so is there any advantage/what are the benefits of sky having their own core network? would that benefit ping times more than a speed vs stable profile setting?

This is the only factors that i need to understand to make my decision now. Skys network vs Zens speed profile

Your location being inside the M25 should give you an advantage over someone who lives in another area like Scotland or wales, Sky's routing within it's own network latency should be quite low, how low can depend on distance from the nearest POP and if DLM has applied interleave or not, in your case it has,
as for routing once outside their network (peering) within the uk both will be similar in how traffic is routed and latency , for overseas destinations, i would imagine that they may differ in peering /routing but latency may be quite close between them. as there are a limited amount of options available to any isp

The DLM side of things will basically work based on the error count as well as re syncs in a given time frame, the threshold's will be most stringent on the Stable profile,
So should you be affected by crosstalk,ect DLM would be more aggressive , where as on the speed profile, DLM would still be active,and could still apply interleave, but should be less aggressive if it does act, the Standard profile is supposed to be middle of the road , that's more or less what is known about how it works,

There are lots of permutations too many to give a conclusive answer , I think it's possible for you to see a lower base ping ,if you switch away from BT retail, quite possibly with quite a lot of other isp's as most have data centres in London ,

Without knowing the actual reason's why DLM has intervened what appears to be at least twice without it restoring what it changed at any point, maybe an indication that crosstalk is the underlying reason , if it is, then depending how full the cab is now ,could mean further intervention from DLM as the spare ports get populated by customers, So if that is the case then DLM set to Speed could prove to be beneficial to you, based on that scenario , Just something to perhaps bear in mind

Edited by tommy45 (Sat 19-Apr-14 23:08:15)

appreciate the advise

Can i just ask, why does being inside the M25 benefit me on sky network and not Zens? im just a little confused as to why skys core network is better than that on BTW/BTO (not sure which one lol) used by Zen, plusnet etc

With vectoring supposedly coming into play later this year...? (not sure) im guessing that would bring more stability due to reduced cross talk?

Im edging close to Zen at the moment and the idea of the speed profile possibly resulting in interleaving being reduced than skys core network.

In reply to a post by Hoolay88:

appreciate the advise

Can i just ask, why does being inside the M25 benefit me on sky network and not Zens? im just a little confused as to why skys core network is better than that on BTW/BTO (not sure which one lol) used by Zen, plusnet etc

Well there's possibly a greater chance of you being near to a POP belonging to sky or Zen, living near to the centre of London, in particular inside the M25 it's geographically better served by ISP's than other parts of the uk , Easynet now sky POP's which they may of added to since the pdf was published
Zen have a a map of their POP locations although their actual locations are not named
http://www.zen.co.uk/about-us/our-network#pops

In reply to a post by Hoolay88:

With vectoring supposedly coming into play later this year...? (not sure) im guessing that would bring more stability due to reduced cross talk?

Vectoring is supposed to enable higher sync speeds by negating some of the affects on lines impacted by crosstalk yes, it may also give a boost to those like yourself who are further away from the cab it may also mean that dlm relents on the amount of interleave/INP it may have applied
As to when BT openreach will deploy it i don't have a crystal ball ,sorry , not a clue on that I'm afraid until they make a proper announcement, but i doubt it will be this year as we are already into month 4 of the year,

Some of the smaller FTTC cabs with ECI Dslams aren't compatible with vectoring , so would need changing ,lots of ££££'s the cabs with the Huawei Dslams installed would only need a firmware update, as would the cpe OR hardware

In reply to a post by Hoolay88:

Im edging close to Zen at the moment and the idea of the speed profile possibly resulting in interleaving being reduced than skys core network.

There is always a chance, it may be more likely that it will.But it would depend on how much your line is being impacted by crosstalk(assuming that is the underlying reason for DLM increasing latency) if cross talk levels are causing a error rate that exceeds the speed profile threshold then it's hard to say what it will do, And without knowing for sure which dlm profile BT retail uses ,makes it even more difficult, So don't rely on it there are no guarantees

In reply to a post by tommy45:

Well there's possibly a greater chance of you being near to a POP belonging to sky or Zen, living near to the centre of London, in particular inside the M25 it's geographically better served by ISP's than other parts of the uk , Easynet now sky POP's which they may of added to since the pdf was published
Zen have a a map of their POP locations although their actual locations are not named
http://www.zen.co.uk/about-us/our-network#pops

What i wanted to know about the networks are the difference between sky actually owning their core network and Zen renting it from BTO/BTW (which ever one), is there any actual benefit of this?

Firstly zen uses both it's own(where it has POP's) and BTW for data transit, Sky uses it own only ,
The advantatage if on sky, would be if there were issues on BTW network ,if wouldn't affect you, The same would apply if you were connected to one of Zen's POP's if there was a BT network problem affecting services in your area,or at your exchange with capacity, unless sky /zen where having such issues on their networks , The routing maybe an improvement over what bt can offer depending on your location in the uk

In reply to a post by tommy45:

Vectoring is supposed to enable higher sync speeds by negating some of the affects on lines impacted by crosstalk yes, it may also give a boost to those like yourself who are further away from the cab it may also mean that dlm relents on the amount of interleave/INP it may have applied
As to when BT openreach will deploy it i don't have a crystal ball ,sorry , not a clue on that I'm afraid until they make a proper announcement, but i doubt it will be this year as we are already into month 4 of the year,

BT originally stated that they saw Vectoring as a "speed enabler" rather than a "speed boost".

Having seen the way BT people speak more on the topic, my expectation is that they are likely to deploy vectoring on an "as-needed" basis to areas with high take-up, in order to restore speeds that the early adopters once saw.

Vectoring certainly ought to extend the range of speeds, such that BT can happily add a few extra percent to those it defines as actually capable of getting superfast speeds. However, BT haven't publicly said anything about this prospect.

BT also seems to expect that vectoring will enable a lift of headline speeds to 100Mbps. They don't seem to say this explicitly, but the implication is there amongst graphs showing expected 100Mbps+ capability across the country in the future. My expectation now is that this will happen a way off.

Ireland is in the process of deploying vectoring, and is seeing speeds being boosted to 100Mbps. However, Eircom appears to have been more cautious than BT, and runs FEC+interleaving on every line, so reducing some of the real speeds.

Vectoring probably does cause a reduction in DLM intervention - at least where the interference is being caused by crosstalk. However, DLM is still needed for other sources of noise - so can still turn on FEC and interleaving, causing speed reductions and adding latency.

Luckily, there is a different solution to that: G.INP is another tool that DLM can use, using re-transmission of faulty frames instead of using full-blown FEC and interleaving to solve the problem.

G.INP is something that BT are trialling, and appears to be being deployed in Ireland as well as vectoring.

As far as I can make out, G.INP uses some level of FEC, so swapping to G.INP will not completely restore speeds. However, it ought to improve latency for every unaffected packet, though the re-transmission of erroneous packets will increase jitter a little.

So it's a choice of higher latency = interleave or higher jitter levels=G.INP
Both aren't good choices for someone who plays online games, But i suppose it would depend on how much jitter was created

Edited by tommy45 (Sun 20-Apr-14 14:57:07)

Vectoring or not, im just trying to decide what may be most beneficial to ping times, joining sky (with their own core network) or Zen (with the speed profile set as apposed to stable.

All this looking into who to go with is doing my head in lol

For anyone interested heres my ping graph, not bad considering the length of my copper (although im no expert and cant read alot into this but the basics)

My Broadband Ping

I've not read much into these DLM settings as my line is perfectly fine, but I had a look at tommy45's link, and saw this...

In reply to a post by SkyFire:

Edited as I've got clarification...

BT Wholesale still use the profile names of ADSL - so when we order 'Standard' and BT Wholesale say it's standard what they pass on to Openreach is an order for 'Speed'.

With our GEA FTTC orders we order 'Standard' - so that will be the middle (balanced) profile, rather than 'Speed'..

kind regards,
Phil.

That's someone from Zen saying they order Standard on FTTC if I've correctly interpreted what he said. If you were on the Speed setting you may regularly experience packet loss (much worse than a higher ping) - DLM is there for a reason. Also like I said, I've seen no evidence of Zen users getting latencies as low as Sky, most likely about 3 - 5 ms higher (wouldn't be as much of a difference if you were up north, but your not).

I've said all I can on the matter, best of luck.

Edited by deleted (Sun 20-Apr-14 18:23:12)