xDSL expectations v reality.

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › xDSL expectations v reality.

CaTz

13 posts

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#201738 1-Sep-2016 11:15

Howdy,

We originally hooked up with Bigpipe a few months ago because VDSL became available in our street.

As the crow flies we are 690 meters from the local telephone exchange.

Otherwise as the streets go we are 1km away.

As for the house wiring, we are CAT6 UTP 10 meters connected directly from the router to the Chorus copper outside the house.

No phones, extensions or filters etc anywhere to be found. I have been pretty fussy about removing all possible weak links where ever possible.

The Chorus copper was recently renewed from the pole to the house, so by rights it should all be great, but alas we get attenuation of 23.5. Given the actual distance that's pretty poor don't you think? This gives us a theoretical distance of 1.7 Km from the exchange.

Is it possible the Chorus cables we are connected to beyond the new cables to the exchange are in really bad condition?

It was good during the 10 day DLM, Bigpipe people said it would continue to get better but that didn't turn out to be the case. It continued to only get worse.

It got so bad in the end we switched back to ADSL.

Even still according to most DSL connection rate calculators we should be able to attain up to almost 19000 kbps down, that's accounting a cable loss of 13.81. Accuracy is within 10% would still give us about 17000 kbps down. That is what our neighbours get and they are one house further from the exchange.

The maximum we actually get here using a router out of 3 that typically syncs at a faster rate than others is 14550 Kbps with a max attainable rate of 15900 Kbps.

No doubt we simply have to accept this until fibre is rolled out, which according to some sources is not for the foreseeable future... :)

Moving is not an option, can't afford to live anywhere else unfortunately.

If it was jut me and I was renting, then no worries... I think... LOL

If anyone has any suggestions that may help improve our lot here, it would be great.

We went back to ADSL because VDSL while having a slightly better download speed, had higher latency and the upload speeds were half of what we get on ADSL.

So VDSL was definitely not the improvement we were hoping for.

The DLM period when from pretty darn good (compared to our ADSL) to absolute rubbish after the 10 day DLM.

I am thinking of jumping ship and going with 2degree who say they will hook us up with VDSL again. I reckon the same thing will happen during DLM and we will end up on a really nasty profile.

My only hope is that 2degree will have better hardware, perhaps their own hardware at the exchange and the connection will improve. But then that's only my hope...

No doubt we are better to stay on reasonably cheap ADSL with Bigpipe than enter into an expensive contract with 2degrees and find the connection is no better, wait it out until perhaps one day fibre will arrive here... LOL I am not going to hold my breath for that to happen.... heheh

Thanks for the platform to vent, any and all suggestions would be very much appreciated.

Regards,

Catz.

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#1620797 1-Sep-2016 11:34

How did you find your distance to your cabinet/exchange? In some areas the route or path taken from your property to the cabinet isn't necessarily the most direct route.

In the OP you said that your internal wiring is pretty good (CAT6 etc), however what modem are you using? Have you noticed any dropouts specifically caused by your CPE?

Would also be interested to know if you've contacted support about this. Feel free to PM me your email address and can always get someone to take a further look.

DarkShadow

1647 posts

Uber Geek

#1620825 1-Sep-2016 12:25

My only hope is that 2degree will have better hardware, perhaps their own hardware at the exchange and the connection will improve

2degrees uses Chorus as well, so unfortunately that won't happen.

dclegg

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#1620832 1-Sep-2016 12:41

All I can recommend is keep nagging to get the issue looked into.

It took over six weeks, and five seperate Chorus tech visits to get our VDSL performing to acceptable levels. The first four Chorus tech visits were a complete waste of time, but the fifth tech found the obvious line fault within the first few minutes of his visit.

CaTz

13 posts

Geek

#1620853 1-Sep-2016 13:25

Flickky:

How did you find your distance to your cabinet/exchange? In some areas the route or path taken from your property to the cabinet isn't necessarily the most direct route.

In the OP you said that your internal wiring is pretty good (CAT6 etc), however what modem are you using? Have you noticed any dropouts specifically caused by your CPE?

Would also be interested to know if you've contacted support about this. Feel free to PM me your email address and can always get someone to take a further look.

I used google maps. It's a small town and I know exactly where the exchange is. In fact the town is so small it doesn't have cabinets, well at least none that I am aware of.

Even if you took the longest path via phone lines or where one would expect underground copper it would be difficult to get 1.7km distance. Besides my neighbors who are one house further from the exchange and don't care about their house wiring get better sync rates. They have done for years and as a result I have suspected comparatively poor copper on our line.

I am not sure if all the phone lines are above ground or not, I could try and track them back to the exchange. A challenge I would be willing to do. I may be unpleasantly surprised. Perhaps it loops around streets that doesn't seem quite logical, but then it's antic infrastructure now days... LOL

I have 3 routers, all middle range units. The one I got for VDSL is dual channel but I found it not great at ADSL compared to my older units.

The one I used with VDSL is the Asus DSL-AC68U. Because of all the issues I was having with the connection ASUS thought the problem was with the router, so they replaced it with a new one.

This got my hopes up but when the new one arrived and was all set up, nothing changed.

Many interactions with support. Mostly there was good support, but mostly just telling me to wait longer for DLM to do it's job, but every day the connection rates became worse.

Once the sync rates became worse than ADSL I gave up waiting for improvement and switched back to ADSL, which like I said had much better upload speeds and better latency.

I initially used the Asus DSL-AC68U for the ADSL connection as it is dual band etc, but the upload rates were still poor compared to what I am use to. It would only sync at a max of 697 kbps upstream 14458 kbps.

I then connected up the D-Link DSL-2900AL which gave a 1017 kbps up and 15313 kbps down. Tried the Netgear DGN2200 and that connected at 1048 kbps up and 13804 kbps down.

The Netgear had the best latency at consistently 19ms while the D-Link and ASUS were closer to 25ms.

At first the VDSL with the ASUS router was giving a great latency of only 15ms, but that was downgraded after DLM to 35ms. Possibly interleaving caused that? Oh and the slower than expected up no doubt.

No interleaving on ADSL.

Anyway, I am currently connected using the D-Link and the rate is about the same as I was getting when I was with Maxnet, 1080 kbps up and 14551 kbps down with an average ping test showing 24ms latency.

When initially set up on VDSL there were some interruptions to the internet connection on the ASUS router. These were not drop outs as such because they were not detected at the provider end, they were only occurring at our end, weather it was a wired Ethernet connection of WiFi device etc.

Unfortunately I did not have another VDSL router I could try on the connection, however it was not recommended that rebooting or otherwise disconnecting during the DLM period be advised as this could interfere with the testing and could cause a deterioration with the connection as the system is trying to be stabilized etc...

Staff at Bigpipe have been as helpful as anyone would expect. Over all I thought the way they handled these issues to be very good indeed.

Cheers,

Catz.

RunningMan

8963 posts

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#1620905 1-Sep-2016 14:56

Remember that copper feeders can loop down a side street and back up the other side of the same street - they were installed for voice, not xDSL which was far more tolerant of line length.

Sideface

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#1620944 1-Sep-2016 16:21

CaTz:

<snip>

As the crow flies we are 690 meters from the local telephone exchange.

Otherwise as the streets go we are 1km away.

<snip>

As others have said, it's all about line length.

You almost certainly have a line length greater than 1km.

I had the same experience as you, with a line length of 900m, and a downstream attenuation of 19dB.

Despite good hardware, new Cat 6 house wiring, a VDSL master filter, and new copper to the street, I still got "ADSL" performance.

So I reverted to ADSL.

The Laws of Physics Rule.

Sideface

Jase2985

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#1620950 1-Sep-2016 16:33

it may be less than 1700m but there could be crosstalk in there which attenuates the signal too.

And those calculators are only ESTIMATES, they cant account for the quality of the copper nor the size of it. Any kind of joints in the cables can add attenuation too.

even at 1km street distance you would probably be pushing it to get a good connection.

Sucks but there is little you can do as pretty much all ISP's use the same chorus gear.

Quic Broadband

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CaTz

13 posts

Geek

#1620963 1-Sep-2016 16:42

RunningMan:

Remember that copper feeders can loop down a side street and back up the other side of the same street - they were installed for voice, not xDSL which was far more tolerant of line length.

Yes! You could be correct, and that would explain the extra attenuation compared to our nearest neighbor....

I am wondering now if something could be done about that. Even if we paid Chorus to switch us over to the same line our neighbors are using it would be a massive improvement and VDSL then a true upgrade....

There I go getting my hopes up again.... LOL

Thank you for your comment.

Cheers,

Catz.

Jase2985

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#1620967 1-Sep-2016 16:48

nope chours dont want much at all to do with the copper network. They will fix faults on it but there is next to no money being spent upgrading it.

RunningMan

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#1620985 1-Sep-2016 17:01

CaTz:

[snip]

Even if we paid Chorus to switch us over to the same line our neighbors are using it would be a massive improvement and VDSL then a true upgrade....

Not likely. Cables are installed in bundles of 50 or more pairs - you can't just get moved to a different cable, as the route would have been set when designed all those years ago. If you are getting vastly different sync rates to neighbours on both sides, it may be worth logging a fault to get it checked. In that case, it may be the pair you're connected to has an issue. If it's just a neighbour on 1 side that's different, that may be the end of one feeder, and the start of the next. Short of moving house, you (or Chorus) can't change the cable route to the exchange.

Put yours, and several neighbour's addresses into the Chorus broadband tool - that will give you an idea of sync rates for nearby dwellings. If yours is vastly lower than surrounding properties in both directions, it's probably worth logging a fault. If it's about the same, then there's nothing really that anyone can reasonably do to improve it.

EDIT:Spelling

CaTz

13 posts

Geek

#1621004 1-Sep-2016 18:19

RunningMan:

Put yours, and several neighbour's addresses into the Chorus broadband tool - that will give you an idea of sync rates for nearby dwellings. If yours is vastly lower than surrounding properties in both directions, it's probably worth logging a fault. If it's about the same, then there's nothing really that anyone can reasonably do to improve it.

EDIT:Spelling

Thanks RunningMan, I went for a walk towards the exchange a little while ago and noticed many instances where the copper was in quite a messy state. No doubt there are many issues and of course Chorus wouldn't be interested in sorting anything out on the copper network unless there is major fault.

The Chorus broadband tool link appears to only indicate current connections and available upgrades, eg one of our neighbors is currently connected to ADSL and can now upgrade to VDSL etc.

We are in the same boat, but I can't see where you can check actual sync rates. Am I missing something?

Cheers,

Catz.

RunningMan

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#1621020 1-Sep-2016 19:59

CaTz:

The Chorus broadband tool link appears to only indicate current connections and available upgrades, eg one of our neighbors is currently connected to ADSL and can now upgrade to VDSL etc.

Hmm, not sure why, but with some address, you get this

where the speed on the left is the current sync rate

CaTz

13 posts

Geek

#1621032 1-Sep-2016 20:23

Thanks RunningMan,

I was not that familiar with the tool and didn't notice that the "up to" was an actual sync rate.

I have checked many in the area and one place only 5 houses away can get up to 44 Mbps and ours states up to 23 Mbps on VDSL as our current connection, and yet we are currently connected to ADSL. Somethings not quite right there, however it could be that Chorus hasn't updated it since we switched back to ADSL.

Apparently we are in the zone for UFB2 however it looks like most smaller towns are indeed candidates for UFB2, the question is when... LOL

Your Chorus example makes me mad and envious... Somebodies using a rather slow ADSL rather than utilizing the potential 200 Mbps UFB... LOL Crazy.

I have one similar a few houses away that is very close to the exchange with the potential to get the same as their neighbors VDSL up to 69 Mbps but are still on ADSL.

Of course I forget that Internet isn't worth all that much to a great many. Just seems like such a waste to those who require UFB but are stick on ADSL with no hope any time soon of achieving it... LOL

Thanks again for your input.

Cheers,

Catz.

EDIT: wording ;)

CaTz

13 posts

Geek

#1621036 1-Sep-2016 20:33

Just to add to this, I was not entirely unhappy with the down speed. It was giving us a boost on download speeds for sure.

It's crazy that during the early stages of DLM, like 4 days after getting VDSL I was able to download a large Steam game update at 3 Mb/s, essentially doubling our usual download maximum of 1.5 Mb/s on ADSL.

The upload speed during this time was 1.5 Mbps, again about double what we were getting on ADSL, but then after another few days the connection deteriorated to a sync rate of 18 Mbps, the up rate reduced to 600 Kbps and the latency more than doubled from 15ms to 35ms+.

The upload was so poor that it was essentially making for a very unstable connection.

Anyway, it is what it is, and in the mean time ADSL is running pretty good for us here while we anticipate the potential for UFB2... hehehe

Thank you all so much for your input. It has been very helpful.

Cheers,

Catz.

zespri

416 posts

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#1621037 1-Sep-2016 20:35

Oh god, I'm switching to BigPipe VDSL right now, because VDSL became available on our street recently. Now, after reading your post Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt prevails in my mind..

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