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Vectoring speeds in Ireland

WWWombat
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Registered: ‎29-01-2009

Vectoring speeds in Ireland

Eircom started rolling out vectoring in Ireland last spring.
In a recent publication by the Irish government (showing consultation responses to their equivalent of BDUK) , we get to see a graph of speed vs distance, attached below.
How much does this apply to the prospects of vectoring in the UK?
Ireland tends to use 0.5mm copper like us, and their equivalent of the ANFP puts the same power masking requirements that we have.
However, they run their DSLAMs with a 9dB target margin. If they used 6 dB margins, speeds would be 11 Mbps higher on the left half of the graph, with the increase dropping down to an extra 2 Mbps at the longer distances.
I don't see any other significant differences in their line plant.
As ever, words of caution need to be added for aluminium lines.
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Using FTTC since 2011. Currently on 80/20 Unlimited Fibre Extra.
13 REPLIES 13
Terranova667
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Re: Vectoring speeds in Ireland

looking at that graph depresses me I'm 450m or so from the fibre cab and so that would put me at around the top end of the 90's mark with the 6db target margin give or take which would be very nice,
sadly with Open reach in charge it's not going to happen any time soon they already did one trial last year which proved positive only to do another this year which seems to prove positive again yet they don't seem to want to take it further with any great speed, most likely knowing it will be more work and maybe cost for them to do it and we all know they don't like doing anything like that if they can get away with it, it would take ISP's and maybe even government kicking them up the backside to get it done but that wont happen either.
sadly i can see Fibre getting more and more worse with cross talk and speeds just dropping like flies to levels where it's not acceptable before BTO consider rolling out vectoring to any great length,.
AndyH
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Re: Vectoring speeds in Ireland

There is a cost element (new hardware needs to be installed in every cabinet) and it will ultimately come down to cost vs benefit.
The latest trial (strategic vectoring engine) has been using additional things like SRA/FFM/testing the lines above 80Mbps. It's not a simple thing to just roll out vectoring.
rona
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Registered: ‎15-10-2014

Re: Vectoring speeds in Ireland

This just goes to prove there's a serious fault with my connection as originally stated here
http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,132929.0.html
After 3 engineer visits I'm still stuck below 7mb downloads on a line I know to be 1500m to the FTTC green cab. The engineer also confirmed that vectoring is enabled on my cabinet (Chapel St Leonards Cabinet 1) as part of a local trial.
I have an open ticket 93037992 and await Plusnets reply to the latest engineers report after he last visited on 7/11/14
WWWombat
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Re: Vectoring speeds in Ireland

@Terranove
I can understand your concern, but I can understand BT wanting to trial further - especially if it gives them an idea about whether a hardware upgrade is truly needed.
BT always said that they see vectoring, not as a speed booster, but a speed enabler. I take this to mean that they see it for solving speed drops in congested cabinets more than they see it boosting speed packages. The random nature of crosstalk leads to exaggerated customer service issues as take-up increases; I see vectoring as a solution to the higher costs that these service issues bring ... so I do see there being a benefit to BT to introduce vectoring.
Looking further ahead, some BDUK projects have the stated aim of getting speeds to match the EU digital agenda for 2020. The only real way that BT can get close to one of these targets (100Mbps for 50%) is to introduce vectoring.
@AndyH
My understanding was that the vectoring variant trialled originally was FPGA DSP code that would work in existing hardware. If trial 2 doesn't show significantly improved results, it could be that vectoring could be introduced without new hardware everywhere - and might be a first step.
@rona
I'm not sure it counts as proof. Do you have any aluminium in the line?
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Using FTTC since 2011. Currently on 80/20 Unlimited Fibre Extra.
AndyH
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Re: Vectoring speeds in Ireland

Quote from: WWWombat
My understanding was that the vectoring variant trialled originally was FPGA DSP code that would work in existing hardware. If trial 2 doesn't show significantly improved results, it could be that vectoring could be introduced without new hardware everywhere - and might be a first step.

The first stage of the trial (for the 6 Huawei cabinets) required 2 short PEWs - one to perform a DSLAM hardware upgrade and one to activate the vectoring engine. I have no idea what the hardware upgrade entailed though.
The strategic vectoring engine in the second trial was designed to iron out some of the things picked up in the first trial (one of them was re-trains taking 6x longer than on non-vectoring DSLAMs).
I would imagine that vectoring will be introduced network wide as the trial outcomes have been very positive.
Terranova667
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Re: Vectoring speeds in Ireland

WWWombat understandable better to get it right, I myself have lost around 8mb Which Plusnet / BTW say is due to crosstalk I'm hoping it wont get any worse but with these things you never can say, i'm not looking really for a boost although that would be very nice i would however like the speed back that I had and was paying for less than 8 months ago when i joined Plusnet.     
GeordieMark
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Re: Vectoring speeds in Ireland

You're lucky, I've lost almost 15mb since install on my ali line Sad
PLan
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Re: Vectoring speeds in Ireland

Quote from: AndyH
The first stage of the trial (for the 6 Huawei cabinets) ...

Have they included ECI cabinets in any of the trials? Is there any problem with them?
WWWombat
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Re: Vectoring speeds in Ireland

No ECI cabinets have been included. The ECI hardware in the cabinet is apparently the M41 DSLAM, while ECI seem to support vectoring with the V41 DSLAM.
You'd think that BT would have something vectoring-capable from ECI in their Research dept, but it hasn't made it into a public trial yet.
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AndyH
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Re: Vectoring speeds in Ireland

Dave at PN confirmed ECI cabs can support vectoring. I assume that for both Huawei/ECI cabinets, they are changing the MSANs.
PLan
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Re: Vectoring speeds in Ireland

I thought it was really weird when I heard the rumours that BT had purchased equipment from ECI that couldn't do vectoring when the Huawei could, sounded like a complete cock-up. Roll_eyes
AndyH
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Re: Vectoring speeds in Ireland

We don't know the terms of the Openreach agreements with ECI and Huawei. However, vectoring was in the future plans when they began rolling out NGA.
Melancholie
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Re: Vectoring speeds in Ireland

Quote from: WWWombat
@AndyH
My understanding was that the vectoring variant trialled originally was FPGA DSP code that would work in existing hardware. If trial 2 doesn't show significantly improved results, it could be that vectoring could be introduced without new hardware everywhere - and might be a first step.

As I understood it the original trials used additional hardware, however these were FPGAs. The followup trial again additional hardware but ASICs rather than FPGAs.
The kit having enough unused processing capacity to handle vectoring out of the box without it being built to do so given the computational demands of vectoring compared with the normal operations of an MSAN, and remember much of this would be ASIC-based switching and routing fabrics, would be very, very odd.
DSPs and FPGAs are different things, too. DSPs are supposed to be reprogrammable, they're processors.