Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Presumably a trial is being run in your area. Saw on the VM forum that someone's config had gone from 50 to a 100Mb and it was confirmed as a trial. I'll see if I can find the thread.

There we go: http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/...e-view=desktop

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Another downstream doubling with no upstream increase? Meh.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Yes, would much prefer improvements to upstream. Only possible use is for markettng an 'unlimited download'. When it is quet in the morning I'll find out if my routers are the bottleneck!

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Must be a trial here in Cardiff too. My internet was down this morning. I rebooted the router, checked the speed and just got 206 Mb/s

106% more than I pay for.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Direct to modem mode shub1 now get this

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2015/03/8.png

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

It's almost an answer to the question posed in this thread.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

how interesting, if 100 is being doubled to 200 I wonder what 152 is going to. Surely we would need a new modem if we are going up to 300mbits?

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

It's certainly possible to do 300Mbit on 8 channels, but you're right - I'd imagine 12 or 16 would be better. See what Virgin does, I suppose.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

yeah, if they are doing trials you would have thought we would have heard about a new modem by now if they were intending to use one. It is interesting because although they could try and go with shub2 from a cost saving point of view, they can't afford the negative press if everything back fires and everyone turns around and says they cant get more than something like 250mbits.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

AFAIK there is a new modem coming, mon General. Capable of 24 x 8.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

WOW :eek:, better than the 16 we were expecting then. It is going to be interesting to see whether it is a standalone modem or if they try and palm it off as a router as well.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Can they just put a new chip into the VMDG490 to make it do 24 x 8? If not it
Doesn't look like any new Hub has been put into the Wi-Fi Certified proses just yet.

http://www.wi-fi.org/product-finder-...rom=2012-01-01

---------------

As General Maximus said it my be a standalone modem now

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Doesn't mean that the top tier will start of with 16 DS. You know how VM do it - 4 then 6 then 8; so maybe 12 DS first. According to my information it will be a gateway. Are they so dumb as not to have a modem mode?

---------- Post added at 17:31 ---------- Previous post was at 17:29 ----------

Or it may be a non-VM branded product. I've no hard information on that though.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

VMDG490 seems to be a 16x4 unit. I see no reason why it can't be used for a potential 300Mb service. The product page advertises suitability for up to 800Mbps downloads.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

... and another thing to draw this together.

Bearing in mind that the VM tiers will be 100/200/300, the fact that they're trialling 200 meg in Cardiff (e.g.) suggests that the SH will remain the gateway for the two lower tiers. The 300 meg tier will almost certainly not be of the current SH2 type.

And have you also noticed what VM said about infilling adjacent areas? I don't think they said as much as this, but it'll be deep fibre whereby each cabinet will be an optical node, the fibre going back to the local hub, aggregated into a line card via passive optical taps. Much easier to manage resegmentation and because there is no amplification, vastly improved SNR. Last 200 metres would, of course, be coax. Anyone able to confirm all that?

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Maybe need to look at what LG are up to rather than just VM

http://www.broadcom.com/press/release.php?id=s889754

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

8 channels certainly possible. Thinking back to the Coventry proof of concept trial, a few years ago now, I was the only regular customer trialist to to have a 400Mb connection. From what I recall I maxed at 380Mb/24Mb on an 8 channel modem connected to my, then, WNDR3700 router. However, I was the only trial customer on our street cabinet.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Bearing in mind that VM's plans are LG's too, the article suggests to me that the top tier modem/gateway could have the new bi-sexual Broadcomm chip - I don't have any solid information on that though at this stage.

I imagine that VM, in the spirit of the LG VP's statement, might pilot a DOCSIS 3.1 segment somewhere after proving the chip out in their labs. The BC3390 is, according to the article, at sample release stage so it's not like something just about to happen.

An interesting situation.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I think the 100/200/300 speeds are all but a given at this point, but I don't see it involving DOCSIS 3.1. I think we're likely to see more Downstream channels on 3.0 for a couple of years yet.

It's not like Virgin has much competition in this area, 150Meg is already faster than most consumer things. 300 would keep them going for a couple of years.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

For what my opinion is worth, Kush, I think you're more-or-less right. The "couple of years" - maybe because DOCSIS 3.1 has to mature, be proved out and so on.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Well when tech was here 2 weeks ago i was told that 200mb in Swansea was being tested at Matrix Court which is Virgins main offices here in Wales now and also at test at the head end and due for roll out in Swansea during the 3/4 of this year.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I recently read that Comcast has started 3.1 trials with an aim to start rolling out in 2016. I'm sure that'll be tail-end 2016 but either way, it would mean that 2016/2017 is a realistic time frame for 3.1 deployments.

That to me says moving to 12/16/24 downstream channels in the meantime makes the most sense. While you're at it, prep the network for 3.1 deployment. When you can, start shipping 3.1 capable equipment and it'll all come together.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Yes - my info is roll out to start October this year.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I wouldn't hold you're breath on that one. BT are going to be trialing G.fast this summer in 2 areas.

"The two pilots will start this summer in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire and Gosforth, Newcastle. Around 4,000 homes and businesses will be able to participate in the pilots which will explore what speeds can be delivered using G.fast at scale."

Roll out to begin 2016/7

scource http://www.btplc.com/Innovation/Inno...fast/index.htm

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

NB I am a long way away from Wales!

For info if using an Asus RT-N66U you can download test at full speed using latest ASUSWRT-Merlin firmware with QOS disabled,

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2015/03/7.png

Tomatusb was limited to ~150 Mbps

This router seems to max out at 110Mbps using QOS (might be tunable).

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Good point about G.fast. It'll be interesting to see what advertised speeds that ends up with, as that's what Virgin targets. It can do gigabit in theory, but I can't see it ever being advertised as such.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

500Mbps apparently:
Should also make 1000Mbps FTTPoD a lot cheaper too. But they expect it'll take 10 years to complete rollout.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

What does "most homes" mean? Those with copper-aluminium-copper runs to the cabinet?

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Same as "most homes" that get FTTC service?

The cabinet run will be of less relevance now that it'll be FTTdP

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I would expect that statement to be nothing less than the usual 51% can get this speed.

Still, if it means someone who'd previously get maybe 8meg on ADSL2 and 30Meg on FTTC can now get 200Meg, that's fine with me.

I really can't see there being a need for multi-hundred Mbps speeds on the downstream any time this decade. I could be wrong, but I just don't see anything beyond VoD pushing it.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Well 2025 isn't this decade.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

For me it's appeal is upstream. If it goes like it seems it will their upstream is going to be multiples of VM's, not just a few mbps faster. We can only hope they give us something special with 3.1 but it's far from a guarantee.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

As the service will effectively do away with the cab as it is from the dp then one could hope that more homes will be served (proviso:- commercial viablity).

Effectively it would bring more homes into range of the DSLAM (on the dp)...ish

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Doesn't answer my question Pip. My telephone line (copper strung, aluminium u/g) goes to a ****** cabinet. Then of course to the FTTC cabinet.

So what will change at my home? And if the route remains the same, will my aluminium wire with its impedance mismatch no longer cause me to lose 40% of my upper limit DS speed and 55% of my upstream speed?

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

A what?

A FTTdP line doesn't go to any cabinet.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Correct. It boils down to the length from dp to premisis (or should that be premises).

Seph, the DSLAM is effectively at the dp.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I'm obviously missing the point. My question is centred on my installation.

Modem -> Copper overhead -> aluminium u/g (300m) -> Crappy cabinet --> FTTC cabinet.

What is going to change at MY installation? Will I get more speed from G.Fast?

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Modem -> copper overhead -> dpDSLAM.

Speed depends on distance from dp. No more aluminium!

Effectively the DSLAM is pole mounted or that will be where the fibre termination point will be and copper from there.

I thought I'd reported on this 2 yrs ago after my visit to Adastral Park.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Ah - shows how little I know about these things. So the telephone will run over IP?

Looks like BT would have to spend billions to convert the likes of me.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Or basement in my case.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Hence the proviso above.:D

Why? Your copper/ali line will still be there.

Quite.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

So the optical convertor is on the pole along with, say, 6 phone connections. What will BT do? Connect the converted signal piggy back onto each phone line? And how does that not then microreflect over the aluminium to the cabinet that iit doesn't need to go to?

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

It'll work the exact same way FTTC works now. There is no "optical converter". There's a DSLAM for data. The analogue POTS phone line is continues to work the same as it always has.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Seph, have a look at the telegraph poles in your street. See if a bunch of lines meet at a specific pole. That's likely going to be where your DP will be (guessing!).

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Thanks for the replies. But I haven't had the question answered (you don't have to, of course).

Fibre comes to the pole with a DSLAM on it.

That has to be converted to RF for the copper to pick up.

To avoid anything Broadband going back to the street cabinet and causing micro-reflections, they'd have to have frequency filters put in. Yes?

And would they as a matter of course tap each copper pair into the DSLAM irrespective of whether the customer was on BT Broadband?

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Thought they rolled it out for a second!

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2015/03/4.png

Checked my config still the normal 152mbit one so it's an erroneous speedtest.net result.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I was amused at "faster than 93% of GB"!

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2015/03/5.png

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

300Mbps Service Coming Soon Too :)

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/...e/td-p/2796357

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

And here I am stuck on 10Mbps after boasting for years about being able to get triple-fibre.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

sweet, at least we can end the speculation now and we know what the new tier is going to be.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

No we can't, all we know is they are testing something along the lines of 300/15.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

which is what we expected (I had hoped for 300/20) so I very much doubt it is going to change.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

If they add upstream channels, mon General ......

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I am sure we were saying that this time last year and I am still on 2

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I have a very strong suspicion you are wrong there, Sir.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

So what would 200/300MB allow you to do that you can't do now? At some point it becomes pointless.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

It will allow you to watch VM wave its willy at BT.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Except 300mbps is Infinity 4 speed.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Available in all of ~160,000 premises nationwide, a large proportion of which, perhaps half or more, were subsidised by taxpayers. :)

Fair to say for the other 99.7% of the country seeing the advertising the comparison in their minds is between VM and Infinity 2.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

October 2015 VM vs when BT?

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Probably around when 3.1 goes into testing.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

really? how interesting

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

So I reckon they virgin is increasing upload channels from 2-4 then can start offering faster up speeds. Looks like I'm gonna commit to another 18months with cable, in that time gfast may be here or even virgin could roll out this RfOG tech or would they go straight to 3.1?

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Virgin aren't going to overbuild any existing areas with RFoG any time soon. RFoG runs DOCSIS anyways.

Some new build might get RFoG, but will have the same DOCSIS services running on it as existing equipment for now.

DOCSIS 3.1 isn't going to be a big 'thing' in production for a while yet. There is some work to be done on the physical networks, which is in progress, before 3.1 can really shine. Along with that the customer equipment, modems, set top boxes, isn't really there yet.

G.fast will be about in 2016 but delivered to a very, very few premises indeed on a commercial basis, and the form it'll come in is unknown. It may be based out of existing cabinets in which case unless you're very close to yours you're SOOL.

---------- Post added at 09:24 ---------- Previous post was at 09:12 ----------

Much of what you do now but more quickly.

In my own case things like when I want to purchase a PS4 game online in digital format, many of them are >40GB. Were I able to get an ultrafast service I would have more immediate gratification as 40GB at the speed 300Mb has been capped at in the trial would take 17 minutes.

At my current performance on my above-average VDSL it takes 5 times that.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here, but it sounds like you're saying that the g.fast node might be deployed in existing cabs? I don't think that's right, it would completely defeat the purpose of g.fast.
I think it'll be more a case of deployment happens where FTTC is already in place as g.fast is designed to work with FTTC present (or at least, it can account for it without interfering).

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I was speaking about G.fast in 2016.

This year's pilot will test deployment scenarios and it'll become clearer at that time how Openreach are deploying. I would not be surprised if the 2016/7 financial year deployment is small, as they are still building out for BDUK, and tackling the easier stuff first which means where power and backhaul are easily available.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Yuck. I can't see that being particularly great, but what can you do.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Wait for them to crack fibre to distribution points and work out how they are going to power the nodes.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I vaguely remember reading that one potential method of powering the nodes would be from the customer end, via the "modem".

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

That's a way away. The world's first public demo of a reverse powered G.fast node was only this year.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Vs. several years ago with BT.

---------- Post added at 11:37 ---------- Previous post was at 11:37 ----------

Not counting FTTPoD

---------- Post added at 11:41 ---------- Previous post was at 11:37 ----------

I read that to mean G.Fast nodes may be deployed from the fibre cabinets not in the fibre cabinets.

Isn't that what they said above? DC power from the fibre cabinets?

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

It's not like power distribution is a new issue to solve, I'm sure it's a minor technicality.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Not sure we should compare a product whose average delivery price is around the £3000-£5000 mark for install and whose cheapest retail offering is over £200/month with a residential service.

From BT's Chief Network Architect:

They have also gotten DC power from the existing cabinets working fairly recently and will be doing trials accordingly on a few different deployments.

Still, as I said, there are just trials and tons more to do. BT themselves don't know what they're doing yet, hence the pilot.

EDIT: I should mention in conversation with BT staffers that the deployment they are considering is to deliver from very close to the existing FTTC nodes initially and spread out more deeply into the network later on. Coverage will be slow in coming in the beginning.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Sounds expensive but... :drool:

I imagine that when or if those types of speeds become the norm 10, 20 years down the line that the copyright hounds will go ballistic and really put pressure on governments. 2GB symmetrical is faster than most dedicated servers used by 'pirates' and would no doubt cut into sales as everyone would be able to get 40GB full BD movies in minutes.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Ah yes.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-relea...300059858.html

Should be noted, though, that their 305Mb tier is $300 a month. Wonder how much this will be, let alone the installation costs for the 10Gb metro Ethernet kit. Ouch!

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Arguably no less fair than comparing a product neither of us can actually get because it's only available to half the country...

---------- Post added at 16:46 ---------- Previous post was at 16:43 ----------

US broadband prices are already way higher than ours regardless, they charge $115 for 150Mbps for example.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I know of an area that will be going to 6 upstream frequencies in the very near future. That's 6 individual not aware of how the bonding is going to be just yet, but I imagine it's with one eye on 4x bonding. A few of the nodes need the transmitters changing as they struggle with the 6 carriers.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

There are a bunch with 3 or 4 DOCSIS 2.0 carriers already. The problem is that when you go from 2 to 3 or 4 bonded channels you lose 3dB of maximum transmit power. You've doubled the range of the power so it's spread across a wider band.

Any modems that are transmitting at over 51dB right now will max out if they're taken to 3 or 4 bonded channels.

This might be remedied by a feature called extended upstream transmit power which puts the maximum back at 54, however that comes with the price of higher load on the upstream lasers and risks clipping.

As far as I know they're going to try it in a few areas with DFB transmitters and see how it goes. Remaining nodes with F-P transmitters are going to have the transmitters replaced with DFBs if they're field replaceable else the whole thing will have to come out.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I'm ready and waiting for more upstream then!

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Read this today:

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Interesting.

See how they feel about running it unlimited when someone's 95th percentile usage on it is 100Mb+ for a month or two ;)

Verizon were rather upset by customers pushing >5TB/month on their service.

Not that surprising as there's very little settlement free peering in the United States, virtually all paid transit.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

That's assuming Sony are actually going to allow you to download a line rate, I've seen some pretty horrendous speeds from both PSN and XBL, the last system update I had for the xbox got a lovely 2Mbit/s meaning a 250MB update took over an hour to download and apply.

I think they expect people to leave their consoles in the connected standby modes and have the downloads trickle through in the background :shocked:

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Steam downloads used to run at 60Mbps+ on my 70Mbps line most of the time.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Steam is not XBL/PSN unlike both of those Valve seems to be able to do CDN right, the only time I've seen steam download slowly recently is during a sale.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Indeed. Abysmal speeds from PSN last night - initially sub-1Mb. Had to keep restarting the download and even then the best I could get was about 7Mb.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I have no probs getting 15MB/sec on Steam these days

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I've had similar experiences. Xbox Live, at least a couple of years ago, wasn't too bad for download speeds. It never maxed the connection but seemed reasonable enough for me. PSN was always slower than dogshit. It has gotten better with the PS4 but still not anywhere near maxing the connection for me.

Steam is all right for me. I do often find myself struggling to download at faster than about 5MB/s in the evening but I think that's local congestion rather than Steam.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Another benefit of PC gaming vs. console it seems...

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Looks that way. You pay pretty much if not full retail price for a game to be delivered digitally and it takes so long to download, even over 'superfast' broadband, that it would've been faster for me to walk from deep in the 'burbs, literally right on the edge of Leeds to the city centre and buy it then walk back than to purchase it directly from Sony and give them a whole bunch of profit.

I purchased a game that quoted a ~6GB download before being playable at 8pm and 4 hours later it was still not even half done. Abysmal. If they can't handle delivering their own content there are a whole bunch of companies, Akamai, Limelight, etc, who can.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I would love 300meg at home, which would be 40x times faster than my works. :D

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

We only have 50meg in work, but it's symmetrical so there's that.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

My mobile phone downloads faster at work than my works PC.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Thank-you VM, New config received this morning

From wireless laptop via my own routers:-

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2015/04/25.png

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I'm not jealous. I'm not jealous at all.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Sweet, downstream tests went well so onto the full thing.

Meet the middle tier of the uplift, bitches.

Note I said middle tier, not 'M' tier. There's one below and one above this one so this is equivalent to XL / 100Mb.

First time I've seen both downstream and upstream uplift tests though. I'm sure someone on the same segment formerly on 50Mb / L will have the lower uplift tier in place.

Unsure if the top of the shop tier, the new XXL, is being tested yet.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Someone posted that they noticed their speeds going to 300Mbit+ for a small time recently, but it doesn't appear as though anyone's got a 300Mbit active config yet.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Ah yeah I forgot about that! :dunce:

He was seeing ~330Mb down and 16Mb up.

I need to get more drunk before I start commenting on whether or not that's the final top tier performance.

Note to mods: I have banned myself from the off-topic section so no worries about the standard drunken ranting.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Makes sense and sounds like this is going to be another flat doubling of download speeds. To me it makes more sense to have a nice 100/200/300.

With the way Virgin likes to overprovision by about 10%, that would explain the 330MBit.

Shame the upload is only going to 16Mbit, if that's to be believed. Be nice if they pushed it to at least 20, if only to match FTTC (before STM). That said, I'd settle for 16 and less STM on the upload.