That’s great, well if it means improvements and less problems other people have been seeing with virgin then I guess it’s only a positive.

In reply to a post by tomxlisa:

Yeah I mean the first ones to be fair the town I live in now has only just started getting cable it’s still only in a small area and my sister happens to be in that area so this is the first time for year since I’ve seen them install equipment, I had cable 20 years or so ago and only remember the smaller box which you showed I the first link which I prefer to be honest, don’t you think the bigger box looks a bit ugly to be on the front of the house that was definitely my first impression of it anyways, but I guess equipment changes.

Yes, I think all the boxes look terrible on the front of a house. I had Virgin Media put it down the side of my house to avoid this issue

Why all the fuss about a fairly small box on the wall of the house? I'd have a container in the garden if it gave me FTTP.

In reply to a post by Realalemadrid:

Why all the fuss about a fairly small box on the wall of the house? I'd have a container in the garden if it gave me FTTP.

I don’t have FTTP.

We had virgin installed a few weeks ago they didn't fit a cover, said it was only needed if a large chunk of the exterior wall comes out when drilling.

Virgin traditionally use a HFC or "Hybrid Fibre/Coax" network. In a way like FTTC - fibre goes to the street cabinet (which is powered) then coax to the individual houses. This is the older, smaller box. They use a protocol called DOCSIS for this, in most areas DOCSIS3.0 is used, in Gig1 areas, DOCSIS3.1 is used (although only on the downstream right now). This is why Gig1 needs a new modem.

Their new areas, where they are rolling out now, they use "RFoG", or "Radio Frequency over Glass". They save significant cost by putting fibre direct to the premises. This means they don't need power to their cabinets, which are now passive devices. The larger box houses a fibre media converter, that has the fibre go in one side, and coax come out the other (for the superhub, TV boxes etc). This device also needs power, so there is a wall wart indoors.

The newer option is better, in that the coax is only a couple of metres long so has less chance for interference. In theory it allows for higher bandwidth future services, as they can push GPON over the same fibre if they want, but it seems VM are reluctant to do this as they want to offer the same products nationwide.

In many ways however, it's the exact same protocol, with the exact same issues, over a different type of physical medium. It's still DOCSIS, it's still subject to contention, it still has significantly higher latency than VDSL/FTTC let alone what most people call FTTP. It still has limited upload speeds (although future DOCSIS versions might improve this).

While RFoG technically *is* FTTP, I wouldn't put it in the same category as GPON, XGPON, etc as other providers (BT, Cityfibre, etc) are deploying.

In reply to a post by gary333:

In reply to a post by Realalemadrid:

Why all the fuss about a fairly small box on the wall of the house? I'd have a container in the garden if it gave me FTTP.

I don’t have FTTP.

Technically, if you have the larger box, you do. The box is large as the fibre converter is in it. You have fibre, to the property. FTTP.

I have no idea what @gary333 has from Virgin but I don't think he got my joke about having a very large box to get FTTP.

In reply to a post by nemeth782:

In reply to a post by gary333:

In reply to a post by Realalemadrid:

Why all the fuss about a fairly small box on the wall of the house? I'd have a container in the garden if it gave me FTTP.

I don’t have FTTP.

Technically, if you have the larger box, you do. The box is large as the fibre converter is in it. You have fibre, to the property. FTTP.

I suggest you read the history of this thread. This is nothing to do with my setup. For the record I have RG11 coax.

In reply to a post by DG834MAN:

We had virgin installed a few weeks ago they didn't fit a cover, said it was only needed if a large chunk of the exterior wall comes out when drilling.

This is just lazy installers, probably contractors. The box should always be fitted. My last house didn't have one fitted upon the second install as I mentioned the cable had already been patched twice. To prevent them needing to repull the cable they just didn't bother with the box to prevent another connection. Bodgers.