FTTC

[David]

Install date next Friday 4-5 hours for it !! that will be fun 

[Glenn]

4-5 hours? It only took 30 minutes for mine one the work was done on the cabinet.

[Lance]

4-5 hours? It only took 30 minutes for mine one the work was done on the cabinet.

Mine took even less than that!

Are you sure the 4-5 hours isn't just the duration of the time slot the engineer will come during?

[David]

No Lance he will be here at 9 and I am to expect his visit to last 4-5 hours changing the masterbox ,dont know why its new but there you go I am a little confused though that the isp I have gone with can supply this service where others cannot but I did think this was a long time to be here 

A modem has to be fitted as will as a long list of things but I have no idea I can expect almost 10 times the speed Im getting as well

We will see

[Glenn]

Could it be FTTP?

[David]

Just checked no its FTTC  how long would it usually take to carry out what would seem a straight forward job as I have a new telephone cable from my phone to the pole new box everything was replaced not that long ago ?
I would have thought 2 hours maximum

[Glenn]

David, like I said, the chap was in my house for 30 minutes or less, plus maybe 5 minutes at the cabinet.

[Glenn]

You will know what he is doing next week 

[psp83]

Mine was done and over with within 15mins  (after 3 delays / BT cockups )

[David]

Perhaps he is expecting lunch 

[Lance]

Mine was 5 mins at the cabinet (I know this because he phoned before doing anything), then 10 mins in the house 'doing' and a further 20mins or so chatting

[David]

Sounds more like it perhaps they meant 5 mins 

[Ardua]

@David  Are you with IDNet? Some OR engineers will not carryout any form of router configuration for non-BT customers. They may just leave you with a working FTTC modem and leave it to you to connect the router and configure it for FTTC.

[David]

The router is already configued and have full instructions here all I need to do is plug in I decided on getting one of their routers to save me all this

[Ardua]

The router is already configued and have full instructions here all I need to do is plug in I decided on getting one of their routers to save me all this

OK. Just thought that I would mention it. Hope that the installation goes well.

[MisterW]

Some OR engineers will not carryout any form of router configuration for non-BT customers

I've seen reports of some engineers refusing to do the installation when there is no BT HomeHub. They say its not possible for them to complete the installation without one, which is complete rubbish!. OR's reponsibilty ends at the modem, at which they can test with their laptop, although most engineers will wait until any router is successfully connected. 

[David]

OK. Just thought that I would mention it. Hope that the installation goes well.

Thanks for this its all new to me so dont know what to expect 

I've seen reports of some engineers refusing to do the installation when there is no BT HomeHub. They say its not possible for them to complete the installation without one, which is complete rubbish!. OR's reponsibilty ends at the modem, at which they can test with their laptop, although most engineers will wait until any router is successfully connected. 

Hope I get a nice one failing that bribery may work   

[pctech]

Offer them tea or coffee and biscuits David.

[pctech]

I thought with FTTC OR supply the modem and a router?

[Lance]

I thought with FTTC OR supply the modem and a router?

No, just a modem with a single enabled lan port (although the device also has a disabled lan port).

[Ardua]

Some OR engineers will not carryout any form of router configuration for non-BT customers. They may just leave you with a working FTTC modem and leave it to you to connect the router and configure it for FTTC.

To clarify, when I had FTTC installed, I was shown two work orders. The first for BT Infinity (for AN Other customer) included install, configure and test BT HH3. The second, mine, was install FTTC modem only and it also mentioned the data extension kit that I had specifically asked for. It was the guy's first FTTC install and I think that he took fright when he was faced with an OR modem and Fritz!Box. We chatted whilst he drank his tea. He plugged his laptop into the modem just to prove that everything worked and he left after running a final meter test at the box that he had installed. I washed his cup, threw the modem into the back of my cupboard and connected the FB as a standalone.

[David]

What is coming in the post for me before Friday I hope is a router a modem with cables I have not moved to Bt but another supplier  from up north so will the engineer do as I am led to believe fit a new master faceplate and the modem ? sounds like this could be one of those days 

Sound scary

[MisterW]

from up north

Not Sheffield by any chance ?

[Steve]

Not Sheffield by any chance ?

Good guess! 

[MisterW]

Shouldn't be any problem then, as long as the router arrives in time
It will self configure, all you (David) need to do is connect it to the modem with the supplied ethernet cable and power it on. They use TR-069 to download your details to the router and set it up.
A colleague of mine just upgraded to Fibre with them and it went like clockwork. Good job really 'cos he's the MD, and my referral, so if it went t**s up then it would be down to me to sort it out. Hence all my gening up on FTTC at the moment

@david,pctech won't talk to you again though, now you've moved to the 'dark side'

[David]

Not Sheffield by any chance ?

Will you stop that singing and who drew that dog on the hill 

[David]

Not Sheffield by any chance ?

I believe its very near there 

[David]

Im lost that pctech wont talk to me and what is the dark side ?    I have no idea

[MisterW]

I'm sure he'll be along to explain.
IIRC He used to be with them and had lots of issues with the traffic management. If you use ptp or ftp extensively ( which I guess you don't! ) then you may see some slowdown during peak times. For general browsing, email, voip and vpn TBH I've never had any problems.

Shame I didn't know you were moving to them, you could have used me as a referrer and saved me another 50p/month

NB on a more pertinent note. If there isn't any sign of your router by Wed then give the CSC(Customer Service Centre) a call and check its been dispatched.
They( like most places these days) operate a 'just in time' system of despatching stuff and sometimes its 'not quite in time'
If you have problems then drop me a PM with your account name and I'll prod one of the Digital Care staff on the forums.

[David]

Thats very kind of you thank you so much and if I had known would have used a referral ( I just liked the ad )  but seriously I dont do games or anything else and was unaware of any real issues with FTTC .
I will take you up on that very generous offer if the package isnt here by wednesday though 

[pctech]

I hope things have radically changed since I was with that Sheffield outfit.

I was doing normal stuff (I don't do torrents) and it would often slow to a crawl, while my line isn't the quickest and has had quite a bit of work done on it since then when I was using non traffic managed ISPs the performance was quite adequate.

Their support maintained my problems were due to my line and dismissed completely the idea their traffic management appliances were struggling or incorrectly classifying traffic despite the fact they used to post regularly about 'gold' classified packets being dropped (DNS lookup responses were supposedly classified as this and I was having trouble with them)

As an experiment I upgraded to their pro package which prioritised everything and the issues disappeared, by this time I was fed up with their lies and so requested a MAC and had to buy myself out of a contract.

I moved the phone line away too but it took 3 months of phone calls to speak to someone within the company who had the permissions to kill the billing for line rental I did not owe as the line had transferred elsewhere.

It taught me that you get what you pay for, that traffic management is bad and that dealing with smaller companies is best.

The only upside was their forum as, just like here there were a lot of good people though a few used to defend the company relentlessly  just because they'd been invited into the offices for a cup of tea and a biscuit once a year and had had forum moderator status conferred on them.

YMMV of course as have others.

[David]

Im on the Fibre plus or something and have read some good things about them and even had a friend in Yorkshire ask around and he has not heard any great moans so hope they have upped thier game I think they are leaders with which or somebody but I dont take a lot of notice of awards we will see

[pctech]

I will say this is over three years ago so one would hope that they had improved but I am happy where I am so not tempted to move back to find out but as you asked I explained my own experience.

I would advise though that you register for their forums as they are used as an official support channel so you may sometimes get a quicker response from there than sitting on the phone and like I say there are a few interesting characters there too.

[David]

Many thanks have registered  and see from there what you mean 

[David]

Installing the actual service takes about 3-4 hours

Just taken that from my order perhaps its all that time in total and not in my home ?

[Lance]

Nope, it's just a load of rubbish! It really doesn't take longer than 15-20 mins in the house and 10 mins beforehand at the cabinet.

[David]

I hope you are right Lance  seems a long time jus to what looks to be fitting a modem and configuring that to the cabinet if thats the right expession from what I have read the router has to be confirured to the modem then it should in theory work but you know me thick as two short ones most of the time 

[Glenn]

From what I remember, it was along the lines of;

Phone call to say the internet would go off in a few minutes (doing some work at the cabinet)
10 mins later a knock on the door from the BT chappie
Decline a cuppa
Swap the faceplate
Fit the modem
Test the connection with his handheld tested
Connect the router and see if it connects
Off to the next job.

[Steve]

I seem to recall it was about an hour from the first phone call telling me my phone would be interrupted to him finishing the job.

[MisterW]

Yes, that sounds about right Glenn. I've no idea why it says 3-4 hours on your order David, but it says similar on the Faq's on the website, maybe that's just the maximum it could take ( assuming the engineer drinks his tea very slowly ). A colleague of mine just had FTTC installed with your new ISP and it went just like Glenn said.
As to the router, no configuration should be needed, its preconfigured with a special username/password which connects to the TR-069 server at the ISP, retrieves your account information from the serial no of the router, and then configures it automatically with your account details. You just need to connect it to the modem with the ethernet cable supplied and power it on, its Plug & Play ( or should that be Plug & Pray )

[Steve]

I think the time duration on the ISP's FAQ may well be related to the fact that you can only book a sometime AM or sometime PM appointment with an engineer.

[David]

Sounds fairly straight forward to me roll on Friday in some ways but I will say a big thank you to all the people at IDNet for what has been first rate service and not needing anything other than reminders of my password every once in a while which if course is me all over but it does speak volumes how good the service is and has been for me for a long time now

[Ardua]

Only recently, I was told by the technical department of another Which-recommended ISP that the data extension cable had to be used between the FTTC modem and router. When I drew their attention to the BT Infinity data extension cable video they went away to think about it.

To be fair to David's chosen ISP, they are obviously allowing for all contingencies.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2012/06/bees-attack-the-sheffield-office-of-broadband-isp-plusnet-uk.html

[David]

They did mention an extension lead but I didnt ask for it !!! oops maybe ?

[Steve]

If your router and modem can be placed near the master socket you will not need the additional lead. The Master socket is the only socket you can use for FTTC I believe, you might want to think about power supply availability near the master socket.

[David]

Thanks Steve the master socket is inches away from the router so thats good and the power supply is a foot away so no issues there 

[David]

Install was quick and smooth Bt a day early but no big deal turned on this morning and its all up and running and god its fast 
Thanks all for your help this proved to be childs play 

I can use my wireless and Wi Fi now 

[pctech]

Isn't the extension cable just a bit of Cat5?

[David]

Seems so I am going to mount these on the wall they got very hot stacked on top of one another but cooled down once seperated

[Steve]

The modem needs to be on the wall David, a couple of protruding screws heads will do it. If you  need a template it's  easy enough to fashion , likewise I did the same with my router , end result is quite tidy imo.

In fact I'm surprised the modem is not fixed to the wall, my engineer insisted upon it.

[psp83]

For the template, I turned my modem upside down and put a piece of A4 paper on it and pushed a pen into the holes.

Put paper on the wall, mark the holes and put screws in, Simples!

[Lance]

Mine wasn't installed to the wall either, just left to be freestanding on the back of my tv unit next to my router.

[.Griff.]

http://www.idnetters.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,26507.0.html

[David]

Thanks Steve no he just did it and was gone he left them stacked up but I noticed they were very hot indeed so just doing that now for both ventiatlion and tidyness 

[andrue]

For the template, I turned my modem upside down and put a piece of A4 paper on it and pushed a pen into the holes.

Put paper on the wall, mark the holes and put screws in, Simples!

I already had two screws in place that fit exactly. Ironically they were from my old Home Highway box.



Or is it irony? Could it be a rare example of good planning and consistency by BT?

[pctech]

Home highway? you must be posh then, some of us could only afford 33.6 

[Polchraine]

I already had two screws in place that fit exactly. Ironically they were from my old Home Highway box.



Or is it irony? Could it be a rare example of good planning and consistency by BT?

Just BT ensuring that the fixings points are in standard locations - there are industry standards/agreements that define the pitch of holes and the size of screw they are designed for.

[Steve]

I think the 7800N is the same template.

[David]

I will just use a pencil 

[andrue]

Home highway? you must be posh then, some of us could only afford 33.6 

Lol, I couldn't afford to run bonded channels very often though. I don't think BT ever offered an 0800 bonded service. I vaguely recall someone saying it was because BT didn't want to encourage it. They pointed to a document that said bonding put too much load on the CPU at the exchange. Apparently BT went for a software solution rather than hardware or somesuch.



ISDN was great for gaming though. Better than ADSL at the time. You had far more consistent pings and I think it was the same guy said it was because I had a dedicated pipe through to the backbone whereas ADSL was consolidated at the exchange. Happy days. Slower...but happy

As a side note when I finally switched to ADSL I was so concerned that I might be too far from the exchange that I paid for an engineer install. At the time that was the only way they'd restore HH if it didn't work for no cost. In hindsight I may have been a bit pessimistic since eventually my line gave me a 14Mb/s sync.

Ah well - it meant I had a filtered faceplate as well.

[David]

Just wondered is the upload on the low side ?

[andrue]

Just wondered is the upload on the low side ?

I would have said so but not sure how the upload speed follows the downstream. Is your connection 40/10 or 80/20? If you're on 40/10 then the downstream is pretty reasonable in which case the upstream should be better. However if you're on 80/20 then the downstream has reduced a lot and perhaps the naff upstream is reasonable.

Or are Plusnet offering a 40/2 product like I think Sky used to?

[Steve]

I got the impression David was on the 2mb upstream product not that that's a problem as the majority of us don't need it any faster. It doesn't take long to say 'pardon'.

[David]

Had to double check and think you are correct I thought I was on 40/20 

[Steve]

I think currently it's 40/2 with the Sheffield ISP however unless your photo uploads are too slow you should be ok.

[David]

Thanks Steve in typical David fashion I took more notice of the whole thing without realising the different things but FTTC is new so I wont be too hard on myself

[Steve]

The 40/10 and 80/20 options are more expensive per month and I believe will be offered by Plusnet sometime in the future. I think unless your running a website from home or uploading loads of photos regularly it's not going to be an issue. Certainly for myself I'd cope with 40/2.

[David]

Your right Steve it isnt an issue I just noticed the low uploads 

[MisterW]

David, If you really want faster uploads you could opt into the 80/20 trial. There's no increased costs at the moment since its a trial, whether there would be an increase later once the product goes live I'm not sure. In the past usually triallists have been able to keep the trial product for no increase.

[David]

That did it   

[zappaDPJ]

That looks pretty damn good to me

[David]

 

[MisterW]

That looks pretty damn good to me Anyone ( unless of course you've got FTTP )

[David]

That looks pretty damn good to me Anyone ( unless of course you've got FTTP )

No just plain old FTTC Ian

[pctech]

I can technically get FTTP here but am just too tight.