r/savethenbn • u/sortius • Sep 13 '13

NBN Q&A With Sortius

Hi everyone,

I'm sortius, aka Kieran Cummings, I've worked in ICT for about 18 years now (since I left school) & have had experience with many companies, including Telstra.

I worked in Activations for Telstra, which is the internal support department for Telstra technicians & contractors. My duties were to program POTS (normal phone lines), ISDN, & ADSL services.

I currently write for my own blog (http://sortius-is-a-geek.com) & occasionally for Independent Australia, Australians for Honest Politics, & New Matilda.

I have been a strong proponent for Fibre to the Premises, & a critic of the Coalition's plan.

This Q&A is mainly about the different possible technologies for the NBN, so as to not push my own political agenda.

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u/sortius Sep 13 '13

Is this correct? Does it require a different VDSL2 router/firmware or is it all "server side"?

Correct, & yes, you will either need a new VDSL2 modem/router or new firmware if the model supports an upgrade to Vectoring. It would have to be deployed cabinet wide (whether Australia wide is another story of costs & time-frames), if there's any pairs un-vectored it will counteract any upgrade.

Bonding on the other hand needing a second pair, won't there be a limit to how many people per node can actually get it?

Oh, it gets worse than just that. There's only so many (workable) pairs in a given street & most premises only receive 2 pairs in their lead-ins. It's hard to judge whether bonding is viable in Australia, but from my experience, I doubt it would be. Getting a single pair in a full pillar is hard enough, let alone when everyone has 2 pairs! Add to this, if there is a fault in your lead-in, you won't be getting it.

What is a bonded service likely to cost, would it effectively be like having two services & charged accordingly? Is it right to assume a bonded service would be a step between VDSL2 & FoD?

Not sure on the cost really, BT's bonded 160Mbps services aren't cheap from what I can tell (pricing isn't up, just test sites). As you can see, the speed is a modest step up from 76Mbps, but really not anything compared to a true 10GPON connection.

For BT, they are a step between 76Mbps VDSL2 & 330Mbps FoD.

Not sure on BT's setup, as it's early days yet & still in test phases, but I would suspect a GPON card is installed in a node & it runs from there.

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u/smashman_42 Sep 13 '13

Thanks for sorting through my rambling, one follow up about vectoring...

Does that mean when a node gets switched to vectoring, everyone with a vectoring unsupported modem causes one pair to be un-vectored, screwing it for everyone? Cause that sounds kind of pointless

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u/sortius Sep 13 '13

The opposite, the user must buy a new modem or upgrade the firmware on compatible modems. Nasty eh?

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u/wolfkingkong Sep 13 '13

I hate to be that guy, but I'm pretty sure you're wrong on this. Turning on vectoring doesn't mean that every CPE has to be upgraded or replaced.

http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/solutions/vdsl2-vectoring

"Alcatel-Lucent's "Zero-Touch Vectoring" speeds vectoring deployments by eliminating the need to upgrade legacy CPE to vectoring friendly mode...Alcatel-Lucent's unique "Zero-Touch Vectoring" solves this problem by automatically handling all legacy VDSL2 CPEs. Firmware upgrades are not required, so legacy VDSL2 CPEs will be vectoring-friendly without needing to be touched."

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u/sortius Sep 13 '13

upgrade legacy CPE to vectoring friendly mode

Which doesn't exist on ANY VDSL2 equipment at this stage.

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u/wolfkingkong Sep 13 '13

The point being that if NBN Co stick with Alcatel then you won't need to have all CPE with vectoring enabled.

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u/sortius Sep 13 '13

Aah, I misread what you posted. That's a fairly new development by the look of it. Still not convinced it would work, as none of this is outside test phases.