In reply to a post by ryan125_hst:

The only thing we are concerned about is the light level was apparently -30 from what the engineer told my Dad.

Is it possible they said -13 and he misheard?

In any case, if it's working reliably, don't worry about it. If the connection becomes flaky in the future, you can mention it.

I really don't believe an engineer would have gone away and ticked-off a successful install if the light level was -30dBm

Ah yes, of course. I have a combined ONT Router, where the light levels can be read. But not something to worry about, as you say.

Is it known Fibre Heroes lock down the ONT?

My MS3 supplied Nokia (XS-010G-Q - the 2.5G one) leaves the web interface available at http://192.168.100.1with default login admin/1234 providing access to a moreinfo.html page reporting light level.
It requires manually assigning an IP to access, but I configured OPNsense to make it available.

As you say kind of useless though, it's either working or it's not so just go by the lights.

In reply to a post by ryan125_hst:

An engineer from CASS (Fibre Heroes contractor) turned up yesterday at about 11:30 and installed the ONT, CSP box and attached the fibre to the outside wall. I was working so couldn't watch what was going on but my Dad seemed happy with it. The engineer put the ONT where we wanted it and Dad has run an Ethernet cable under the carpet so we can still put our router where it currently is - I'd discussed all this with him advance so he knew about the ONT needing power etc.

The only thing we are concerned about is the light level was apparently -30 from what the engineer told my Dad. He had a look at the connection to the ONT and then went into the street and looked in one of the chambers under the footpath. We're not sure if anything changed but we have two green lights on the ONT so it seems to have a good connection. I'm concerned that a video online shows -22 as being the value that they investigate at. This was for Wildanet but they also use XGS-PON so I'd presume tolerances are similar? The reading in the video was about -17. Would it even work if it was -30? Is this reading something else? Or perhaps it was that bad and he sorted it?

Squirrel have confirmed the router has been dispatched so we'll see what the connection is like when it arrives over the next couple of days.

Thanks for the update. It sounds like a positive experience. Hopefully the engineer did something to fix the light reading before he left. At least with proper fibre it generally either works or it doesn't so fault finding should be much easier. Looking forward to your next update

By and large the main network providers here in the UK lock down the ONT on the Ethernet side. I’m aware that some don’t, mostly AltNet providers here and some overseas networks - so it can be possible to get light levels and some very basic info from a landing page. But it’s by no means the rule or standard.

The router arrived on Thursday afternoon and my Dad installed a Cat 6 cable under the carpet between the ONT and the router in the evening (a seemingly difficult job due to the thickness of Cat 6 meaning he had to cut out some underlay, and I wasn't up to helping him as I've been suffering with a herniated disc in my lower back and painful sciatica for 7 months so I can't kneel on the floor to pull cables!)

We had the service up and running by about 10pm on Thursday night, in parallel with our existing Sky FTTC service. I worked connected to it on Friday and had no issues accessing files on the work server or in video calls.

I've not been able to do a reliable speed test as my desktop PC is connected over WiFi and the only other device I have is my work laptop which uses a USB-C adapter for Ethernet which I'm not convinced is the most reliable either!

It's definitely faster than Sky FTTC by far and even over WiFi when I'm in my room I'm seeing 200-300 Mbps as my Backblaze backup uploads which is brilliant, and I've seen speed tests over 400.

I don't think the WiFi is the strongest in the provided router though as it keeps dropping to a lower negotiated speed or even down to 2.4 Ghz so I'm looking at buying a high end router, probably an Asus ROG GT-BE98. I had hoped I could persuade my Dad to run an Ethernet cable for me and he initially accepted the idea, but after the experience the other night and with the thought of drilling holes in the wall, I think I'm sadly out of luck. Having the Sky router on as well also seems to be causing interference (I put my Sky box on earlier to look at moving it across to the new WiFi and it was stuttering while connected to the Sky router) so we'll move the last things across tomorrow and switch the Sky router off.

That said, the best speed I have seen on my phone so far when stood in front of the router is 826 Mbps down and 768 Mbps up which is miles ahead of the 70 Mbps and 18.5 Mbps we used to have. It does seem to vary a lot and even when plugged into my work laptop it was in the 600's and varying. I'm not sure if this is due to network contention or if it's because I've not been able to plug a device in that can get the full speed reliably. I'd love to see it nearer 900 Mbps but either way, we can't really complain with those speeds! We've also not noticed any drop outs so hopefully the fibre light levels are fine after all.

The last thing to mention is I think we're getting some bufferbloat. Webpages were snappy to load but suddenly I was seeing YouTube thumbnails take a while to load which led me to do some research and discover this. I found the Waveform Bufferbloat tester and sure enough it's grade A when plugged into the router and grade C or worse in my room. Another reason for me to look at improving the WiFi.

We also still need to contact them to organise a Static IP.

Overall though, so far so good and the speed bottlenecks are keeping me busy in the hunt to try and get the best out of the connection!

Very good. Bit more tweaking on the WiFi in due course.

You’ll find when you’re trying to reliably get > 800 Mbps on WiFi 6 and 7, obstacles of any sort will put a big dent in performance. Distance also. If you really want / need this level of throughput then coordinated multiple access points (with their own wired uplinks) start to become a necessity unless you practically have everything in one room!

You are so right. Wasn't so long ago I had two ADSL lines bonded together costing me £100 a month! Now I'm getting 800+ for £33!

Edited by kingbiscit (Mon 03-Feb-25 09:50:02)

In reply to a post by adslmax:

Squirrel is very limit to UK. They not Openreach but believe to be Cityfibre!

Squirrel use Freedom Fibre where I live.

. In my case it was at a plug and he cleaned the face of the fibre on a special fabric that the sleeve of his jacket was made of.

Tell me you are joking ?

If that was genuinely what the ‘engineer’ told you, then that’s a huge demerit against them.