Zen 900 FTTP

I had the first 900 service in our street and it was great.
Gradually the distribution on pole has been filled.

Since then it appears congestion as I've had as little as 180Mbps during day with a windows dial up pppoe connection as suggested.

I've tried a restart of equipment and the think broadband test is erratic, one time I get 230Mbps and then 700Mbps.

I haven't seen any red loss lights, however at 12 or 1am I did experience disconnections someday's- I presumed it was ONT firmware or similar update.

I see there are other Zen users with priority flag on their service, it's frustrating so any ideas of similar experiences, it's below Zen minimum service guarantee.

Is this Openreach overselling capacity or zen congestion?

Thanks

Are you measuring speed over wireless or over a wired connection?

I'm not on Zen, but the TBB speed test show my 1Gb line to be incredibly slow, however it's the only speed test that does!

Try downloading the speedtest.net app from here: https://www.speedtest.net/apps

With such high speeds, the internet based testers seem not to work very well. A client/server test seems much more accurate.

Provision issues FTTP (GPON) is normaly things like

1) the GPON split (openreach)
2) wholesale handover capacity (openreach)
3) the ISP’s core/backhaul, (zen)
4) peering/transit links.(zen)

Power off (remove power plug) ONT and the router for 5 mins on FTTP, it does no harm to connection unlike it could on FTTC. I would also check that ethernet cable from ONT to router is giving has connection of at least 1Gb.

No matter if it Zen or Openreach issue your contract is with Zen. It Zen problem to get it fixed.

" unlike it could on FTTC."

Are you saying that there was an issue switching off VDSL once for 5 minutes?

In reply to a post by broadband66:

" unlike it could on FTTC."

Are you saying that there was an issue switching off VDSL once for 5 minutes?

Not always - but if the connection was prone to reconnection anyway, it'd be one more instability to add to the (potenitally flawed) BRAS calculation.

In reply to a post by HangingOn:

I had the first 900 service in our street and it was great.
Gradually the distribution on pole has been filled.

Since then it appears congestion as I've had as little as 180Mbps during day with a windows dial up pppoe connection as suggested.

I've tried a restart of equipment and the think broadband test is erratic, one time I get 230Mbps and then 700Mbps.

I haven't seen any red loss lights, however at 12 or 1am I did experience disconnections someday's- I presumed it was ONT firmware or similar update.

I see there are other Zen users with priority flag on their service, it's frustrating so any ideas of similar experiences, it's below Zen minimum service guarantee.

Is this Openreach overselling capacity or zen congestion?

Thanks

Before I migrated away from Zen to BT, (just over three years ago), I had similar issues to you.

At the time that I left Zen I was on the Zen FTTP 900 mbps service, (which had been an erratic very poor service for years prior to my migrating away), and as soon as I migrated away from Zen to BT FTTP 900 mbps all of the Zen FTTP Issues all went away and since then the same connection, (with BT), has been great.

Years before that; when I was on the old slower Zen FTTC service it was good for a FTTC Connection but as soon as I re-contracted by upgrading to Zen FTTP 900 mbps the service was poor and I was then stuck with a bum Zen Service for years until I was out of contract and could leave.

Having left Zen I would not go back to Zen.

In reply to a post by hunnymonster:

In reply to a post by broadband66:

" unlike it could on FTTC."

Are you saying that there was an issue switching off VDSL once for 5 minutes?

Not always - but if the connection was prone to reconnection anyway, it'd be one more instability to add to the (potenitally flawed) BRAS calculation.

a straight Openreach fttp connection does not use bras, but is set at the olt level, via a database.

In reply to a post by amiga_dude:

1) the GPON split (openreach)

the gpon pon split is set at 1/32. that said, if theres only 10 onts on the pon, the olt will split and manage the bandwidth between those 10 onts. What you may see is the pon at user capacity, the olt then has to work harder to manage bandwidth and if theres 3 or 4+ heavy users you may see more variable speeds.

But thats hard to quantify due to pon contention and other parts of the net, for instance you may downlaod at steam and you slow downloads but if you then say downloaded from intel, or nvidia etc the demand may be lower and you would see faster downloads.

In reply to a post by amiga_dude:

Power off (remove power plug) ONT and the router for 5 mins on FTTP, it does no harm to connection unlike it could on FTTC. I would also check that ethernet cable from ONT to router is giving has connection of at least 1Gb.

Why remove the power plug on the ont when it has a switch. Also why 5 minutes............xDSL and xPON fibre are completely different things

Edited by Taras (Tue 04-Aug-26 10:26:41)

In reply to a post by amiga_dude:

Why remove the power plug on the ont when it has a switch. Also why 5 minutes............xDSL and xPON fibre are completely different things

Because isn't the common IP lease time 5 minutes to an ONT before it renegotiates the connection? If the OP wanted to flush the gateway, etc most tech support would advise unplugging it for 5-20 minutes to allow the systems to clear the lease.

ONTs don't in general pick up an IP address, so there is no "lease" for them. They are managed via separate management frames from the OLT.

But switching off for a minute or two isn't a bad idea anyway, because allows capacitors to fully discharge. Then you know it's definitely starting from a clean boot.

in addition to what @candlerb has said, you may only see an ont taking an ip at enterprise level, and some sfp pon trancievers. Otherwise its a level 2 device and is just acting as a media converter with a ethernet presentation at the end.

As an user you can not flush a pon connection, as its a shared connection. OR can do that. If you need to clear a stale session with your service provider .. disconnect the pppoe connection and and reconnect it . You can do this via the router's interface or reboot the router and you also can do it via power cycling the ont or router.

poert cycling the ont is a last resort type thing.