[Justputt]

Originally Posted by Coop63

Moving to the villages soon, work remotely, and NEED a reliable internet provider. I notice we have some choices, including fiber. Do you have any you would recommend, avoid? Thanks in advance.

I recently switched to fiber in my current location. Upload speeds are great, but my main need is adequate download speed and reliability.

Fenny area

New homes in the South come with Centric fiber preinstalled and RUNNING. The monthly rate is $68/mo for 1 Gig service. We also have YouTube TV ($83/mo, I think) and Netflix Standard ($18/mo). Centric offers packages, but none seemed competitive with the options from YouTube TV. We've seldom had any issue with Centric.

[jrref]

Originally Posted by bopat

Fiber is glass, glass breaks.
Copper is coax, it's shielded but subject to interference.
Wireless is subject to interference.

The myth that fiber isn't shared is just that, a myth. It's all shared at some point. There's no way quantum has dedicated 1gb up and down for every customer on their network.

The myth that copper is always shared is just that, a myth, it's dedicated at some point going to a switch. That's how networking works.

You are right at some point, everything is shared but from your home to your ISP the cable is shared while with fiber you have your own dedicated bandwidth.

The confusion is what do we mean by shared? Is it a single strand of fiber for every customer to the ISP? Is it a single run of copper cable to the ISP? It's neither.

With cable and fiber there is a single run of copper or fiber from your home to a hub then it's multiplexed to the ISP.

The difference is with copper cable there is a fixed amount of bandwidth per cable to the ISP. The more customers the cable company allocates to a specific cable the more likely the cable's capacity will be reached and possibly cause slow downs. Think of it this way, with cable it is like a highway where during peak hours, when more people are online, the connection can slow down, just like traffic gets congested during rush hour. In technical terms, this slowdown occurs because multiple users are drawing from the same pool of bandwidth on the copper cable. This is why some areas of the Villages homeowners have little or no cases of buffering and other areas there is a lot. The reason why you get fast download and slow upload is because the majority of the download bandwidth of the cable is allocated to download and the smaller remaining bandwidth is allocated to upload.

With fiber, the bandwidth of each fiber is far greater than copper cable so they can allocate a fixed amount of bandwidth for each customer so there is never a slow down at this part of the network. It's like a private toll road, you get the full speed limit at all times, and there’s no traffic to slow you down. You have a continual amount of bandwidth that is solely for your use, ensuring consistent speed and reliability regardless of the time of day or the number of users online. With fiber each customer is allocated their full allotment of download and upload bandwidth so the speeds are the same.

Hope this helps clear things up.

[JerryLBell]

I've had CenturyLink fiber for 4+ years now and can't recall the last time I had any issues with it. I get around 940 Kbps both up and down and the price has not risen in that time. I'm not sure where all it is available though.

[Bill14564]

Originally Posted by bopat

Fiber is glass, glass breaks.
Copper is coax, it's shielded but subject to interference.
Wireless is subject to interference.

The myth that fiber isn't shared is just that, a myth. It's all shared at some point. There's no way quantum has dedicated 1gb up and down for every customer on their network.

The myth that copper is always shared is just that, a myth, it's dedicated at some point going to a switch. That's how networking works.

Your best bet is to find one with great service, low price, and lots of peering and points of presence. The bigger companies usually have the biggest backbones and the ability to manage traffic. Good luck!

From what I can find, you are mostly right and I agree with you.

TL;DR: Both coax and fiber are shared but fiber runs faster which lets the provider greatly oversubscribed without many noticing.

The coax to your home is running (probably) DOCSIS 3.0 and is connected to a hub. All the coax connected to that hub sees the same signals. The bandwidth is separated into channels and you use 4/8/16/32 of them but your modem shares those channels with other modems on the same hub. On the other side of the hub is a connection to the ISP that carries all the data from the hub.

The fiber to the home is connected to a switch. The signals to/from your home are not seen by any other modems connected to that switch. You have the full bandwidth between you and the switch. On the other side of the switch is a connection to the ISP that carries all the data from the switch.

Because of the shared nature of the hub I may not always see 200Mbps throughput. Ideally, the provider limited the number of users and since not all users are active all the time and using all their bandwidth there is usually no slowdown, but it can happen.

Because of the nature of the switch I will always get my full bandwidth to the switch. However, since my data comes from locations off the switch, the connection to the ISP also comes into play. The connection out of the switch runs faster than the 1Gbps to my home but it also has a limit, maybe 100Gbps. If fewer than 100 customers are connected to the switch then that shared bandwidth can meet capacity. If more than 100 users are connected or if some of the users purchased 2Gbps then there can be a bottleneck.

The provider is betting on Villagers being typical users and normally pulling data at less then 100Mbps. At that usage he can sell 1,000 users his 2Gbps service, far exceeding what he can actually provide, and no one will know. Well, some will notice when they run a Speedtest but the answer will be that the slowdown was temporary and that you actually purchased up to 2Gbps. Meanwhile, they will keep on collecting monthly payments.

[jrref]

Originally Posted by Bill14564

From what I can find, you are mostly right and I agree with you.

TL;DR: Both coax and fiber are shared but fiber runs faster which lets the provider greatly oversubscribed without many noticing.

The coax to your home is running (probably) DOCSIS 3.0 and is connected to a hub. All the coax connected to that hub sees the same signals. The bandwidth is separated into channels and you use 4/8/16/32 of them but your modem shares those channels with other modems on the same hub. On the other side of the hub is a connection to the ISP that carries all the data from the hub.

The fiber to the home is connected to a switch. The signals to/from your home are not seen by any other modems connected to that switch. You have the full bandwidth between you and the switch. On the other side of the switch is a connection to the ISP that carries all the data from the switch.

Because of the shared nature of the hub I may not always see 200Mbps throughput. Ideally, the provider limited the number of users and since not all users are active all the time and using all their bandwidth there is usually no slowdown, but it can happen.

Because of the nature of the switch I will always get my full bandwidth to the switch. However, since my data comes from locations off the switch, the connection to the ISP also comes into play. The connection out of the switch runs faster than the 1Gbps to my home but it also has a limit, maybe 100Gbps. If fewer than 100 customers are connected to the switch then that shared bandwidth can meet capacity. If more than 100 users are connected or if some of the users purchased 2Gbps then there can be a bottleneck.

The provider is betting on Villagers being typical users and normally pulling data at less then 100Mbps. At that usage he can sell 1,000 users his 2Gbps service, far exceeding what he can actually provide, and no one will know. Well, some will notice when they run a Speedtest but the answer will be that the slowdown was temporary and that you actually purchased up to 2Gbps. Meanwhile, they will keep on collecting monthly payments.

When you say both cable and fiber are shared, with fiber, each customer is given their full fixed bandwidth were as with cable each customer is not. With cable each customer has to "share" the available bandwidth at all times. Yes, you are correct, in order to save money, cable companies over provision their systems hoping on average, there is enough bandwidth for everyone. When you hear some people in some Villages complaining of buffering at peak times, this means in these areas, the cable system is over provisioned and there is not enough bandwidth for every customer using the system at that period of time.

After you reach the ISP, the next bottleneck is how good is your ISP? Same issue. ISPs that generally charge more will have more server capacity and bandwidth to the internet and will adjust their provisioning to accomodate the usage on their system. When I worked at Verizon we did this all the time as usage on the FiOS network increased. With cheaper ISPs, there generally will be more over provisioning causing more slow-downs. I don't know much about Xfinity and Spectrum but I believe their "back-bone" and server network are very good which is why I keep saying the buffering some Villagers experience is probably from the home to the ISP. Quantum is owned by Lumen which will soon be AT&T so the Quantum back-bone and server network while very good now will remain high quality.

So, given the difference in the technology, and given the same cost and availability, which service would you get? Fiber or Cable?

[Bill14564]

Originally Posted by jrref

….

So, given the difference in the technology, and given the same cost and availability, which service would you get? Fiber or Cable?

As I wrote in post #11: Availability, service reliability, price, and support all matter more than the particular technology being used.

Gbps is actually a negative to me because I see it as a deceptive marketing ploy.

Fiber vs Coax vs 5G only go towards availability. One or more might not be available in a particular area though I am fortunate to have all three options.

Poor service would be an issue but I’ve not seen many complaints about any of the available services.

T-Mobile had the lowest price for me so that is what I have.

[jrref]

Originally Posted by Bill14564

As I wrote in post #11: Availability, service reliability, price, and support all matter more than the particular technology being used.

I don't think anyone is disagreeing with you but the technology can affect the reliability and performance of the service. As far as support, in general, Xfinity, Spectrum, Quantum, Verizon, and T-mobile are all good. Sure there are some issues with each and someone is always going to have a "bad story" for all of them but in general if the system is reliable you shouldn't need support much and if your do all of these companies provide "good" service.

This is why I say if you can get fiber, get it.

[Nana2Teddy]

Originally Posted by jrref

I don't think anyone is disagreeing with you but the technology can affect the service reliability and performance of the service. As far as support, in general, Xfinity, Spectrum, Quantum, Verizon, and T-mobile are all good. Sure there are some issues with each and someone is always going to have a "bad story" for all of them but in general if the system is reliable you shouldn't need support much and if your do all of these companies provide "good" service.

This is why I say if you can get fiber, get it.

I hope we can get fiber in DeLuna eventually. I want a better upload speed.