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For the multi-gigabit deniers

Never managed to max out my 1GB symetrical FTTP line with Box other than by speedtesting it. Game downloads via Xbox/Steam/Epic seem to max out around 6-800mbps, uploads never even get close, usually uploading to foreign servers at a max rate of 250mbps

It just makes things so much easier and quicker for the one person who is doing the intensive task and means the internet is useable for everyone else at the same time

Were for once in the period where speeds are starting to outperform the current highest demands, but don't worry, i'm sure use cases will soon develop that demand these speeds over mobile and fixed connections
I can easily max mine. You probably don’t have the right hardware. Most computers will struggle to even max 1Gb internal LAN as the bottleneck will be somewhere else.
 
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"You don't need that speed"
"It's a waste of money"
"My XX/XX works fine for me"
"Most people don't need that speed"
"Only gamers need that speed"
etc
etc
etc
Okay.

And the kind of people who are on 55, 80 or 160 now saying those kinds of things are going to be convinced they need multi-gig imminently how exactly?

Openreach saw traffic increase by, say, 10% last year. It was slightly less but we'll say a bit more per customer to account for the loss of some users. I'm going to round the increases up to next integer as I'm doing them in my head and had a work call at 7.

80 Mbps // 160 Mbps // 7 Mbps average peak seen by pure FTTP providers right now.

10% CAGR:

2023 - 80 Mbps // 160 Mbps // 7 Mbps
2024 - 88 Mbps // 192 Mbps // 7.7 Mbps
2025 - 97 Mbps // 212 Mbps // 8.5 Mbps
2026 - 107 Mbps // 234 Mbps // 9.4 Mbps
2027 - 118 Mbps // 258 Mbps // 10.4 Mbps
2028 - 132 Mbps // 284 Mbps // 11.5 Mbps
2029 - 154 Mbps // 313 Mbps // 12.7 Mbps
2030 - 170 Mbps // 345 Mbps // 14 Mbps

TalkTalk's forecast 20% CAGR:

2023 - 80 Mbps // 160 Mbps // 7 Mbps
2024 - 96 Mbps // 192 Mbps // 8.4 Mbps
2025 - 120 Mbps // 232 Mbps // 10.1 Mbps
2026 - 144 Mbps // 280 Mbps // 12.2 Mbps
2027 - 180 Mbps // 336 Mbps // 14.7 Mbps
2028 - 216 Mbps // 404 Mbps // 17.7 Mbps
2029 - 264 Mbps // 492 Mbps // 21.3 Mbps
2030 - 324 Mbps // 592 Mbps // 25.6 Mbps

The actual usage per customer at peak times is going to rise faster than this due to the move to all-IP TV, however that has almost zero influence on the need for multi-gig. Far more likely operators will be implementing multicast or some other mechanism to reduce core load and QoS to ensure other traffic on the broadband can't cause live TV to break.

No unforeseen applications, no need for multigig. The lack of that killer app has been disappointing but that's where we are.
 
I can easily max mine. You probably don’t have the right hardware. Most computers will struggle to even max 1Gb internal LAN as the bottleneck will be somewhere else.
Indeed. Tons of compression on Steam transfers for instance to reduce the amount of data needing download.

I can't get past 2.5 Gbps on Steam though I can't exclude that my Ryzen 9 5950x is running out of gas, or the Samsung 980 Pro SSDs the games are going onto is maxing out.
 
Well I had FTTP available from Openreach for over 2 years now and I just checked and I can get EE’s 1.6Gb service so I think you might be overestimating the lack of combo cards. Also it’s possible Openreach may sell it and provision a combo card as needed so I think your idea of it having to be ready for service for most people before they can sell it is not correct. And GPON can still do multi-gigabit 2.4Gb/1.2Gb so for the lower plans they don't need combo cards.
I mentioned combo cards and Adtran as on the chassis Openreach were installing until relatively recently combo cards weren't a thing: only the Nokia kit could take them. Only use for a new card at the moment would be to split a PON and I imagine that is something Openreach won't want to do if they can help it.

GPON can do 2.4 Gbit indeed. Chances of Openreach selling that: zero. Uptake too high, expectations of customers too high.

On the 2 year point I've had Openreach FTTP since 2020, neighbours since 2018. It's Huawei kit. 1.6 would be delivered over Huawei too. I've no doubt there's other kit in the exchange now but the Huawei is staying for the foreseeable, likely XGSPON will be delivered via co-existence elements and dedicated XGSPON ports.
 
Typical domestic users have switches, network cards and cable that can only handle 1Gb max, so multi-gig connections are generally sold as being shareable between members of a multi-user houses where some of the users need well over 500Mb of bandwidth. Such packages are currently sold with a modem/router with usually one, sometimes more, 2.5Gb ethernet ports and perhaps multi-gig WiFi.

Our house has two gamers and four video streamers, a plex server and at least one heavy torrent user. Even so, a symmetrical 1GB is plenty. Even with the Plex server having up to 10 clients at times and torrents sometimes using most available up and downstream bandwidth, such demands have never occurred at the same time. We are much heavier users than most. Our street has two ISPs offering a symmetrical 2.5Gb, but I won't be splashing out an extra £15 a month for 2.5Gb or on a 10Gb switch until someone in the house complains that their style is being cramped.

I'm not a multi-gigabit denier. I'm just being realistic about the general demand for it right now. Having said that, we have seen hungry applications being developed after the capacity comes available, e.g. ever increasing streamed video definition, video calls and video game updates. I expect ISPs will be watching to see the extent to which 2.5Gb gets taken up before they decide to offer 5 or 10Gb at domestic prices.
Not having an internal multi-gigabit network to handle a multi-gigabit internet connection is not an impediment to make good use of such service. In fact this can easily act as a “free” limiter preventing that no single device on the network will saturate the internet connection and that there will be always bandwidth available for other users. So as long as you separate your internal network devices into separate router ports you can have a nice bandwidth guarantee without having to spend money on expensive QoS switches. Furthermore most multi-gigabit routers used by ISPs tend to have a single multi-gigabit port so unless the consumer spends on a multi-gigabit switch then it’s going to have a single device on multi-gigabit speeds. A lot of people on multi-gigabit take that approach.
 
Indeed. Tons of compression on Steam transfers for instance to reduce the amount of data needing download.

I can't get past 2.5 Gbps on Steam though I can't exclude that my Ryzen 9 5950x is running out of gas, or the Samsung 980 Pro SSDs the games are going onto is maxing out.
It's an interesting point that one, I run a Steam cache internally and I think the best I've had is 3.6Gbps, though the cache disk is a SATA SSD. I don't think I made much more speed even with the cache living on an nVME, but now I want to go back and try it. In any case, my 5900X immediately goes 100% when doing a Steam download from the cache - yet SMB transfers will do 1GB/s no problems at all.

Going multigig introduces some interesting challenges, that is for sure.
 
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Not having an internal multi-gigabit network to handle a multi-gigabit internet connection is not an impediment to make good use of such service.
A fair point.

The "mass market" for higher end services is probably gamers so a high spec ISP supplied device would suit that type of user well.

We are at the point with interfaces running at over 1Gb/s that was typical a few years back with over 100Mb/s interfaces, some devices supported higer speeds but most didn't.

I have one 10Gb/s capable device (bought with that interface with an eye to the future) but I don't think I'll be having a 10Gb/s capable router for a while.
 
It's strange how long 1Gb has stuck around for, I think I was using gigabit from about 2004 at home. It would be nice to see 2.5Gb at least become the default interface on laptop docks, PCs etc.
 
It's strange how long 1Gb has stuck around for, I think I was using gigabit from about 2004 at home. It would be nice to see 2.5Gb at least become the default interface on laptop docks, PCs etc.
Unlike other computer upgrades 10Gb has additional compute requirements that are not trivial. The demand isn’t there either so its hard to justify the additional cost. 2.5Gb is starting to become the new 1Gb on more advanced kit. But it’s only a matter of time.
 
I can easily max mine. You probably don’t have the right hardware. Most computers will struggle to even max 1Gb internal LAN as the bottleneck will be somewhere else.
Yeah probably I don’t have the right hardware, im just using the box bb supplied router with a very long cat 5E cable to a standard 1GB port on my pc
 
1Gbps equates to about 112MB/sec which is "good enough" for most applications and reasonably balances the other capabilities of your system (SSD, CPU etc)

2.5G is not enough of an improvement to matter to most people, and 10G still adds significant cost.

2.5G was supposed to be a sweet spot because it works over the same CAT5e 100m cabling as 1G, but hasn't taken off big-time yet. With Wifi 6E/7 it ought to become more prevalent, as the 1G uplink becomes the bottleneck to the access point.

Having said that, these days most people just use the router+wifi combo that their ISP supplies anyway.
 
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This brings back (painful) memories of trying to organise OR Fibre Community Partnership some years ago.

We simply asked people to register their interest but my god the amount of people dictating what someone should or shouldn't have was ridiculous.

"We get by on our (20Mbps) connection so why can't everyone else"

and the best

"Unless you're doing something illegal you don't need fast internet"

Wow 🤯
I was back home over Christmas and read a one-sided article in a local rag about people in some village or other complaining about "masts" (telegraph poles) being built on their road by an FTTP altnet. They eventually showed up and stood in the way of the contractors, preventing them from building.

The lines used were just like these, mostly variations on "the internet is fine around here" from retired people who only use the internet to post links to GB News on Facebook. Meanwhile, home workers and everyone else will be screaming at the newspaper.

In this case, the altnet did actually clear off out of the area to an easier place to build, leaving the streets in question with worse internet service. It won't bother these oldies, but it will lower the attractiveness of the property once they're gone.
 
The lines used were just like these, mostly variations on "the internet is fine around here" from retired people who only use the internet to post links to GB News on Facebook. Meanwhile, home workers and everyone else will be screaming at the newspaper.

In this case, the altnet did actually clear off out of the area to an easier place to build, leaving the streets in question with worse internet service. It won't bother these oldies, but it will lower the attractiveness of the property once they're gone.

I must admit that bit made me smile! 😂

Maybe it's me but I would never think of dictating to anyone else how much water they should consume as a household, how much electricity they should consume or how many clothes to purchase. It's their choice.

As a result, it rubs me up the wrong way when someone tries to dictate what internet service I should consume. Especially when it's the local "Mrs Bucket" shouting people down by repeating that she can watch Eastenders on iPlayer while her little angel plays Fortnight as 'evidence' that our current internet provision is more than enough.
 
The reality is past 200 mbps you will only notice the faster speed when downloading large files and video games. Some of you think downloading 100GB in 12 minutes is a mainstream use case that's driving demand, but the market shows that's simply not the case for the vast majority. Even most active gamers and power users don't mind waiting 40 minutes for a download because they don't download enough to justify spending £10+/month extra for the faster speed.

The reason people say these things that annoy you of the sort - xx is enough, you don't need faster - is because it's true for them. You're saying you think what they need better than them? Of course eventually everyone will have gigabit and faster simply because it will be so affordable and possibly the cheapest tier in 5-10 years, that it won't make sense to go slower. That's adoption driven by commoditization and advancement of technology, not demand. Of course competition and marketing play a role too.

A similar example is the transition from 1080p to 4K. DVD was adopted very quickly because VHS was awful in comparison. But 4K has been available and fairly affordable for 10 years and it's just now gaining wide adoption because most people just don't care, and have only adopted it because almost all TVs are 4K now, because at this point the technology is very mature.

This is the general trend in computer technology as it's matured, everything has become overkill for the average user, which is why you can now have a 5-year old phone, a 10-year old computer and an internet speed from 10 years ago and generally be fine. This was unthinkable in the past.

I honestly fail to see what mainstream use case (akin to streaming, playing a video game, browsing. etc.) is going to spike demand for gigabit and faster, i.e. majority of customers will choose to pay a not-insignificant price increase for it before technological progress and competition make it dirt cheap (as has already happened in many places in Europe). Right now nothing like this is on the horizon.

And of course we can discuss, but no one's opinion matters on this, it will be decided by market forces.
 
The reality is past 200 mbps you will only notice the faster speed when downloading large files and video games. Some of you think downloading 100GB in 12 minutes is a mainstream use case that's driving demand, but the market shows that's simply not the case for the vast majority.
I don't need to download 100GB to enjoy the benefits of my 1Gb line. I recently started downloading YouTube videos since the ads got really annoying. Most of the videos I watch are between 2-4GB each. Are these large files? Not to me, for me a large file is a Bluray UHD 30-40GB movie. But the YT videos I download are not crazy long videos, there are typically 20-30mins, 4K VP9 (webm) encoded. 2-4GB means 16Gb-32Gb which in rough terms means 16-32s per video vs waiting 5 times that in your 200mb artificial threashold which is 80-160sec. Do you I care if it takes 5x more? Of course I do. Less than a minute waiting means I can watch most things nearly instantly without ads and allowing me to fast forward/skip to any part of the video instantly without buffering delays. It also allows me to watch offline in my work commute. Is that too niche of a use case? I wouldn't say so, ask anyone below 25 where they spend their time online today and most will say YouTube, among other things. And this speed improvement really applies to any sort of any downloads be it podcasts, Spotify playlists, OS updates, game updates, etc. Everything will run faster. And yes I do care if it takes 5 seconds instead of 25 secs and that's just a 640MB file.
Even most active gamers and power users don't mind waiting 40 minutes for a download because they don't download enough to justify spending £10+/month extra for the faster speed.
Such silly generalisation is the main reason for this post. YOU don't mind. I do. And plenty of other people do. My daughter will often skip playing a game if it needs to be udpated. Newer generations are all about instant gratification. And large game updates are the complete opposite of that. This is what the deniers love to do, just generalise everyone into a category, often the category they believe they should be in, and just say no one is allowed to be different or having different requirements. Or even go crazy and just buy it because they want to have it.
The reason people say these things that annoy you of the sort - xx is enough, you don't need faster - is because it's true for them. You're saying you think what they need better than them?
Just like I said in previous responses and other threads I don't like people saying what I should use in the same way that I don't tell them what they should use. It works both ways. The point here is just because YOU think it's an overkill you should not come and say that to me. Everyone has different requirements, you don't know my requirements and at the end of the day I can spend my money any way I want. Do I want everyone to get 1Gb or multi-gigabit connection? Not really. I think a lot of people will benefit from them, but it's clearly not for everyone. I do want everyone to have the chance to get it though.
This is the general trend in computer technology as it's matured, everything has become overkill for the average user, which is why you can now have a 5-year old phone, a 10-year old computer and an internet speed from 10 years ago and generally be fine. This was unthinkable in the past.
Again this sort of generalisation is damaging and it's what this post is about. It really depends on the user, the workload, what tool they are using, etc. A lot of users have highly inneficient workflows or even ancient hardware and yet they refuse to upgrade or improve it. A couple of years ago I saw one of our junior members of the team struggle with her personal laptop's very low quality trackpad. You should buy a mouse I said, it will be miles better. She didn't so the next time I saw her struggling I went ahead and ordered a nice Logitech mouse since I wanted her to see how much a small investment could improve her productivity. I gifted it to her and I let her use for a week before asking for feedback. I then asked her whether she was more productive, whether she could see this was like night and day and whether now having experienced the difference she would have bought the mouse when I told her to do so if she knew how much it improve her productivity. While she liked the mouse and saw the benefits she said she wouldn't still buy it even after seeing what a proper mouse can do to her productivity. The moral of the story is that we all not only have different requirements but also assign different value to the software and hardware we use. So even having a very good reason to upgrade something some people just won't do it. They just don't care and prefer to spend their money elsewhere.
Here is another example, in my commute I see a lot of people with phones with broken screens. I wouldn't last a day with a broken screen, I would just go a fix it the day it breaks. Aside from my work computer my phone is the most used personal computer. It literally is my number 1 computing device and I suspect that applies to a lot of people. And yet you see loads of people with broken screens not fixing them. Why wouldn't they fix it? Some may be short of cash but not all. They just can't be bothered. And yet you don't see them using broken trousers (*), shoes or a broken shirt do you? So clearly most people value more their fashion than their technology. So how can you expect them to even have an appropiate internet connection at home if they barely take care of their devices?
I honestly fail to see what mainstream use case (akin to streaming, playing a video game, browsing. etc.) is going to spike demand for gigabit and faster, i.e. majority of customers will choose to pay a not-insignificant price increase for it before technological progress and competition make it dirt cheap (as has already happened in many places in Europe). Right now nothing like this is on the horizon.
Nobody could predict GenAI (chatGPT) could become what is has become and yet here it is. The fact you can't see something doesn't mean it won't happen.
And of course we can discuss, but no one's opinion matters on this, it will be decided by market forces.
That's the one thing we can agree on!

So to summarise. My main post's intention is to tell you all deniers, conformists and those who prefer value for money rather than quality: multi-gigabit is not for you. If you are happy with your 60/20 FTTC/[vDSL]/[insert your speed] then happy days for you. Nothing to see here, move along. But don't come tell me it's not for me, it's overkill and whatever other nonsense you can come up with that only applies to you. I am not you. You are not me. And that's good.

(*) Some people wear broken jeans as they are fashionable but how has the world changed that in my times broken jeans were a sign of you constantly using your jeans and actually reaching the point where they break whereas now people pay more for broken jeans at the shop, just because they look cooler. Takes instant gratification to the next level!
 
I sincerely hope using software to download content for free from YouTube, denying the creators their share of the revenue, is a niche case else we end up losing independent content. I presume it is and most stream, enough without ad blockers that it's worth the while of some creators.

I know a few content creators so this is a special bugbear. If you don't like the ads get Premium. If you don't like the UK price use a VPN and purchase in a lower income country so they at least get something for their work.

Rant over.

If your first post was fuelled by some Christmas cheer all good but you seem to be trying to pick a beef where there isn't one: AD47UK doesn't use this forum 😊
 
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I sincerely hope using software to download content for free from YouTube, denying the creators their share of the revenue, is a niche case else we end up losing independent content. I presume it is and most stream, enough without ad blockers that it's worth the while of some creators.

I know a few content creators so this is a special bugbear. If you don't like the ads get Premium. If you don't like the UK price use a VPN and purchase in a lower income country so they at least get something for their work.

Rant over.
You don't need to agree to any terms to watch YouTube so downloading videos does not breach any license terms. I agree that downloading them like this might hurt content creators a bit, but that's as far as I go with your thinking. The VPN work around is actually a breach in the license terms which you need to agree to buy the subscription so it isn't strictly legal.
I prefer to support the content creators I care for directly either via Patreon or buying merchandise. This gives them a much higher proportion of the revenue (if not all) without making Google more rich. If you ask around most of their content creators will tell you that the YouTube ad revenue is by far the smallest part of their income. In content ads, Patreon and merchandise tend to be how most content creators make most of their income.
 
How enforceable the terms of service are is a matter of debate.

The terms relying on local laws would probably be enforced by the authority in the relevant jurisdiction, especially pertaining to the local criminal code/laws.

 
How enforceable the terms of service are is a matter of debate.
So if Google catches you up buying a subscription for YouTube in one country but living on another one they couldn’t just cancel you subscription? I’m not saying they will do it or that they are actually enforcing it but it’s clearly something they could do. And if you have free gmail email with them too they could suspend your whole Google account so it’s not something I want to play with.
 
So if Google catches you up buying a subscription for YouTube in one country but living on another one they couldn’t just cancel you subscription? I’m not saying they will do it or that they are actually enforcing it but it’s clearly something they could do. And if you have free gmail email with them too they could suspend your whole Google account so it’s not something I want to play with.
Apologies, I should have mentioned I posted that purely in reply to "You don't need to agree to any terms to watch YouTube" and didn't mean to say or imply anything else. 😄
 
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