Quite possible to have both services, the copper line is not removed when FTTP is installed but may be at some unknown time in the future.

In reply to a post by LucBorg:

How can you have both FTTC and FTTP simultaneously? Don't they remove the Copper line once the Fibre has been installed?

In general, no. The FTTP service is separate from the FTTC one and there's no need to cease the FTTC to take FTTP.

For underground feeds, they just pull the fibre in alongside the copper. For aerial feeds, they can replace the existing copper cable with a "hybrid" cable that has both fibre and a copper pair.

Of course, there are some new-builds which are fibre only. And going forward, as FTTP is rolled out there will be an increasing number of places with a "stop sell" on copper services where fibre is available - initially no new provides, then no migrations back from FTTP to FTTC. But forcibly removing copper services is still a way down the road.

Separately from this is the switch-off of the PSTN, scheduled for 2025. By then the baseband analogue voice signal *will* be forcibly removed from everyone, but will be replaced by voice-over-IP (which will be over xDSL if you don't have a fibre service).

In reply to a post by jpm:

Are you in a position to hint at what this is, because that's a very specific requirement and would rule out people from doing that job from e.g. Newcastle, possibly Cornwall would not be an option either.

Likely professional gaming on a game with something with potentially an 80 tick rate - update every 12.5 ms.

Obvious solution to that requirement is to move to Docklands and only use servers hosted there.

I'm a futures trader.

Sorry for the late reply.

The high latency is caused by Vodafone routing customers via the Edinburgh BNG. It's done automatically as part of their load balancing.

I've spent many hours on the phone and the problem can't be fixed by their support team.

There are rumours of network upgrades but nothing has been confirmed.

Needing those sort of tight latency guarantees are what leased line SLAs are for. They don't even have to be internet circuits - you could get layer 2 straight back to your office if you wanted.

In reply to a post by max1486:

So in regards to your IP address saying Manchester over Milton Keynes, this is irrelevant. IP's very often will have the wrong geolocation on them as this data is populated by 3rd party companies, this doesn't mean your internet is routing all the way up to Manchester rather than Milton Keynes.

That ^^

The "location" data is very vague and often wrong, especially in the UK.

It has absolutely nothing to do with the routing you take as the previous poster said.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

FTTC sync speed is not a reliable indicator

e.g. 20 Mbps sync here and pinging our servers over an IDNet connection at 9ms

8 to 8.5ms to the first hop.

The real variable for FTTC is the depth of interleaving applied (i.e. error correction).

Not expecting any decrease when FTTP rolls around, maybe 1ms.

Quote - as an example:

idnet FTTC:
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=121
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=121
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=121
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=121

idnet FTTP:
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=0 ttl=121 time=13.934 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=1 ttl=121 time=15.103 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=2 ttl=121 time=14.514 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=3 ttl=121 time=15.524 ms

Same geographic location, same underlying conditions/routers etc.

I've done a lot of digging since my eariler posts. The issue is actually caused by Vodafone using Path finder to balance their network capacity.

The way this is achieved is by changing the customers gateway to a less congested location. In the case of Vodafone, this often tends to be Edinburgh. If you are located down South, this means your traffic has to go all the way to Edinburgh and then all the way back down to their London data center. I'm in Bucks and this round trip ads around 20ms to my ping times.

There is a huge thread on the Vodafone forum. Unfortunately, it's basically just a handful of users handing out false information that a fix is coming. It isn't, the routing we now see is to ensure customers get their advertised download speeds.

For those interested, here is a trace route

Tracing route to www.google.com [142.250.200.4]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms RT-AX92U-6090 [192.168.50.1]
2 14 ms 13 ms 13 ms 90.247.128.1
3 24 ms 24 ms 24 ms 63.130.172.45
4 25 ms 27 ms 27 ms 72.14.216.236
5 27 ms 28 ms 26 ms 216.239.42.41
6 28 ms 33 ms 26 ms 108.170.234.231
7 24 ms 23 ms 25 ms lhr48s29-in-f4.1e100.net [142.250.200.4]

Let's just hope other ISP's don't adopt this model.

Edited by bluebull (Mon 06-Mar-23 13:30:53)

In reply to a post by bluebull:

Let's just hope other ISP's don't adopt this model.

AIUI, Zen beat them to it.

That sucks. I just have this horrible vision of the future. ISP's trying to sell us "gaming broadband", obviously more expensive than regular broadband.

Edited by bluebull (Mon 06-Mar-23 11:54:12)