About fibre broadband

[satimis]

Hi all,

I am at a crossroads in selecting subscription plan.

My current contract shall expire on about mid April, 2012. According to contract term I must submit 2 month notice to ISP if I'm not prepared to renew it.

Current contract: - 6Mbps ADSL, 1 fixed IP and 3 free email accounts of 6MB storage each.

I expect to change ADSL to DSL also with 1 fixed IP. I have no specific requirement on free email account. I only use it to communicate with ISP. Therefore 1 free email account will be sufficient. I'm now in contact of 2 new ISPs


1)
Broadband service provider via telephone line.
4Mbps/4Mbps DSL (2 year contract), 1 fixed IP and 3 free email account each of 50MB storage. The monthly subscription is cheaper than my current contract by 10%. Free wired router will be provided

2)
Fibre-to-the-home/building broadband service provider
100Mbps/100Mbps DSL (2 year contract), 1 fixed IP and 1 free email account of 20MB storage. The monthly subscription is about 47% more expensive than my current contract. No router will be provided. They will provide Cat5-E or fibre connection to their fibre network.

I'm quite interested on the speed of fibre broadband except the monthly subscription is more expensive. I'm willing to absorb the increase on subscription if there will be an advantage to my work.

I have only 2 physical servers, one for redundancy. I'm running virtualization, i.e. about 30 VMs (virtual servers) on each box. Most VMs are running Linxu/Unix OS. I'm running them mainly for testing, only 2/3 of them for working, mail and web servers, but without heavy traffic.

Several years ago I used dynamic IP with free dyndns and curl to monitor the router address. Any changes wget will notify free dyndns which in turn will use the inbound tcp address to update/propagate their records. It worked without program on single domain. However I couldn't make it work on multiple domains. Therefore I use fixed/static IP afterwards.

Please shed me some lights whether there will be advantage for me on selecting fibre broadband? TIA

B.R.
satimis

[hieronymous]

Hi satimus

If your current connection doesn't provide any bottlenecks for your web servers, and you don't have plans for much higher data usage e.g.multimedia, then 100Mbps is overkill.

If you aren't monitoring your current peak throughput, then dropping back to 4Mbps may affect your web servers. If they are peaking over 500k/sec, you won't get that from 4Mbps.

A new ISP may have a quite different pattern of data throughput performance. 4Mpbs isn't a guaranteed level. For example, if an ISP is cheap, and attracts lots of younger Internet users, there may be very heavy evening loadings. I used to be on such a plan, and got 7.5Mbps in the morning, but often under 0.75Mbps in the evenings. Moving to a slower connection doesn't seem to have merit.

Fibre is gradually replacing copper - we''ll all be on it sooner or later. Once you are on it you may find new interests possible because of the capacity.

If your choice is between reduced throughput with potential problems, or a big pipe that will handle anything you throw at it, and the only issue is $$, find the money....

[Dangermouse]

A couple of other things i consider also is as you mentioned a fixed ip, which is much better if you run a home server etc..
Another important thing for me is does your isp provide free newsgroup access;
If you use torrents is it throttled;
Is there a fair usage policy, unlimited doesnt mean unlimited theses days
Faster always sounds better, but will it make any big difference to what you do? upload speed is just as important to me as download speed, and just because you have a faster line doesnt mean you will get stuff faster as you are still limited by others website speeds etc..

[satimis]

Originally Posted by hieronymous

Hi satimus

If your current connection doesn't provide any bottlenecks for your web servers, and you don't have plans for much higher data usage e.g.multimedia, then 100Mbps is overkill.

If you aren't monitoring your current peak throughput, then dropping back to 4Mbps may affect your web servers. If they are peaking over 500k/sec, you won't get that from 4Mbps.

A new ISP may have a quite different pattern of data throughput performance. 4Mpbs isn't a guaranteed level. For example, if an ISP is cheap, and attracts lots of younger Internet users, there may be very heavy evening loadings. I used to be on such a plan, and got 7.5Mbps in the morning, but often under 0.75Mbps in the evenings. Moving to a slower connection doesn't seem to have merit.

Fibre is gradually replacing copper - we''ll all be on it sooner or later. Once you are on it you may find new interests possible because of the capacity.

If your choice is between reduced throughput with potential problems, or a big pipe that will handle anything you throw at it, and the only issue is $$, find the money....

Hi hieronymous,

Thanks for your advice. I have no problem using my current ISP except the upload speed is slow. That is why I need DSL. I don't know whether they can provide 6Mbps/6Mbps? I'll ask later.

This is no problem on download speed throughout the day. I have been using this ISP for 6 years. If I renew the contract, it will be the 4th contract.

Fiber broadband is much better on both upload/download speed. I'm only consider whether it will be over skill to my application as you said. I don't have heavy traffic. If I can find additional advantage other than speed I'm willing to pay more for fibre broadband.

B.R.
satimis

---------- Post added 20th January 2012 at 12:11 AM ---------- Previous post was 19th January 2012 at 11:58 PM ----------

Hi Dangermouse,

Thanks for your advice.

Originally Posted by Dangermouse

- snip -
Another important thing for me is does your isp provide free newsgroup access;

What did you mean? Please explain in detail. Thanks

If you use torrents is it throttled;

Yes. I have been using torrents frequently to download OS.iso

Is there a fair usage policy, unlimited doesnt mean unlimited theses days

No usage limit. I can run my servers round the clock.

.... and just because you have a faster line doesnt mean you will get stuff faster as you are still limited by others website speeds etc..

Yes, you're right.

I'm searching whether there is additional advantage/use other than speed. I'm willing to pay the difference if there is. But I need a careful consideration. Because the contract period is 2 years.

B.R.
satimis

[pete_1967]

One additional benefit is if you need to perform load testing on your application(s), with thicker pipe you can get more reliable results because you can increase the load 25 fold. Also higher bandwith means you got room to grow as needed without worrying about bandwith, even if you now run 20 virtual servers on that setup, 4Mb leaves very little bandwith for each individual server.

25x increase in capacity for 50% increase in cost, I'd say it's a good deal.

[satimis]

Hi all,

Lot of thanks for your advice.

I have following points expected to be clarified;

1) The Broadband service provider, 4Mbps/4Mbps DSL max, abovementioned can provide 200M fibre connection for Internet access ONLY. But when I requested for fixed IP they only offered 4Mbps/4Mbps DSL, saying that this was fibre connection. However I doubt why fibre connection for fixed IP only at such slow speed 4Mbps/4Mbps?

2) Do fibre connection need cable modem?

ISP -> Modem -> Router -> PC ?

If 'No', how is the PC connected to ISP network?

3) Can fibre connection use Cat-5E cable to connect ISP network?

TIA

B.R.
satimis

[Dangermouse]

What did you mean? Please explain in detail. Thanks

With filesharing being clamped down on and torrents etc.. newsgroups (usenet) is becoming the prefered way of downloading films etc.. (legal of course) its usually a guaranteed fast speed and safer way to download.