20Gbps

Of theoretical interest only (so far) in the UK, and most of the US come to that, but it sounds rather tasty...

In reference to fiber.google.com/blog/2023/12/your-most-exciting-invitation-this.html:

Your most exciting invitation this holiday season — 20 Gig + Wi-Fi 7 for $250 a month

The majority of people don't even use what we have to its full potential.

In reply to a post by billford:

Of theoretical interest only (so far) in the UK, and most of the US come to that, but it sounds rather tasty..

Not really needed for another 10/15 years I think, as you're talking more bandwidth than most websites will have.

A bit like the YouFibre 8Gbps and Community Fibre 3Gbps plans, this is a way to get your own customers to pay for your ability to market that you have the fastest fibre broadband in the country. Outside of a couple of speedtests the average usage won't increase as there are no applications that become viable on 20Gb that weren't on 1Gb, and you get to enjoy the huge increase in margin for the contract duration.

Good luck routing 20 Gbits.
It would cost a fortune in hardware and then more to power it.

This sort of capacity is designed for serious multiple user bases such as universities.

In reply to a post by smouty:

This sort of capacity is designed for serious multiple user bases such as universities.

AI researcher or video editors working from home? Hosting web sites, update servers to name but a few.

But arguably those things really belong in a data centre with redundant fibre routes and generator backup, not sat under your desk at home.

Obligatory xkcd 908

In reply to a post by DrBob:

AI researcher or video editors working from home? Hosting web sites, update servers to name but a few.

Not at home. Those editing 4k video cope with 1G/1G (or 900/900) lines without issue. The AI types will have their work in the cloud and remote control a system hosted on an EC2 (AWS) or VM (Azure).

1 to 4 Gbps MAY be sensible in the next 5 to 10 years, but 20 Gbps is just crazy as you'll need data centre grade hardware (and cooling) to connect and even a house full of teenagers won't saturate it...

I tried 1Gb/s for fun but never really needed that speed ... soon downgraded to 450Mb/s.

In reply to a post by Spud2003:

I tried 1Gb/s for fun but never really needed that speed ... soon downgraded to 450Mb/s.

Hardly anyone really needs 450 either, but it's pretty nice for downloading content. All a question of budget and what's considered value I guess.

In reply to a post by Spud2003:

I tried 1Gb/s for fun but never really needed that speed ... soon downgraded to 450Mb/s.

I will downgrade to 150Mb/s once my contract is up, I have no need for 500Mb/s, if they offered an even slower speed for less money I would half that and that would be more than enough.

For me, 300/50 is the sweet spot.

If I halve the speed to 160/30 I only save £3 per month. But to increase speed by ~50% to 500/75 costs an extra £5 per month.

300M is also what commodity wifi can handle comfortably.

You'd need a custom solution for that to work in a home plus a pcie x4 or x8 slot (depending on pcie version) and you'd have to go with a custom wifi solution as you'd use a pc for routing..

not for the fainthearted.

AI is the only thing now that will saturate multigig connections, gaming won't, downloading won't (most servers are 1gbit minus cdn's ) When i mean ai, as in it creating large datasets and moving those around and or downloading large datasets - in real time.

Anyways, for me, i need 500mbits to 1gbit down and 500mbits up ideally .......

My provider's packages were priced to steer you towards 450/100 for maximum value for money - that's why I have that speed.

It's fascinating how stories like this consistently trigger a wave of opinions claiming that no one really needs internet speeds beyond a certain point. However, progress is driven by challenging the status quo and embracing early adoption. I'm on CFs 3Gb package, and the capabilities of fast internet are astounding.

In my line of work, dealing with extremely large files, I can transfer them across cloud storage as if they were local. Downloading games from Steam takes just a few minutes. The possibilities are limitless.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

For me, 300/50 is the sweet spot.

If I halve the speed to 160/30 I only save £3 per month. But to increase speed by ~50% to 500/75 costs an extra £5 per month.

300M is also what commodity wifi can handle comfortably.

My Gfast was a sweet spot for 8 days. Happy with 241/41. No complaint at all.

Stats recorded 20 Dec 2023 16:57:51

DSLAM type / SW version: BDCM:0xc190 (193.144) / v0xc190
Modem/router firmware: AnnexA version - A2pvfbH043q.d26u
DSL mode: G
Status: Showtime
Uptime: 8 days 15 hours 44 min 4 sec
Resyncs: 0 (since 12 Dec 2023 01:12:45)

Downstream Upstream
Line attenuation (dB): 37.0 0.0
Signal attenuation (dB): 37.0 0.0
Connection speed (kbps): 241671 41900
SNR margin (dB): 3.1 3.1
Power (dBm): 0.0 4.0
Interleave depth:
INP: 551.00 535.00
G.INP: Not enabled Not enabled
Vectoring status: Unknown

RSCorr/RS (%): 0.4930 0.7735
RSUnCorr/RS (%): 0.0000 0.0000
ES/hour: 0 0

In reply to a post by Taras:

You'd need a custom solution for that to work in a home plus a pcie x4 or x8 slot (depending on pcie version) and you'd have to go with a custom wifi solution as you'd use a pc for routing..

You can certainly buy routers in a single RU form factor that'll handle it and WiFi is a case of getting a router that has an access point mode which even commodity Asus and Netgear kit does.

I imagine people willing to spend that money on an Internet connection won't be phased by a router VM or buying a Mikrotik 2216. They'll have SFP28 switches anyway.

In reply to a post by jon999:

It's fascinating how stories like this consistently trigger a wave of opinions claiming that no one really needs internet speeds beyond a certain point. However, progress is driven by challenging the status quo and embracing early adoption. I'm on CFs 3Gb package, and the capabilities of fast internet are astounding.

In my line of work, dealing with extremely large files, I can transfer them across cloud storage as if they were local. Downloading games from Steam takes just a few minutes. The possibilities are limitless.

Speaking as a person with 8 Gbit at home, yes, the speed is great as I said, but doing things faster isn't needing the extra performance for an application. We're still waiting for the killer gigabit and multigig app to arrive. At the moment it's the same things faster and doing the same things as slower connections on multiple devices concurrently.

We've reached a plateau. The Register recently made a similar point, but for computing in general:
https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/19/windows_nt_30...

The change from dial-up to ADSL was transformational in terms of what you could do with the Internet. The transition to fibre, much less so. It's just more of the same, but a bit faster.

Being able to stream Netflix on demand is transformational. Being able to stream Netflix in UHD is not.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

The change from dial-up to ADSL was transformational in terms of what you could do with the Internet. The transition to fibre, much less so. It's just more of the same, but a bit faster.

agreed on dial up to ADSL, but for many people that was less than 5 Mbit, the benefit was always on. The move to FTTC/VDSL was for a lot of people much more transformational as 30 to 40 Mbps was common, and quite a few people got faster. The modern web (with all the advertising/scripting junk) is unusable on dialup, people now use mobile data which can get 20-30 Mbps generally in most places.

The cable coax, or FTTP services with 100 Mbps or faster are as you say not yet transformational. They speed up downloads or patching/updating of computers and mobile devices, and those whom play the extensive games that download to a console appreciate the quicker download of 300GB of data.... but those are still not insane-mass-market that the always on ADSL provided.

The front page stories about 185,000 homes passed, and 20,000 take up, I suspect is quite typical.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

The front page stories about 185,000 homes passed, and 20,000 take up, I suspect is quite typical.

The figures on TBB in the last couple of days says 28% take-up rate on average across the UK but in the more rural areas it's 49% probably because in those places it's the first offering with a significant speed boost for people who typically were supplied via longer copper connections.

In reply to a post by rippedcotton:

probably because in those places it's the first offering with a significant speed boost for people who typically were supplied via longer copper connections.

Agreed, and I wonder for those providers that sell different speed products, if the medium speed products are more common in built up, and higher speed in rural, as built up areas may be moving from older services and people feel "200 Mbps is good enough, I'm used to 60" and rural people will go for 500 Mbps as they only had 5 Mbps before. Doubt we will ever know!

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by rippedcotton:

probably because in those places it's the first offering with a significant speed boost for people who typically were supplied via longer copper connections.

Agreed, and I wonder for those providers that sell different speed products, if the medium speed products are more common in built up, and higher speed in rural, as built up areas may be moving from older services and people feel "200 Mbps is good enough, I'm used to 60" and rural people will go for 500 Mbps as they only had 5 Mbps before. Doubt we will ever know!

I recently moved from 80/20 FTTC to 500/75 FTTP, initially my provider suggested the 100Mbps FTTP product, but I said I wanted the faster speed because otherwise I wouldn't notice the difference.

Memories of 3kB/s dialup are strong...

Not directly related but I have been playing around with NetBoot.xyz running it locally and with a 1gbit connection you can boot a device from the network and have a working Linux install in under 5 mins.
Unless the hosting speeds improve this would not speed up much more.

For home use I cannot see any genuine use case for anything faster currently.

Edited by smouty (Fri 22-Dec-23 14:37:06)

In reply to a post by smouty:

For home use I cannot see any genuine use case for anything faster currently.

You may be right, but as with the improvement in GPS accuracy when the deliberate errors in the signal timings were removed in 2000 and "accuracy became addictive" I suppose everyone likes additional speed and reduced latency.

My biggest improvement in service moving to Community Fibre (I believe XGS-PON) isn't the downstream - I had that on Virgin - it's been the reliability. The thing is never down and never has issues. It's hard to market that. So if the 20Gbps service means more reliability for whatever reason, then it's a win.

I've also found going from VM's 52Mbps upload to CF's 1Gbps upload has made a large difference. It's so nice being able to stream my media in full quality anywhere I've been. Nice case, most people stream but I prefer my own media.

In reply to a post by rxp:

My biggest improvement in service moving to Community Fibre (I believe XGS-PON) isn't the downstream - I had that on Virgin - it's been the reliability. The thing is never down and never has issues. It's hard to market that. So if the 20Gbps service means more reliability for whatever reason, then it's a win.

I've also found going from VM's 52Mbps upload to CF's 1Gbps upload has made a large difference. It's so nice being able to stream my media in full quality anywhere I've been. Nice case, most people stream but I prefer my own media.

Yes, reliability is a good selling point but as you say hard to demonstrate. Perhaps the stats for it should be required in the advertising for a service.

I don't have access to anything other than OR fibre here, and probably never will, so until they decide at some point to provide faster upload or even symmetric up/down speeds then you have an option I don't. Luck of the draw really.

ISPs would have to be careful advertising reliability as well because it starts to sound like an SLA

In reply to a post by jpm:

ISPs would have to be careful advertising reliability as well because it starts to sound like an SLA

Yes, that is a good point. However moving to FTTP is supposed to be improving the reliability of the OR network at least, and designing infrastructure with reliability and resilience is not a bad plan.

What rubbish.

My home router is a ccr2004-1g-12s+2xs, has 2 25g ports, and would likely get close enough. It's a similar price category to the udm pro, at about £450, which is a similar price to some of the "gamer" monstrosities with 27 antennas you see.

In reply to a post by Taras:

You'd need a custom solution for that to work in a home plus a pcie x4 or x8 slot (depending on pcie version) and you'd have to go with a custom wifi solution as you'd use a pc for routing..

not for the fainthearted.

AI is the only thing now that will saturate multigig connections, gaming won't, downloading won't (most servers are 1gbit minus cdn's ) When i mean ai, as in it creating large datasets and moving those around and or downloading large datasets - in real time.

Anyways, for me, i need 500mbits to 1gbit down and 500mbits up ideally .......

AI? what are you on about.

A Mikrotik CCR2004-1g-12s+2xs would be sufficient. I run that already. Yes you're not going to hit 20gbit over wifi, that's not the intention. A few 6E APs would probably be what people would run.

I have that kit now for my 2gbit down connection.

Ref the PCIe cards, cheap Mellanox ConnectX-4Lx cards from ebay work fine. It's cheaper to do 25G with SFP28 modules and DAC cables than it is 10G with RJ45/Cat6.

Oh I was planning on upgrading my RB4011iGS+RM over the next few years to possibly the CCR2004-1G-12S+2XS or a CRS326-24S+2Q+RM to future proof not that I would ever go for that speed, but more to run a 10GBit LAN to each room.

---
Paul

In reply to a post by nemeth782:

AI? what are you on about.

read up on big data and ai. Understand the need for large datasets probably changing in real time then, you start to release the bandwidth issues. Will it hit our homes in the next 10 or 15 years who knows.

In reply to a post by nemeth782:

A Mikrotik CCR2004-1g-12s+2xs would be sufficient. I run that already. Yes you're not going to hit 20gbit over wifi, that's not the intention. A few 6E APs would probably be what people would run.

I have that kit now for my 2gbit down connection.

Ref the PCIe cards, cheap Mellanox ConnectX-4Lx cards from ebay work fine. It's cheaper to do 25G with SFP28 modules and DAC cables than it is 10G with RJ45/Cat6.

I'm happy for you, just as i will be happy with my network, enjoy

In reply to a post by PaulKirby:

Oh I was planning on upgrading my RB4011iGS+RM over the next few years to possibly the CCR2004-1G-12S+2XS or a CRS326-24S+2Q+RM to future proof not that I would ever go for that speed, but more to run a 10GBit LAN to each room.

Bear in mind that the CRS326-24S+2Q+RM is a switch, not a router. It has only a single core 650MHz MIPS CPU; it will switch at line speed but it will only route at about 200Mbps! So you definitely need a separate router upstream from it.

The CCR2004-1G-12S+2XS does look cool, although with only a 4-core CPU and no layer 3 offloading, it seems a bit underpowered for 10G. For 2G or 3G presented on a 10G port I think it would be OK.

The CCR2116-12G-4S+ has the opposite problem: plenty of power but only 4 x 10G ports.

If you have to ask the price of the CCR2216-1G-12XS-2XQ, then you can't afford it

It always amazes me when people comment with "you can't get the full 20Gbit download speed from websites"

This is probably obvious to most children at this point. It's also obvious to most that the purpose of these multi-gigabit connections is for multiple users to have multi-gigabit performance from the same connection.

I wonder if the same people comment on car forums that a Bugatti can't achieve 300MPH on UK motorways?

In reply to a post by candlerb:

The CCR2004-1G-12S+2XS does look cool, although with only a 4-core CPU and no layer 3 offloading, it seems a bit underpowered for 10G. For 2G or 3G presented on a 10G port I think it would be OK.

It's fine for 15 Gbps or so. Sources: Init7 and my own testing.

Mikrotik's own test results: https://mikrotik.com/product/ccr2004_1g_12s_2xs#fndt...

If you're doing 1500-byte MTU packets, then total throughput 14.3G (with 25 IP filter rules). Remember you need 20G of routing throughput if you want to max a 10G link in both directions.

With 512 byte packets this drops to 4.8G. Worst case 64-byte packets, 636Mbps. They don't give an IMIX figure.

So yeah: probably "good enough" if you're just doing big file downloads at home, but I wouldn't run a data centre off it.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Mikrotik's own test results: https://mikrotik.com/product/ccr2004_1g_12s_2xs#fndt...

If you're doing 1500-byte MTU packets, then total throughput 14.3G (with 25 IP filter rules). Remember you need 20G of routing throughput if you want to max a 10G link in both directions.

With 512 byte packets this drops to 4.8G. Worst case 64-byte packets, 636Mbps. They don't give an IMIX figure.

So yeah: probably "good enough" if you're just doing big file downloads at home, but I wouldn't run a data centre off it.

But I mean we're talking about a 20Gbps home product, so probably about right then. Home users also don't tend to need loads of IP filter rules, so quoting the 64 byte worst case figure with loads of rules is a bit disingenuous. The average home router would do a lot less than 636Mbps in that scenario so shouldn't be used on 1gbit services?

If you do want to run a datacentre, there is the 2216 : https://mikrotik.com/product/ccr2216_1g_12xs_2xq#fnd...

Edited by nemeth782 (Mon 01-Jan-24 11:21:15)

I don't think anybody is saying it's bad value or even a bad product, you just have to be careful quite often with MikroTik as it's quite cheap to chuck interfaces on a device but backing them up with processing performance is more expensive. The CCR2004 "only" has 50Gbps available for all the ports to share, it's the sort of device where you can use a handful of the 10Gb interfaces or you're using the 25Gb ones because that's what's at the other end and you might be able to go a bit quicker than 10Gb in certain situations. It's doing about what a 4-core ARM CPU can be expected to handle.

In reply to a post by jpm:

I don't think anybody is saying it's bad value or even a bad product, you just have to be careful quite often with MikroTik as it's quite cheap to chuck interfaces on a device but backing them up with processing performance is more expensive. The CCR2004 "only" has 50Gbps available for all the ports to share, it's the sort of device where you can use a handful of the 10Gb interfaces or you're using the 25Gb ones because that's what's at the other end and you might be able to go a bit quicker than 10Gb in certain situations. It's doing about what a 4-core ARM CPU can be expected to handle.

Yeah, fully aware of the bandwidth limits, hence I use it as a router (with a single WAN port and single LAN port) and not a switch

But if running some ISP provided integrated router and WAP (that quite probably doesn't even support VLANs, and is going to have way lower than 600mbit of throughput in the small frame, many rule scenario I was replying to) is acceptable on a 1G service, then running a CCR2004 on a 20Gbit service is acceptable for home use imo.

I guess what I'm getting to, is that a user on a CCR2004 can make as much use of a 20Gbit service as a user on an EE Smart Hub Plus can make use of a 1.6gbit connection.

Edited by nemeth782 (Mon 01-Jan-24 14:20:26)

In reply to a post by Taras:

In reply to a post by nemeth782:

AI? what are you on about.

read up on big data and ai. Understand the need for large datasets probably changing in real time then, you start to release the bandwidth issues. Will it hit our homes in the next 10 or 15 years who knows.

In reply to a post by nemeth782:

A Mikrotik CCR2004-1g-12s+2xs would be sufficient. I run that already. Yes you're not going to hit 20gbit over wifi, that's not the intention. A few 6E APs would probably be what people would run.

I have that kit now for my 2gbit down connection.

Ref the PCIe cards, cheap Mellanox ConnectX-4Lx cards from ebay work fine. It's cheaper to do 25G with SFP28 modules and DAC cables than it is 10G with RJ45/Cat6.

I'm happy for you, just as i will be happy with my network, enjoy

I know how AI works, but building your own AI model and training it on massive datasets isn't really a home user scenario.

In reply to a post by nemeth782:

quoting the 64 byte worst case figure with loads of rules is a bit disingenuous

I didn't say that this worst-case figure should be used as a guideline. There *is* a guideline, and it's called IMIX (a representative mix of Internet packet sizes), but sadly Mikrotik don't quote throughput for that.

In the absence of IMIX measurements, I think the 512-byte packet throughput is a reasonable benchmark. You're going to have a mix of big packets for large downloads, and small packets for DNS, conferencing, and other miscellaneous stuff.

I just don't see why anybody would pay for a 10G link without a router fully capable of 10G. It probably means you didn't really *need* 10G in the first place, in which case, you could just take a lower capacity link.

On mine, the vast majority of my packets go through fastpath, which makes sense as ongoing sessions generally do. I'd submit that while 512-byte packets is a reasonable benchmark for overall internet usage, home use of 20gbps is likely to be massive bulk downloads from newsgroups, steam, torrents, etc, all of which are likely to be full packets.

I agree very few people likely need 20G. Very few home users "need" 1G, and I don't "need" a motorbike but I like having one.

I don't know what other tiers the ISP offer, but there may well be a big gap, e.g. a 5gbps service and a 20gbps service, in which case I can see someone going "I can achieve 12gbps and want more than 5 so will take 20"

Very few home users "need" 1G,

Here at work with 700 pupils and 80 staff, from usage stats we don't need 1Gbps, we barely need 300Mbps. However if someone else is paying (they are) 1Gbps does make everything rather more snappy (couple of minutes to dowload VLSC ISOs? I don't mind that at all)

In reply to a post by Sponge35:

Here at work with 700 pupils and 80 staff, from usage stats we don't need 1Gbps, we barely need 300Mbps. However if someone else is paying (they are) 1Gbps does make everything rather more snappy (couple of minutes to dowload VLSC ISOs? I don't mind that at all)

A shared GPON network 1G/1G on a retail contract is quite different to a business / school / charity with an office that has 300 Mbps symmetric over a leased line circuit.

I'm kind of interested in how CityFibre do their ethernet and ethernet flex services. A pure guess based on pricing but assuming that Ethernet is a spare fibre dedicated to you all the way back to the FEX with pricing pretty much the same as Openreach, and their Flex product is PON like all the residential services but if you need an engineer to attend you jump the queue.

In reply to a post by jpm:

I'm kind of interested in how CityFibre do their ethernet and ethernet flex services. A pure guess based on pricing but assuming that Ethernet is a spare fibre dedicated to you all the way back to the FEX with pricing pretty much the same as Openreach, and their Flex product is PON like all the residential services but if you need an engineer to attend you jump the queue.

Ethernet is a regular leased line, dedicated fibre.

Flex is delivered over GPON but apparently on a very low split ratio of 6:1 - https://www.giganet.uk/2019/07/04/cityfibre-flex-lea...

Edited by XGS_Is_On (Wed 24-Jan-24 10:54:39)

I've found most schools and offices only go with leased lines if they can't get FTTP, cable or a decent FTTC

Thanks
Dan

In reply to a post by danielhyde:

I've found most schools and offices only go with leased lines if they can't get FTTP, cable or a decent FTTC

Not surprising given the cost difference, and that kids in school can wait a bit if there is congestion.

The issue is many schools now using all their IT in the cloud (Google, Microsoft etc) with if the link goes down they end up having to cancel classes!

A shared GPON network 1G/1G on a retail contract is quite different to a business / school / charity with an office that has 300 Mbps symmetric over a leased line circuit.

It is indeed - however the bandwidfth demands are the point, rather than the bearer.... my point being that about 400 users rarely saturate a 300Mbps connection. One person could, easily, if they were downloading the internet (or all the films they could never watch)

FWIW Our leased line circuit is a fibre, symmetric, 1Gbps bearer (what specific product it is I don't know as the LA deals with that side of things) with a nominal 300Mbps enabled bandwidth... though it may have been enabled at 1Gbps for a while (cough - a year or so) before anyone noticed and turned down the wick at Christmas. On Monday it gets officially set to 1Gbps.

In reply to a post by Sponge35:

A shared GPON network 1G/1G on a retail contract is quite different to a business / school / charity with an office that has 300 Mbps symmetric over a leased line circuit.

It is indeed - however the bandwidfth demands are the point, rather than the bearer.... my point being that about 400 users rarely saturate a 300Mbps connection. One person could, easily, if they were downloading the internet (or all the films they could never watch)

To be fair a fraction of the students will presumably be online at any one time and they will be heavily filtered with the staff somewhat less strictly controlled but still pretty aggressively filtered as far as access to the Internet goes. Can't really compare that to residential usage per user.

FWIW residential usage is roughly 5-7.5 Mbit/s per home sustained, though of course there are bursts way higher and those have to be catered for.

As you mentioned earlier it's all very much about doing the same things more quickly. Most of us could, reluctantly, just about get by on double-digits megabits per second to our homes we just want to do more than get by.

In reply to a post by Sponge35:

It is indeed - however the bandwidfth demands are the point, rather than the bearer.... my point being that about 400 users rarely saturate a 300Mbps connection. One person could, easily, if they were downloading the internet (or all the films they could never watch)

No disagreement from me, we used to have 1500 office users on a 3 Mbps line in 2000... but everyone's requirements change, and the way we use computers changes.

FWIW Our leased line circuit is a fibre, symmetric, 1Gbps bearer (what specific product it is I don't know as the LA deals with that side of things) with a nominal 300Mbps enabled bandwidth... though it may have been enabled at 1Gbps for a while (cough - a year or so) before anyone noticed and turned down the wick at Christmas. On Monday it gets officially set to 1Gbps.

My friend (teacher) at a school their IT person now runs everything separate from the LA, and they have a 200 Mbs symmetric service, no idea if copper or fibre bearer. Cable apparently wasn't interested, and the Alt Net is still building. No sign of Openreach FTTP in town.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

My friend (teacher) at a school their IT person now runs everything separate from the LA, and they have a 200 Mbs symmetric service, no idea if copper or fibre bearer. Cable apparently wasn't interested, and the Alt Net is still building. No sign of Openreach FTTP in town.

Interestingly, I was just talking to a friend at my kids' school and he (while being entirely non-IT!) told me that the school has a boat-load of fibre bandwidth, but now resells a chunk of it to a local new-build estate via a microwave link on the roof. They worked out that, quite logically, school bandwidth usage and domestic bandwidth usage are almost entirely at opposite parts of the day, so it doesn't cost the school anything more and they offset a large chunk of their infrastructure budget by flogging their unused, out of hours capacity to a third-party. Quite a canny move, TBH.

Where I work is a bit of a rural internet backwater with residents struggling to get even the lowest levels of broadband speed, with fibre not being on the roadmap yet. I sometimes feel rather guilty at the 100Gbps+ that we have coming into our building and am rather glad that noone locally knows about it or we'd probably have them banging on the doors with pitchforks!

In reply to a post by daern:

In reply to a post by jchamier:

My friend (teacher) at a school their IT person now runs everything separate from the LA, and they have a 200 Mbs symmetric service, no idea if copper or fibre bearer. Cable apparently wasn't interested, and the Alt Net is still building. No sign of Openreach FTTP in town.

Interestingly, I was just talking to a friend at my kids' school and he (while being entirely non-IT!) told me that the school has a boat-load of fibre bandwidth, but now resells a chunk of it to a local new-build estate via a microwave link on the roof. They worked out that, quite logically, school bandwidth usage and domestic bandwidth usage are almost entirely at opposite parts of the day, so it doesn't cost the school anything more and they offset a large chunk of their infrastructure budget by flogging their unused, out of hours capacity to a third-party. Quite a canny move, TBH.

Quite a dodgy move. Isn't their bandwidth to resell.

In reply to a post by daern:

I work is a bit of a rural internet backwater with residents struggling to get even the lowest levels of broadband speed, with fibre not being on the roadmap yet. I sometimes feel rather guilty at the 100Gbps+ that we have coming into our building and am rather glad that noone locally knows about it or we'd probably have them banging on the doors with pitchforks!

A school, business or whatever having those speeds while the residential folks don't is nothing out of the ordinary.

In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

Quite a dodgy move. Isn't their bandwidth to resell.

Only dodgy if they've not agreed it with the supplier surely?

Quite a dodgy move. Isn't their bandwidth to resell.

Well, I guess the school are paying for it and in these current times, I can't see anyone arguing with them reselling unused capacity to recoup some of that budget back. Who is going to tell them not to do it?

In reply to a post by daern:

Quite a dodgy move. Isn't their bandwidth to resell.

Who is going to tell them not to do it?

Their supplier, who's t&c's will certainly forbid it.
The school would also be legally responsible for whatever a random resident downloads, with any legal correspondence being sent to them.
I think such a situation to be highly unlikely. Schools/councils also have legal departments that would advise against that.

A microwave link on the school roof utilising the schools spare fibres, done through the supplier with the school getting some kind of kickback sounds possible.
The school just piggybacking their own connection/excess bandwidth to a nearby estate would be inadvisable.

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

Their supplier, who's t&c's will certainly forbid it.

Nah. On a domestic broadband connection, probably. On a commercial service, I've never seen such a caveat. Knock your socks out with it.

You know, I'm going to go with "they probably know what they're doing" on this one.