Has anything changed on FTTC?

Well after a glorious two years on FTTP, I am moving house and only FTTC is available.

Luckily the cab is only a few hundred meters away, BT estimate is giving me 60-70Mb.

Has anything changed tech wise on FTTC over the last 2 years? Vectoring? I had a Zyxel VMG1312-B10A running at my old place as a modem on FTTC and it pulled the line up from 62Mbps to 75Mbps.

The cab is an Huawei so thinking of getting one of these again.

Why did you move house away from FTTP?. If it was me, I wouldn't move away from any FTTP that have it. Sound like big downgrade from FTTP back to FTTC.

This is what gives the game away.

"I am moving house and only FTTC is available."

Sigh. Because there is more to life than broadband.

In reply to a post by wolvesmad:

The cab is an Huawei so thinking of getting one of these again.

Probably a good choice. If you want a modem to give you an Ethernet point you can then connect any device in the same way you did with the ONT. Friends and family of mine are still using Huawei Openreach modems, and there are likely lots around in peoples cupboards etc as 'spares'. One friend moved from cable (200 mbps) to Vodafone FTTC (50 mbps) and he picked up a Huawei HG612 modem from an advert, and connected it to his firewall and has no issues. (Apart from dropping 150 megabit in speed, which he doesn't care about, the price was king).

I had a HG612 prior to my Zyxel and the Zyxel out performed it. They’re getting on a bit now HG612’s. It was only a 3Mbps difference but apparently the Zyxels have a noise filter in them or something.

The house was too good an opportunity to turn down. As it’s only me and my girlfriend speed isn’t particularly the be all and end all, although I know my ping will be slightly higher on FTTC, interleaved.

I couldn’t drop down to 20Mbps but 70-80Mbps should be fine.

There’s a new development near by with FTTP so hopefully BT infil.

Yep the HG612’s are very long in the tooth these days

In reply to a post by wolvesmad:

I had a HG612 prior to my Zyxel and the Zyxel out performed it. They’re getting on a bit now HG612’s. It was only a 3Mbps difference but apparently the Zyxels have a noise filter in them or something.

Didn’t see any difference at all on my old 45 Mbps line, but maybe the faster lines show more of a difference. I did have random issues with some websites, which went away when returning to HG612, but then I gave up due to the slow upload and went to cable. (Which is also problematic!)

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Sigh. Because there is more to life than broadband.

Not for some people!

In reply to a post by adslmax:

Why did you move house away from FTTP?. If it was me, I wouldn't move away from any FTTP that have it. Sound like big downgrade from FTTP back to FTTC.

Can you remind us what you use all the extra speed above 60Mbps for, i get constant 60Mbps and at the moment have no need for more nothing i use needs more speed.

Edited by Jack_Hackett (Mon 20-Jun-22 20:43:16)

I don't think anything have changed to be honest and I expect you will be fine with 60Mb/s.
I used a Huawei modem as I had a problem with the sync and the Huawei was the only thing that worked. A few weeks ago I went back to the Huawei and an old TP-link router as my Zyxel decided to self-destruct and to be honest it worked well.
i am now using the HUB one, but I am thinking of putting the Modem back in line.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

Sigh. Because there is more to life than broadband.

Take a bow.

In reply to a post by wolvesmad:

I had a HG612 prior to my Zyxel and the Zyxel out performed it. They’re getting on a bit now HG612’s. It was only a 3Mbps difference but apparently the Zyxels have a noise filter in them or something.

Just to share my limited experiences, on Zen FTTC with sync speeds around 50down/10up. Cabinet is Huawei.

Fritzbox 7530 modem - re-syncs a few times a week
Zyxel VMG1312-B10A - re-syncs a few times a week, download 1M slower, upload 0.5M faster
Huawei HG612 - same speeds as Zyxel but re-syncs a lot less. Once or twice a month,

The interesting thing is that only when I used the Huawei did the SNR margin finally drop from 6dB to 3dB (and then settle on 4dB) due to the lower errors and fewer re-syncs presumably. So overall my speed increased and the Huawei still sticks to my line like glue.

Huawei cabinet are always good at 80/20 with G.INP and Interleaved with SNR of 6dB (around 260m from the cabinet)

At my old house I went on 50/10 FTTC when I moved in and the attainable rate on the BT Hub was always 74/20 so at recontract, I went with 80/20.

To give the line its best chance I went and got a HG612, which wasn’t brand new. The connection ran at 68/20, G.INP was on and around 8 weeks in, the SNR started to drop to around 5db and then 4db and then it ended back up at 6db.

I did a bit of reading on the Zyxel B10A and thought I’d give it ago. It took around 2 months but the connection went down to a 3db SNR, where it stayed. 76500/20000. It was absolutely rock solid.

The difference between the first house and this new one is the one half of the street had a choice of FTTP or FTTC. The top end, my end was on copper only. The majority were on FTTP judging by the exterior BT boxes on the houses.

This new house is completely copper only, with a Huawei HD cab with what looks like an extension on both sides. I’m expecting a load of crosstalk.

via openreach test socket on MK4

Stats recorded 20 Jun 2022 23:07:35

DSLAM type / SW version: BDCM:0xc190 (193.144) / v0xc190
Modem/router firmware: AnnexA version - A2pvfbH043q.d26u
DSL mode: VDSL2 Profile 17a
Status: Showtime
Uptime: 7 hours 33 min 46 sec
Resyncs: 0 (since 20 Jun 2022 15:40:00)


Downstream Upstream
Line attenuation (dB): 11.6 0.0
Signal attenuation (dB): Not available on VDSL2
Connection speed (kbps): 79999 19999
SNR margin (dB): 6.1 12.5
Power (dBm): 12.7 -1.5
Interleave depth: 16 1
INP: 48.00 0
G.INP: Enabled Not enabled
Vectoring status: 5 (VECT_UNCONFIGURED)

RSCorr/RS (%): 0.0007 0.0012
RSUnCorr/RS (%): 0.0000 0.0000
ES/hour: 0 0