If it’s PON congestion , before accepting what your ISP has said , I’d check with some of your very near neighbours, do they have the same issues at the same times , immediate neighbours from the same CBT are definitely on the same PON , if they don’t suffer the same congestion at the same time , then you can call BS on your ISP diagnosis , if a neighbour using a different ISP ( EE , BT etc ) don’t have similar issues then you know whatever your issue is , its not the PON .

Hi,

In reply to a post by nyctomanica:

Ah, that makes sense.

I've pinged off an email asking the minimum guaranteed speed, as I couldn't find one in any previous communication.

I agree that falling below the minimum should be classed as a fault, and it also can't be just me suffering with this issue, given that it's shared!

For Openreach, the minima are detailed in SIN506.

AAISP has a summary which includes these and Cityfibre's also: here.

In reply to a post by nyctomanica:

I've finally got somewhere!

Spitfire have now let me know that this is an issue with PON congestion, as my street has a pretty high takeup of Openreach fibre services.

This was revealed after testing using their supplied router (which they can remotely manage) revealed the exact same issue, and they checked with OR.

Unfortunately however, I have been informed that Openreach will not consider congestion a fault, and if I were to request an engineer's visit, I may be charged upwards of £200 as they would not find one.


However, do you think it would be possible to ask an engineer to switch the line to a different PON node if they were to visit?

The pole serving the house has two splitter nodes on top, one with 12 ports which I am connected to, and one with 4 that are currently unused.

The 12 port one is quite full, with only a few ports left available (if that's what the little nubbins are).

I'm wondering, if it IS possible, that changing to the other may resolve this once and for all?
As it would only be shared with 3 other lines.

and if so, may that engineer's visit gamble be worth it?

Please tell me if I'm talking out my backside here, I've only read about this recently on an old thread here!

Are you getting anywhere with this?

I don’t buy their PON congestion excuse. I reckon the congestion is firmly within their network.

Unless you happen to have a ton of really, really heavy duty work-hours downloaders on your residential PON service that is.

It’s just too convenient an excuse and in reality ties in with business hours congestion in their network.

I think they’re fobbing you off big time, hoping you’ll accept the excuse or not risk it! If it was me I’d do what most of Gen Z does these days and take my gripe to their social media.

https://x.com/spitfireupdates?s=21

I’d also go contractual on them. Dual pronged attack…😎😅

I think I read on here someone who was on the same PON as a home worker who did video stuff for BT Sport that had two gigabit Openreach FTTP connections to their house and was load balancing between them which made things unusable, if I find the post I'll add a link.

Here it is https://www.ispreview.co.uk/talk/threads/getting-mov...

Edited by jpm (Fri 31-Jan-25 16:55:53)

Don’t worry I remember the one quite clearly. Either way this is something the supplier should be proactively sorting it. I’d be on to the account manager in a heartbeat and thumping the table metaphorically.

In reality I’d call them out for breach and would have withheld payment. I know that’s not everyone’s cuppa but I’ve done it quite successfully. Even when I’m being threatened with a four figure bill.

In reply to a post by Iniltous:

If it’s PON congestion , before accepting what your ISP has said , I’d check with some of your very near neighbours, do they have the same issues at the same times , immediate neighbours from the same CBT are definitely on the same PON , if they don’t suffer the same congestion at the same time , then you can call BS on your ISP diagnosis , if a neighbour using a different ISP ( EE , BT etc ) don’t have similar issues then you know whatever your issue is , its not the PON .

I was just about to suggest this too. You must test it in the same way .. so same testers and with in minutes of each other - so like 12:01 and neighbour 12:02. You don't want the same time because you are then fighting for 2.5gbits/1.25gbits

If this was PON congestion - and it is very rare, hence why I’m dubious it’s a convenient fob off by Spitfire, the higher speed tiers will be disproportionately affected / more noticeable - add to the fact that these tiers are on average only 5-10% of subscribers.

Saying that if the PON was *so* incredibly congested or oversubscribed to be running at 1.6% of nominal download throughput - there’d be no need for coordinated speed tests with neighbours. Everyone’s internet would suck so badly they’d (hopefully) instantly notice.

Saying that many folks - other than home based workers like the OP - or retired people generally aren’t sitting on their broadband connections for long periods in the middle of the M-F working week. So if they’re generally say watching Netflix at 10pm they won’t have a scooby…

Edited by Pheasant (Sat 01-Feb-25 09:27:53)

Although it’s not the case that it’s a simple mathematical division, in the worst case scenario , and the splitter had the defacto maximum number members/active users (30) then the 2.4Gb download bandwidth shared equally amongst them is around 80Mb , the OP stated their real world performance D/L drops to less than 25% of that , and in reality, chances are there are many fewer that 30 users , although if on a new build estates that has no alternative to OR FTTP then take could be towards that , but as average take up is around 35% , 10 users on the PON is more realistic assumption and therefore 240Mb average bandwidth per user , that’s before dynamic bandwidth allocation, and the extremely unlikely situation of all these users being intensive downloaders during business hours , given that , the possibility of PON congestion is remote albeit can’t be completely dismissed.
I’d agree that coordinating speed tests is overkill, the answer to a simple question , to near neighbours , of ‘ how useless is your internet , 9-5 ‘ will be sufficient and should the answer be ‘its fine’ , or ‘I’m at work’ so it’s not used during those times’ , suggests the ISP is not really engaging with the OP’s issue , obviously if the neighbours also confirm very poor performance then there may be something OR need to investigate, assuming the neighbour isn’t also with the OP’s ISP, but even that requires the OP’s ISP to engage with OR .

Edited by Iniltous (Sat 01-Feb-25 11:16:14)

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

If this was PON congestion - and it is very rare, hence why I’m dubious it’s a convenient fob off by Spitfire, the higher speed tiers will be disproportionately affected / more noticeable - add to the fact that these tiers are on average only 5-10% of subscribers.

Saying that if the PON was *so* incredibly congested or oversubscribed to be running at 1.6% of nominal download throughput - there’d be no need for coordinated speed tests with neighbours. Everyone’s internet would suck so badly they’d (hopefully) instantly notice.

if it was a congested pon then yes you are right but if spitfire, is at fault you'd know within a day what is happening, why doing a couple of nearly in sync tests will tell you a good picture of whats going on

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Saying that many folks - other than home based workers like the OP - or retired people generally aren’t sitting on their broadband connections for long periods in the middle of the M-F working week. So if they’re generally say watching Netflix at 10pm they won’t have a scooby…

and if you are a gigabit user would they even notice 100mbits missing in normal use (not downloading). With normal webrowsing with a media rich site, 20mbits is more than enough

In light of the lack of any useful support from Spitfire the fairest thing for them to do is release the OP from their contract so they can try another ISP.