Mass Media & Technology

Cutting the Cord

The end of the Aerial and Dish (July 2018)

This site closed in March 2021 and is now a read-only archive
NG
noggin Founding member
dosxuk posted:
integral posted:
City dwellers real can't seem to grasp the poor BB speeds even in many towns never mind rural locations. We get no more than about 10Mb which is not satisfactory for viewing its forever buffering. The infrastructure just isn't there most of where I live is copper wires, street after street


Being a city dweller, I wish I could get 10Mb, we only get 5Mb, and that's on a good day. It's a treat to visit my parents in their tiny little Norfolk village miles away from any notable population which gets 28Mb.


My in-laws get fibre-to-the-premises in their little village. 100Mbs or 1000Mbs are options - though I think they went for the 50Mbs lowest cost tier...
LL
London Lite Founding member
Near to me in South London, there are areas which haven't got FTTC, but have gone straight to FTTP instead.

8 days later

SA
safetywatto
What are FTTC and FTTP. Not heard those terms before
MA
Markymark
safetywatto posted:
What are FTTC and FTTP. Not heard those terms before


FTTC Fibre to the Cabinet A fibre runs from the exchange to the street cabinet that’s typicaly 0 to 1000 metres from your house. The connection from the cabinet to your house is still copper

FTTP Fibre to The Premises. The fibre cable runs directly from exchange into your house ( Huge benefits of course)

Further reading

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/guides/fibre-fttc-ftth-broadband-guide
HA
harshy Founding member
The highest we get is 8mbps up north where I am, everyone here virgin media for that reason
NG
noggin Founding member
safetywatto posted:
What are FTTC and FTTP. Not heard those terms before


FTTC = Fibre to the Cabinet. Basically your existing phone line is still used to carry the broadband signal, but rather than it travelling all the way from the exchange over your phone line, your phone line is routed through a street cabinet with a fibre connection and a bunch of broadband kit in it (similar to the kit that would have been at the exchange). Your voice phone line goes back to the exchange just as it always did, but your broadband connection only has to travel a much shorter journey (to the cabinet) - and as broadband speeds drop with distance on copper/aluminium wires - speeds are higher this way.

FTTP = Fibre to the Premises. You have a new fibre optic cable connection all the way to your home, with a fibre optic modem installed in your house. This can offer 1Gbs connection speeds - or higher. But requires new cables to be laid to every home - which isn't anywhere near as cheap as re-using existing phone lines.

Virgin Media uses a third way. They have a network of coax cables to carry TV signals - and allocate some of the frequency band of these cables to carry broadband (the connection TO you is actually carried using the same modulation system as TV signals are carried). They call it fibre, but it doesn't involve fibre coming into your home...
PE
Pete Founding member
noggin posted:
Virgin Media uses a third way. They have a network of coax cables to carry TV signals - and allocate some of the frequency band of these cables to carry broadband (the connection TO you is actually carried using the same modulation system as TV signals are carried). They call it fibre, but it doesn't involve fibre coming into your home...


How far does the fibre reach with Virgin? How fast can the coax reach? Obv they're currently providing 300mbit service over the same cables that used to provide 10 thanks to advances in the backhaul, changes in modulation, and newer modems but how fast can the coax theoretically reach?
NG
noggin Founding member
Pete posted:
noggin posted:
Virgin Media uses a third way. They have a network of coax cables to carry TV signals - and allocate some of the frequency band of these cables to carry broadband (the connection TO you is actually carried using the same modulation system as TV signals are carried). They call it fibre, but it doesn't involve fibre coming into your home...


How far does the fibre reach with Virgin? How fast can the coax reach? Obv they're currently providing 300mbit service over the same cables that used to provide 10 thanks to advances in the backhaul, changes in modulation, and newer modems but how fast can the coax theoretically reach?


I guess there is a trade-off between how many residences you run from the same feeder (i.e. how many separate RF slots you need to allocate to each consumer vs how many channels you us vs how granular your network is)

If you want to know the full capacity of a Virgin Media Coax - assuming you got rid of all the TV - then you have around 50 x 8MHz muxes (I think we use 8MHz for cable here) slots used just for TV - which will give you 50Mbs each mux - so that is around 2.5Gbs of bitrate for the digital TV services ignoring what they currently allocate for IP.

AIUI they allocate data using the same modulation scheme as the TV muxes - so 50Mbs=1 mux, 100Mbs=2 muxes etc. so the more muxes each consumer is allocated, the more granular the coax distribution has to be (as fewer people can share the same feed)

(That's unless Virgin are now using DOCSIS 3.1 which doesn't use DVB-C muxes for IP)

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