Gigaclear failed install; no WAN light on DKT Comega 79745; can I fix manually

[ilmiont]

Gigaclear came and did our installation on Wednesday. The fibre got stuck on the way down to the cabinet. The two technicians who came were very friendly and helpful.

On Thursday, two further technicians came with a much larger generator. I was pleasantly surprised that Gigaclear got them out less than 24 hours after the first attempt. They ran into the same issue; however, they then went down to the cabinet and succeeded in blowing the fibre up the other direction to the property.

Install complete... or so we thought. Unfortunately the WAN light on the DKT Comega (displays product number 79745) remains stubbornly dark. The team on Thursday were much less friendly and were very obviously clock-watching; with their job done (blow the fibre) they said they could do no more and that the internal network termination endpoint had been installed incorrectly by the original team. They then attempted to spin a pack of lies about "not being able to activate your connection" and "call the office, they will" as an excuse to leave; in retrospect I should have made them stay but was keen to get off out myself. I'd already seen the WAN light on the modem was not illuminated and had also heard them positively successfully test the connection at the external connection point.

As I understand it, the problem is therefore that either the fibre cable between the external/internal endpoints has been installed incorrectly, or the modem has been.

I called Gigaclear and after 20mins on hold was told they'd follow up with Comex and phone me as soon as they'd heard anything. On Friday morning I got what seems to be an automated email claiming they couldn't install the fibre because the duct was blocked and it would be a 30-40 day wait (!) Incorrect; the fibre has blown successfully, something's just wrong between the internal and external boxes. Or I suppose another possibility is they forgot to actually patch the cable into the cabinet...

I opened the internal NTE myself and can't see anything amiss although I'm not really sure what I'm looking for. I also opened the external "omnibox" in Gigaclear speak, and again, can't see anything astray. With this starting to go badly wrong and no indication of when another team's going to turn up (and when they do, it seems they're going to be informed the fibre hasn't blown, despite me telling Gigaclear that's not the case), I'm trying to work out if this can be resolved myself.

I'm not sure if this is even the right forum for this kind of technical matter but does anything look obviously amiss in this fibre install? For the external box, the black cable going down is to the POT in the road; the white cable obviously goes into the wall. It looks the same where it comes out the other side.

(Sorry about photo quality, my iPhone has the stuck dust spots problem...)

 

[Mark.J]

I haven't got any experience with Gigaclear's direct installs myself and I suspect that others won't have gone looking inside their cabinets. What has the ISP told you when you've called to ask about that email?

 

[J.Norrington]

Hello, did you have any success with this problem. I'm on Gigaclear and the installation and router are the same as yours. No WAN light. Engineer not coming for a week? If it was fixed by a engineer, what did he say was wrong? Thank you

 

[Pheasant]

Hello, did you have any success with this problem. I'm on Gigaclear and the installation and router are the same as yours. No WAN light. Engineer not coming for a week? If it was fixed by a engineer, what did he say was wrong? Thank you

It could be an optical problem anywhere from their equipment to yours including a poor splice or connection in the pot. None of which is easily or readily diagnosed by the customer. You’ll need to leave it for them to attend.

 

[kommando828]

Hello, did you have any success with this problem. I'm on Gigaclear and the installation and router are the same as yours. No WAN light. Engineer not coming for a week? If it was fixed by a engineer, what did he say was wrong? Thank you

ilmiont​

Member · From United Kingdom
Joined Aug 22, 2020
Last seen Nov 28, 2020


Your post will not be read, best to PM him and hope his email address is still active.

 

[sheephouse]

I had Gigaclear install back in January. The original install went OK, but it failed after a week - they had to come back and redo some splices (there are a lot of connections that can fail with the way Gigaclear do things). It failed again a couple of weeks later - this time not a fibre break but a configuration issue that made it slower than ADSL. The guys that attended were friendly and helpful, but the problem reporting and handling system is chaotic.
You can create a ticker online - but you can't see their replies, and they ask you questions on there that you can't see. If you don't respond they assume the problem is fixed..
If only one person has a problem, then they assume it is the customer's problem not Gigaclear's. They only looked at my 2nd problem when another customer complained (originally I was the only customer connected to the cabinet - which makes multiple complaints unlikely).
They mostly don't call back when they say they will. They arrange appointments then don't send anyone out. They then send engineers out after you have confirmed the problem is fixed.
All you can do is persevere and phone them every day until it is fixed.
When working, the FTTP is superb. They just need to improve the problem handling. Significantly.

 

[Pheasant]

In theory a spliced connection is more reliable, has lower loss and is cheaper. However the practicality is that a poorly done splice work is a major liability and requires more labour and time than a connectorised solution.

Clearly influenced Openreach, who changed their FTTP deployment model from blown and spliced to connectorised and discrete drop cables.

I think they made they right call.

 

[Ionide]

In theory a spliced connection is more reliable, has lower loss

Could you explain how, and the reasoning behind it? And how much impact there is - even if it's insignificant.
Not trying to be condescending, I just have no idea the impact of a spliced install vs the other way (assuming it's where the cable is the full length)

 

[Pheasant]

Sure. When you fusion splice together separate cores of fibre, you use a machine that creates a very controlled electric arc between two electrodes to fuse together very precisely the separate glass strands into one continuous piece of glass. When done correctly the fibre ends are carefully stripped, cleaned and prepared. The ends are cut very cleanly and precisely in a tool called a fibre cleaver. This can be separate to or these days often part of the same fusion splicer (along with other steps of the splicing process).

When done well and correctly - this results in a very good (optically and mechanically strong) connection that has very, very good optical loss often less than 0.01 dB. On the other hand if the engineer does not prepare the fibre properly or improperly performs either the stripping, cleaning, cleaving, splicing or overprotection then the results are less than ideal - resulting in a high loss connection or indeed a connection which outright fails.

The alternative to splicing is to use a mated connection. This is where fibres that have (in the ideal scenario) a factory terminated and tested standard connector (like an SC/APC) are literally plugged together using a mating sleeve or other mechanical connection (hopefully weather and water etc proof as needed) to join the fibre cables together. They can later be un-mated and remated. The disadvantage is that the loss through the mated connection is a lot higher (around 0.2 to 0.5 dB) and of course connectors are more expensive to fabricate etc. There is also a risk of dirt, skin oils and general contamination between the faces of the fibres in the connectors if these aren’t inspected and cleaned before use. Something which was discussed in an ISPreview story piece last week about the CityFibre FEX’s. This is how the connection on an Openreach FTTP is made from the pole or footway chamber mounted CBT. The fibre is literally plugged in (or screwed in - with an o-ring or two for good measure). More expensive to build but has the other advantages noted.

 

[Ionide]

Thank you for the detailed reply @Pheasant

The disadvantage is that the loss through the mated connection is a lot higher (around 0.2 to 0.5 dB)

Just one question, would this therefore impact latency? and if so how significant would you estimate it to be in ms/us, I care about even us of added latency so I'm genuinely curious.

I have a SC connection as you mention with CityFibre, so wondering how meaningful the impact is, and if it could be the cause for the 'slightly flaky' latency where it variates by 0.1-1.0ms.
Or if that much difference would probably be caused by their backbone or something else.

And also do you know if Hyperoptic/CommunityFibre splice or use SC/APC connectors as their latency seems very stable from what I've seen.
And do Openreach splice aswell? - I know you mentioned something in the post above, I'm just a bit slow in the head

 

[Pheasant]

Connectors and spliced joints are both used in fibre connections and fibre distribution networks of all types - just to varying degrees, depending on the network. To be clear they have absolutely nothing to do with latency. This is higher up the food chain so to speak.

Connectors and splices are counted in the optical loss budget of a link. This is just the difference in the amount of light at the start and finish of a link. The loss is made up of the fibre itself, the longer the fibre the more loss it has, together with the number of both splices and mated connections which all individually and collectively contribute loss. The receiver simply needs a minimal amount/level of light to operate. The designer needs to ensure that the link is not too long and that there aren’t an excessive number of splices and/or connectors in the path to keep the loss within spec and ensure the receiver will get the minimal amount of light it needs to operate. The optical loss budget can be calculated but also measured. The optical loss budget is expressed in dB (decibels, a logarithmic scale of unit-less measure). When measuring actual light levels these are referenced back to the power of the light at the source (in mW or typically decibel milliwatts, dBm).

In a PON design there are also splitters which as said splits the light multiple ways. The spec allows this to be split twice or at two levels up to a maximum of 128 ways. No operators in the UK split this highly they typically split 32 ways. Splitting introduce loss and needs to be accounted for in the optical loss budget.

However as we are in a Gigaclear sub-forum, they do not use PON but are a point-to-point design network. So there is no optical splitting involved.

I hope that clarifies optical loss.

Network latency is a whole other subject topic - not always neatly explained as there’s many, many elements and variables which come into play. Safe to say however that splices and connectors at the physical level are not one of them.

 

[Ionide]

@Pheasant
So when you say 'loss', wouldn't the loss be in packets then?
And wouldnt't that therefore impact latency, I know you've said no, but I'm just trying to get my head around why?

 

[Pheasant]

@Pheasant
So when you say 'loss', wouldn't the loss be in packets then?
And wouldnt't that therefore impact latency, I know you've said no, but I'm just trying to get my head around why?

No - optical loss in other words it’s the brightness of the light coming out of the end of the fibre. You need a minimum level of brightness so that the optical detectors can distinguish between the relevant states that determine a ‘0’ and ‘1’.

Bits, bytes and packets are much further up the food-chain (layer 2 and layer 3 of the network model).