Account

Forgotten password

FTTP Speeds

The great thing about a pure-fibre FTTP internet connection is that the downstream and upstream speeds you get are independent of the distance you are from the exchange or any cabinet and not affected by interference. However there are still other things that affect the speed of your Internet usage.

The route from your computer/phone/tablet to the Internet has many links, each with their own characteristics. the speed you get will be the slowest of these links.

Link Speed Notes
Wifi 1 - 100 Mbps The speed you get on your Wifi link is dependent on many factors. The main one being how far you are from your Wifi router and if there are any walls in the way. Also the Wifi link is shared with every local user and the Wifi bandwidth shared with neighbors if their Wifi is using the same radio channel. You get the same speed upstream as well as downstream but upstream and downstream share the overall bandwidth.
Ethernet 100 or 1000 Mbps If you connect to your router with an Ethernet cable you will get either 100 Mbps or 1 Gbps depending on the type of Ethernet router and device you are using. Upstream and downstream connections are independent and are of the same speed.
FTTP 40, 80, 150, 330, 1000 Mbps Your Wifi router will connect to Openreach's main Internet backbone at the nearest telephone exchange or perhaps a cabinet. Downstream and upstream speeds are capped by the ISP/Openreach to the broadband Internet package speeds you have purchased. Technically FTTP is currently capable of a raw speed of 2.5 Gbps downstream and upstream simultaneously. However there are overheads so the peak speed available is less than this and this speed is shared between a number of premises (up to 32 by Openreach's current implementation). Note that 80/20 Mbps FTTP appears to be capped at 73/19 Mbps at present.
Backbone to ISP terrabits per second Your data then travels to your ISP routers wherever they are physically located. This link is shared between multiple users and its overall bandwidth is limited by the deal between your ISP and Openreach.
ISP to Backbone terrabits per second Your ISP routes your data to the destination server over the Backbone fibre internet connections. They may pay for dedicated paths to the USA or other countries to speed up some access.
Server 1 to 10,000 Mbps

Eventually you will access a WEB server or other Internet service. This includes your companies servers, Skype, Facebook, BBC etc.

These servers are shared and often are the main limiting factor in your access speed.

Once you have an FTTP connection the main things limiting your Internet access speed will be:

  • Your Wifi system. You can improve this by siting the Wifi router close to where you are accessing it from and avoiding any signal paths through walls. See bellow for improvement ideas. Or use an Ethernet cable which provides solid reliable speeds.
  • The WEB server or system you are accessing such as the BBC website. These WEB servers are shared by all of those accessing them at a time. So speeds will vary depending on the time and other factors (big news story etc.).

Wifi Speed Improvements

  1. Site the Wifi router close to where you generally access it from.
  2. Avoid radio signal paths through wall's etc.
  3. Set its radio channel of operation to a different frequency to neighbors routers. Some Wifi routers attempt to do this automatically.
  4. Add multiple Wifi routers for different areas of the premises all connected by Ethernet cable. Old ADSL Wifi routers can be used fr this. Make sure they all operate on different Wifi radio channels though.
  5. Purchase newer routers that implement newer faster Wifi frequencies and/or protocols such as 5 GHz, 802.11ac etc.
  6. Note that if two people are using the Wifi and one is sited a distance away and thus only getting 1 Mbps, then this will slow down access for the other user as well as most of the bandwidth/time is being used by the slow device.
  7. Where possible use a Gigabit Ethernet cable rather than Wifi.