Zen Internet Support Forum

I read Zen's newsletter announcing Up to 20Mbps Broadband with great interest but it raised some questions.

1. My exchange (Maidenhead) is 21cn enabled, but there is no Zen equipment there, as far a SamKnows is concerned. Does this make a difference? Is Zen's faster broadband dependent on Zen having equipment in the exchange?
2. Where will the increased speed come from? Presumably the existing kit at the end of my line is talking to my router as fast as the line will permit. So the copper wire is the speed limiting factor. So what will change to increase the speed? It seems to be that until the the mountain comes to Mohammed, ie the fibre comes to my cabinet, then nothing will change.
   

I'd be grateful if someone can clarify this.

I did follow the link to BT's website and just got the usual marketing drivel ... b*gger all about speed improvements!

By the way, I note that BT have selected Huawei to provide much of the equipment which will power the Internet in UK, despite Intelligence reports warning that China may have gained the capability to shut down Britain by crippling its telecoms and utilities.

pintosal:

I read Zen's newsletter announcing Up to 20Mbps Broadband with great interest but it raised some questions.

1. (edit)
2. Where will the increased speed come from? Presumably the existing kit at the end of my line is talking to my router as fast as the line will permit. So the copper wire is the speed limiting factor. (edit)

Hi,

The copper wire is the same now, with your 8meg adsl, as it was when I had dialup on an acoustic coupler. The wire is one of several limiting factors but the limitations have been gradually circumvented with each new piece of technology. In this case ADSL2 has brought on the potential speed increase as I understand it. Sorry I can't help on the other questions.

1. The ADSL2+ is based upon BT Wholesale's wholesale broadband product which doesn't require us to have equipment in the exchange.

2. ADSL2+ is a more advanced development of ADSL, ADSL2+ utilitises capacity on your phone line at very high frequencies that ADSL 1 did not use, ADSL1 transmits a carrier signal at 25KHz up to 1.1MHz and ADSL2+ transmits it's carrier signal far beyond 1.1MHz, this wider "bandwidth" (bandwidth in radio terms, not download speed terms) allows more data to be encoded and sent down the phone line at the same time.

For ADSL2+ to work both your modem and the modem at the exchange in the DSLAM both need to be able to communicate at those high frequencies, this upgrade will enable this to happen along with a big upgrade in the BT network and the Zen network that supports these speed for end-users.

Fibre to the cabinet technology still uses the same copper phone line but the copper will be shorter going from your home to the end of the road usually, the cabinet to the exchange will then be high speed fibre. This will allow more users to take advantage of the much higher speeds that VDSL technology provides but only to very short copper distances. FTTC would be yet another huge network upgrade for BT and is not part of 21cn which ADSL2+ is riding on the back of so if BT decide to invest in FTTC it will not be for some time to come.

Hope that helps.

---

DS Nelson

Performance and Improvement Analyst

Zen Internet Business Support Unit

Thanks David

I will read up on ADSL2+

> Intelligence reports warning that China may have gained the capability to shut down Britain by

> cripplingits telecoms and utilities.

I think the capatalist system just made a fairly good job of doing that, right?; did not require any particular bogy-man; just the usual human nature.

 It used to be the Japanese; I bet the Russians could do quite a good job too...

TPTB need some kind of bogy-man at any given time to justify their existance.

'Intelligence reports': you gotta be fecking joking man; I see /zero/ fecking intelligence on this planet.

20Mbs! LOL! This is what I've got the past year, every weekend and every night 6pm - midnight for a synch of 7700, in a city. Forgive me if I'm not leaping around with joy at the thought I'll be 19.9Mb beneath the max instead of a mere 7.9Mb

 

Those results looked odd to me, if you can upload at 349k your download should be much faster.

Running the same bbmax test on my line gave me 2Mb/s slower than I get using www.speedtest.net using the London server.

I ran both tests 4 times and the bbmax tester consistently reported slower speeds.

 

You're right there, it should be much faster! That's the actual speed, though, I've got a b/w monitor running that reports exactly the same. The BT tester, on the two days a year it actually functions, reports the same too.

Just run it again - 6481 download. That's because it's just come off-peak. Bascially, after months of investigation on my part (including swapping out every single piece of related equipment), only two options remain. One is that BT is illegally capping my line at peak times. Two is that there is massive congestion in the exchange and BT consistently lies and says there isn't.

Either way is not good so as soon as I have the time and energy spare to engage Sky's fine body of support personnel (a stiff whisky or two is the best preparation) then I'm moving to unbundled. Not much choice of supplier, unfortunately.

It's pointless logging another fault because all that happens is that I have to spend hours checking things I know are not the cause then BT refuse to investigate properly, instead coming back repeatedly with the standard response "Unplug your router, wait x minutes then try again", despite having made no changes. And if the speed goes above 600Kbits/s even for a single test, the response is instantly, "Oh it's working within our guidelines - bye!"

I had hoped that Zen would have their own equipment for this 20Mb thing, but if they have to rely on BT it's irrelevant what service they offer, it's always going to be useless.

I would be interested in reports of your triallist's modem/routers.

 

When Zen upgraded to the <8Mb service my venerable but very reliable D-Link modem/router became unstable. I think a number of reports of poor connections were wrongly blamed on Zen/BT because of customer equipment compatibility issues which contributed to the poor reputation of that upgrade.

 

Though my modem/router was rated for ADSL2 service it predated the availability of a UK service. Replacing it with a (then) modern 2/2+ router gave me a totally stable connection. Should we plan to do the same this time? Perhaps some examples of your triallist's setups/experiences would be useful. Is there to be  a 'preferred' set of equipment for the enhanced service? 

 

(I don't always believe the label on the tin) 

Am I right in thinking that the requirement for the exchange to be upgraded to 21CN means (in the terminology used on the SamKnows exchange checker) only upgraded to 21CN WBC, not  switched over to 21CN PSTN?

 

How did I miss this sexy piece of news ?

Thats great that we are going to be bumped over to 20mbit for free on a like for like basis.  I always had a feeling that when 20mbit became available that new broadband packages would suddenly appear on the home page reflecting the increase in bandwidth and also an increase in price which isnt the case, that really is great news :)

 

Way to go Zen

> for free

You will have to buy a new router (or whatever).

>  I always had a feeling that ...

1) Most people don't need it (I'll just run out of useage allowance on the 15th instead of the 30ith).

2) Most people won't want to spend on hardware upgrade

3) Most people are not fooled anymore

If you try and actually charge extra for it you've no chance, it might get a take up if given 'free'.

But... it's always fun playing with something new.

pwhyles:

> for free

You will have to buy a new router (or whatever).

>  I always had a feeling that ...

1) Most people don't need it (I'll just run out of useage allowance on the 15th instead of the 30ith).

2) Most people won't want to spend on hardware upgrade

3) Most people are not fooled anymore

If you try and actually charge extra for it you've no chance, it might get a take up if given 'free'.

But... it's always fun playing with something new.

 

Nope, all my hardware is adsl 2+ compliant :)  so no need to buy anything.

I think all the routers that have been selling for the last 2 years atleast have probably all been adsl2 capable, maybe not 2+, but for me anyway I wont need to buy any new hardware as my routers, all 5 of them are all rated for 24mbit adsl2+, also nearly every decent sized isp will hand out adsl2+ routers to customers if the routers they have gave them already arent already 2+ enabled, ok we here will have to buy our own if we need them as zen no give freebie routers.

Fooled ? EVERYBODY wants faster broadband, the majority see a big number and think great, thats what I want, you just have to see why all those that advertise upto 24mbit are selling like hotcakes even though they have a dodgy service, its because they fooled their customers into thinking that a speed increase means that they are a good isp, so the "fooling" is still happening sadly :(

A faster speed is better than what we have now, even if the speed increase is only an extra 1mbit, its 1 more mbit that "we" didnt previously have. 

In my situation, I live ontop of an exchange so it should greatly increase my speed from 8mbit to I would think atleast 15mbit ? I dunno though.

I agree with the charge extra part, but what I really meant was, ok, they will shift us over like for like to the newer speeds, but those on the lower caps will probably use their allowance even faster, so I just assumed that newer packages to reflect the faster speed and the fact that allowances will be used up far faster than they are now, so I can see zen introducing something like a 100gig package in the near future and if they do such a thing, the chances are that those who are on the 50 gig package atm will probably upgrade to the 100 gig package thus having to pay more, but hey, if thats what they want then its all good with me.

I just want the speed increase because I can see it greatly increasing my speed due to the fact that I can spit onto my exchange if I looked out of the window :) if I personally had to worry about allowances then I would be in 2 minds about upgrading to 20mbit, because as you quite rightly say the allowance will run out halfway through the month and having to pay the crazy fee for an extra gig in bandwidth for the rest of the month would be a fair bit of cash at the end of said month.

Overall the speed increase is a good thing so that we keep inline with the rest of the world, but what BT have proposed is still out of date, I recall when my buddies in the netherlands were first getting 8mbit, they got it years before I was able to get it, then the same with 24mbit, they got it about 3-4 years ago, maybe even before in some places, so what we are getting is still outdated, but it will come in handy.

The faster speeds are really only good for downloaders, 8mbit in my opinion is more than capable of doing everything that any ordinary person will do on the internet without any problems so long as they get their full bandwidth.

 

As you say, it will be something new to play with :)

> Nope, all my hardware is adsl 2+ compliant :)

Mine says that it's ADSL2+ on the box but I'm assuming (as I've been tricked many times in the past) that that does not actually mean it is/will work.   Hopefully it will.   I have 3 Netgear DG834s of verious revisions/software updates.

> Fooled ?

Yes.   They've been promised things and, in general, it's not been delivered (on a serious scale).  Most won't fall for it again.

Humans suffer from the something-for-nothing mentality so, in general, they only have themselves to blame initially, but most wake up and think rationally eventually.

> A faster speed is better than what we have now

Why?   What could you do that you can't do now?  I'm really interested in answears to this, it's not a troll.

> is a good thing so that we keep inline with the rest of the world

Keeping up with the Jones' never has seemed rational to me.

> The faster speeds are really only good for downloaders

I don't agree there.  IMO, and I am a heavy downloader (but not music or torrents; DDL 99 percent of the time), the servers/network are way slower than my current connection so it would not matter what speed my connection increased to as the limit is at the other end (the server/network).   And, anyway, I just download in the background; it really matters not how long it takes, within reason; it used to when I started in this game as the poxy machines I had access to could only do one thing at a time, but nowadays there is no practical restriction on that count.

I've never had a download run at anywhere near my /current/ speed capability.

 

I agree, that we suffer from a something for nothing mentality, hence why people see isps offering 24mbit or whatever and go for it even though they only get 1mbit at peak times.

I think you are missing the point when keeping up with other countries, because if they all had gigabit infrastructure and we only had 1mbit connections it severaly limits us, not them, but us in the future, example, streaming HD movies which WILL become the norm, that isnt an option on the lines we have now as streaming 1920x1080p is just too much bandwidth for us to do so properly atm on 8mbit or even 20mbit lines.

As for the faster speed is always good, well faster is always better when it comes to the internet, sure we can only download as fast as the server pumps it to us, but most servers are in the 100-1000mb range and are quite able to give us what we need.  I know you arent trolling ;)

You may also have noticed further down my post where I say that an 8mbit line can do practically everything that any normal person would be doing on the net fine, so we dont really need a speed increase because what we have is fine for the foreseeable future "but it will soon not be enough", e.g streaming true HD movies.

I wouldnt class 50 gig as a heavy downloader, I download anywhere from 200-500 gig monthly and I wouldnt even class that as a heavy downloader, ALL LINUX DISTROS mind you :) na, i jest its tv programmes that I missed on tv, and an increase in speed would be welcomed, because depending on what the download is, it can still take hours to get it on an 8mbit line, going from waiting 3 hours for a download to 15 minutes is what everyone wants nowadays.  Just because we can get X speed on an 8mbit line does that mean we shouldnt get a faster speed ? no it doesnt, but I see no real need for faster speeds ATM other than for heavy downloaders because nearly everything else on the net doesnt use insane amounts of bandwidth, e.g, email, browsing gaming etc, they dont need a 20mbit line to play on or to send email on etc etc.

I can only really think of a couple of things that an increase in speed would be good for, downloading and streaming HD movies.

 

I would be quite happy to keep my 8mbit line for a few years yet as the only reason I would need it for is so that my downloads wouldnt take so long to complete and thats what the majority of people will be wanting it for.

I can only speak for myself, but when downloading 99% of the time I max out my connection speed and can get no faster, if I was only able to get 2mbit of my 7150kbps then the upgrade would be nigh on useless.

I spose in the end it boils down to different strokes for different folks.

I download alot, I ftp alot, I am forever piddling about with servers etc but then go to my neighbour, they browse the internet and send emails and thats about it and then the neighbour next to them its gaming and browsing etc, so we all have different needs, but all those needs re easily served by a DECENT 8mbit line, downloading can always be faster, but in the end it gets to you one way or another no matter how long the wait is.