to the point it comes into your house/premises,then there is about 5ft of what could be coax or fibre,never taken things apart to check but is really stiff stuff,does the bt version of fttp carry fibre through to the router?

You are getting too technical there. Possibly caused by the "shorthand" way we refer to xDSL modem/routers as simply "routers".

BT Openreach fibre carries on into the inside of the premises where it ends up in a wall-mounted ONT (Optical Network Terminator). You can think of that as the replacement for an xDSL modem. The current ones then output via a single ethernet socket using standard ethernet cables of suitable speed capability to go to your true router+switch+WAP that we also shortcut-call a router.

Edited by RobertoS (Mon 09-Nov-20 18:20:13)

Followed this old thread with interest, if not complete technical understanding -
If anyone cares to comment on my situation, I'd love to hear from you.

Q: Will I notice a big change if I ditch cable (Virgin 100M) and go back to Zen over POTS?

My postcode (centre of Edinburgh) is reporting that the best Zen could do for me is 15mbs.
That sounds awfully narrow, compared to my usual (Speedtest) figure of 220mbs / Ping 6ms / Jitter 5.2ms.
And we still get Zoom occasionally telling us, "your internet connection is unstable." and dropping links.

Usage: we're just a couple here, using Netflix, a lot of Zoom, no gaming or UHD TV.
One mac uses Ethernet connection, everything else uses wifi, which of course throttles the Speedtest flow right down to 20mbs.
As Virgin prices creep - or jump up inexorably- am I paying for more than I need?
Thanks

In reply to a post by NotaJock:

My postcode (centre of Edinburgh) is reporting that the best Zen could do for me is 15mbs.

City centre Edinburgh is a pain - the central Rose St exchange area only has FTTC on the outskirts so that 15Mbit is ADSL2+.

The problem with ADSL2+ is the upload speed, I wouldn't recommend changing in this case.

Cityfibre have built a lot, in the city centre there are only business connections to be had as far as I know... but hold out, maybe the Vodafone partnership will bring a consumer service to you, or Openreach FTTP will get there first.

That's really helpful. Many thanks. Good to know the reason for the lack of alternatives.

Now to not let on to Virgin they are my only option when I try to negotiate a lower price...

Update on this - OpenReach have fibre'd the street, and now Virgin has competition.

Zen 100 looks good to me- £38 / month (and no price rises). They say they will install cable right into the house. With their Fritz box, but of course that goes into modem mode to feed my wi-fi router.

Virgin counteroffer is £29 (rising to £35 after 18 months) for 200 mbs.

Do I *need* 200, and could more consistent Zen performance in video calls and streaming justify the small extra spend? Or am I paying for customer support?

Needless to say, I have factored out wi-fi issues, using Cat5 cable for critical connections.

Any Zen fans out there who can justify the higher price?

If this is Openreach FTTP you won't need the Fritzbox, just connect your router WAN Port to the ONT (Optical Network Termination). The ONT is basically the fibre equivalent of a modem.

In reply to a post by NotaJock:

Virgin counteroffer is £29 (rising to £35 after 18 months) for 200 mbs.

Yet here, the 200/20 service (M200) is now £50; so assume Virgin will increase that price quickly from £35.

Thanks for that.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

If a gamer you will want to keep the Zen connection for actual gaming and use the Virgin one for the large downloads of patches.

That old one, any game network stack programer should be able to handle that. It by using a good lag compensation techniques. Now with a very long lag then you would have problems, but 20-40 ms should not be issue.
Packet loss is lot bigger problem for gaming. Anything that need to send without dealy will sent as a UDP packets. But the issue with UDP packets that there no confirmation of successful recept. Anything that must get there will use TCP but has lot overheads and take longer but has confirmation of successful recept.

There is lot more to lag compensation techniques than this. This is very simple video explane what going on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiGwrmMzhjc