Had Vodafone GigaFast FTTP (CityFibre) installed yesterday 21st July. Problems from the get go:
Kelly engineers were due between 1:00pm and 5:00pm. 5:00pm rolls around, no sign of them and no phone call explaining that they are running later than planned. They finally turn up at 5:30pm with a brief apology.
New drop wire installed from pole, attached and clipped neatly to the outside wall, Kelly engineer then tests the cable AFTER doing all that, and his tester reported an issue. Connecting to the ONT confirms no service. Cue the engineers ripping out the first drop wire and having to install another one from the pole again. This one works, and ONT has service, router connected, all lights green everywhere. Happy days, or so we thought...
Engineer does a speed test, and gets around 20mbps (I signed up for the 100/100 package, purely so I could test Vodafone/CityFibre out on the cheapest tier first, and if happy, regrade in future to a higher tier). He does several more speed tests, all around the 20-30mbps range in both directions, never going above that, sometimes a lot below, sometimes the speed test not even completing. He declares I'll have to get in touch with Vodafone as he's not sure what the issue is, gets me to sign off on the physical cabling work they have done (which was fine, very neat and tidy, any mess cleared up by them), and they leave. Due to the lateness of the hour by this time (almost 7:30pm and having had to delay evening meal due to this) I didn't get the chance to speak to Vodafone that night. I also thought (hoped) that leaving everything connected overnight may illicit better things today...
Not so. Still poor speed tests, (also the speed tests seemed to be "stuttering" - stopping and starting rather than the usual smoothness seen on any connection I've had before). Download of large test files start out with "reasonably" good throughput, but eventually dwindle to almost dial-up modem throughput speeds. Furthermore the PPP session on the router seemed to be dropping completely every 15 minutes or so, sometimes more frequently. During these dropouts all the ONT lights remain solid green, so I believe its just the PPP / network side thats dropping and nothing fibre related.
As I have another live connection here (Zen FTTC) with a Fritzbox router, to eliminate the Vodafone THG3000 router being the culprit, I obtained my Vodafone broadband connection username and password from CS online chat this afternoon (very easy), and set up the Fritzbox to connect to the ONT. Connection successful, but with still the same issues (poor throughput, PPP dropping, ONT lights remaining green during drops).
I have contacted Vodafone (actually getting through a to a human in the UK - wonders will never cease!) who have said they need to monitor the connection for 24 hours from their end before seeing what action to take. So thats where things stand now. Not a great start at all, hopefully they will redeem themselves and figure out and sort the issue, if not it'll be cancellation within the 14 day period!
I've also set up a Monitor on the connection myself this afternoon, and as you can see, it's reporting massive amounts of packet loss (ping on WAN is enabled on the router) even whilst the connection is idle:
Vodafone Gigafast Monitor
Compare that to my monitor for a typical day on my Zen FTTC connection:
Zen FTTC Monitor
So, we'll see where this goes. Am I right in my assumption that as the PPP is constantly dropping, combined with poor throughput and high packet loss, but no physical loss of service to the ONT, is a Vodafone network issue, rather than a physical fibre issue?
Thanks for reading if you got this far!
Carl
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cabinet8 - My journey back to xDSL after a decade with VM
ZeN Fibre 2 | Huawei HG612 via Fritz!Box 7530 | ECI Cab
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cabinet8 - My journey back to xDSL after a decade with VM
ZeN Fibre 2 | Huawei HG612 via Fritz!Box 7530 | ECI Cab
Edited by flilot (Thu 23-Jul-20 00:48:00)