In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by jchamier:

... nested quotes trimmed ...

but at significantly lower upload.

Certainly. It's then a question of which is more important to you: fast uploads, or a reliable connection?

For those lucky enough to have a choice, they can weigh up these factors, along with others like price. If you can afford it, you can always take both.

If reliability is very important to you and you can afford it that's exactly what you should do. The connection to the OLT on both should be very solid, from there onwards it depends.

Alternatively it might be worth taking FTTP and 4G -- if you have two FTTP connections then there's a risk that the same event will take them both offline (for example, if someone runs a JCB through the duct). Obviously the 4G is slower, but better than nothing!

In reply to a post by smouty:

In reply to a post by gkw:

Am also on Swish. To be honest I had no idea there was any issue until I saw this thread.

It was the same for me.

And the same here. While Swish's recent outage appears to have affected customers throughout their network, there seem to be plenty of customers who weren't affected.

In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

Quoting this as I'm responding to a couple of points here, though OP your issues are nothing to do with FTTP. An equipment failure and issues deeper into the network. FTTP can only, and does, improve reliability in the part where it replaces copper.

Your issues were nothing to do with FTTP. Had you been on FTTP, FTTC, copper or carrier pigeon you'd have experienced the same issues. What were the problems with the person in Coventry?

If i was still on FTTC, I would not have had the same issue,

As for the person in Coventry, from what I can understand is his ONT loses connection now and again and come up with the lost link light or what ever it is on Openreach ONTs. done it again last night when we were chatting, one minute he was there, the next gone. His wife was not happy either as she was watching something online. It reconnects after 10 or so minutes. He is waiting until the end of the contract and then seeing what is available, I think they have 2 or 3 options

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

Lets start by making it absolutely clear that the outage you suffered was an issue with backhaul.

When it is said that full fibre is more reliable than a copper service they are referring to the connection between the exchange and the customer, you an experienced person on this forum should known that. The fact you chose to jump off the Openreach network and go onto Zzoomm because of contract lengths is a reflection of you.

According to Zzoomm it was a break in a fibre cable and then all the traffic was forced down another one, so we had congestion, in the daytime it was okish, but as soon as evening came and people started playing their games and doing their streaming, I was lucky to get out of single fingers, it was like going back to ADSL.

Fibre itself is more reliable than copper, as it don't get affected by water or interference or other things that affect Copper, but the way it is advertised is as if it is this magical thing where nothing can go wrong or and it adds pounds to the value of your house. Funny how they advertise it.


But I have had other small problems since I have been with zzoomm and other people, but as I said it seems to be ok at the moment and have been for a few days.

i jumped from Openreach for a few reasons, yes the 24 months contracts were annoying, but I could have gone to something like now broadband, 12-month contract, no fibre, but as I have said before, not bothered about speed.

The prices for FTTC were pretty high for most providers, for both FTTC and FTTP, I did not want to pay stupid prices for speeds I don't need. It was only Zzoomm sending me a leaflet for FTTP at £24, that made me decide to move, after all at some point I may have to move to FTTP, so I may as well get it done now.

The other thing is I don't like Openreach, never have,

We will see what happens, I am on a 12-month contract with 4 months gone already, let's see if they can keep their network working. I reliase that problems do happen, but it is how they handle that bothers me.

zzoomm seems to be expanding and going to more places, just hope they don't go crazy and go belly up.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

In reply to a post by PCJM40:

Lets start by making it absolutely clear that the outage you suffered was an issue with backhaul.

When it is said that full fibre is more reliable than a copper service they are referring to the connection between the exchange and the customer, you an experienced person on this forum should known that. The fact you chose to jump off the Openreach network and go onto Zzoomm because of contract lengths is a reflection of you.

According to Zzoomm it was a break in a fibre cable and then all the traffic was forced down another one, so we had congestion, in the daytime it was okish, but as soon as evening came and people started playing their games and doing their streaming, I was lucky to get out of single fingers, it was like going back to ADSL.

Fibre itself is more reliable than copper, as it don't get affected by water or interference or other things that affect Copper, but the way it is advertised is as if it is this magical thing where nothing can go wrong or and it adds pounds to the value of your house. Funny how they advertise it.


But I have had other small problems since I have been with zzoomm and other people, but as I said it seems to be ok at the moment and have been for a few days.

i jumped from Openreach for a few reasons, yes the 24 months contracts were annoying, but I could have gone to something like now broadband, 12-month contract, no fibre, but as I have said before, not bothered about speed.

The prices for FTTC were pretty high for most providers, for both FTTC and FTTP, I did not want to pay stupid prices for speeds I don't need. It was only Zzoomm sending me a leaflet for FTTP at £24, that made me decide to move, after all at some point I may have to move to FTTP, so I may as well get it done now.

The other thing is I don't like Openreach, never have,

We will see what happens, I am on a 12-month contract with 4 months gone already, let's see if they can keep their network working. I reliase that problems do happen, but it is how they handle that bothers me.

zzoomm seems to be expanding and going to more places, just hope they don't go crazy and go belly up.

I would never have guessed

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

According to Zzoomm it was a break in a fibre cable and then all the traffic was forced down another one, so we had congestion

That means it was a fibre break in *their backhaul network*: it's nothing to do with the fibre between them and your home, since there's only one path there, with no alternative to switch over too.

*All* networks use fibre for backhaul. Coax backhaul links are long gone, as are microwave links (except perhaps for the odd sheep-farming island)

Therefore this isn't a copper versus fibre issue.

Fibre breaks do happen frequently, and backhaul networks need to be designed with sufficient redundancy to cope with these events. This episode simply shows that Zzoomm had built insufficient redundancy in their network, and/or had not implemented it or tested it properly. Basically, they skimped on the network to save money.

Once again, we are conflating two different things:

1. Fibre from ISP to home, compared to copper from ISP to home, as the "last mile" connectivity. Fibre is clearly superior here.

2. How well ISPs design, build and run their own networks, which carry all their aggregated customer traffic to the Internet. This varies between extremely good to total pants, even though the site-to-site links themselves are all fibre.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

If i was still on FTTC, I would not have had the same issue,

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

When my fibre went belly up, it was the whole network in the city I live in, Zzoomm said it affected other providers as well. A fibre broke somewhere, and it meant all traffic had to go through one trunk. So while it did not fail completely, the speed at peak was worse than FTTC here. It seems as if Zzoomm uses a third party. since then, I have had slow-downs and a complete lack of broadband for a couple of hours once.

If you were on an FTTC supplier using that same backhaul yes, you would have. Nothing to do with FTTC/P/carrier pigeon and everything to do with the choice of ISP.

Yes, Zzoomm use a third party for backhaul. Nearly every ISP does including Sky, TalkTalk and Vodafone.

The person in Coventry sounds like they do actually have an issue with either fibre or ONU that needs addressing. More reliable and 100% reliable are quite different things and their supplier should be pushing Openreach to get the issue sorted: issue is on the supplier if they aren't.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

i jumped from Openreach for a few reasons, yes the 24 months contracts were annoying, but I could have gone to something like now broadband, 12-month contract, no fibre, but as I have said before, not bothered about speed.

Now = Sky. Sky have quite a few exchanges that have no resilient backhaul at all, and others where a single break will trigger congestion. If Hereford's one of them a single fibre cable break and you're either degraded or offline. They also make extensive use of third party backhaul and could quite easily have been using the same cable that was cut.

Edited by XGS_Is_On (Fri 03-Nov-23 14:37:49)

In reply to a post by candlerb:

That means it was a fibre break in *their backhaul network*: it's nothing to do with the fibre between them and your home, since there's only one path there, with no alternative to switch over too.

I never said it had anything to do with the fibre between them and my home.

*All* networks use fibre for backhaul. Coax backhaul links are long gone, as are microwave links (except perhaps for the odd sheep-farming island)

Therefore this isn't a copper versus fibre issue.

I do know this.

Fibre breaks do happen frequently, and backhaul networks need to be designed with sufficient redundancy to cope with these events. This episode simply shows that Zzoomm had built insufficient redundancy in their network, and/or had not implemented it or tested it properly. Basically, they skimped on the network to save money.

I know this as well, the problem is, Zzoomm like others are using a third party for their backhaul, who I don't know, but it was not only zzoomm customers that were affected.

Once again, we are conflating two different things:

1. Fibre from ISP to home, compared to copper from ISP to home, as the "last mile" connectivity. Fibre is clearly superior here.

2. How well ISPs design, build and run their own networks, which carry all their aggregated customer traffic to the Internet. This varies between extremely good to total pants, even though the site-to-site links themselves are all fibre.

Not conflicting anything, just saying that i have more problems since going fibre than I had with FTTC. When you go for fibre and get a speed that is slower than what you had on copper, then it does make you think if it was a good move. Granted, it was only for a couple of evenings, but still.

Fibre should be more superior, but it is also more fragile, looking at the fibre going from the pole to my house this morning and the way it was blowing, the copper cable was not moving that much. I just hope it is well and truly bolted to the pole, I know it is to the house. The problem is and this is not just zzoomm, is the way some of these network providers including Openreach is just chucking the fibre down, I have seen a few posts from different people about fibre just being left where it can get damaged. Granted, that is not about the reliability of fibre, just that it is easier to damage.
The copper cables from my house have been there for 50 years or more and yet still carried data and voice until it was cut off a few months ago.


We will wait and see if we have any more problems, so far been online for 15 Days, 5 Hours, that is a record since I have been on Zzoomm.

In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

If you were on an FTTC supplier using that same backhaul yes, you would have. Nothing to do with FTTC/P/carrier pigeon and everything to do with the choice of ISP.

If i was using a FTTC provider with the same backhaul, but I doubt Plusnet or Sky uses the same one, which one of them I would have been with if I stayed on FTTC.

Yes, Zzoomm use a third party for backhaul. Nearly every ISP does including Sky, TalkTalk and Vodafone

.
I know they do, I don't know who Zzoomm uses, I tried a traceroute, but it comes back with very little.

The person in Coventry sounds like they do actually have an issue with either fibre or ONU that needs addressing. More reliable and 100% reliable are quite different things and their supplier should be pushing Openreach to get the issue sorted: issue is on the supplier if they aren't.

They are with vodafone, he said it is like swimming through treacle and to be honest I can understand that as I used to be with Vodafone a few years ago with mobile, like a lot of these large providers they read a script and won't deviate from it. He said something about CityFibre and also Virgin is there, but his Wife thinks about Virgin the same way I think about BT and Openreach. He said about overloading the ONT powerwise, he is an electrician or something like that, so he would know how to do that, they would have to replace it then . We will be group chatting again on Sunday.

Now = Sky. Sky have quite a few exchanges that have no resilient backhaul at all, and others where a single break will trigger congestion. If Hereford's one of them a single fibre cable break and you're either degraded or offline. They also make extensive use of third party backhaul and could quite easily have been using the same cable that was cut.

Now broadband was just a idea i had at the time as it was cheap, Plusnet would not offer me anything at a decent price without them wanting me to go into a 24-month contract, even FTTC. I was willing to go for an 18 month, I will never go for a 24-month contract on anything again. Plusnet kept trying to push me to FTTP and I did not want to go to FTTP, certainly not Openreach, so when ZZoomm sent me a leaflet saying £24.99 for a 500Mb/s connection I decided to go for it, but only because of the price, not the speed.
I said it before, I don't need super-duper speed, it has made little difference to me. The only difference I suppose is when re-downloading some games after my Windows machine decided to play silly fools and also downloading Windows again. A couple of days ago when I decided to update the MAc to the latest OS. But If i had FTTC i would just wait.
When this contract ends, if I stay with Zzoomm i will go go to a lower speed unless they give me a good offer, that is if I am still living here.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

According to Zzoomm it was a break in a fibre cable and then all the traffic was forced down another one, so we had congestion

That means it was a fibre break in *their backhaul network*: it's nothing to do with the fibre between them and your home, since there's only one path there, with no alternative to switch over too.

*All* networks use fibre for backhaul. Coax backhaul links are long gone, as are microwave links (except perhaps for the odd sheep-farming island)

Therefore this isn't a copper versus fibre issue.

Fibre breaks do happen frequently, and backhaul networks need to be designed with sufficient redundancy to cope with these events. This episode simply shows that Zzoomm had built insufficient redundancy in their network, and/or had not implemented it or tested it properly. Basically, they skimped on the network to save money.

Once again, we are conflating two different things:

1. Fibre from ISP to home, compared to copper from ISP to home, as the "last mile" connectivity. Fibre is clearly superior here.

2. How well ISPs design, build and run their own networks, which carry all their aggregated customer traffic to the Internet. This varies between extremely good to total pants, even though the site-to-site links themselves are all fibre.

If you are referring to the following: Here is some wholesale information:


"Some customers connections via the Full Fibre Heroes network in the Shrewsbury area may be experiencing a current outage due to a cut cable. Fibre Heroes have provided the latest below update on the current issues:

Our engineers have now identified the root cause of the issue in Shrewsbury and we have a 288F (fibre) cable and a 144F (fibre) cable partially severed in an Openreach joint box. This damage was caused by a contractor working on behalf of Openreach.

In order to repair the cable damage we need to replace a section of both the 288F cable and the 144F cable and this means we need to access Openreach joint chambers several hundred metres back on either side of the location of the cable damage. One of these Openreach joint chambers is located in the middle of the road near a traffic light junction, we’re talking to the local Council Highways team to request a permit for emergency works to shut down their traffic lights and set up some temporary traffic lights so our engineers can safely access and work in the Openreach joint chamber.

Our resolution work is dependent on obtaining the permit from the Highways team and we anticipate the duration of our works will be 24 hours due to the complexity of replacing and splicing in new lengths of 288F and 144F cables.

Further updates will be posted as soon as they are made available.

******Update*******

Fibre Heroes have advised they do have a lot of engineers working in the Shrewsbury area and we believe we have additional cable damage downstream of the location we resolved yesterday.

Our engineers will be working into this evening and tomorrow to get all affected customers back online.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused."