UK ISPs have to stop lying about broadband speeds • Hacker News Board

Re: UK ISPs have to stop lying about broadband speeds

#41

Post by Blackstone4 » Wed, May 23, 2018, 3:18 PM UTC

dspillett wrote: post #35

Blackstone4 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree on the upload speeds...I had Plusnet 17MPS but in actual fact it was ~6MPS download and 0.5MPS upload. The bad part was if I did an upload of say ~20MB it would throttle my download speed thereby slowing everything to a halt.

> upload of say ~20MB it would throttle my download speed This is not directly due to the technology involved, it is due to congestion on the upstream side slowing down IP control packets (ACKs and such) as they are queued with the rest. When you have a slow upstream pipe it is very easy to see this effect. It is even worse when there are multiple upstream connections trying to use as much as they can (as seen in tor…

Thank you for this. Super interesting to hear about what's happening. At one point they told me there was a problem with the copper which meant my packets where getting dropped.

In the end, Plusnet increased their prices by £1 and in the small print of the email, they said I could cancel my contract within 30 days...I was 3 months in so I cancelled. Now I'm using my phone (tethered + 20GB of data for £20 a month from BT) and BT-FON free wifi for Youtube videos.

Re: UK ISPs have to stop lying about broadband speeds

#42

Post by matthewmacleod » Wed, May 23, 2018, 3:20 PM UTC

Rjevski wrote: post #38

simonbarker87 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every home I have lived in for the past 10 years or so has had Virgin fibre to the home. BT don't have the monopoly at all, they just have poor infrastructure and are the defacto that most people choose. Our unit didn't have a direct fibre connection when we took the lease, we rang Virgin and they used infill money to lay a fibre cable to all the units on the trading estate at no cost to us other than the initial £20…

Are you sure it's actually fibre? Or is it their bullshit coax cable (HFC) they mis-sell as "fibre"?

It's a bit weird that there hasn't been a decision about the mis-selling of "fibre" connections in the UK. Virgin's network is pretty great if you're not in an oversubscribed area, but it just seems weird to bill it as "fiber".

To be fair though, DOCSIS 3.1 can push 10GB through coax so it's not all bad.

Re: UK ISPs have to stop lying about broadband speeds

#43

Post by Rjevski » Wed, May 23, 2018, 3:21 PM UTC

rwnspace wrote: post #17

arethuza wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying a house in a rural area is a nightmare as you don't really know in advance what speed you will get and the speeds quoted on sites like Rightmove are for entire postcodes - not the property in question. We bought a house last year in a rural area in Scotland - not far from Edinburgh and were appalled at the broadband options. We get 20Mbps down and 1 up which is enough for most things (barely) but that was one…

https://www.dslchecker.bt.com/ About as accurate as you'll ever get.

The problem is that those tools don't take into account the quality of the wire going to your house, they just quote a best-case scenario based on the wire's length, assuming a perfect wire.

It does not take into account rusted, damaged wire, open cabinets where rain & moisture can enter, etc.

This tool gives me an estimate of 13 Mbps on my line - I actually only get 6, and when seeing the building's electrical & phone line cabinets, I can understand why, but as a consumer you shouldn't be required to manually try to estimate how "good" your phone line is - the ISP should be giving you an estimate you can trust.

Re: UK ISPs have to stop lying about broadband speeds

#44

Post by matthewmacleod » Wed, May 23, 2018, 3:21 PM UTC

wjoe wrote: post #23

oldcynic wrote: post #8

The UK could have had world leading broadband were it not for Mrs T. She decided BT's late 1980s decision to rollout fibre was anti-competitive and killed it in 1990 when we were pretty much leading the world [0]. So the grindingly slow reality of ADSL isn't especially surprising sadly. [0] https://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-lost...

And yet BT is pretty much the definition of anti-competitive now anyway, and it's that monopoly which is killing progress today.

Is that really true? What's stopping alternative companies from rolling out fibre services, beyond the cost barriers?

Re: UK ISPs have to stop lying about broadband speeds

#45

Post by PaulKeeble » Wed, May 23, 2018, 3:21 PM UTC

matthewmacleod wrote: post #39

It would definitely be really nice if the UK rolled out comprehensive fibre connections – it seems like a good long-term investment for as many homes as possible to have a direct FTTP service. At present domestic internet connections using DSL top out at 76MBps – and that's if you live on top of the cabinet. Aside from niche providers, the only other high-speed network is Virgin, which runs a HFC network at up to 350…

There are still quite a lot of people in cities who don't have VDSL yet and are still stuck on maximum 20 Mbps ADSL2. Worse than that is that due to the length and age of the lines they can be getting unstable connections around 1.5Mbit/s.

This is one of those areas where the suburbs and countryside have done significantly better from government funding of BT to roll out Fibre. Wayleaves and Councils and landlords and management agencies across the cities have repeatedly blocked rollout, the situation for many is still much worse than 76 Mbps VDSL, that is a good outcome for someone in a UK city.

Re: UK ISPs have to stop lying about broadband speeds

#46

Post by PaulKeeble » Wed, May 23, 2018, 3:24 PM UTC

matthewmacleod wrote: post #44

wjoe wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet BT is pretty much the definition of anti-competitive now anyway, and it's that monopoly which is killing progress today.

Is that really true? What's stopping alternative companies from rolling out fibre services, beyond the cost barriers?

The contract that BT signed with the government for all the funding granting it a duopoly with Virgin, where Virgin isn't going to increase the cable network at all. That combined with the wayleave issues at a local council level being waved just for them means that the preferred rollout partner in BT gets all the money, all the profits from it and has all the access.

About the only nationwide competition that is even remotely happening is from Hyperoptic and they are being blocked all over the place and they are also really laser focussed only on high-density buildings.

Re: UK ISPs have to stop lying about broadband speeds

#47

Post by horsawlarway » Wed, May 23, 2018, 3:25 PM UTC

LeonM wrote: post #20

> or make a Skype call that doesn’t drop out every two minutes. When will people learn that bandwidth has nothing to do with this? You don't need 50mbit for a skype call! It's usually not the 'last mile' problem, but what I'd call the 'last meters' problem: most SOHO/consumer grade network equipment is just total garbage. Replace your ISP supplied equipment with something more reliable (I highly recommend Ubiquiti ge…

People should try to understand the difference between bandwidth and latency.

I've found an analogy to a car is a simple way to help people understand.

Bandwidth: This is how big your car is. High bandwidth is like driving a huge truck. You can load a whole bunch of things up at once.

Latency: This is how fast your car is, measured in the time it takes to get between two places (so lower time means a faster car)

So you can think about most web usage like picking up groceries from the store.

Driving a huge slow 18 wheeler is a waste: you're only picking up a few groceries, and it will take a long time to get to the store and back.

Driving a tiny fast corvette is silly, because even though you get there real fast, you're going to have to make three trips to fit all the groceries in the car.

What most people want is good all around car - Big enough to haul what you need, fast enough to not feel sluggish doing it.

Some things work better with the fast car (playing games, video chat, streaming songs)

Some things work better with a big truck (downloading games, streaming HD video, moving large files)

But you have to pay attention to both.

Re: UK ISPs have to stop lying about broadband speeds

#48

Post by Rjevski » Wed, May 23, 2018, 3:26 PM UTC

ksec wrote: post #36

signal11 wrote: post #6

> The UK’s fibre to the home infrastructure is so poor it’s out-performed by almost every other country in Europe (Latvia, with 50.6 per cent fibre coverage, ranks first in terms of market penetration). The reason the UK is on a mix of copper and fiber is because the entrenched monopoly, BT, didn't think fiber to the home (FTTH) was worth investing in. To protect their investment in their existing copper network, the…

Having had three few provider and different tech, unless I have a need of 1Gbps+ broadband speed in the future, I would much rather have copper RJ11 or RJ45. Copper Ethernet RJ45 is the best. No more modem, just plug and play. Installing a Ethernet cable is, assuming enough space in the pipe, can be easily pulled through using whatever force you like, I don't think you can actually do any damage to the cable while in…

New builds in France don't have telephone wires for example, if an alternative is available (real fibre) they just install that instead.

Re: UK ISPs have to stop lying about broadband speeds

#49

Post by matthewmacleod » Wed, May 23, 2018, 3:26 PM UTC

ksec wrote: post #36

signal11 wrote: post #6

> The UK’s fibre to the home infrastructure is so poor it’s out-performed by almost every other country in Europe (Latvia, with 50.6 per cent fibre coverage, ranks first in terms of market penetration). The reason the UK is on a mix of copper and fiber is because the entrenched monopoly, BT, didn't think fiber to the home (FTTH) was worth investing in. To protect their investment in their existing copper network, the…

Having had three few provider and different tech, unless I have a need of 1Gbps+ broadband speed in the future, I would much rather have copper RJ11 or RJ45. Copper Ethernet RJ45 is the best. No more modem, just plug and play. Installing a Ethernet cable is, assuming enough space in the pipe, can be easily pulled through using whatever force you like, I don't think you can actually do any damage to the cable while in…

Copper Ethernet RJ45 is the best. No more modem, just plug and play

I mean, you still have some kind of consumer equipment there, which the ISP will likely be supplying for almost all users anyway – so that's quite a specific thing.

Despite the headline figures, G.fast will not achieve anything close to that.

And I have to say that all seems like a little short-term thinking. The fragility of fibre in a permanent installation is hardly a convincing argument.

Re: UK ISPs have to stop lying about broadband speeds

#50

Post by PaulKeeble » Wed, May 23, 2018, 3:27 PM UTC

Rjevski wrote: post #3

Not sure if that's going to change something. The main problem was never peak-time congestion (I've never experienced it personally), it's just the fact that 1) the infrastructure is shit and 2) everyone sells DSL as "fibre". The infrastructure is a mess. Unless you've got actual fibre to the home, you're stuck with DSL, aka rust. The problem is that it's impossible to tell just how rusty it is without subscribing to…

We have had terms for the difference between VDSL, coaxial and actual fibre into the home for a long time, but Ofcom has allowed BT and Virgin to sell their products as "Fibre". Ofcom and the Advertising standards agency are partly to blame, they are have allowed the advertising to suggest these products are something they are not for several decades at this point.