Community Fibre, the Good, the Bad and the literally Ugly

In my location I have in terms of FTTH services a choice of Virgin Media, Community Fibre and various BT/OpenReach based offerings.

I have therefore recently chosen Community Fibre and had it installed.

The Good
Community Fibre is one of the cheapest - certainly best value ones. It is a symmetrical service meaning upload speed is effectively the same as the download speed. (Unlike ADSL type services there is no technical reason this should not be the case but BT/OpenReach and Virgin Media do limit their upload speed on their Fibre offerings.) Community Fibre also provide IPv6 connectivity as standard. I have been able to on occasion achieve nearly 900Mbps which is close to the advertised 900Mbps/1Gbps I signed up for. It is also a very simple process to use my own router instead of the Community Fibre provided one.

The Bad
It seems I do not consistently get the advertised speed of approaching 900Mbps, it seems that more often it drops down towards 400Mbps. This might be indicating that their infrastructure is not able to cope with the amount of users and traffic. Therefore this may be like the bad old days of ADSL where speed was significantly affected at different times of the day. Arguably as ISPs are supposed to have an 'average' speed matching their claims this is in breach of that.

The Ugly
Their installers have not fitted a fibre termination box on the outside of my house and there is instead an ugly coil of fibre and visible filler sealing the hole in the brick wall. All the photos I have seen of installations of other brands e.g. BT, Sky, Virgin Media, etc. show they use an external box to make a tidy and more secure installation. They have fitted a very small box on the inside of the wall and then a short fibre lead runs from that to the Adtron ONT unit. (An Ethernet cable then runs from the ONT to their Linksys Velop WiFi router.)


Questions
Is the lack of an external fibre termination box standard practice for Community Fibre?

With ADSL/VDSL services previously I have used my own Draytek Vigor routers. I have then been able to have a firewall, a VPN server and even to implement a 6to4 IPv6 tunnel to 'fix' the lack of IPv6 service from previous ISPs. I am finding that at least an old Vigor 2860 is apparently too slow and only achieves a max of about 220Mbps even when using a 1Gbps Ethernet connection. (The Linksys Velop uses a 2.5Gbps Ethernet connection but I suspect is not running any form of firewall.) Does anyone have any experience of using a Draytek Vigor router with 1Gbps or faster fibre based Internet connections and what model did you use and what speeds have you achieved? For testing whilst preparing to discontinue my VDSL link I am using an older 2860 model but I do also have a 2862 model and I am wondering if it is worth investing in a Vigor 2962. The Vigor 2962 is a lot more expensive but does also have a 2.5Gbps Ethernet WAN port but if it cannot deliver a better throughput this is a waste of money.

I'm thinking of getting Community Fibre and *VOIP from a Third Party Supplier to retain my existing Land Line number.

Do you know if this is feasable?

*I'm considering A&A for VOIP but they say 'avoid isps that do CGNAT

I now have my Community Fibre connection and I have now also completed getting my former landline number ported to VoIP using Voipfone as the provider.

I also have seen articles saying to avoid CGNAT ISP providers.

It seems slower connections from Community Fibre e.g. 150Mbps might use CGNAT, I however have a 1Gbps connection and I get the impression this speed does not have CGNAT and that I also appear to be getting a static IP address.

As it happens however I believe Voipfone provide the ability to use their outbound proxy server and this might act as a workaround for CGNAT.

I am using a Grandstream HT802 configured to link to Voipfone and whilst plugging a BT analogue phone in directly to the HT802 works, I am finding that to get the HT802 to work with an old analogue PBX as a 'line' I need to run a cable from the HT802 to the back of a BT Master socket and then run a cable from the front of the master socket to the PBX. This lets the Master socket 'ring' capacitor work to make the PBX detect a ring signal.

Whilst I am using Voipfone, I see quite a few people use Andrews & Arnold and they appear to be a bit cheaper. I felt Voipfone did a better job of offering an official softphone solution as well and may allow multiple lines as standard. (Still working on my setup.)

To be precise A&A support SIP over ipv6, so as long as your ATA supports ipv6 the you can use any ISP that has implemented ipv6 regardless of whether they are using CGNAT on their ipv4 implementation.
I'm using a Fritz!box for A&A VoIP which works well. I'm looking to implement this for my father in law whose current location can only get community fibre, so at least ipv6 will work for him.

In reply to a post by jellockwood:

The Ugly
Their installers have not fitted a fibre termination box on the outside of my house and there is instead an ugly coil of fibre and visible filler sealing the hole in the brick wall.

Can you share a photo? It sounds pants to me.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by jellockwood:

The Ugly
Their installers have not fitted a fibre termination box on the outside of my house and there is instead an ugly coil of fibre and visible filler sealing the hole in the brick wall.

Can you share a photo? It sounds pants to me.

They do fit a very small white box internally that the fibre coming into your home is coiled up in that terminates into a port which that short cable with the 2 green fibre connectors on.

I wouldn't call it ugly though, if the OP didn't like the look of it they should of told the engineer to install that CSP out of site and use a longer patch cable.

---
Paul

Well I am getting above their advertised speeds 24/7 shown in my sig, maybe its your router hardware that could be having issues.

I would try their supplied equipment for a week and do tests throughout the day and compare tests when you saw those speed drops.

But those 400Mbits speeds seems like Wi-Fi speeds to me, if so try wired.

As for an external termination box, you should of asked for one to be installed when they arrived to do the install.
But going by how ugly you said the one inside was (which its not, its a nice little white box) then you would hate the one outside, that is an ugly one.

---
Paul

In reply to a post by PaulKirby:

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by jellockwood:

The Ugly
Their installers have not fitted a fibre termination box on the outside of my house and there is instead an ugly coil of fibre and visible filler sealing the hole in the brick wall.

Can you share a photo? It sounds pants to me.

They do fit a very small white box internally that the fibre coming into your home is coiled up in that terminates into a port which that short cable with the 2 green fibre connectors on.

I wouldn't call it ugly though, if the OP didn't like the look of it they should of told the engineer to install that CSP out of site and use a longer patch cable.
---
Paul

I am happy with the internal termination which as you say has a small white box, it is the outside termination. Other providers e.g. BT, Sky, etc. fit an external box. I did query the engineer during the installation but they did not have an external box.

Thank god I got them to run the cable down the side of my house past a gate so it is not visible on the front of the house which would have been a REAL eyesore. I am also working on getting my own external box but because the fibre cable is now fitted and has a plug on the end so I cannot pull it back out, I will have to cut a slot in the box I will use to slide the cable through. Should work and be a lot better.

Unfortunately this forum system does not seem to allow me to attach a picture.

Yes the speed is a combination of my WiFi and my router. I have however also tested a 1Gbps Ethernet connection to my router.

My own router is currently a Draytek Vigor 2862. I can get upload speeds of 600-850Mbps via Ethernet but download speed is 150-250Mbps. It looks like its hardware acceleration is not working for downloads. I have a support ticket open with Draytek regarding this. I am also looking at buying new WiFi access points.

I have restested speed using their Linksys Velop and I do get download and upload speeds of 800+ Mbps so the link itself is fine.

In reply to a post by jellockwood:

I am happy with the internal termination which as you say has a small white box, it is the outside termination. Other providers e.g. BT, Sky, etc. fit an external box. I did query the engineer during the installation but they did not have an external box.

Thank god I got them to run the cable down the side of my house past a gate so it is not visible on the front of the house which would have been a REAL eyesore. I am also working on getting my own external box but because the fibre cable is now fitted and has a plug on the end so I cannot pull it back out, I will have to cut a slot in the box I will use to slide the cable through. Should work and be a lot better.

Unfortunately this forum system does not seem to allow me to attach a picture.

Yeah you wouldn't want their external box, trust me.

Yeah when I got mine installed, they actually offered to install it down our ally way (side of house) but I was happy it being installed the front for ease and to make it easier to fix a fibre fault if one was to arise.

As for the reason they install the internal CSP is due to its more likely the cable inside getting damaged, which is why you connect a short terminated fibre patch cable between there and the Modem.

Just some advice, I wouldn't touch any of their infrastructure coming out from their CSP (small white box) due to if you break something you are liable to pay for it to be fixed.

Oh you need to use an online service to store them and then link to them.

---
Paul