problem.

DON’T do the powerline thing .... it’s a recipe for disaster.

If you have the TT hub you can set the Asus up as a wifi repeater and use that for all your devices. I was getting 500-700mbps link speed between the two routers on 5ghz from downstairs to upstairs.

Have you had initial survey? I 'signed' with TTB on 22nd, on 24th OR engineer came for initial survey, I was quite surprised how quick it was organised.

I am with BT FTTP, after switching from virgin media and so far they have bene really good.. I know a lot do have problems with their uploads speed capping etc and this can be put off for some who just want perfect 900/110 service.

I am using netgear router and for 6 months now it has been very solid 970down-120upload bandwidth

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

DON’T do the powerline thing .... it’s a recipe for disaster.

Well I already do the powerline thing, so I reckon the 75mb upload won't be a problem, but it's hard finding any evidence of people using it successfully for fast download speeds, so that may suffer, and if so I'll be considering my options.

In reply to a post by Banger:

If you have the TT hub you can set the Asus up as a wifi repeater and use that for all your devices. I was getting 500-700mbps link speed between the two routers on 5ghz from downstairs to upstairs.

You know, this might not be a bad idea. My main goal was to setup remote gaming (from my pc) and remote access to my files (from my router/HD). However I've been able to successfully remote game (away from home) with great performance and quality on my current 17mb upload (through powerlink adapters) set at a 15mb bitrate.

So my only concern by going wifi instead of ethernet or powerline was the increase in latency. But tbh now I'm thinking of it, it might not be a big problem. I mostly want to play single player games, and I believe a ping of 80ms is the maximum I can have, so I'm assuming it could be doable.

Any idea what your link speed ping is (just between the routers)?

In reply to a post by burble:

Have you had initial survey? I 'signed' with TTB on 22nd, on 24th OR engineer came for initial survey, I was quite surprised how quick it was organised.

No they were meant to come in a couple of days but never did. What did the initial survey entail? Could you ask about placement?

I did ring up Talktalk, as we have had 0 email confirmation on the order. I did ask about the initial survey, but the guy couldn't get through as openreach were closed (it was bank holiday Monday), and told me to ring tomorrow, but I didn't bother. But he did confirm I am booked in for the 28th.


---------

My plan is to ask the engineer if he could put the entry point under my stairs, if not and he has to install it where my current landline is, then my testing will go like this.

Test powerline speeds.
Test WiFi speeds.
Test router linked WiFi speeds.

I'm hoping the 5GHz will be fine. However if the speeds are poor (which I don't think they will be), I will buy a 15m ethernet cable, run it around my room (most of it goes behind sofas and tv), then there's a 3m gap where I will need to hide the cable under the carpet. Now I've never had to do this before and it's new carpet so I don't want to mess it up. But I've done a small trial run and it doesn't seem that bad (pliers, crowbar). However the tricky bit is the carpet isn't one straight line, but goes in to meet the tiles in my kitchen.

While I'm confident I can probably do this without ruining the carpet, it's not ideal, and the wifi repeater idea doesn't sound like a bad idea.

Ok I've just tried to lift up the carpet and put it back near the kitchen tiles, didn't go bad at all. I'll probably go this route if I can't get it installed under my stairs. But I'll test my cable out before putting it under the carpet, just to make sure it's working normally before I do all that work.

Powerline will be inferior to 5GHz WiFi from a reliable throughout and latency/jitter perspective.

Where I've had to do powerline, I've done it through gritted teeth. The promise is never as good as the reality and especially so in the good old UK due to the way domestic wiring is typically done here.

In reply to a post by mannypee:

In reply to a post by burble:

Have you had initial survey? I 'signed' with TTB on 22nd, on 24th OR engineer came for initial survey, I was quite surprised how quick it was organised.

No they were meant to come in a couple of days but never did. What did the initial survey entail? Could you ask about placement?

I did ring up Talktalk, as we have had 0 email confirmation on the order. I did ask about the initial survey, but the guy couldn't get through as openreach were closed (it was bank holiday Monday), and told me to ring tomorrow, but I didn't bother. But he did confirm I am booked in for the 28th.

In our case we were told there would be an initial survey and we didn't need to be home. Very surprised to see him 48hrs later on Christmas eve.
As it was the OR person saw the pole had 'no climb', so knew to order van with hoist, then he could see from pole to house was clear, as we had unlocked the gates he 'wheeled' from pole to house to check distance. Didn't discuss anything in house as it's going in where the present line goes. I'm surprised he didn't have a laser measure.

Any idea what your link speed ping is (just between the routers)?

Date, DL Speed, UL Speed (not tested so -1), Ping to BBC in ms
24/12/2020 01:23,59976,-1,8,
24/12/2020 02:23,56085,-1,27
24/12/2020 03:23,56836,-1,51
24/12/2020 04:23,57149,-1,11
24/12/2020 05:23,57079,-1,11
24/12/2020 06:23,57472,-1,12
24/12/2020 07:23,55614,-1,20
24/12/2020 08:23,60287,-1,8

Above is a record of when I was using repeater mode, normal wired ping is 8ms starting 01:23 so looks like average extra time added between routers is 3ms.

Hey guys thanks for all the replies, they’re really helpful.

But I have to tell you the strangest story which happened to me yesterday/early hours of this morning, this is 100% true and completely bizarre.

So I wake up and all my devices are off. No tripped switches, the extension lead went, well it was a special one I had for like 6 years now with a car battery in it, 4 plugs normal extension lead, 4 plugs run on backup power, the backup power plugs are the ones that stopped working completely. So I chucked it, went to bnm and got a 10 socket extension cable, and plugged everything back in.

Now later on, around 7pm I’m streaming/playing games to my iPad from my PC. Usually get 120mbs no problem. Take a break for a few hours, and think hell it’s Sunday, let’s have another go around 11pm. The streaming is dropping out like crazy. I tell my wife to get off the WiFi, still dropping out like crazy. Use steam link network test, see massive dropouts I can’t explain. Start doing WiFi diagnostics, no interfering channels (I had set this up previously), and tried all sorts of channels and settings to no avail to fix the problem. Now I do a normal Speedtest, and I’m only getting around 30mb Internet speed, which should easily be full speed (around 62mb) on 5ghz WiFi as I get 120mb streaming locally, so it seems like my WiFi was working at around 30mb with constant drop outs. I re-enabled the 2.4ghz band, experienced the exact same problem with speed. Then I thought let me test the connection right next to the WiFi (as I was testing it from the room above, my bedroom where I stream my games to), and I was getting the exact same speeds and dropouts! It didn’t matter how close I was, it was truest bizarre that the exact same thing was happening with both bands. Then I tried adding a power line into my bedroom wall and connect my iPad via an Ethernet adapter, and was getting a smooth connection up to 100mb, so wired connection was completely fine.

So at this point I think I burnt out my brand new ASUS routers WiFi from playing games a couple of hours earlier at 120mbs. But I think cause the power line Ethernet connection to my bedroom is working 100mb, I’ll get the official talktalk router out of the garage, plug it into the power line upstairs and use that WiFi. So I do just that, get the talktalk router, disable dhcp, put it on a fixed IP, make sure the channels aren’t contflicting with my current router or the neighbours.

And here is the most absolute bizarre thing. It suffered from exactly the same problem! Max 30mbps, dropouts, the exact same problem, and it was right next to my bed. I even turned off my ASUS WiFi, still same problems. Tried both bands, still same problem. Done all sorts, I couldn’t fix it. And remember the Ethernet through powerline was getting me a smooth 100mbps, so the speed should be there, but both bands were completely interrupted.

Then I did a factory reset on the talktalk router, put it down stairs replacing my ASUS, and still the exact same problems. At this point I’ve pretty much given up, and am looking to return my ASUS router and get an even more powerful one. After half an hour doing this, it’s really late 4am, I’m in bed, give the speed test another try, and all of a sudden it’s working normally again. I’m actually getting better speeds than before 150mbits streaming (no dropouts), and full internet speeds, but this is because I discovered a new channel for better signal earlier when testing. Then I remove my talktalk router and put the ASUs router back in, both WiFi bands are working as they should normally, and I disable to 2.4ghz again.

The whole thing is totally bizarre because nothing I did, changing settings, changing channels (including non dfs channels), changing distance, adjusting the attennas, changing routers, all resulted in a capped 30mbits with major drop outs (and I’m talking about lan here, not wan).

So for some reason there was major interference with my WiFi (and no appliances were running either). Oh and my cat decided to sleep in the bathroom during this time (the most insulated place in the house tiled walls/floors), so I wonder if he felt something.

Anyway I just had to share this bizarre experience, not sure what anyone else could make of this. I’m just glad I don’t have to return my router lol.

Edited by deleted (Sun 03-Jan-21 16:09:17)

Sounds like your WiFi was picking up some quite severe noise/interference. The actual source of the interference could be just about anything. If it becomes a recurring thing, might need a bit of further investigation.

In reply to a post by mannypee:

So for some reason there was major interference with my WiFi (and no appliances were running either).

You can have interference on WiFi that does not show up on a "WiFI channel checker" because the interference itself is not a WiFi signal. E.g. it could be a neighbour with a faulty microwave, or some industrial machinery nearby, or even an airport.

The bands used by WiFi are not exclusive to WiFi, they can be used by other "unlicensed" users.

In reply to a post by Banger:

Any idea what your link speed ping is (just between the routers)?

Date, DL Speed, UL Speed (not tested so -1), Ping to BBC in ms
24/12/2020 01:23,59976,-1,8,
24/12/2020 02:23,56085,-1,27
24/12/2020 03:23,56836,-1,51
24/12/2020 04:23,57149,-1,11
24/12/2020 05:23,57079,-1,11
24/12/2020 06:23,57472,-1,12
24/12/2020 07:23,55614,-1,20
24/12/2020 08:23,60287,-1,8

Above is a record of when I was using repeater mode, normal wired ping is 8ms starting 01:23 so looks like average extra time added between routers is 3ms.

Just wanted to say thanks for taking the time to get me these results, I really appreciate it.

This idea was a brilliant, until I had that problem that occurred once. Well today it just occurred again just now around 7pm. Constant dropout speeds, only getting 21mb max. So I will have to go a hard wired route regardless now.

These drop out speeds wouldn’t be so much of a problem for streaming videos I doubt, but for streaming games to my iPad, I need a good 5GHz connection, which most of the time it works fine, when all of a sudden it doesn’t.

So I doubt I’ll ever be able to fix this, because it seems to be a strong interference from somewhere else. I do live near an industrial estate, but can’t see any businesses on there that would interfere, but regardless it’s out of my hands now.

Anyway 24 days to go until the engineer comes, though I still haven’t had an initial survey that I know of.

Edited by deleted (Mon 04-Jan-21 19:26:36)

Wired is always best.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by mannypee:

So for some reason there was major interference with my WiFi (and no appliances were running either).

You can have interference on WiFi that does not show up on a "WiFI channel checker" because the interference itself is not a WiFi signal. E.g. it could be a neighbour with a faulty microwave, or some industrial machinery nearby, or even an airport.

The bands used by WiFi are not exclusive to WiFi, they can be used by other "unlicensed" users.

Indeed. The MOD choppers that fly back to Woodbridge often trigger a 'radar found' fault on some of my external Ubiquiti AP's on 5GHz.

Part of the problem of unlicensed ISM bands used by wee-fee is that every man an his dog can use them for a whole bunch of unrelated stuff, causing congestion and [censored] the SNR margin

That explains why I sometimes see APs detecting radar in London - they fly Apaches over fairly regularly so the radome must be setting it off.

I'm also awaiting connection to faster fibre from talk talk. Could you please update how did you get on with yours? What sort of equipment did they install in your property and how is the assus RT-AX82U coping with the new speeds as I'm thinking of buying it as well.

In reply to a post by ciwy85:

I'm also awaiting connection to faster fibre from talk talk. Could you please update how did you get on with yours? What sort of equipment did they install in your property and how is the assus RT-AX82U coping with the new speeds as I'm thinking of buying it as well.

'Faster Fibre' was TT's old name for FTTC, not FTTP, did you mean you are awaiting 'Future Fibre'?

You are correct. I meant future fibre, sorry.

Mines been pushed back to March 17th by openreach. Something to do with Covid, and because I’m getting over 31mb currently I’m not a priority.

Okay I have an update on this. BT openreach came today unexpectedly to pull the fibre to my property. Mine is already underground to the front of my house, but I wanted it on the side of my house under the stairs.

So I asked him if he could put it there and he said the wire will be pulled in the same place (at the front of the house), but when openreach come next time, they’ll splice it and run it around the outside of the house. I asked don’t they need to dig up the drive for them to do this, he said no, only the fibre being pulled at the front of my house needs to be underground.

However I just checked outside and there’s a big bundle of fibre wire there, look at this pic link: Bundled fibre cable picture

So with so much fibre cable, surely this can’t go around the outside of the house right? Isn’t it meant to go underground?

Or will they splice and put the box there and then run another cable around the house?

I mean I don’t care if the fibre cable goes on the outside of my house, just a bit confused whether if this fibre cable is allowed to go around the outside of my house or will have to go underground, or they splice it there at the front and then run it round?

Just seems like a lot of slack not to use and put it around the outside of my house, that’s why I find it confusing.

Any guesses peeps?

There was a fair coil of fibre when they did the first part of mine but they only used about 8 feet of it for the actual install - I think it is cheaper to leave a lot of spare than to risk having to redo that first part.

Its external grade cable. So its perfectly fine to go on the outside walls etc. of your house. Just not inside, which is what there's an external splice point where it transitions to internal.

The cables from CBT to CSP are in pre made lengths, so the stage one has been done, and that’s the spare.

A CSP will be fitted to the top of the BT101, which will house both copper and the fibre. The ONT will be fitted, and fibre runout and externally to the CSP.

You are perhaps ‘overthinking’ this. Relax.

Engineer is installing it now. No trouble, nice lad, putting it around the side of my house.

The modem indoors is actually tiny. Originally I wanted it under the desk, but because I was worried they wouldn’t do it, I made room under the stairs where my pc was (couldn’t move the desk as it has loads of wires wrapped around the back legs). However he said it was absolutely fine putting it under the desk, it only requires a couple of screws to put on the wall.

So all good, will probably be finished in a 30 minutes now. Will do a speed test and post my results back here once it’s down. My only regret is ordering a 3m cat 7 cable from Amazon coming today, as that’s what I needed if he was going to put it next to the desk/where the pc was, but now I can use a 1.5m cat 6 I already have.

So so far it’s all good.

Just for reference, there's no point buying cat7 anyway.

cat5e = good for 1 gigabit at up to 100m
cat6 = good for 1 gigabit at up to 100m; also good for 10 gigabits at up to 55m
cat6a = good for 1 gigabit at up to 100m; also good for 10 gigabits at up to 100m
cat7 = not a recognised TIA/EIA standard, and no benefit over cat6a

👍 I agree with your points. I’d also add zero point buying a shielded patch lead. At least here in the UK. Different perhaps in continental Europe.

Minor point, whilst fair to say Cat 7 was never ratified by the TIA/EIA it was actually ratified by the ISO/IEC under the parallel 11801 structured cabling standard (11801 and the TIA/EIA standards were “twinned” for decades - TIA/EIA refer to ‘categories’ whilst ISO/IEC 11801 talks about ‘classes’)

Some chatter below from the good folk at Fluke about Cat 7...

https://www.flukenetworks.com/blog/cabling-chronicle...

Shall we talk about Category 8 🤣?

Well they're nearly all as cheap as each other for the ones I get (amazon basics), it was only £6.70 for 3m, and is currently cheaper than the cat 6 3m amazon basics cable (£10.49). Thing is I only ordered a cat 7 cause I didn't think I had any cat 6's at the 3m length, but then realize I did have one when looking today. And at the end of the day I ended up using a 1.5m cable that came with my router anyway. I'm up to my eyeballs with cables these days.

One other thing to note is apparently this BT fibre will be able to support 10Gbs in the future, so at least I'll be able to use that cable one day probably in a decade lol

As for my speeds, I was getting between 250-350mb, so I wasn't happy. I tried a different cable, no luck. So I try the talktalk router instead of my Asus router, and now I'm getting full 500mb speeds, and 70mb upload.

Which was then annoying because I wanted to use my asus router for accessing my own cloud via aidisk. And guess what, can't do it cause it's a private WAN (connect lan from talktalk to WAN in asus router), so the asus DDNS thing doesn't work. As luck would have it, after forwarding my asus router IP with DMZ on the talktalk router, I can still access my files via IP address, and I tested resetting the modem, and it seems to be static IP, so I'm cushdy. And after much testing, the asus router seems to be operating fine for connecting devices to it wireless or lan and routing, so I just ended up disabling the wifi on the talktalk.

Anyway so much unnecessary detail, but it's a bit of a shame I had to setup both routers cause my new asus router couldn't get up to 500mb, but I'm just happy it's all working and setup now.

Edited by deleted (Wed 17-Mar-21 13:45:28)

I don't know how Amazon can get away with such ludicrously high pricing for a commodity item. At fs.com, a single 3m CAT5e patch cable is £2.20; CAT6 £2.90. (However, you have to pay postage on orders under £79)

Even if Cat7 is ratified by the ISO/IEC it means jack if the IEEE don't ratify an 802.3 standard for actually using it, which fun fact they have not. In addition the only IEEE 802.3 standard for Cat8 is limited to 30m requires special connectors (as does Cat7) and is intended for data centre usage in racks at 40Gbps.

Frankly the chances of you seeing any actual deployment of 40GBase-T (802.3bq) is around ħ because we either use direct attach cables which are cheaper, and lower powered or we just use actual fibre. Well in my personal experience that's what we do,

Hell even 10GBaseT is virtual none existent in the data centre because it would be a right royal pain in the backside to use. I would have to buy really expensive 10GBase-T SFP+'s to put in my switches and I would be limited to 30m anyway. Frankly I would look to replace any 10GBaseT network card with an SFP+ based one first.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Just for reference, there's no point buying cat7 anyway.

cat5e = good for 1 gigabit at up to 100m
cat6 = good for 1 gigabit at up to 100m; also good for 10 gigabits at up to 55m
cat6a = good for 1 gigabit at up to 100m; also good for 10 gigabits at up to 100m
cat7 = not a recognised TIA/EIA standard, and no benefit over cat6a

Note that NBaseT brings some additional options

Cat5e = good for 2.5Gbps up to 100m and also probably good for 5Gbps up to 55m
Cat6 = good for 2.5Gbps up to 100m and also good for 5Gbps up to 100m.

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

Hell even 10GBaseT is virtual none existent in the data centre because it would be a right royal pain in the backside to use. I would have to buy really expensive 10GBase-T SFP+'s to put in my switches and I would be limited to 30m anyway. Frankly I would look to replace any 10GBaseT network card with an SFP+ based one first.

For datacentre use it is pretty pointless.

There are some niche use cases for 10GBase-T in broadcast/media production settings where it actually makes sense over DACs... for example a major event press centre, rows of hot desks for photographers/cameramen to plug their laptop with 10G dongle in and upload.

Edit: but we are well off topic now.

Edited by ft247 (Wed 14-Apr-21 15:07:30)

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

Even if Cat7 is ratified by the ISO/IEC it means jack if the IEEE don't ratify an 802.3 standard for actually using it, which fun fact they have not. In addition the only IEEE 802.3 standard for Cat8 is limited to 30m requires special connectors (as does Cat7) and is intended for data centre usage in racks at 40Gbps.

Frankly the chances of you seeing any actual deployment of 40GBase-T (802.3bq) is around ħ because we either use direct attach cables which are cheaper, and lower powered or we just use actual fibre. Well in my personal experience that's what we do,

Hell even 10GBaseT is virtual none existent in the data centre because it would be a right royal pain in the backside to use. I would have to buy really expensive 10GBase-T SFP+'s to put in my switches and I would be limited to 30m anyway. Frankly I would look to replace any 10GBaseT network card with an SFP+ based one first.

Not necessarily advocating Cat7 cabling (or Cat8!), datacenter out otherwise, just merely indicating the divergence between the 11801 ISO/IEC cabling standards and the TIA/EIA 568 cabling standards - which up until Category 6 / Class E the Europeans and Americans, were pretty much aligned in their twisted pair cabling standards whether it be stateside 'Categories' or the Euro/ISO based 'Classes'.

Category 7 was always a 'shielded' led standard - driven ny the continental predilection for such cabling. In USA, (as in OZ/NZ and the good old UK), unshielded copper has always been historically dominant - at least that was my experience working in that part of the industry up until the early noughties. Nothing much really changed since then.

In any event Cat 6a does enough (for me at least) running 10 Gbps up to 100m. Beyond that fibre all the way!

Hello!
Quick question - does anyone know what Authentication method TalkTalk FutureFibre 500 uses please? Is it PPPoE or IPoE? I have a UniFi USG router and wondering if I can use it with TalkTalk, it only supports PPPoE AFAICT, and I am worried TalkTalk uses IPoE. Any ideas anyone please?

The ordinary TalkTalk (retail / residential) FTTP services use DHCP/IPoE.

Only the TalkTalk Business FTTP services use PPPoE with dummy login/password creds.

I believe the USG should support an IP WAN connection with DHCP.

https://community.ui.com/questions/USG-DHCP-WAN-prob...