Internety thingummies, question.

More on my friends Internet access issues, which I mentioned earlier..

He would seem to have several issues and is on Plusnet, which is BT supplied.

  1. He seems to be reporting his Internet connection is unstable.

  1. His wifi access from the Plusnet router is desperately poor range coverage.

He contacted PN this am and PN has checked out 1 and agree with him. They are sending a new router and have upsold him to fibre. They suggest that they don't need to run anything into his house, he just needs to switch to the new router.

Virgin recently ran fibre round the village and left little plastic access points in the pavement, adjacent to every home. Where people have taken up the Virgin service, they have had to run from the access point, into the house with cable. How come Plusnet/BT don't need to do this?

Friend bought himself a pair of BT Homplugs, to extend the range of his wifi (2). During his call to PN, they said the Homeplug might be causing him the problems with his poor interned - I don't really see how, however the Homeplug access point, seemed not to be working at all, despite it all being lit up. The AP failed to show in his devices list of available AP's.

I have the same pair of Homeplugs here, just for when I might need them and they work absolutely fine.

Reply to
Harry Bloomfield
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Might be fibre to the cabinet (FTTC). That's what we have, gives 35Mbps or so. Fibre from the exchange to the box I can see down the road, and the old copper connection from the box to the house.

When we had it done, a BT Openreach girlie had to come over and install a new modem. But perhaps these days the modem is built into the router.

Reply to
Tim Streater

Correct, FTTC is 'Fibre to the *cabinet*', it still runs over the normal telephone wire pair to the house.

See above, FTTC uses the existing pair, you just plug it into a VDSL router as opposed to an ADSL router (some routers do both).

Start simple and work up. I.e. first get a wired connection to the router running properly and fast (should be much faster than before now he has FTTC). Next try the new router's WiFi with nothing else extra, check where coverage is OK, or not. Then if needed add the Homeplug thingies.

Reply to
Chris Green

BT is fibre to the nearest (green) box in the street. Whereas before it may have been wire to the exchange which for many people would have been Km long and which were possible installed 50+ years ago its now fibre to the nearest box with only the bit between the box and house being wire.

Reply to
alan_m

I'd probably take the view that the IP is not providing the service they contracted to provide, and if they wanted ongoing payment they would need to do so.

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

That's correct.

Reply to
Andy Burns

They use the existing phone line. Its only fibre to the street cab. Its copper thereafter.

They are crap when more than two are on the network

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Because it's only fibre to the cabinet, then twisted pair to the house.

Virgin usually use coax (plus twisted pair for phone) to the house, but it sounds like your area may be covered by Virgin's Project Lightning which *is* fibre all the way to the house.

Reply to
Andy Burns

If you have any extensions, it is important to use a filtered faceplate. If you don't performance will be adversely affected by reflections from the TAP connections.

Homeplugs may work OK, but they are not known for being reliable.

Reply to
Michael Chare

53.7 here. And rather old overhead telephone cable with telegraph poles to the cabinet - quite rare in London.
Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

79.5Mbs here, underground wired, If I crane my neck out of the window I can see the cabinet.
Reply to
Andy Burns

A completely different matter.

How much extra is that costing him? 'Normal' ADSL should be OK unless he lives a long way from the exchange.

...which someone will dig up with a hoe or just a kick. They don't even bother to secure their roadside cabinets.

Because it's FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) as others have noted.

Homeplugs are regarded as the Spawn of the Devil by some, due to the radio interference.

Reply to
Max Demian

I think BT recently offered me an 'upgrade' to a higher speed. For more money, of course. But the last one I had which doubled the download speed made zero difference (that I could see) in practice. Most things seem to have 'the other end' as the bottleneck.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

BT (specifically Openreach) do need to do this - but they've already done it. Once there's a cable into the house, they can connect it at the cabinet to FTTC (VDSL), back at the exchange for plain broadband (ADSL), or just connect it to the exchange for a phone line with no broadband. If you change from one to the other, they will change the relevant connections at the exchange and/or cabinet with no need to visit the house. Now if you order FTTP, that's a different matter as you'll need a different type of cable (fibre rather than copper) and Openreach will need to visit the house. Or if you need a line where there isn't one already (a new house, or a second line), they'll need to visit to install it. Since Virgin are setting up a new service and don't have lines into anyone's house, they'll always need to visit - the first time. But if you then get a different service from Virgin they probably won't need to visit to make the change.

Mike

Reply to
Mike Humphrey

homeplugs are the work of the devil ..........

Reply to
Jim GM4DHJ ...

I suspect I'm only paying for 37.5 or whatever it is. That's plenty for now. Specially considering that 20 years ago, that was pretty much teh fastest international circuit you could get.

Reply to
Tim Streater

It's DIGITAL you didn't really expect it to work properly did you ? .....

Reply to
Jim GM4DHJ ...

The Natural Philosopher explained on 28/07/2018 :

They work just fine for me, when I am out of range of my wifi. So I am puzzled as to why his pair of Homeplugs didn't work, didn't even show up on his devices at all.

Reply to
Harry Bloomfield

Andy Burns wrote on 28/07/2018 :

Could be, they covered the entire village with it, not long ago.

Reply to
Harry Bloomfield

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