Openserve vs VDSL (Same ISP), how much of a difference ?

[KinsZA]

Hello

Those of you who have switched from VDSL to Openserve fiber how much of a difference have you noticed ?
I have 20mbit VDSL currently and I went onto the planned map for Openserve today (Active is 1km away from me).

I was wondering what same ISP same speed VDSL vs Openserve fiber difference is. I know Download will be actual rated speed and upload higher but what about your actual internet experience ?

Thanks in advance

 

[Johnatan56]

The internet experience should be the same, both go through IPC.
You might see a couple of ms less latency.

EDIT: Afrihost has a good answer about IPC in their Q&A forum.

This question comes up a lot, and it's a little complex, but something definitely worth understanding.

IPC is a networking component which allows DSL traffic to break out of Telkom's DSL network and onto an ISP's private network (in our case, MTN's national fibre network). The IPC's are housed at data centres, so that they break out directly onto our network. We have three regional IPC's, in Johannesburg (North region), Cape Town (South) and Durban (East). Telkom owns the IPC hardware and everything leading up to the IPC, so they are the only ones allowed to do upgrades or maintenance to the IPC (and essentially ISP must rent the ISP from Telkom, kind of like you rent your Telkom line from them, even though it lives on your property).

Each regional IPC represents the closest point that a user can break out of Telkom's network, so it's important for an ISP to have sufficient IPC capacity in order to allow enough traffic at any given time for the number of clients they have or the amount of traffic - specific to each region. When ISP's refer to upgrading capacity, they are often referring to IPC upgrades, which are performed exclusively by Telkom. In our case, DSL traffic goes from the IPC directly onto our national fibre network.

There are probably more technical explanations (hopefully someone will do the honours here) but this is about the simplest way to understand how it all works
http://answers.afrihost.com/306/what-is-ipc-and-who-owns-it

 

[KinsZA]

I was pretty much wondering about people who suffer from congestion, if you are pooled with the ADSL people as well as how quickly you reach maximum speed / how stable it is.

I know a friend of mine on 20mbit openserve through webafrica has no issues streaming from a specific overseas server where myself on the same package with webafrica but 20mbit VDSL struggle with it however he never had VDSL before so cant do the comparison I am looking for.

 

[Johnatan56]

I was pretty much wondering about people who suffer from congestion, if you are pooled with the ADSL people as well as how quickly you reach maximum speed / how stable it is.

I know a friend of mine on 20mbit openserve through webafrica has no issues streaming from a specific overseas server where myself on the same package with webafrica but 20mbit VDSL struggle with it however he never had VDSL before so cant do the comparison I am looking for.

No, you'd be treated the same from the ISP point of view.

 

[KinsZA]

No, you'd be treated the same from the ISP point of view.

So really you just gain the following:
1) Remove yourself from any issues 1km or so (in my case) of copper can bring.
2) Drop in latency a little
3) Get rated speed downstream
4) Get higher upstream

I must not understand how exchanges and congestion work, I would have thought you'd skip that part and have it only matter what your ISP's IPC is and then their rules from there on.

Thanks for clearing things up.

 

[Johnatan56]

So really you just gain the following:
1) Remove yourself from any issues 1km or so (in my case) of copper can bring.
2) Drop in latency a little
3) Get rated speed downstream
4) Get higher upstream

I must not understand how exchanges and congestion work, I would have thought you'd skip that part and have it only matter what your ISP's IPC is and then their rules from there on.

Thanks for clearing things up.

1) yes, less maintenance requirement which Telkom hasn't really done.
2) also often more stable, but my ADSL is also quite stable last mile
3)You should be getting the same rated downstream speed on your VDSL package as fiber, it's just that fiber has a tendency to burst over the cap more. I am not sure exactly on the overheads of DSL vs fiber, but maybe 5% or so max reduction (so from 10-15 to 10%), most of it is the normal TCP or UDP header.
4) This should not be understated, the extra upstream helps a lot for e.g. gaming. DSL is terrible with upstream as using the upstream will decrease your downstream, there is a frequency impact.

Well, you can have exchange congestion on fiber, but you shouldn't as it's all new technology, same if Telkom upgrade your DSL exchange. The usual congestion of the ISP is still the same. Fiber also has the bonus of you choosing any speed you want, I'd love 20Mbps but I am stuck on 10Mbps due to attenuation.

 

[whatwhat]

1) yes, less maintenance requirement which Telkom hasn't really done.
2) also often more stable, but my ADSL is also quite stable last mile
3)You should be getting the same rated downstream speed on your VDSL package as fiber, it's just that fiber has a tendency to burst over the cap more. I am not sure exactly on the overheads of DSL vs fiber, but maybe 5% or so max reduction (so from 10-15 to 10%), most of it is the normal TCP or UDP header.
4) This should not be understated, the extra upstream helps a lot for e.g. gaming. DSL is terrible with upstream as using the upstream will decrease your downstream, there is a frequency impact.

Well, you can have exchange congestion on fiber, but you shouldn't as it's all new technology, same if Telkom upgrade your DSL exchange. The usual congestion of the ISP is still the same. Fiber also has the bonus of you choosing any speed you want, I'd love 20Mbps but I am stuck on 10Mbps due to attenuation.

I guess the question with congestion is, where does your fibre terminate? Does it go to the same exchange as what your VDSL used to go to? Or is the fibre running somewhere else that has a better connection?

Our complex has around 100 units, and every one has been fitted with 100MB OpenServe fibre for data and phone as the copper infrastructure is being removed. That is a crap load of bandwidth that is all of a suddenly required on the backhauls.
Or has that always been available or properly planned for?

 

[Johnatan56]

I guess the question with congestion is, where does your fibre terminate? Does it go to the same exchange as what your VDSL used to go to? Or is the fibre running somewhere else that has a better connection?

Our complex has around 100 units, and every one has been fitted with 100MB OpenServe fibre for data and phone as the copper infrastructure is being removed. That is a crap load of bandwidth that is all of a suddenly required on the backhauls.
Or has that always been available or properly planned for?

Depends, the issue with congestion was previously that the back haul was not upgraded from the old equipment, the speed offered to users was different from the original planning. If the back haul planned is better, which it should hopefully be with fiber, then there should be less/no congestion. If you look at something like this from MyBB where they "break down the cost of 1GB" (it's definitely not accurate, just a ballpark figure), IPC makes up more than half of the cost which will naturally make that a more common bottle-neck for ISPs as they try to keep costs as low as possible.

Telkom just have such a huge network and it's often not cost efficient upgrading some exchanges as they make more money upgrading something somewhere else/rolling out fiber, it's a priority for a business to make as much money as possible.

You shouldn't have an exchange congestion with the fiber on OpenServe, maybe/probably with the ISP.

 

[hellkom123]

This is a bit off topic not VDSL vs Fibre but I have been using ADSL for quite a while 4MB (slower than slot) I had decided to upgrade to a 10MB VDSL to see what I could get speed wise as I have to work from home. In fact I just took a job where I am going to permanently work from home, thus the connection speed all the more important. With 10MB VDSL the best speedtest I got was 5.5MBps which was not worth double the cost of 4MB line.

They openserver/huawai have been busy in my suburb since november and as recently as two weeks ago pulled out of my visible area (big telkom box on the corner) Now I am stuck in the FutureHOOD (Fibre) scenario which really sucks.

Anyways my 2cents just go fibre VDSL sucks I have seen our copper lines running underground lying in water so hopefully the fibre is better insulated.

 

[whatwhat]

This is a bit off topic not VDSL vs Fibre but I have been using ADSL for quite a while 4MB (slower than slot) I had decided to upgrade to a 10MB VDSL to see what I could get speed wise as I have to work from home. In fact I just took a job where I am going to permanently work from home, thus the connection speed all the more important. With 10MB VDSL the best speedtest I got was 5.5MBps which was not worth double the cost of 4MB line.

They openserver/huawai have been busy in my suburb since november and as recently as two weeks ago pulled out of my visible area (big telkom box on the corner) Now I am stuck in the FutureHOOD (Fibre) scenario which really sucks.

Anyways my 2cents just go fibre VDSL sucks I have seen our copper lines running underground lying in water so hopefully the fibre is better insulated.

It might be ASSIA screwing up your sync. You can chat to TelkomZA on Twitter and ask them of ASSIA is enabled on your line, and disable it. Might bump your speed up, but it depends how far away from the exchange you are.