How fast & costly is your internet connection?

[StKeverne1497]

We have a very large family so it's not uncommon for there to be five or six devices of various types connected at the same time. My partner also works from home and we do a lot of streaming on Spotify and Netflix, often on more than one device at once. My PlayStation 4 sees very little use simply because I don't have a great amount of time to use it, so whenever I do use it there are often large update files which can take quite a lot of hours to download.

There are times, such as early evenings and weekends, where our internet feels slow, so I'm guessing we're at the limit of what 100Mbps can provide.

Not necessarily - it's evenings and weekends when everyone else is using the system too, so it *might* be simply that you are suffering from contention - the internet equivalent of a party line. I don't know how Virgin works on that front, but I do know that what is now Virgin started out as several disparate networks (Cabletel / Telewest / ntl: etc.) so any remaining legacy technology is likely completely different in different parts of the country.

Another bottleneck is often the household WiFi. It's usually better to wire where possible and leave the shared medium of WiFi to those devices which cannot be wired, such as phones.

Being pedantic about it, in this household there are probably ten or twelve devices almost permanently connected and "using internet" with plenty of others on and off as required. It's not the number of devices which matters, it's what they are doing. Obviously updates are a problem, but most sensible systems allow you to defer these to happen overnight or at other low-use times. I've just had a scout around t'internets and the latest system update for the PS4 console itself is less than a ½GB download, so even being conservative, that should take under a minute to download at 100Mbps (≈10MB per second, so 500MB in 50 seconds). It was more difficult finding sizes of update files for games, but the biggest installed size of a game I could find was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare at 175GB. This is the total amount of hard drive space it uses however; the size when downloading will be smaller due to compression, and update files will never (I hope!) attempt to replace every single file in one go. Let's assume a massive 50GB update. That should take no more than an hour and a half to download at 100Mbps, *if* you are getting a true 100Mbps.

Some types of work remote desktop VPN need a constant stream of data and can be a pain on a slow line, but with 100Mbps downstream to play with, you should be able to do a heck of a lot of remote desktopping and streaming before it becomes a problem. Netflix recommends 5Mbps for HD and 25Mbps for 4k streaming, so a true 100Mbps connection could support as many as 20 simultaneous HD streams. I believe Spotify doesn't specify the bandwidth used by their "lossless" audio, but even if they streamed raw CD data (and no-one in their right mind would do that) it would only be 1.4Mbps. Their "premium" audio is 0.32Mbps.

More is almost always better. The question is, is it worth the extra money?

M.

I can’t find a nice Openreach document that explicitly says it, but https://www.openreach.co.uk/cpportal/products/product-withdrawal/stop-sells-updates talks of the analogue network and products that rely on it. Various sites talk of ADSL being such a product. If the copper line from the exchange isn’t available, there’s nothing for the ADSL to run on.
[...]

Here's an article from February, another from early May, and a small update a week later (all on The Register) - Openreach is issuing "stop sell" orders for Copper in large parts of the country which means that you won't be able to order a new Copper-based phone line after a certain date, and as previously noted if you don't have a Copper landline you can't have ADSL or, indeed, FTTC I suppose.

M.

 

[Geezertronic]

You will often find that the contention for wireless is in fact the box that is supplied by your provider. Mine is Virgin Media and their Super Hub 3 is shockingly poor for wireless the more devices you are hanging off it. If you want better wireless speeds, the recommendation is to run the Virgin media box in Modem mode (standard mode for wireless access is Router mode) and have a separate wireless router.

I do this and have the Asus RT-AC86U directly connected via RJ45 to the SuperHub and the Asus serves wireless. Speed tests show that I get *twice* the wireless speed through the Asus than I did through the Super Hub, plus an extended wireless range to boot. I also do not have to reboot the Super Hub regularly - or the Asus for that matter, and I no longer have lag on my wireless Ring cameras. Performance of cabled connections via the PowerLine adapters is also improved as that is plugged direct into the Asus now as well

 

[Tazi Hupefi]

You will often find that the contention for wireless is in fact the box that is supplied by your provider. Mine is Virgin Media and their Super Hub 3 is shockingly poor for wireless the more devices you are hanging off it. If you want better wireless speeds, the recommendation is to run the Virgin media box in Modem mode (standard mode for wireless access is Router mode) and have a separate wireless router.

I do this and have the Asus RT-AC86U directly connected via RJ45 to the SuperHub and the Asus serves wireless. Speed tests show that I get *twice* the wireless speed through the Asus than I did through the Super Hub, plus an extended wireless range to boot. I also do not have to reboot the Super Hub regularly - or the Asus for that matter, and I no longer have lag on my wireless Ring cameras. Performance of cabled connections via the PowerLine adapters is also improved as that is plugged direct into the Asus now as well

The other thing about equipment provided by BT is that they have the absolute cheek to turn your internet connection into a public (paid for) hotspot with no way to disable it in the settings!

Or at least they used to!

 

[WelshBluebird]

They're going to have to finish rolling out FTTC or better to the rest of the country. But there are many exchanges sitting in prime spaces in towns and cities. If BT can push out the majority of the kit required to roadside cabinets, that's a lot of valuable space that can be made available.

Most (95+%) of the UK is FTTC or FTTP anyway, the ones listed in the trial are FTTP areas. By 2025 they will have to upgrade the remaining 5% or keep the ADSL running. Currently Openreach have a target of at least 10mbps for each house, this will also get rid of a lot of ADSL lines.

It isn't really the areas that currently do not have FTTC / FTTP at all that I am thinking of to be honest as yeah I suspect they will be on the roadmap before long (I'm still amazed my parents have fibre now after years of dealing with sub 2Mbps ADSL!).
Its the properties and streets in areas that do have FTTC coverage that for one reason or another have been left out that I am really interested in, as those will have been left out of the initial rollout for a reason I would have thought. I am (selfishly) thinking of places like where I live in Bristol - a street within a ten minute walk of the city centre that has three relatively modern (~10-15 years old) blocks of flats on it where the best we can get is ADSL but the streets around us can get both Virgin Media or BT FTTC (or both).

 

[lkpridgeon]

The other thing about equipment provided by BT is that they have the absolute cheek to turn your internet connection into a public (paid for) hotspot with no way to disable it in the settings!

Or at least they used to!

From what I understand you have to go into your BT account and opt-out of BT Openzone/whatever it's called these days or switch it into modem mode and run your own wireless network (should you still want to use Openzone when out and about).

 

[JamesT]

It isn't really the areas that currently do not have FTTC / FTTP at all that I am thinking of to be honest as yeah I suspect they will be on the roadmap before long (I'm still amazed my parents have fibre now after years of dealing with sub 2Mbps ADSL!).
Its the properties and streets in areas that do have FTTC coverage that for one reason or another have been left out that I am really interested in, as those will have been left out of the initial rollout for a reason I would have thought. I am (selfishly) thinking of places like where I live in Bristol - a street within a ten minute walk of the city centre that has three relatively modern (~10-15 years old) blocks of flats on it where the best we can get is ADSL but the streets around us can get both Virgin Media or BT FTTC (or both).

Quite possibly they're too close to the exchange. Paradoxically, because the lines run directly into the exchange, there's no intermediate cabinet for the FTTC equipment to go in.
This is something they'll have to sort out before they can decommission the copper network.

 

[Tazi Hupefi]

From what I understand you have to go into your BT account and opt-out of BT Openzone/whatever it's called these days or switch it into modem mode and run your own wireless network (should you still want to use Openzone when out and about).

I have my own equipment anyway, but you're quite right, it is / was possible to opt-out. Although, I doubt many people even know a slice of their bandwidth is being shared, and other devices connecting to their hardware, let alone even think to opt-out. Although I suspect it is secure, I still don't want unknown devices connecting.

I have no problem with the public hotspot functionality, just that it's on by default, a pain to turn off, and not really made clear.

 

[ABB125]

What are people's experiences with using a SIM card and some sort of WiFi hub thing which uses a mobile network?
This seems to be a lot cheaper than a fixed connection (which possibly implies it isn't as good?); for example, Smarty (which I believe is a sub-brand of Three; they certainly use the Three network) has an unlimited everything plan, supposedly with no limits/restrictions etc, available for £18 a month. I can't remember if it's 5G enabled, but you can get 5G plans for a similar amount, especially when you use "exclusive" price comparison site offers.

 

[Tazi Hupefi]

What are people's experiences with using a SIM card and some sort of WiFi hub thing which uses a mobile network?
This seems to be a lot cheaper than a fixed connection (which possibly implies it isn't as good?); for example, Smarty (which I believe is a sub-brand of Three; they certainly use the Three network) has an unlimited everything plan, supposedly with no limits/restrictions etc, available for £18 a month. I can't remember if it's 5G enabled, but you can get 5G plans for a similar amount, especially when you use "exclusive" price comparison site offers.

Those sorts of mini hubs aren’t designed for intensive use, for example lots of connections and lots of data going through them.

They will be fine for a bit of internet browsing, and even a fair amount of streaming, but won’t handle lots of devices very well at all. You’d be just as well to turn on your mobile phone hotspot

You can buy a decent quality mobile hub that supports 5G, but the hardware can be as expensive as a top mobile phone.

I have a cheap one as an emergency backup.

 

[ABB125]

Those sorts of mini hubs aren’t designed for intensive use, for example lots of connections and lots of data going through them.

They will be fine for a bit of internet browsing, and even a fair amount of streaming, but won’t handle lots of devices very well at all. You’d be just as well to turn on your mobile phone hotspot

You can buy a decent quality mobile hub that supports 5G, but the hardware can be as expensive as a top mobile phone.

I have a cheap one as an emergency backup.

Thanks - probably not the best idea in a house full of students then!

 

[eMeS]

What are people's experiences with using a SIM card and some sort of WiFi hub thing which uses a mobile network?
This seems to be a lot cheaper than a fixed connection (which possibly implies it isn't as good?); for example, Smarty (which I believe is a sub-brand of Three; they certainly use the Three network) has an unlimited everything plan, supposedly with no limits/restrictions etc, available for £18 a month. I can't remember if it's 5G enabled, but you can get 5G plans for a similar amount, especially when you use "exclusive" price comparison site offers.

I've been forced to use one or similar (a Three dongle in my case) as a result of the inventiveway way my home was wired decades ago, before the now standard BT Master Socket was introduced. It's worked OK for me, but at times has been more expensive (I think) than a more normal connection. One advantage, was that when we went on holiday, I'd pickup up my laptop and the dongle, and have the same connection whilst travelling as when at home. I wouldn't recommend it, and if I hadn't piled masses of hi-fi equipment in front of the installed old type master socket, I'd have changed it.
(Disconnecting some of my more recent hi-fi has damaged it due to bonding between optical fibre cables and the sockets in the Hi-Fi. So, I no longer have 5.1 sound when playing suitable DVDs... I never saw instructions that domestic optical fibre was a short time only connection!)

 

[Snow1964]

There has been lot of new cabling going on here in Wiltshire

Now getting choice of 36, 40, 74, 100, 300, 900 Mb with guarantee downloads of about half of maximum, but uploads are fairly low eg the 900 only gets 110 upload (so about 15% of quoted speed)

Prices vary from £27.99 to £59.99 per month, but most include landline package

 

[ABB125]

I've been forced to use one or similar (a Three dongle in my case) as a result of the inventiveway way my home was wired decades ago, before the now standard BT Master Socket was introduced. It's worked OK for me, but at times has been more expensive (I think) than a more normal connection. One advantage, was that when we went on holiday, I'd pickup up my laptop and the dongle, and have the same connection whilst travelling as when at home. I wouldn't recommend it, and if I hadn't piled masses of hi-fi equipment in front of the installed old type master socket, I'd have changed it.
(Disconnecting some of my more recent hi-fi has damaged it due to bonding between optical fibre cables and the sockets in the Hi-Fi. So, I no longer have 5.1 sound when playing suitable DVDs... I never saw instructions that domestic optical fibre was a short time only connection!)

Thanks, that's good to know.

 

[johncrossley]

Who is actually responsible for the rollout of fibre direct to the home? I thought Openreach was generally in charge of this but I see other companies such as Community Fibre and CityFibre advertising full fibre services.

 

[eMeS]

Who is actually responsible for the rollout of fibre direct to the home? I thought Openreach was generally in charge of this but I see other companies such as Community Fibre and CityFibre advertising full fibre services.

In Milton Keynes 2 & 3 years ago, we had CityFibre laying the fibres in the footpaths, and installing a small terminal(?) with hatch-cover outside each or each pair of premises - seemed to vary from area to area.

 

[johncrossley]

In Milton Keynes 2 & 3 years ago, we had CityFibre laying the fibres in the footpaths, and installing a small terminal(?) with hatch-cover outside each or each pair of premises - seemed to vary from area to area.

With fibre to the cabinet you can choose from a variety of providers. If a particular company is installing in your area, how are you meant to be able to choose other companies?

 

[eMeS]

With fibre to the cabinet you can choose from a variety of providers. If a particular company is installing in your area, how are you meant to be able to choose other companies?

Here's a snap of a junction box (or whatever it's called) - from May 2018, in Milton Keynes.

 

[Energy]

Here's a snap of a junction box (or whatever it's called) - from May 2018, in Milton Keynes.

The fancy name is a TOBY box, here is a err... better installed one:



Virgin (and others) use similar ones to run the cable up to that point with the remaining distance on the customers property being done when they make an order.

 

[JamesT]

With fibre to the cabinet you can choose from a variety of providers. If a particular company is installing in your area, how are you meant to be able to choose other companies?

You’ll have the choice of whatever companies are willing to install to your premises. With FTTC it’s still only Openreach running the physical install, even if there are lots of companies willing to resell their underlying services.

It’s somewhat of a free market in that if a company wants to run fibre there’s nothing to stop them. But an area that already has a supplier is unlikely to offer enough lucrative customers for another to try. Though I would expect Openreach to eventually offer some sort of product everywhere.

 

[87 027]

In addition to Openreach there are many other smaller companies (called alt-nets) who are rolling out FTTP but unless the company has received government subsidy they are not obliged to open up their networks to competitors to offer retail services. However they can choose to do so if they think it is in their commercial interests, so it is very much down to the particular company and locality.

Openreach is obliged to open its infrastructure to other providers because it is deemed by Ofcom to have 'significant market power.'

 

[DelW]

What are people's experiences with using a SIM card and some sort of WiFi hub thing which uses a mobile network?
This seems to be a lot cheaper than a fixed connection (which possibly implies it isn't as good?); for example, Smarty (which I believe is a sub-brand of Three; they certainly use the Three network) has an unlimited everything plan, supposedly with no limits/restrictions etc, available for £18 a month. I can't remember if it's 5G enabled, but you can get 5G plans for a similar amount, especially when you use "exclusive" price comparison site offers.

I currently use a Three wifi hub, which means I can take "home" wifi with me when I'm travelling (not that that's been often for the last fifteen months though). I pay about £30 per month for 100GB, of which I usually use around 50 - 60GB. Speed is variable, usually 15 - 30 Mbps download, 5 - 10 Mbps upload, just occasionally it slows right down. It's usually fine for e.g. Zoom calls and youtube video, and I don't use streaming services much at all.
The price is for a rolling one month contract, it would come down to around £20 per month if I signed up for 24 months. I've had the hub for about four years, so it's now out of contract (i.e. it was paid for over the first two years).
I can also use it for data on my phone instead of PAYG data at 5p per Mb. Its easily pocketable, but battery life is only around 3 - 4 hours, so means carrying a charger and/or power bank as well.

 

[ABB125]

I currently use a Three wifi hub, which means I can take "home" wifi with me when I'm travelling (not that that's been often for the last fifteen months though). I pay about £30 per month for 100GB, of which I usually use around 50 - 60GB. Speed is variable, usually 15 - 30 Mbps download, 5 - 10 Mbps upload, just occasionally it slows right down. It's usually fine for e.g. Zoom calls and youtube video, and I don't use streaming services much at all.
The price is for a rolling one month contract, it would come down to around £20 per month if I signed up for 24 months. I've had the hub for about four years, so it's now out of contract (i.e. it was paid for over the first two years).
I can also use it for data on my phone instead of PAYG data at 5p per Mb. Its easily pocketable, but battery life is only around 3 - 4 hours, so means carrying a charger and/or power bank as well.

Thanks

 

[paul1609]

Quite possibly they're too close to the exchange. Paradoxically, because the lines run directly into the exchange, there's no intermediate cabinet for the FTTC equipment to go in.
This is something they'll have to sort out before they can decommission the copper network.

Our village was all exchange only lines, my house is across the road from the exchange. When FTTC was introduced BT just put a cabinet in the road outside and another couple round the village linked by fibre overhead lines. The exchange gets its connection via microwave from London. It always upsets people down from London that in the sticks I get a much better internet service than they do.

 

[Dai Corner]

Our village was all exchange only lines, my house is across the road from the exchange. When FTTC was introduced BT just put a cabinet in the road outside and another couple round the village linked by fibre overhead lines. The exchange gets its connection via microwave from London. It always upsets people down from London that in the sticks I get a much better internet service than they do.

I wonder why they put a cabinet outside instead of installing the kit inside the exchange building?

 

[507021]

Not necessarily - it's evenings and weekends when everyone else is using the system too, so it *might* be simply that you are suffering from contention - the internet equivalent of a party line. I don't know how Virgin works on that front, but I do know that what is now Virgin started out as several disparate networks (Cabletel / Telewest / ntl: etc.) so any remaining legacy technology is likely completely different in different parts of the country.

Another bottleneck is often the household WiFi. It's usually better to wire where possible and leave the shared medium of WiFi to those devices which cannot be wired, such as phones.

Being pedantic about it, in this household there are probably ten or twelve devices almost permanently connected and "using internet" with plenty of others on and off as required. It's not the number of devices which matters, it's what they are doing. Obviously updates are a problem, but most sensible systems allow you to defer these to happen overnight or at other low-use times. I've just had a scout around t'internets and the latest system update for the PS4 console itself is less than a ½GB download, so even being conservative, that should take under a minute to download at 100Mbps (≈10MB per second, so 500MB in 50 seconds). It was more difficult finding sizes of update files for games, but the biggest installed size of a game I could find was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare at 175GB. This is the total amount of hard drive space it uses however; the size when downloading will be smaller due to compression, and update files will never (I hope!) attempt to replace every single file in one go. Let's assume a massive 50GB update. That should take no more than an hour and a half to download at 100Mbps, *if* you are getting a true 100Mbps.

Some types of work remote desktop VPN need a constant stream of data and can be a pain on a slow line, but with 100Mbps downstream to play with, you should be able to do a heck of a lot of remote desktopping and streaming before it becomes a problem. Netflix recommends 5Mbps for HD and 25Mbps for 4k streaming, so a true 100Mbps connection could support as many as 20 simultaneous HD streams. I believe Spotify doesn't specify the bandwidth used by their "lossless" audio, but even if they streamed raw CD data (and no-one in their right mind would do that) it would only be 1.4Mbps. Their "premium" audio is 0.32Mbps.

More is almost always better. The question is, is it worth the extra money?

M.



Here's an article from February, another from early May, and a small update a week later (all on The Register) - Openreach is issuing "stop sell" orders for Copper in large parts of the country which means that you won't be able to order a new Copper-based phone line after a certain date, and as previously noted if you don't have a Copper landline you can't have ADSL or, indeed, FTTC I suppose.

M.

Thanks for the advice, I'll bear it in mind and do some research before making a decision.

 

[paul1609]

I wonder why they put a cabinet outside instead of installing the kit inside the exchange building?

Apparently its interference issues.

 

[Trackman]

In Milton Keynes 2 & 3 years ago, we had CityFibre laying the fibres in the footpaths, and installing a small terminal(?) with hatch-cover outside each or each pair of premises - seemed to vary from area to area.

CityFibre recently installed fibre at my place up north. Odd thing is, they doing it by BT poles. They all have junction boxes attached at the top.
An institution at the top is being fed by overhead fibre and it has a warning notice on the BT pole.
My contract for Virgin media M100 was up, so I decided to investigate and it turns out Cityfibre have a deal with Talktalk or something- so that was the end of that matter, cant be doing with them.

 

[87 027]

CityFibre recently installed fibre at my place up north. Odd thing is, they doing it by BT poles. They all have junction boxes attached at the top.

Nothing unusual about the alt-nets using BT poles. Openreach are obliged under the terms of their regulation to allow other providers physical access to their infrastructure (i.e. poles and ducts). This was done in order to stimulate competition and speed up gigabit broadband rollout by reusing existing infrastructure.

it turns out Cityfibre have a deal with Talktalk or something- so that was the end of that matter, cant be doing with them.

Not all of the alt-nets directly sell retail broadband to end consumers. Some provide their capacity on a wholesale basis for other ISPs (internet service providers) to use. The link below is a directory of ISPs and if you click through to the details of each package, you can find out whose infrastructure they are using - their own, Openreach, or someone else.

Broadband deals from UK broadband providers | thinkbroadband

Find the best broadband deals and packages from UK broadband providers.

www.thinkbroadband.com

You will note that CityFibre are not on the list as they are not a retailer. But if you look up TalkTalk you will see that they offer some products using Openreach and others using CityFibre. It depends where the non-Openreach alt-nets are up to with their own infrastructure rollouts.

 

[Trackman]

Nothing unusual about the alt-nets using BT poles. Openreach are obliged under the terms of their regulation to allow other providers physical access to their infrastructure (i.e. poles and ducts). This was done in order to stimulate competition and speed up gigabit broadband rollout by reusing existing infrastructure.

They dug the pavements up to lay the cables, doesn't make sense as there is duct down the road and it ain't full or anything as I've seen it- and VM use it.

 

[Dai Corner]

They dug the pavements up to lay the cables, doesn't make sense as there is duct down the road and it ain't full or anything as I've seen it- and VM use it.

VM aren't obliged to allow other providers access to their ducts.