Hi philg,

My order has been completed. I had some delays as there was a collapsed duct between the street and my house which needed to be dug out; the civil works team that do this are working to around a month lead time in my area.

Nevertheless, my service is now live and so far I am happy;

The speeds are symmetrical, my latency to London (from Leeds) has increased ever so slightly compared to previous BT FTTP (~4ms) and all of this seems stable from my ~24 hours since going live.

https://imgur.com/B2Rj8mN shows hourly latency and throughput tests which I plan to run for a week or so to make things are stable and as expected.

Thanks for the update.
Ive actually ordered with Giganet for now - they have short contracts (in fact I could have gone for a monthly contract (although I chose yearly). Simply put they were cheaper and answered my rather techy questions directed to them quicker and better than Zen did (which was a little surprising).

But installation hasn't happened yet, they suggest it will be in the next few weeks but if not I may end up changing my mind on ISP - there are more available to order from now (initially it was just giganet and zen that cityfibre announced)

My installation was on Thursday.
Two men (and two vans) from Kelly Communications, on behalf of
CityFibre acting for Zen, arrived at 15.00.
They rodded through the BT duct from the house to the BT chamber,
there was some muck in it but they got through. Then they installed a
CF mini-microduct in the BT duct and connected it to an existing microduct
running from the camber to the adjoining CF cabinet installed last
year. At the house end a short length of brown duct, external grade
presumably, was attached to the mini-microduct and run to a junction box
mounted on the wall, after which a fibre was blown through.
To get the service to the back of the house where it was needed
required a 25m cable, but they were supplied in 20 or 30m lengths, so
5m had to be 'lost.'
I didn't see the ONT being installed. I'd have preferred it to have
been next to, or over, the cable inlet but the guy obviously thought
he was being helpful by putting it next to the ethernet outlets. At
least there's now a desk hiding the cable run along the skirting.
It took just short of two hours and was the eighth install they'd done
that day. They were pleased that they'd been able to use the BT duct,
otherwise they would have had to have trenched the block-paved drive.
Apparently there's a larger external wall box being released but I
don't know if it's large enough to lose another 5m of cable.
The installers were very happy for me to photograph what they were doing. I'm sorry that I missed the connection being made in the CF cabinet.
Download some pics from
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AkhvgPvXD0_1ouktMVtodRRD_XNI5g?e...
When first connected the download speed was 1Gb, instead of the 300Mbs that I'd ordered, but when I ran a speed test later the download was 300Mbs.
I also worked out how to connect my Asus DSL-AX82U in preference to the Tecnicolor DGA4134 provided by Zen.

In reply to a post by ParksidePeter:

I also worked out how to connect my Asus DSL-AX82U in preference to the Tecnicolor DGA4134 provided by Zen.

Was that simply a PPPoE based authentication?

Enjoy the new connection and thanks for posting pics of the install.

In reply to a post by ParksidePeter:

I also worked out how to connect my Asus DSL-AX82U in preference to the Tecnicolor DGA4134 provided by Zen.

I thought Zen were using FritzBox now or was that a limited offer when I renewed my VDSL?

Never been a fan of Technicolor, not that I'd use it as a router but the FritzBox I was able to flash OpenWRT on and use as a WiFi Access Point.

Screenshots of my Asus configuration should be self explanatory, download from https://1drv.ms/u/s!AkhvgPvXD0_1ouoyxMOtn3WtR2bpaA?e...
Might help in configuring other makers' devices too.

Zen sent me the Technicolor router a couple of weeks ago so presumably it's now the standard issue.
The interface is not of the best so I can see why you are not keen but it's probably quite competent for most users. Its wifi is the latest variant. I had an Asus mesh configured and didn't want to start again with that.

I believe they've had trouble with supply of Fritz, so the Technicolor is a substitute.

They sent me a Technicolor. Works OK as a broadband router - haven't tried the wifi.

But ... the documentation is sorely lacking

Thanks for the update 🙏

Just for informational purposes, Zen over Cityfibre is not symmetrical everywhere.

We've had two lines installed in separate premises in Eastbourne and the gigabit line is limited to 120mbps upload, whilst the 300mbps download line is limited to 50mbps upload.

These are not business lines, they are residential, so I don't know if that would make a difference.

This is plenty fast for us, but is obviously asymmetrical.

(I have run dozens of speed tests at speedtest.net to verify this and every time each one has come out limited to the above numbers.)

Edited by soilcandidate (Thu 31-Mar-22 15:45:55)