Vodafone HFC/FibreX Max

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tdgeek

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#1971497 9-Mar-2018 07:21

quickymart:

tdgeek:

Without reading any posts, its not FibreX its CoaxX

Im surprised that hasn't been hounded by some lawyer or Consumer. its misleading. Only a day or so ago, a poster here created a thread only to be told its coax not fibre.

If I created a company called MercedesX but the car is xxx I'd be broke now with lawyers fees and penalties.

https://www.nbr.co.nz/article/comcom-investigation-vodafones-fibre-x-drags-ck-208673

Cool. So its Hyrbrid Fibre Coax. I assume fibre on the network and coax from the ETP to the home connection? Or fibre to the cabinet and coax to the home?

Copper could be construed as Hybrid Fibre Copper? Call that FibreX too? :-)

ajw

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#1971559 9-Mar-2018 09:39

heapsort:

I've no experience with the faster FibreX Max, but I've been on FibreX (200 Mbps down, 20 up) in Christchurch for two months now, having previously been on cable (100 down 10 up, and 50/2 before that, and 15/2 before that) for a long time including under TelstraClear ownership.

I'm aware of the horror stories about Vodafone cable performance on this site, but as far as I'm aware (could well be wrong) most have been about the Wellington network? For me, it just works and I have no problems. No need to reboot modem or router since the switch to FibreX in January, web surfing seems snappy, video streaming fine, and no outages that I have noticed. I also have Vodafone TV with Sky sports etc (old T-Box, not the newer one) but it has no effect on Internet performance or vice versa; the T-Box is connected to a separate older supplied modem that wasn't upgraded when they swapped me on to FibreX.

Still, if speeds approaching 1000 down or 100+ up were important to me (which they're not, 200/20 is ample for us) and I wasn't also getting TV through Vodafone, I'd probably prefer Fibre for the greater range of ISP options.

Docsis 3.1 user here in Stokes Valley on 200/20 since I was upgraded a year ago my connection hasn't missed a beat. I have a friend in Newlands using Docsis 3.1 200/20 and he was upgraded a year ago and has a reliable connection.

Yabanize

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#1971622 9-Mar-2018 10:36

tdgeek:

quickymart:

tdgeek:

Without reading any posts, its not FibreX its CoaxX

Im surprised that hasn't been hounded by some lawyer or Consumer. its misleading. Only a day or so ago, a poster here created a thread only to be told its coax not fibre.

If I created a company called MercedesX but the car is xxx I'd be broke now with lawyers fees and penalties.

https://www.nbr.co.nz/article/comcom-investigation-vodafones-fibre-x-drags-ck-208673

Cool. So its Hyrbrid Fibre Coax. I assume fibre on the network and coax from the ETP to the home connection? Or fibre to the cabinet and coax to the home?

Copper could be construed as Hybrid Fibre Copper? Call that FibreX too? :-)

It's Fibre to the cabinet (on your street or a couple of streets away) and coax to each house with powered amplifiers (dark green boxes outside every couple of houses, or up on poles)

antoniosk

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#1971822 9-Mar-2018 13:13

1) If you're using HFC in Christchurch, how's the performance?

Wellington for me has always been reliable, since 2007. I'm not sure what the CHCH installation is like after the earthquakes, but Voda has chosen to keep the cable network rather than put all the connections on fibre, so have a responsibility to run a good service.

2) What's the worst issue you've seen whilst on Voda's HFC?

If the cable modem goes out, it's normally next 3 business days to get it fix (just like a Chorus ONT). You will be supplied with a Vodafone HG659 router to connect to the cable modem, and many people don't like the HG659 as they feel it's wireless performance is poor. I don't use it. If you replace it with your own kit, make sure it supports tagged connections on VLAN10 (most kit supplied by NZ providers is preconfigured, as it's the same standard for fibre as well). If you are going to be using a landline, the new service model is to supplied a connection from the back of the HG659, rather than a classic analogue POTs line. The Voda analogue POTs service is degrading and probably not so good for alarm monitoring anymore (it is 20 years old), but for voice its ok.

3) Anything I should be aware of other than the fact cable bandwidth is shared with the whole street?

The less people there are on the cable ring, the faster your average performance. Before you accept service, the field techs will run simple speedtests with you - don't let them leave until you are confident you are getting what you asked for. 200/20 should be easy.

4) If you're on FibreX Max (anywhere in NZ), how are the speeds and routes internationally (primarily Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the UK, and California, US)?

That's a Vodafone-wide setting, and currently it's not great compared to others. Real-world performance for web and email seems ok, but if you have apps that are time sensitive ymmv. Clearly Voda are waiting on the hawaiki cable to come onstream this year, so they can stop relying on Telstra Global for transit (and Telstra's service stinks at times)

________

Antoniosk

ripdog

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#1971828 9-Mar-2018 13:23

Sorry for being off-topic, but how on earth did lurker get 500mbps from Frankfurt?! I'm on gigabit fibre from 2degrees and I only get 35mbps from the same server with a similar ping.

cyril7

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#1971838 9-Mar-2018 13:36

Hi, it should be pointed out that the fibre bit in an HFC system is very inefficiently used, its really a RoF arrangement, ie in simplistic terms at the head end the CMTS loads the layer2 ethernet traffic into/out of the DOCSIS/DVB-C/C2 transport. This results in DVB-C/C2 carriers which at this point appears in essence identical to other DVB-C/C2 carriers carrying TV data payloads. At this point linearised lasers take these RF carriers and tranport them out into the distribution ring where it is received and recovered and put on the coaxial cable, then amplified and distributed down the street.

So you can clearly see, there is no fibre distribution of 10G/40G/100G traffic over this arrangement, the fibre is just a coax extension that allows further distance of the coax, nothing more, nothing less, so to call it FibreX is pretty dodge.

Cyril

MarkFive

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#1972549 10-Mar-2018 22:44

cyril7:

Hi, it should be pointed out that the fibre bit in an HFC system is very inefficiently used, its really a RoF arrangement, ie in simplistic terms at the head end the CMTS loads the layer2 ethernet traffic into/out of the DOCSIS/DVB-C/C2 transport. This results in DVB-C/C2 carriers which at this point appears in essence identical to other DVB-C/C2 carriers carrying TV data payloads. At this point linearised lasers take these RF carriers and tranport them out into the distribution ring where it is received and recovered and put on the coaxial cable, then amplified and distributed down the street.

So you can clearly see, there is no fibre distribution of 10G/40G/100G traffic over this arrangement, the fibre is just a coax extension that allows further distance of the coax, nothing more, nothing less, so to call it FibreX is pretty dodge.

Cyril

Are they not deploying the D-CCAP from Huawei? Then the fiber becomes "real".

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cyril7

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#1972660 11-Mar-2018 10:49

Hi, they well might be, but at the end of the day, pushing the CMTS out further into the hood does not change the fact that this is still DOCSIS3, which has far more moving parts than GPON or p2p fibre that are all part of the UFB product catalog.

I dont know how many homes TCL/Voda provision off every DOCSIS carrier set which on DOCSIS3 at full chat delivers around 1.28Gb/s down 320Mb/up , but I am guessing its way more homes that the 24-32 homes CFH/Chorus/Enable etal share 2.4Gb/s down and 1.2Gb/s up.

So end result...................... you cannot compare, and as such FibreX does not equal GPON

Edit, and also the performance issues of DOCSIS relating to network interference etc, this is a big issue, take are read of the NBN where HFC has been put on hold due to MAJOR perofrmance issues doe to lack of network maintenance of the HFC assets they purchased from Telstra. Such issues do not effect "Real Fibre" networks.

Cyril

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