It's not all about Bandwidth - think network quality insead

Fibre to the Premises and Network Quality

I wanted to follow up after my last post about Truespeed dedicated fibre to the premisses (FttP).  If you haven't read that post, I suggest you read that first.  Suffice as to say, I am a big supporter of small independent broadband providers who are filling the gaps left by slow monalific duopoly providers - BT and Virgin.  In our area of the South West of the UK that is Truespeed.

So far, I don't have the Truespeed service to our home although I am hoping it won't be long.  They have started installing in our village and quite rightly they have prioritised a group of key NHS workers who were really struggling to work from home.  Just stop and think about that for a second.  Can you even imagine BT or Virgin doing that?

Truespeed were able to install ultrafast dedicated FttP broadband to ensure that three doctors and a care worker could connect up successfully without constant drop outs and buffering.  All three had BOTH slow and unreliable service to the point they could not do their work online.  One was getting 3 to 5 second drop outs 15 to 20 times and hour.  The other was getting just under 1Mb/s although they were paying for 40Mb/s.

I witnessed it myself.  We even disconnected all other devices from their network and I say and watched the router, drop and reconnect.  They tested the line, no issue found, they sent a new router - exactly the same problem occurred.

You see my point is this; before you measure or even notice speed issues you will first notice quality.  If you are a watcher of BBC, you will see they are doing far more interviews from home with any number of experts and academics willing to share their views and opinions.  I would estimate that 1/3rd of the interviews fail due to connection issue.  They often start of find and then freeze, glitch or fail.

So why is this?  Surely in this day and age that should not be an issue and you're right, it really shouldn't.  You see when you stream a movie or watch iPlayer you are buffering perhaps several minutes of playing time.  This smooths out your stream.  In fact the algorithm which controls this measures and decided how much buffer storage you need.  Unfortunately this doesn't work with an interactive discussion such as a Zoom or Teams call.. IE working from home.

I suggest what is happening is this;  somewhere on the network there is a bottleneck which is running at its maximum and cannot do more.  The bottle necked delayed traffic builds up and up a little like the row of brake lights behind a wide load, slow moving transporter on the motorway.  You have no choice other than slow down and wait until you get past. Did you know that the shared fibre broadband can be shared with up to 128 other users?!! If only 10% get busy your speeds will significantly drop.

This is the cause of the frozen interview and broken connection on the BBC.  It's you "contending" for your small piece of space but after you get past you are free.  The problem is you have a speed limit so you never make up the time.  Some systems such a Skype now speed up your voice and lower your tone to compensate but that can sound ridiculous.

All the ADSL providers who use the BT Openreach infrastructure have this issue and so does Virgin.  If one of your neighbours decides to download a system update or perhaps 25 of your neighbours decide to watch Strictly Come Dancing on iPlayer your motorway is going to get busy.  It doesn't matter if you have paid for 70mph you might end up at a standstill.

Truespeed does things a bit differently.  They provide what is called "Active Ethernet" which is a single unshared connection dedicated to you. There circuit is uncontended like your own dedicated motorway.  Not only that but it's the same speed in both directions.  That leads to their core network which is a supper high performance optical network.

So perhaps we should consider the quality before we consider the capacity. Bandwidth is nice, don't get me wrong but it's pretty easy these days to be sold the potential high speed.

Here's a graph showing my recent network usage.

It's a weekend so not much going on.  You can see some updates going on after midnight but look at what happened at 11.30 this Sunday.  My UPLOAD maxes out at 20Mb/s.  You can also see a large peak in download at 12 noon on Saturday.  That was probably me causing a contention issue for my neighbours.  

What I need is a dedicated circuit that is as fast up as it is down that can cope with my peaks and troughs without causing issues on my network.  There are two of us working from home not to mention three kids who are studying or supposed to be.

Assumptions of Asynchronous

As I have said, Truespeed provides a dedicated synchronous service which is the same speed up and well as down.  Other types of broadband are Asynchronous.  Many provide between a 5:1 or even 10:1 ratio.  This means your upload might be ten times slow than the maximum speed you have been sold.

The thing is these assumptions were made 20 years ago when dial up modems and fax machines were all the rage. Things have changed.  So much of our work and play is now Cloud based and that requires upload as well as download.




Here's another graph from my Router. I'm nearly max-ing out my upload which will start to slow down my downloads too.  Every packet of data delivered needs to be confirmed.  So Virgin selling me 200Mb/s is fine but my limit of 20Mb/s is more of a problem.

My network speed is being limited by design and by quality.

So far I have helped four people set up their Truespeed networks. The first thing I noticed with each and every one is the super low latency.  They are achieving 2 to 4ms ping times even over wireless with insignificant jitter.  

What they all say is the consistency of the service is what really sets it apart.  I used to notice when the school kids got home and switched on their Xbox's and my network would drop by 40%.  Since lockdown it's been like it most days.

The Waiting Game

Building a full FttP network in village locations is challenging to say the least.  There's no way to wrap this up other then to say you need the patience of a saint.  Truespeed is demand led aso before they even plan a feasibility of an investment in a location there needs to be a tangible demand.

In the East side of Saltford, where I live this has been quite strong AND the Truespeed network was already in the next door village.  Despite this it's taken over two years to get to this stage and I still don't have a date for my install.  

I've worked hard to get people in the village to sign up as the more who have ordered or registered an interest the faster it will arrive.  BUT there is no other way.  I'm sure the time spent will be forgotten once it's installed and hopefully mine will only be a little time away.

Long Term Investment

It's pretty easy to do the maths and realise that Truespeed and their investors are playing the long game.  It can cost several thousand pounds to install a single property and that doesn't include the core infrastructure and overhead.  I estimate they are looking at an 7 to 8 year payback but they are building a future proof asset.  Fibre Optic cable lasts in excess of 100 years and the theoretical speeds at ridiculous.  In the lab developers have reached petabyte speeds (you google it as i'll get the zeros wrong).  Even this current equipment will support up to 10,000Mb/s. Bonkers.

So I need to sit and wait, twiddle my thumbs, write a blog post or three and my time will come.  I've upgraded my network ready for it.  I've prepared the route into the house.  Not too long now I hope.