In reply to a post by Ripley:

So in summary from the replies above, you cannot currently get gigabit broadband via FTTP

You are the one who doesn't have the basics correct.

Gigabit services, which deliver a billion bits per second into your home, show as "942Mbps" on speedtest sites like speedtest.net. That's because of the way those sites measure the speed: they only count the payload portion, not the full packet with headers.

Text
1 23 4	[ ethernet header [ IP header [ TCP header [ TCP segment data              ] ] ] ]                                              <---------------------------->                                               speedtest application only                                                    counts this part

This doesn't make them "not gigabit", because they do actually deliver a gigabit in total. It's just an artefact of how packet networks operate: not every bit carries user data, a small proportion is overhead for traffic routing.

However because many end-users are not technically savvy enough to understand this, many ISPs market such services as "900M".

Of course, few households actually *need* or are even capable of making use of a gigabit anyway. "Gigabit" here is really an alias for "fibre", which is about having more reliable connections and guaranteed consistent speeds (fibre does not use rate adaptation like xDSL, whose speed depends on the length and quality of the copper cable)

It is also partly about future-proofing. The fibre itself is capable of delivering 10Gbps, 25Gbps or more: once the fibre is in the ground, only the equipment at each end needs changing for any future higher speeds.

It is gigabit, the underlying access network operates at above-gigabit speeds and the handoff to the customer is a gigabit port.

Canlerb I think you miss understand my point.

And that's a bit of a cop out to say gigabit is just an alias for fibre.

Everybody else above has claimed contrary to you, that they cant deliver gigabit. Obviously you think otherwise.

I haven't seen a 942 mb product on the market yet...

with no gigabit product available

In reply to a post by Ripley:

Canlerb I think you miss understand my point.

And that's a bit of a cop out to say gigabit is just an alias for fibre.

Everybody else above has claimed contrary to you, that they cant deliver gigabit. Obviously you think otherwise.

I haven't seen a 942 mb product on the market yet...

The product delivered is Gigabit capable. The technology used to convert the optical signal to a signal usable by the user's equipment takes that Gigabit stream and passes it on from the connection at the end user's location to the equipment in use, this process of passing on incurring some transactional costs so the Gigabit delivered to the user becomes less than a Gigabit when the user measures what is being received at his/her equipment. That does not detract from the point that a Gigabit service is being delivered to the equipment at the end of the fibre.

In reply to a post by Ripley:

I haven't seen a 942 mb product on the market yet...

You need to look again.

Virgin for starters over provision all their services. Their gigabit package is over 1130Mb/s. It's available to over half of the UK or will be by the end of 2022.

Your arguement is a bit ridiculous though.
Basically every single Gigabit Ethernet NIC on every PC/Router/switch on the planet isn't a gigabit using your logic.

You haven't seen a 942Mb/s product because OFCOM rules dictate that providers can only advertise a speed reachable by a certain % of users during peak times.
For that reason and to stop people who don't understand what overheads are from complaining they advertise the packages as 900Mb/s.
Even without overheads providers would still quote below the maximum throughput possible to follow the rules.

Even on that Virgin connection that's connected at 1130Mb/s the gigabit Ethernet port on their Hub will limit throughput to 942Mb/s.

In the Nationwide Gigabit rollout I'd be more inclined to quibble about "Nationwide" than "Gigabit".

John

I never mentioned Virgin on my original post. it was specifically about the Openreach rollout.

Your understanding of my point is wrong. Regardless of Ofcom rules etc the underlying fact is you can only order a 900mb product and according to previous posts on this thread it would need to be a 942mb product to utilise the full 1gb connection.

The reasons behind it that you mention are all irrelevant to my initial thought.

"to my initial thought."

The ability to think and the ability to understand are two different concepts.

In reply to a post by Ripley:

Regardless of Ofcom rules etc the underlying fact is you can only order a 900mb product and according to previous posts on this thread it would need to be a 942mb product to utilise the full 1gb connection.
M

Incorrect. It needs to be a gigabit to receive 942Mb/s not the other way around.

You aren't actually getting 900Mb/s from anyone. Nobody sells a product that connects at 900Mb/s.
It's simply averaged down for advertising purposes.

OpenReach send 1000Mb/s to your ONT.
Overheads, and the fact the ONT has a gigabit port, mean the maximum you will see is 942Mb/s.

The definition of gigabit is 1,000,000,000 bits. That's what OpenReach send.
It's very much a gigabit connection.

You're attempting to redefine the meaning of gigabit.