[design219]

One of our clients is a regional telecom currently offering phone/broadband/cable and they are beginning a complete two year fiber optic into every home network upgrade. As far as I can see, faster broadband and an unlimited number of HDTV's in the home are the only advantage to their customers at this time. We have been tasked with marketing the advantages and the "future proof" aspect of this network upgrade.

Anyway, just wondering if anyone has fiber to the home and what your experience has been? What sort of up and down speeds you achieve?

[Spheric Harlot]

We're getting hooked up w/ 100Mbit optical in November.

Friends who have the service claim the 100 Mbit to be realistic.

I couldn't really care less about tv, so I haven't asked.

[residentEvil]

FTTH isn't really taking off very quickly in areas where cities put those services up to bid once every decade or so.

cable incumbunts and phone companies (that aren't doing FTTH yet) aren't too worried since those FTTH builds can't come in where they have the city's contract already.

while not the same as FTTH, FTTN like ATT's U-Verse, suffers compared to traditional cable. the farther from the CO, the worse the picture and top internet speeds will be.

my house though; is all set for FTTH or future FITH distribution. when i bought the house 6 years ago, i ran speedwrap to all rooms and garage back to a central hub near where all my traditional services have come in (phone, cable, satellite)...2 quad RG6 coax, 2 CAT5e and 2 multimode fiber strands.

[gradient]

Originally Posted by residentEvil 

FTTH isn't really taking off very quickly in areas where cities put those services up to bid once every decade or so.

cable incumbunts and phone companies (that aren't doing FTTH yet) aren't too worried since those FTTH builds can't come in where they have the city's contract already.

while not the same as FTTH, FTTN like ATT's U-Verse, suffers compared to traditional cable. the farther from the CO, the worse the picture and top internet speeds will be.

my house though; is all set for FTTH or future FITH distribution. when i bought the house 6 years ago, i ran speedwrap to all rooms and garage back to a central hub near where all my traditional services have come in (phone, cable, satellite)...2 quad RG6 coax, 2 CAT5e and 2 multimode fiber strands.

singlemode, ftw.

[residentEvil]

Originally Posted by gradient 

singlemode, ftw.

why? is your bedroom 20 miles from your in-house distribution point?

[indigoimac]

I've got FiOS for internet and phone -- got the cheapo package so it's 69.99 for 10/2 and unlimited long distance. The city just cleared Verizon for TV rollout and it should be available in places where fiber is installed in 3-6 months -- which is great because then I can dump comcast completely.

The installation was cake, but all of our utilities are above ground so they just draped it in from the pole next to the existing copper. They installed the new fiber ONT on the house next to the copper one and then patched my line over for phone. They ran a coax line up to my unit and setup the power supply and battery backup.

I've been pleased with everything so far except for the router, but uptime has been 100% and I get the exact speed I am supposed to sustained, all the time.

The biggest advantage w. Fiber is that you can get a synchronous connection -- and the network can pretty much support any speed.

[jokell82]

Love my 20/20 Fios connection. Don't get TV or phone, though, as neither are necessary with a sufficient internet connection.

[besson3c]

Are you sure the further you go from the end point the slower the speeds? My understanding is that the cabling is pretty much irrelevant, we cannot improve upon the speed of light, nor is it a bottleneck. The bottleneck is the reader on either end, not the cable that lays in between.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Are you sure the further you go from the end point the slower the speeds? My understanding is that the cabling is pretty much irrelevant, we cannot improve upon the speed of light, nor is it a bottleneck. The bottleneck is the reader on either end, not the cable that lays in between.

You still need repeaters and switches. This might slow it down a bit.

-t

[besson3c]

Turtle: true, although it is possible to design an infrastructure so that there are no repeaters and switches necessary for your entire area of coverage, right? This is always the unknown wild card that will probably always be a mystery to customers. However, the distance in and of itself is not the problem, it's the design of the network, right? You could have a very short distance will a gazillion repeaters and switches, or a very long distance with little to none.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Turtle: true, although it is possible to design an infrastructure so that there are no repeaters and switches necessary for your entire area of coverage, right? You could have ... a very long distance with little to none.

Actually, only theoretically.

The ISPs could not afford to have individual cables go directly from the end user to their main hub. There's always tons of sub-hubs and sub-sub-hubs involved. Actually, since the interweb is so decentral, by design you're gonna have tons of these.

-t

[besson3c]

True, even with a perfect local network design you're still limited by larger bottlenecks.

Still, I think that we can take from all of this that a customer shouldn't necessarily be too bothered by distance with fiber, there are so many other variables that will probably be of greater impact before distance is.

[residentEvil]

for u-verse, which is just a higher speed DSL...distance very important.

sure, they put fiber to vRADs from the CO...but it is still copper from there to your home. so i should have said distance from vRAD not CO. sorry for the confusion.

it still uses the 30 year old copper up on the poles from your house to the nice new fiber vRADs. distance is very important.

[stevesnj]

Well i lived in a lower middle class area so Verizon FIOS is not coming to my town for a few years so Im stuck with Comca$t

[badidea]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

We're getting hooked up w/ 100Mbit optical in November.

Friends who have the service claim the 100 Mbit to be realistic.

I couldn't really care less about tv, so I haven't asked.

Which company?
Yesterday Alice/HanseNet connected me to their optical network with promised 100MBit down, 50MBit up speeds and so far I can see ~60MBit down and 45Mbit up speeds!
The good thing: I'm their 3rd customer and all this is now completely free during the test period of 3 months...and they even give me €250.- for my time "testing" the optical connection!

[Oneota]

I've got Qwest FTTN at my house - 12/2, I think. Works pretty well!

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by badidea 

The good thing: I'm their 3rd customer and all this is now completely free during the test period of 3 months...and they even give me €250.- for my time "testing" the optical connection!

Bastard

[bstone]

Originally Posted by design219 

unlimited number of HDTV's

HDTV's? They is doing what?

[Eug]

Heh. You guys are lucky. The best I can get is Bell FTTN, and they charge $$$ for decent speeds and bandwidth.

So, I'm sticking with a 3rd party reseller for DSL for dismal 3 Mbps down 0.7 Mbps up speeds. To get 25 up 7 down with FTTN it's something like $68 per month, and that's with a 75 GB/month cap (which is fine for me, but low for many others). Anything less than that is artificially crippled, by bandwidth caps and/or upload speeds. Their 16 down option would be OK for me (also with a monthly cap of 75 GB), but the upload is capped at 1 Mbps. No thanks.

Personally, if I could get 10 up and 5 down (with a 75 GB cap) for a reasonable price I'd jump at the chance.

FTTH won't be launched any time soon in existing residential areas. Only new developments are getting it.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by badidea 

Which company?
Yesterday Alice/HanseNet connected me to their optical network with promised 100MBit down, 50MBit up speeds and so far I can see ~60MBit down and 45Mbit up speeds!
The good thing: I'm their 3rd customer and all this is now completely free during the test period of 3 months...and they even give me €250.- for my time "testing" the optical connection!

That's pretty neat.

I switched to wilhelm.tel last month - they offer 100 Mbit down/5Mbit up for €30/month including analog landline-to-landline domestic flatrate.

First three months are €20 off.

You're really getting 45Mbit upstream?

What is this service?

[Sealobo]

on my way back home today i saw a couple of workers digging a big hole right in front of my apartment building. They're laying 1000M optics.

Yum.

[angelmb]

Originally Posted by Eug 

So, I'm sticking with a 3rd party reseller for DSL for dismal 3 Mbps down 0.7 Mbps up speeds.

3 Mbps is 4x my download speed. Misery loves company.

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by residentEvil 

for u-verse, which is just a higher speed DSL...distance very important.

sure, they put fiber to vRADs from the CO...but it is still copper from there to your home. so i should have said distance from vRAD not CO. sorry for the confusion.

it still uses the 30 year old copper up on the poles from your house to the nice new fiber vRADs. distance is very important.

Yeah, U-Verse is FTTN (Fiber to the Node) instead of FTTP (Fiber to the Premises) that FIOS uses. It's cheaper for AT&T to roll it out like that, taking advantage of copper and improvements in DSL technology, which apparently also has legs for future growth. But if you're relatively far from the switching office or the original copper path was convoluted, you're not going to get very impressive speed.

[stevesnj]

FiOs +1, fantastic service, solid internet connection, unlike comcast, and Fiber direct to the house.

[boy8cookie]

I do, and I love it. Part of a user test for local ISP (who I work for).

Speedtest


Downloading CS5


Good stuff.

[badidea]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

That's pretty neat.

I switched to wilhelm.tel last month - they offer 100 Mbit down/5Mbit up for €30/month including analog landline-to-landline domestic flatrate.

First three months are €20 off.

You're really getting 45Mbit upstream?

What is this service?

Ahh, that's what I thought but Wilhelm.Tel isn't available in my street unfortunately!

HanseNet is now testing optical connection all the way into the appartment (usually only the house is connected, with standard copper cables into the appartment) and my house is the first one with this connection.
I'm one of 3 testers now and we are connected to a 1000MBit module but download speeds are limited to 100Mbit.
The connection is really fast but I can't reach the 100MBit, even though there shouldn't be any problem with only 3 households...
Upload is really 50MBit and as I was told that's also the speed they want to offer when the testing period is over.

[Spheric Harlot]

50?

Willy.Tel only offers 5 Mbit up - and as far as I know, they're supplying the infrastructure for Alice's fiber deal.

[badidea]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

50?

Willy.Tel only offers 5 Mbit up - and as far as I know, they're supplying the infrastructure for Alice's fiber deal.

Yes, fifty (50)...and I don't think that the infrastructure is supplied by Willy.Tel since there was construction work for the optical cables in my neighbourhood a few months ago and they had signs there saying that "here is HanseNet supplying the infrastructure for highspeed optical internet" (or something similar)!

Do you have optical all the way into the appartment with Willy.Tel?



tested with my TimeCapsule



tested with the Fritz!Box 7570

[Big Mac]

Wow, that's blazing fast badidea. How do they manage to provide speeds like that?

[indigoimac]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Wow, that's blazing fast badidea. How do they manage to provide speeds like that?

Limited geographic area
Relatively high population density
Government support / subsidization

I don't think that most places in Europe get this kind of service though, just as most in the US don't get fiber or even cable either.

[Doofy]

Beat this, ladies:

[AKcrab]

I would HOPE that's you on a 56k modem?

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by indigoimac 

Limited geographic area
Relatively high population density
Government support / subsidization

I don't think that most places in Europe get this kind of service though, just as most in the US don't get fiber or even cable either.

Not to get too political about this, but I wonder at what point government subsidization justifies itself (Please refrain from the US-centric "we are broke", "government sucks", etc. stuff, I mean this in a general and non-geographic specific way)? I mean, inexpensive and super fast internet access is certainly something many businesses can benefit from greatly, and it probably is also a great way to attract new businesses too.

With Comcast I would have to pay $100/month for 10Mbps upload 50Mbps down. If I could get the sort of bandwidth you are getting it would be mighty tempting for some companies to run their own servers rather than outsourcing this piece, providing they have the facilities and capability to do so and it makes financial sense to do so.

My servers are currently being run through a provider probably similar to yours that is fibre-optic based, but only serves the more rural areas since Comcast has a hold on the urban areas.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by Doofy 

Beat this, ladies:

You should eventually upgrade your carrier pigeon, Doof

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie 

You should eventually upgrade your carrier pigeon, Doof

I just can't bring myself to fire him. I'll have to wait until one of the cats gets him or something.

Just how much HD porn are you peeps downloading anyway?

[macaddict0001]

It's obvious why they call it Zen internet.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Wow, that's blazing fast badidea. How do they manage to provide speeds like that?

Fiber-optics right down into the basement.

We have those nifty yellow cables running down into our basement, as well. Supposedly, there's a gigabit dial-in not six feet from my wall socket, with those last two meters running through copper wire.

[badidea]

Originally Posted by indigoimac 

Limited geographic area
Relatively high population density
Government support / subsidization

I don't think that most places in Europe get this kind of service though, just as most in the US don't get fiber or even cable either.

No government support at all! Germany is not Sweden (unfortunately)!
Fiber-Optics right into the living room. The only copper cable is the Ethernet cable from the modem to the time capsule!
And this is just a field test from my provider - the deal is not yet available and I also don't know what the prices will be when it's available. Probably something around €50.-/month

[Spheric Harlot]

I just talked to a HanseNet guy yesterday - apparently the pipes in Eimsbüttel are their own. They're cooperating with willy.tel in other areas in Hamburg.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by macaddict0001 

It's obvious why they call it Zen internet.

Nah. Zen is the best ISP in the UK.
It's because I'm on an ancient legacy account which I can't be bothered to upgrade since I don't (1) download loads of HD porn or (2) download CS5 updates every day.

I still want to know why you boys need so much bandwidth. What the bleedin' 'eck are you doing with it all?

[badidea]

Originally Posted by Doofy 

I still want to know why you boys need so much bandwidth. What the bleedin' 'eck are you doing with it all?

TBs of HD porn and daily CS5 updates!
Honestly, you're right - I don't need it and I'm even not sure yet if I will keep this connection when the testing period is over (and I then have to pay for it) but high upload rates are really nice when you upload your photos to mobile me or some other service and online storage now also makes quite a lot of sense!
Everything else I can think of is most likely quite illegal though...