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bleagh
join:2004-03-11
Salt Lake City, UT

bleagh to BadMagpie

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to BadMagpie

Re: [Qwest] Availability of 40/20 in former Qwest areas?

I live 2 blocks east of the CenturyLink downtown SLC offices, yet the fastest speed I can get is 12Mbps.

I tried Comcast several times over the years, and it always had problems that they couldn't fix (first time internet would go down when it rained, and other times I would get lag spikes now and then that annoyed me when gaming).

CenturyLink/Qwest almost never went down, and seldom ever had any lag spikes, so I would always go back to their service.

But I decided to try Comcast yet again last month. They give me a deal where I am getting 105/10 for only $10 a month more than what I was paying CenturyLink. Actual speeds with Comcast is like 126/12, so 13x download and 16x upload for only $10 more a month. And so far the connection seems pretty good (seems they may have fixed the lag spike issue...).

So, I may just give up on CenturyLink till they offer some better speeds.
BadMagpie
join:2011-02-05

BadMagpie

Member

Ah that's good to know about the 40/20 in WJ.

I can see the upload speed selection option when I try to place an order from the business site, but not from the residential site. Further, I can "select" the upload speed if I want to change the speed of my current service; I put it in quotes since the only option is 896 kbps.
brad152
join:2006-07-27
Chicago, IL

brad152 to Cluser

Member

to Cluser
said by Cluser :

My mom lives in West Jordan and has had the 40/20 Tier for nearly two years with no issues whatsoever.

I've had and have successfully still ordered it, but it seems as a rep has to manually order it now as it's not a default option on residential accounts now (at least through the website)
coryw
join:2013-12-22
Flagstaff, AZ

coryw to Atom90

Member

to Atom90
My upload is 896k. It's an Embarq and Former-Embarq-Area thing.

In re spectrum: Spectrum and attenuation are different things. Copper cables carry the same spectrum regardless of how thick or thin they are.

However, fatter wire (a lower guage number) will experience less attenuation than thinner wire (higher guage number) which is why most distance estimates are based on 26AWG. If you have 19AWG installed in your neighborhood, you may have a lower attenuation and higher signal than you thought.

But neither of those things is going to carry "more spectrum" or "more bandwidth."

Atom90
join:2014-12-05

1 edit

Atom90

Member

said by coryw:

My upload is 896k. It's an Embarq and Former-Embarq-Area thing.

And yet we both pay the same stockholder dividends. Not sure how much longer you can drudge up Emarq to differentiate it from CL as a whole. I mean, the acquisition was 6 years ago. A life time in internet terms.

And my upload speed was better 6 years ago before CL came along.
said by coryw:

Spectrum and attenuation are different things. Copper cables carry the same spectrum regardless of how thick or thin they are.

However, fatter wire (a lower guage number) will experience less attenuation than thinner wire (higher guage number) which is why most distance estimates are based on 26AWG. If you have 19AWG installed in your neighborhood, you may have a lower attenuation and higher signal than you thought.

But neither of those things is going to carry "more spectrum" or "more bandwidth."

Spectrum and attenuation are different, yes.....

You are acting like all frequencies get attenuated evenly on every wire thickness. Which is not true, thicker cables are able to deal with higher frequencies better. Giving the end use more spectrum utilization potential.

Even though I'm the son of a broadcast engineer, I can't for the life of me find any decent coax cable attenuation charts that shows the entire spectrum. Preferably above 1Ghz, which is where the thicker wire really shines and make my point a bit more obvious. So I'll settle for this graph made for a HDMI cable guide. Notice how as the frequency goes up, the attenuation gap gets wider between the different gauges. And the thickest is able to provide more spectrum.



Image source:»electronicdesign.com/com ··· i-cables

DSL acts the same way. If you are close to the DSLAM, you can use the higher frequencies to carry data data on. And if you are far away, like me, then you can only use the lower frequencies only because they have the least attenuation and the only frequencies that can make it. If my phone line was thicker I would be able to use higher frequencies and get better sync speeds.

coryw
join:2013-12-22
Flagstaff, AZ

coryw

Member

A higher gauge wire helps, but isn't the only factor. The physical arrangement of Cable/DOCSIS plant, which is essentially a giant copper loop that supports inline amplifiers and repeaters is the main reason that cable can go faster for further.

In terms of Embarq: From a legal standpoint, Qwest Communications LLC is the wholly owned subsidiary of CenturyLink that collects my money each month. In fact, if you look at AT&T, you'd probably see that they are still "Southern Bell Communications d/b/a AT&T" or "Pacific Telesis d/b/a AT&T" -- if you ask your state's public utilities commission, they'll tell you it's CenturyTel or Embarq doing business as CenturyLink.

So really, CenturyLink is "Just" a holding company right now as far as Embarq and Qwest goes.

In fact, not sure what they said to you when they picked up Embarq, but when they picked up Qwest several years ago, they talked a whole lot about how decision-making was still going to happen locally within Qwest regions.

So, yes, basically you're actually being served by a different phone company, that happens to have the same parent company, who as a condition of the merger promised to the constituents of the companies it bought that it wouldn't smother them with corporate management.

This would explain why in Qwest areas the minimum upload they'll sell to new customers is 896k, and why your upload is lower than that. (Well, that and your line stats may not support 896k up.)

Atom90
join:2014-12-05

Atom90

Member

said by coryw:

A higher gauge wire helps, but isn't the only factor. The physical arrangement of Cable/DOCSIS plant, which is essentially a giant copper loop that supports inline amplifiers and repeaters is the main reason that cable can go faster for further.

All things being equal, a thicker cable will provide more spectrum to the end users. Which was the issue you raised with my comment.
coryw
join:2013-12-22
Flagstaff, AZ

coryw

Member

I think you actually addressed that yourself. It's not that more physical spectrum is available, it's that very high frequencies attenuate more slowly on thicker cable.

As I mentioned, the attenuation that does happen is assisted by the judicious use of amplifiers, something that you can't really put into DSL systems. (SDSL and SHDSL have repeaters available, but those technologies have been discussed here before.)

With g.fast, for example, they're talking about using almost 200MHz of overall physical spectrum, on the same copper wires that today, ADSL2+ uses about 2MHz on and VDSL2 uses 8-17MHz on. Of course, a 200MHz signal is going to attenuate very quickly on phone lines, and it's not like you can just pump VDSL2 over RG59 coaxial cable. (You sort of can with some types of coax, there are some industrial devices that do it, but I don't think it helps distance at all anyway.)
coryw

coryw to Atom90

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to Atom90
As another thought: I'm unconvinced that the availability of more physical spectrum (the newest CMTS and DOCSIS systems can do 1GHz, as you mentioned) is going to really affect "the end users" -- of course if you put AT&T U-Verse in charge of a CMTS it could actually make a huge difference, but in a cableco scenario, they're going to put TV fist, and data second.

As an aside, this is one of the more fascinating things to me personally about TelcoTV -- it has definitely helped encourage AT&T to develop its data network.

Though, on the CL side of things, we've got it better because CL will deploy FTTN VDSL2/ADSL2+ and FTTH GPON (to locations owned by all of its component parts d/b/a CL) even without a TV franchise.

As a side-note, another interesting case of physical spectrum FiOS vs. U-Verse/GoogleFiber/CenturyLink. FiOS has deployed what's essentially an 860MHz cable TV system in another part of the visible light spectrum on their GPON network, whereas U-Verse, CenturyLink and Google use MPEG4 streams over the data network to deliver TV.

Of course, that's all on fiber and there are different considerations with attenuation and bandwidth on fiber.
BadMagpie
join:2011-02-05

BadMagpie

Member

Click for full size
Very good signal at the new place:

Max: Upstream rate = 16713 Kbps, Downstream rate = 75412 Kbps
Bearer: 0, Upstream rate = 5120 Kbps, Downstream rate = 40127 Kbps
VDSL2 Profile: Profile 8a

And that's with a bridged tap around tone 665.

Now when I try to create a new account, it keeps saying the phone number's invalid; do I need to wait a few days? I wonder if it's faster to try to change it to 20 mbit up through the account itself, or whether I'd need to call in or chat.

Atom90
join:2014-12-05

Atom90

Member

said by BadMagpie:

I wonder if it's faster to try to change it to 20 mbit up through the account itself, or whether I'd need to call in or chat.

Not sure your modem can even make it 20Mbit up if your modem says it has a max of 16.7Mbit.

CL is pretty piss poor when if comes to upload speed and not sure they would even give you 15Mbit, even though you could probably sync at 15Mbit with ease. Keep us posted, I'm in the same boat of horrible CL upload rates and rigid sync tiers.
BadMagpie
join:2011-02-05

BadMagpie

Member

I'm pretty sure they'd use the 12A profile for 40/20, which means, from most bandplans I've seen, all tones from around 8.5 MHz to 12 MHz will be used for upload only.

Atom90
join:2014-12-05

Atom90

Member

Well you do have a great line and if they gave you more spectrum for upload you should be able to reach 20Mbit. You are already pretty close as it is.

What is your Attenuation?
BadMagpie
join:2011-02-05

BadMagpie

Member

VDSL Band Status U0 U1 U2 U3 U4 D1 D2 D3
Line Attenuation(dB): 0.1 15.5 N/A N/A N/A 10.5 20.1 N/A
Signal Attenuation(dB): 0.1 15.5 N/A N/A N/A 10.5 20.1 N/A
BadMagpie

BadMagpie

Member

I tried to order 40/20 from the website after I had my account set up, and I could, but it wasn't applying the discount correctly. So I called in, and going from 40/5 to 40/20 is an extra $5 a month. So, it should be activated by the end of the week.
BadMagpie

BadMagpie

Member


Sweet.
Telnet stats:

Max: Upstream rate = 46063 Kbps, Downstream rate = 70592 Kbps
Bearer: 0, Upstream rate = 20128 Kbps, Downstream rate = 40127 Kbps

I could probably do 60/30 on this single line, too bad it's only available on a bonded solution.
coryw
join:2013-12-22
Flagstaff, AZ

coryw

Member

mmmh, that's beautiful.

I want to say that I've seen some rumors of CL deploying 60/30 on a single line with either a 12MHz or 17MHz profile, but I wonder if part of why they won't do it is because they don't (yet?) have a way to bill for 60/30 without bonding.

Of course, the other issue is what they'd charge for that service. At least on the business side of things, 60/30 is more than the cost of buying two 40/20 lines. 80/40 is a about another $100 on top of that, almost three times the cost of 40/20.
BadMagpie
join:2011-02-05

BadMagpie

Member




And the reprovisioning to 50 didn't take long.

I wonder what kind of speed reprovisioning would occur on a 60/30 single line; the 12A standard only goes up to 68 mbit downstream.
coryw
join:2013-12-22
Flagstaff, AZ

coryw

Member

Very nice.

My guess: it would either go straight to the max sync of 68, or 60/30 is something they'll do with 17A, which can sync up to 100mbit. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that over-provisioning on 60/30 would be 75, but that's as wild a guess as anything else.

The other possible issue with 60/30, and this is something they'd have to calculate out, maybe even for each individual DSLAM or SAI, is that you'd need to figure out what mix of different speeds you're selling on that DSLAM or overall system and how much backhaul throughput you have with it.

With 60/30 and 80/40 remaining bonded options (because once you get to 17MHz if you can get 40/20 on 8MHz today, you can probably go straight up to 80/40) you're still using up a certain amount of throughput per port.

That doesn't explain the existence of 100/12 though, so who knows. (Of course, 100/12 existing may be why they're overprovisioning in the first place, but who knows!)

The solution would be to replace any remaining 1-gig backhaul with 10-gig connections, realistically all you'd need to do is find a different switch or aggregator port in the CO.

Of course, the other other issue is that only the most recent versions of the TA1148V can even do 17MHz.
BadMagpie
join:2011-02-05

BadMagpie

Member

Whaaa? I was on 17A on Telus' 50/10 package a few years back, as soon as it became available, I think in November 2012. That's kind of interesting that most of CL's equipment can only do 12A. Also interestingly enough, it says I can go up to 60 mbits when I first load my main account page, but when I try to edit my service the most I can see is the two 40 mbit options.
That Telus line was nice though, sycned at 76/12, with a theoretical max of something like 120/46. 76/12 was chosen as that was the fastest the modems could to PhyR I think.
brad152
join:2006-07-27
Chicago, IL

brad152

Member

The US companies have just totally lacked on using DSL to it's full capabilities.

I mean if they'd bond two 17A profiles for a 200/20 (synced at something like 230/25) connection then i'd bet that 99% of people would be perfectly happy to get broadband from the phone company.
coryw
join:2013-12-22
Flagstaff, AZ

coryw to BadMagpie

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to BadMagpie
Was that with, what, an Alcatel-Lucent 7330 or an Adtran TA5000 or a Calix C7?

Modular DSLAMs like that have gained capabilities over the years. Most commercial/telco-grade DSLAMs today can't do 30A or vectoring yet.

THis is a fairly big presumption on my part, but most of CL's remote DSLAMs are much smaller, Adtran TA1100 series. It's not that CL isn't using that hardware to its full capabilities, it's just that most of those that they're selling 40/20 from are from 2008 or 2009, and deploying 17A is a lot more recent. My guess? Telus had to slip a new line card (Like the EVLT-K or EVLT-N) into the Lucent 7330 in order to get 17MHz going. The original line cards from however many years ago (I think the 7330 actually started shipping in 2004/2005 or so) don't do 17MHz VDSL2. (Actually, the very oldest VDSL2 line cards dont' rechnically do VDSL2 at all, which is the story behind the 2wire 3600/3800 on U-Verse, and the Lucent branded modem on some Canadian ISPs, but that's another issue.)

So yeah, I think part of the reason we're not seeing 17A in CenturyLink's network is because the vast majority of what they have deployed doesn't support it yet, and in order to get 17A, they'll need to replace the actual DSLAMs, rather than just line cards.

It looks like the 1108VP had 17A in 2010: »www.adtran.com/pub/Libra ··· _KGP.pdf but I can't find a spec sheet from the third generation 1148 from the same time. My guess? a *lot* of the DSLAMs out there are the first and second generation 1148.

I'm sure I've seen it somewhere, but who knows.

Most of CL's modems will happily do 17A, which is good. I don't think the Q2000, C2000a or C2000T are aware of vectoring, maybe of those three just the C2000T (the C2000a datasheet is exceedingly vague.)

Regardless, without going full-sonic.net or deploying TA1108VPs in distribution pedestals, I think it would be really hard to "use DSL to its full capabilities," just because there are so many different "tiers" they'd need to offer.

Plus, I don't know what CL's billing system is like, because I would be interested in what single-port 60/30 on 12A or 17A would be priced like. I would subscribe to it pretty quickly if thy either pushed the price for everything down or if it was a lot less than what 60/30 costs on bonding.