Gigabit fiber internet installed

Status
Not open for further replies.
Joined
Mar 2, 2004
Messages
4,099
Location
Kentucky
My family moved to Meade county Kentucky in the spring in a pretty rural area, but still within a reasonable commute to Louisville (45 mins) and the larger job markets. I was somewhat hesitant to live so far out, internet availabilty was a concern. Suffice it to say I was pretty floored when the local telephone company had gigabit fiber to the home, and the price wasn't far off their lower tiered options. My only gripe is they force you to pay for landline service, which after it was installed, is just a VOIP box instead of running off their traditional copper lines. That should be illegal IMO, I already have OOMA VOIP and have no interest in a landline. So that brought the bill $100 for internet, plus another 20 with the phone they forced on me. Not too bad, I didn't renew our direcTV, we'll do NFL Gamepass (gotta watch the Broncos somehow) and Kodi or something for TV over the internet, so I'm saving money in the big picture.

The service is fantastic. My pings are routinely 2-3ms, and I'm able to attain sustained speeds of 700+ mbps. The issue is the server you're connecting to having enough bandwidth-- I have a feeling most are throttled, as I rarely see over 200 mbps transfers unless I'm doing a speed test or multiple transfers from different servers. Even with a speed test, I haven't gotten past 800mbps. Hasn't bothered me enough to call them, but I'm keeping an eye on it. The fiber goes right off the telephone pole to a box on the side of the house, then straight to my bedroom where the modem and router are. Zero copper in this setup.

The biggest difference came with an upgrade of my router. I had to purchase one with gigabit LAN ports, my old one was an early ac router (600mbps?) with 10/100 ports. A linksys WRT3200ACM solved that problem, and my wi-fi devices (tvs and such) now transfer at about 220mbps, regardless of where they are located. Close devices on the 5ghz signal will reach 400mbps or so. Pretty darn happy so far, the cable companies and DirecTV can keep their expensive [censored].
 
They're rolling it out here, about one third of the city has it installed now. I'm still waiting, according to the rollout map, probably another 2-3 years. They will install it to every residence and business address within City limits, whether you're a customer or not, so it will be available should you want to switch from the Cable provider at some point.

The Cable company is offering a 150 mbps service now at $C 50.00 [$US 40.00] for 12 months, then $C 100 [$US 80] with no obligation to remain after the introductory price ends.

The fibre to the home is:

No installation cost to the consumer.
No change in internet fees (same options as DSL) but faster speeds.
No requirement to have any other service.

The basic plan (8 mbps down, 2 up) is $C 53.00 [$US 42.63] On DSL that would be a 5 down/750 up plan, same price.
The 20/4 is $C 63.00 [$US 50.00]
Next is 50/10 for $C 80.00 [$US 64.00]
And then 175/25 for $C 105.00 [$US 84.45]
And finally there is 260/30 for $C 140.00 [$US 112.00]

Also there is a $10 add-on option which doubles the upload speeds. There are also introductory price incentives ($10 for 3 months). As with SaskTel's prior policy on all internet accounts, no data limits.
 
The landline issue has more to do with the government and rural telecommunications program setup many years ago
 
2-3 ms latency? Should be good go for online multiplayer gaming
laugh.gif
 
I think your limitation may just due to gigabit ethernet. What kind of modem is it? If it just has one gigabit ethernet port coming out of it, that may be your bottleneck. If it's 4 port, then maybe you can add a second ethernet port to your computer and use link aggregation so that you have 2 gigabits of bandwidth available.
 
Originally Posted By: Wolf359
I think your limitation may just due to gigabit ethernet. What kind of modem is it? If it just has one gigabit ethernet port coming out of it, that may be your bottleneck. If it's 4 port, then maybe you can add a second ethernet port to your computer and use link aggregation so that you have 2 gigabits of bandwidth available.


Unless it is 10gig between the media converter and his router, the same limitation (media) will apply between both of those devices as exists between his computer and the router, which also has to PAT that kind of speed as well, which takes some decent CPU power. Also, it is very unlikely that a consumer-grade router is going to support link aggregation/teaming.
 
The modem is a Calix 716GE-I. I haven't looked it up yet, but it serves as the modem and VOIP. Then the Linksys WRT3200ACM in plugged directly into the Calix, which I understand is a ONT, not really a modem. The WRT3200ACM, while perhaps consumer grade, is a $200 router.. It ought to perform like it should.
 
Interesting. It's a 2.5 gigabit fiber connection with 4 gigabit ethernet connections. People seem to be reporting around 900 mbps. If you bypassed the router and went directly into the ONT, maybe you'd get a little more speed. But even if the 2.5 gigabit connector was giving you more than 1 gigabit, you'd never be able to get it out of those 1 gigabit connections unless you could do some sort of teaming.
 
Plugging into Ethernet ports 2-4 on the ONT does nothing. The light for the respective port doesn't even come on. Ethernet port 1 is active -- I can plug my pc straight into it (I get about 850mbps doing that) or the router. I suspect my local telephone company has ports 2-4 disabled, so as to limit speeds to 1gbps via the single port. No idea, this is my first venture into fiber internet, still learning...
 
Originally Posted By: 92saturnsl2
The modem is a Calix 716GE-I. I haven't looked it up yet, but it serves as the modem and VOIP. Then the Linksys WRT3200ACM in plugged directly into the Calix, which I understand is a ONT, not really a modem. The WRT3200ACM, while perhaps consumer grade, is a $200 router.. It ought to perform like it should.


Right, it is going to perform like it should - For a single Gig-E connection to a consumer-grade NIC and this assumes enough CPU power to PAT Gig-E speeds, which may very well be the case.

I wouldn't think much further about this, as your ONT/Media converter doesn't support teaming of the ports and none of them are 10Gig, meaning that what you are presently getting may only be slightly improved upon if you upgraded everything in between it and your computer as well as the NIC in your computer itself.

Enjoy the speed!
 
Originally Posted By: 92saturnsl2
Plugging into Ethernet ports 2-4 on the ONT does nothing. The light for the respective port doesn't even come on. Ethernet port 1 is active -- I can plug my pc straight into it (I get about 850mbps doing that) or the router. I suspect my local telephone company has ports 2-4 disabled, so as to limit speeds to 1gbps via the single port. No idea, this is my first venture into fiber internet, still learning...


Yes, they've only provisioned one port so that you are effectively limited to the speed of that port, rather than being able to use multiple devices on multiple ports and harvesting more bandwidth.

You mentioned earlier 700Mbit through the router. If you run back-to-back tests with your computer with and without the router in place, is the drop of 150Mbit consistent? If so, I'd monitor CPU usage on the router and see if you are pegging that. If not, then it may simply be a limitation of the chipset on the device, as all Gig-E chipsets are far from created equal.
 
Your speeds are not out of whack for gigabit ethernet.

You have an immediate 8-9% TCP/IP overhead.

Speeds for anything, and I mean ANYTHING (including speed test websites) beyond your CPE cannot be guaranteed. Internet congestion is a thing, even at speed test sites. You will never see your absolute max of ~910Mbit/sec.

You're also only guaranteed gigabit speeds to the premise.

Your maximum observed speed is about 10% lower than your absolute maximum, and that isn't really unusual for any ISP.

Just enjoy the speeds that most of us still don't have access to.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, back in the day I was stuck with 300 baud. Don't have gigabit in my area for residential, Comcast has it for business and wants $500 a month for it. I get by with 200 mbps.
 
Originally Posted By: Wolf359
Yeah, back in the day I was stuck with 300 baud. Don't have gigabit in my area for residential, Comcast has it for business and wants $500 a month for it. I get by with 200 mbps.


Yup, exactly! Though I started on 2,400 baud, LOL
wink.gif


Fastest available here non-business is 250Mbit, and it is a pretty penny. Rogers will give you teamed Fibre, up to 80Gigabit IIRC, but the price of that is insane.
 
Originally Posted By: 92saturnsl2
and my wi-fi devices (tvs and such) now transfer at about 220mbps, regardless of where they are located. Close devices on the 5ghz signal will reach 400mbps or so. Pretty darn happy so far, the cable companies and DirecTV can keep their expensive [censored].

Not that it matters much, but those are just connection speeds, as reported by your wi-fi cards. Actual data transfer speeds will be about half that, give or take.
 
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Actual data transfer speeds will be about half that, give or take.


I measured by initiating a file transfer with xcopy via command line, using a mix of small
I tried with a couple Android smartphones at various locations in the house with a simple speedtest and the results were similar until you went outside the house a fair distance, the both signal quality and transfer rates were rather poor.

Didn't actually test our smart tv, but I have to assume the speed is adequate for what it needs to do.
 
I have three 1Gbps ISP options where I am but 60/60Mbps fiber is a much better deal at $20/month. Same low latencies. I host several server services on the connection. It is great.
 
Our current home in NY (country) has 4Mb DSL. Retirement home in DE has up to 1 Gb FIOS. We bought 50Mb for now.

The NY home probably had power and copper wire phone installed after WWII. And not much has changed since.

But recent articles about Google Fiber and Verizon FIOS not expanding into new areas suggests its hard to make $$ on selling broadband by itself. Many companies are figuring the future is wireless.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top