Fios, shared or not
Evad1
Enthusiast - Level 1

Simple question,  is fios shared bandwidth like cable, or is it direct connection such as DSL?

Basically, does my local community effect internet speeds?

   ex the more neighbor's using fios the slower your connection becomes

honest answers requested

Re: Fios, shared or not
smith6612
Community Leader
Community Leader

Every Internet medium is shared. Even though DSL is seen as a direct line between you and the Central Office gear, once you hit the DSLAM you begin sharing the bandwidth at the DSLAM with others. if you're on a remote, you start to get closer to a Cable-like system, as you're dealing with a "node" of users sharing limited capacity at a Remote DSLAM, which then is sharing the capacity back to the CO where it mixes in with the traffic from the DSLAMs in the CO where it aggregates and leaves the Central Office off to the edge network/routers that serve the border between Verizon's backbone and the Private, CO network that serves as the last mile. So yeah, while DSL won't slow down physically from other neighbors, once you hit the DSLAM all bets are off at that point. This is seen with recent threads about DSL slow-downs at night. Sound familiar with what happened to Cable?

Cable modem service works in a series of nodes, too. Except the problem as seen with Cable was due to the way the tech worked before the advent of using multiple Downstream and Upstream channels, and cable systems that easily had hundreds of modems per node all sharing 2-3 downstream channels running at 32Mbps tops on a DOCSIS 2.0 system per channel. Cable sees issues, despite the whole plant being Fiber to the Node, like most DSL installations, due to the higher speeds offered and also due to the high amount of overselling per available bandwidth that used to occur. Cable didn't have issues with say, long lines that perhaps helped keep DSL lines from becoming congestion-prone on the network in the past, but it often suffered with issues regarding noise and just plain old congestion that occurs. With DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades, Cable isn't really seeing congestion that much anymore. What problems that do tend to prop up are often solved with a DOCSIS 3.0 modem, except in some cases where node splits are needed or you live in a collegetown where every person under the sun is probably running torrents. Not much you can do about that besides adding more downstream channels and splitting nodes, and increasing fiber capacity. Even if a cable node is not seeing saturation, once again, all bets are off once you hit the node, or the Fiber gear that eventually leads to the CMTS.

FiOS works on the same basis as Cable. You've got nodes, as indicated by Fiber Distribution hubs, however, FiOS when it comes down to the node level is hardly oversubscribed due to the technology at hand and how few people there are per node. Unless you're in an old BPON area where there are people on 35Mbps/35Mbps FIOS running their connections maxed on a 32 home splitter (BPON does 622Mbps down, 122Mbps up), you really shouldn't have any issues. GPON can do 2.4Gbps down, 1.2Gbps up, which would allow for several people on 150Mbps/75Mbps package to run full bore on a single node (provided the gear at the CO is set up to take that kind of traffic) and not bring down the whole node itself. But once again, even if there is not local node congestion, all bets are off once you reach the OLT, where the hardware may  not be running to potential or if past that point, where you start to see traffic aggregation from other OLTs make their way to where the data needs to go.

So essentially, it comes down to BPON vs GPON, and the capacity at the Central Office especially of GPON or X-GPON (have they even deployed this in production yet?). If every FiOS line in your area starts downloading and uploading at the same time, the whole CO will be brought to it's knees. That will probably take DSL and perhaps business lines with it as well.

Re: Fios, shared or not
weedeater1
Contributor - Level 3

This is a great explanation of their network topology.

Re: Fios, shared or not
RafaelDB
Enthusiast - Level 2

i dont think this is correct.

I've being experiencing very low bandthwithd,  Not the one i pay for which is 50mbit!  and it tend to happens in peak times and day where people are not at work like weekends and holydays.

I think fios is oversusbcribe as much as the Cable company oversubscribe the cablemodem or even more

Re: Fios, shared or not
prisaz
Legend
" If every FiOS line in your area starts downloading and uploading at the same time, the whole CO will be brought to it's knees. That will probably take DSL and perhaps business lines with it as well."

Isn't that the truth. So are they connecting our local C/O that has GPON, to an OC-3 or OC-48 or better. Perhaps they added support for GPON without the balls to back it up! You would hope it would be a. FAT pipe to the local C/O. Perhaps that is the whole problem. Yea I have 150/65 but we max out the C/O!!! I sure would like to see the network architecture feeding my C/O, but I am sure that would never happen!
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Re: Fios, shared or not
TipinAnnandale

Is the bandwidth on the node shared equally among subscriers or does location along the optical fiber make a difference i.e. the last person on the line gets less bandwidth than the first person on the line?

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Re: Fios, shared or not
anonFios
Contributor - Level 2

@RafaelDB wrote:

i dont think this is correct.

I've being experiencing very low bandthwithd,  Not the one i pay for which is 50mbit!  and it tend to happens in peak times and day where people are not at work like weekends and holydays.

I think fios is oversusbcribe as much as the Cable company oversubscribe the cablemodem or even more


Are you experiencing this "low bandwidth" with all activities or just certain ones (such as Netflix)?

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Re: Fios, shared or not
Anti-Phish1
Master - Level 1

TipinAnnandale wrote:

Is the bandwidth on the node shared equally among subscriers


Upstream and downstream work differently.

All ONTs see the same downstream transmissions.  Your ONT picks off your downstream portion.

Your line profile in the CO determines how much the Optical Line Terminal (OLT) in the CO can transmit to you at a time, thereby limiting your downstream bandwidth to your subscribed level.

For upstream, only one ONT at a time can transmit.  Again the OLT in the CO determines when your ONT can transmit as determined by your service profile, again effectively limiting your upstream bandwidth to your subscribed level.


TipinAnnandale wrote:

does location along the optical fiber make a difference


No.

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Re: Fios, shared or not
RafaelDB
Enthusiast - Level 2

@anonFios wrote:

@RafaelDB wrote:

i dont think this is correct.

I've being experiencing very low bandthwithd,  Not the one i pay for which is 50mbit!  and it tend to happens in peak times and day where people are not at work like weekends and holydays.

I think fios is oversusbcribe as much as the Cable company oversubscribe the cablemodem or even more


Are you experiencing this "low bandwidth" with all activities or just certain ones (such as Netflix)?


with all activity, the internet become pratically unusable at peak hours, when i need to connect to work i need to use my Sprint Broadband card that was supply from work thanks god, since at those time in getting less than 1 megabit.

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