Cabinetisation - what does it mean for ADSL2+ users?

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › Cabinetisation - what does it mean for ADSL2+ users?

melchizedik

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#29290 1-Jan-2009 17:28

Hi - I have been with Orcon since they started their ADSL2 service. Up until the 11th December I had a d/l speed of around 2.8mb/s which I had queried, but was told that we lived far from the ponsonby exchange (2.6km) and therefore could not expect great speeds. Since the 11th December the d/l speed has been reduced by almost 50% and currently I am getting around 1.5mb/s. I have been told that this is due to "cabinetisation". This cabinet is 500m from my house and I believe that it has been upgraded by Chorus to the ADSL2 standard, BUT Orcon and other ISP's cannot have access to these cabinets, resulting in poor download speeds for those customers who are affected by the cabinetisation. In fact the only way that I could get a faster speed (ie. what I was getting originally) is for Orcon to put me on the wholesale tariff - and that might cost more and to get the information I have to wait till mid January as the only person who can make any decisions around this is on annual leave - hello!. By chance I found out that my neighbour who lives metres away from me (we live in a 4 unit townhouse built 10 years ago) has an ADSL2 service from Telecom and he is getting about 5 mb/s.
So I have 2 questions -
1. Is this down to a monopoly telecom/chorus situation and a way for them to get more customers, and screw ISP's like Orcon, Slingshot etc and if so, can't this get raised at a government level/pressure from national press?
2. How do I get the maximum d/l speed from an ADSL2 connection given that the cabinet is only 500 m from my house? Surely I could get a lot faster than the 2.8mb/s?

Cheers

Tony

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396 posts

Ultimate Geek

#186926 1-Jan-2009 18:00

Get your ISP to locate equipment in the cabinets - thats an investment decision for them to make. The price they have to pay Chorus to locate equipment is standard for all industry players.

common sense is not very common

manhinli

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#186929 1-Jan-2009 18:53

melchizedik - You mean what will happen to all Orcon+ network users (LLU users) when their cabinet is cabinetised?

Orcon currently keep Orcon+ customers connected to the exchange and not to cabinetised cabinets, and the result is a degraded connection. You either go to a Telecom Wholesale cabinetised connection or stay until SLU comes along.

ascroft - Orcon and other LLU players will probably take their equipment in the cabinets, but SLU has not been finalised - so they can't do that (yet.)

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melchizedik

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#186930 1-Jan-2009 19:15

@manhinli - Yes, that is the question. What is a Telecom Wholesale cabinetised connection and is that a decision that Orcon will make as to whether I stay connected to the exchange or go to the cabinet connection. Can I influence their decision to go for an option that would be more beneficial for me? If I get transferred to the cabinet, surely that will mean that I should notice a speed increase given how close we are to the cabinet?Also, when does SLU come on board?
Gee this is frustrating when all I want is a fast connection :(

manhinli

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#186933 1-Jan-2009 19:19

melchizedik: @manhinli - Yes, that is the question. What is a Telecom Wholesale cabinetised connection and is that a decision that Orcon will make as to whether I stay connected to the exchange or go to the cabinet connection. Can I influence their decision to go for an option that would be more beneficial for me? If I get transferred to the cabinet, surely that will mean that I should notice a speed increase given how close we are to the cabinet?Also, when does SLU come on board?
Gee this is frustrating when all I want is a fast connection :(

If you decide to jump to a connection which can utilise a cabinetised connection, you will lose your ability to access LLU services like Orcon+. (This is only until SLU is operational)

This is because LLU runs equipment from the exchange to your home with copper, but a cabinetised cabinet has fibre from the exchange to the cabinet, which currently uses Telecom equipment.

It's up to you if you want to keep your LLU benefits or get better speeds (it's kind of obvious what most people would want for now

)

As for how to change, I'm not sure what processes there are at Orcon to do this. You might want to discuss this with Customer Support.

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alexx

867 posts

Ultimate Geek

#186943 1-Jan-2009 21:42

The thing I'm wondering is this...

If your neighbour is also 500m from that ADSL2 cabinet (give or take 10-20m), then why does he only get 5 Mbps?

Because if he is 500m from an ADSL2 DSLAM in the cabinet, he should get a bit better speed than that - we are talking about the line rate here aren't we - not some download speed from some random site?

On the other hand if he is not connected to a DSLAM in that cabinet, then he surely must be connected to a DSLAM at the exchange... which sill doesn't explain the difference in speeds you get from your neighbour.

cokemaster

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#186945 1-Jan-2009 22:05

alexx:

If your neighbour is also 500m from that ADSL2 cabinet (give or take 10-20m), then why does he only get 5 Mbps?

You might find that the connection is on a FS-128kbps profile, which may limit the download speed.

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richms

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#186957 2-Jan-2009 01:22

When I last asked, there was no rulings on subloop unbunding, but no ISPs had actually approched chorus about doing it without a ruling either.

So I am thinking it is another case of the ISPs wanting the work all done for them and handed over.

IMO change to an ISP that wholesales and tell orcon the connection is now too degraded to be any use to you.

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Ragnor

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#187083 2-Jan-2009 22:02

Lets assume a particular cabinet serves say 500 homes, lets say 2 out of that 500 are Orcon customers. Do you think they are going to invest in installing their equipment in that cabinet?

Doesn't sound economically viable to me.

melchizedik

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#187097 2-Jan-2009 23:01

Thanks to all for the feedback.
I guess it comes down to whether I want the LLU benefits (what are they?) and a degraded line, or go for a faster line with a cabinetised connection offered by Telecom or Orcon - if they offer it to me.
Incidentally I checked on the Chorus site about the cabinetisation schedule and discovered that our cabinet has a copper feeder. Does this mean that I may not get the benefit of the 10 - 20 mb/s speeds that the cabinetisation is supposed to offer?

richms

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#187106 3-Jan-2009 00:41

melchizedik:
Thanks to all for the feedback.
I guess it comes down to whether I want the LLU benefits (what are they?) and a degraded line, or go for a faster line with a cabinetised connection offered by Telecom or Orcon - if they offer it to me.
Incidentally I checked on the Chorus site about the cabinetisation schedule and discovered that our cabinet has a copper feeder. Does this mean that I may not get the benefit of the 10 - 20 mb/s speeds that the cabinetisation is supposed to offer?

LLU benifits are that you have an ISP who has one less place to pass blame to, they have more flexibility in what they offer over the cable which is not happening yet, and that you will have you PSTN service provided by gear made this side of the first gulf war which will support more useful features, and for free normally.

Wholesaled means that you get telecoms shoddy pstn featureset that costs money for things that are free on LLU like caller id and voicemail, you get the chorus dslam in the box on the road with the higher sync speeds and you get the ISP passing the buck about having to get chorus to do a port reset and blah blah blah.

If orcon are not able to viably put their own gear into a cabinet then they should wholesale the connection and wear the loss. They are just cherrypicking the areas they want, which chorus cannot do by the TSO, and its not really fair that telecom are saddled with all the small number of customer areas and the other ISPs get to only put their gear in where there is density and have the savings as a result, but thats a whole different issue to your one.

I would want to be on the wholesaled plans.

Richard rich.ms

Ragnor

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#187109 3-Jan-2009 02:49

PC Speed (Hard disk, Network card & settings)
Local Network
ADSL Sync/Connection Rate
Exchange Backhaul Network
ISP Handover point
ISP Speed/Bandwidth

People seem to forget you can have the greatest ADSL sync rate in the world and one of the above other points in the chain can slow you down.

alexx

867 posts

Ultimate Geek

#187138 3-Jan-2009 11:48

Going back to your situation before 11th December 2008, if you are 2.6 km from the exchange, then I would expect a bit better than 2.8Mb/s - at least according to the chart and attenuation "rule" of "attenuation (db) = distance (km) x 13.8" posted in another thread.

Refer: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?ForumId=49&TopicId=27834
and also: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?ForumId=82&TopicId=28624

So I'm wondering... what attenuation is your DSL router reporting?
What is the actual DSL line rate?

From the distance formula: 2.6 km x 13.8 = 36 db (or somewhere in that region).

So even before 11th December 2008 it seems you were either much further than 2.6 km from the exchange or your cable was not up to standard (this might even include the cable in your home).

Then it seems that after 11th December 2008, this new ADSL2+ cabinet was installed and your performance dropped even further, which might indicate cross-talk from the ADSL2+ equipment perhaps. Cross-talk is going to have a greater impact if your line attenuation is already high. If you really are only 2.6 km from the exchange, then all these things should be fixable without the need for Orcon to install DSLAM equipment in the cabinet.

When I say fixable, I mean it should be possible to get a substantial improvement on what you have now... not suggesting you are likely to get ADSL2+ speeds.

Of course there is a big difference between being theoretically "possible" to fix and convincing someone to do the work needed to fix it.

melchizedik

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#187158 3-Jan-2009 13:40

@ Alexx:
Yes I am inclined to agree with you. When we first when onto the orcon+ plan I queried the slow speed and other probs, and they determined the slowness was down to the distance from the exchange and quality of the cable from the box to our house (even though the house is fairly new - 10 years)
This is the data for the ADSL line taken from the home hub.
Maximum line rate: 1760 kbps (downstream) / 1040 kbps (upstream)
Noise margin: 8.3 dB (downstream) / 8.8 dB (upstream)
Line attenuation: 42.5 dB (downstream) / 21.8 dB (upstream)
Output power: 17.3 dBm (downstream) / 12.6 dBm (upstream)
Note that the d/l speed is actually slower if I take the reading from Speedtest.net - averaging about 1.4mb/s. The highest we ever had was 3.4mb/s and probably only on one day!
I don't know where the Ponsonby exchange is on College Hill, but I have assumed that it is at the top of the hill, hence the 2.6km estimation. Strangely enough when we first came to Auckland we were living at the Viaduct at were getting 8mb/s from Orcon on a regular ADSL line!

alexx

867 posts

Ultimate Geek

#187163 3-Jan-2009 14:26

Line attenuation of 42.5 dB (downstream) is better than many people get.

In my case the estimated line length is 2.1 km and calculated attenuation is 29db, but in fact I get 39db (refer to the Distance and Speed thread).

However, my ADSL sync is 7520 kbps (downstream) from 39db attenuation, so I would have though you should be getting better speeds than 1760 kbps (downstream) from 42.5db attenuation. It is possible to have things like bad cable joints, which although they might not have a big impact on attenuation, they might create an imbalance and make the line more vunerable to interference such as cross-talk from other ADSL lines.

Do you know anyone else in the area with ADSL - from the exchange - not from a DSLAM in the cabinet? Their sync speed might give a clue where the problem lies. If you own the house you could consider rewiring with splitter +2-wire. Can you borrow another ADSL router for testing, so you can eliminate that as a factor?

You might want to try all the things mentioned in http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?ForumId=49&TopicId=27834
That is if you haven't tried them already.

richms

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#187174 3-Jan-2009 14:59

Crosstalk will be worse if you are on a long circuit back to the exchange where there are lines from a cabinet close by entering the bundle a few 100m from the house, since the other signals will not be attenuated like your own ones are.

IMO, for ISPs to continue to sell LLU to customers that have wholesaled cabinets available to them is just stupid

Richard rich.ms

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