[walrus01]

As an ISP anything that is a shared access, contended media like a copper coax segment (DOCSIS3) is a nightmare waiting to happen. The amount of problems that are caused by one person with a leaky/bad connector and line, or things that have gone screwed up at the RF modulation level of the cable plant between the cablemodems and the CMTS.

Imagine hundreds, or thousands of houses out there all with 25+ year old coax jacks in walls, 4-way splitters jammed into ceilings, leaky outdoor connectors that have been chewed on by squirrels, etc.

It's a miracle that DOCSIS3 works at all.

I'm vaguely familiar with the issue that the axe-grindy guy in the original webpage referenced here is complaining about, specific to some series of chipsets used by a popular cheap cablemodem for a few years of manufacturing run... But what he's found is actually a tip of an iceberg of terrible about why maintaining last-mile copper last wireline infrastructure (POTS wiring/DSL or coax for cablemodems) is a losing bet in the long run.

[girvo]

Copper needs to die. The Australian NBN is a mess because of it. Sigh, what could've been...

[bayindirh]

FTTx systems make copper almost non-existent.

All copper in my city is replaced by fiber, and only copper is from the FTTx box in front of my apartment to my flat. Eeerything (landline, internet, IPTV, etc.) runs from a single, dark fiber.

With cabling already in place and VDSL can reliably provide 5 units of bandwidth (where 4 units is used for download and 1 unit is used for upload, e.g. 32/8 mbps), with a theoretical ceiling of 350mbps, I'm pretty happy with what I have.

While I'd love to have fiber at home, I definitely don't want to rerun cabling.

[FroshKiller]

I thought "dark fiber" meant unused fiber. How can it be dark if you've got services running over it? Is there some other meaning in this context?

[bayindirh]

I used the term "dark" as in unshared, and as a result, you use it the way you like it.

Also, the term looks like it has both meanings.

Having a "dark fiber infrastructure" means having a web of unconnected fiber cables point to point, but since you connect your own devices to it, you don't have to share it with others.

As a result, its presence and its state is only known to you (i.e. it's in the dark).

I understand that my usage is not completely true, but in that context, it's not a flat-out blatant mistake either.

[rincebrain]

It's also not uncommon - people often describe big tech using dedicated lines they didn't lease from people as "dark fiber".

[FroshKiller]

I understand better now, you are really applying "dark" to the infrastructure (which happens to have fiber-optic cable) rather than to the fiber itself. The infrastructure is figuratively dark, and the fiber is literally lit.

[obivatelj]

Usually, dark fiber means that you got that cable (with one or more hairs) completely for yourself, as a customer. It is not leased line, you are not sharing it, it is your fibre to communicate with. It is more expensive, for sure, since Carrier could make lot of $$ out of it (many many Internet Customers for example), but at the end of the day it is cost efficient actually since you have no other interference on your cabling. You do not share bandwith, you do not share services, you decide about your techonlogy at the endpoints (GBICs, etc.).

[jbverschoor]

I think you got your definitions mixed up.

Even the name means: "it's dark, no light, as in no data, because that's what light is in this case"

[freshpots]

https://flexnetworks.ca/what-is-dark-fibre-why-would-i-want-....

It has two meanings. I have heard it most commonly used in reference to private fibre networks.

[jmbwell]

It’s dark in that the entity who purchased and installed it is not yet using it. Telcos install big multi fiber bundles, then actually use only a few strands. The rest are dark, waiting for growth or expansion or to be used as backups. You can lease those and light them up yourself until the telco needs them back.

[girvo]

Yeah at my previous home, we had VDSL, Fibre to the Building, on a non-NBN fibre network. Was amazing, excellent performance, actually good upload bandwidth, and cheap.

I can't wait until my HFC NBN service here goes the way of the dodo.

While I have 1000mbps down, the 50mbps upload is just miserable. And the cost is painful, $130 AUD a month.

[BrandoElFollito]

Oh, that's expensive. I pay 40 EUR/month (~60 AUD) and I find it really high (planning to look for something cheaper). It is 1000/400 FFTH (the fiber terminates at my box).

For the price I pay I should be able to have a shared 10000/1000 (in reality it will probably be 2500/1000).

All of this for the swag, I am ,ot likely to use the bandwidth anytime soon (despite serving a few things from home)

[girvo]

I pay it, because for my use-cases it was the only way to get more than 100mbps (which was more like 75mbps at any regular time of day) download without giving up my 50mbps upload.

Now at least I can play my video games while my partner watches 4K shows on our TV.

Interestingly, moving from 100mbps to 1000mbps has given me a 5ms lower ping: 31ms to 24-25ms with a decrease in jitter of 5ms too, in Valorant -- this is to the exact same server from the physical same PC. I'm guessing even on the same damned cable, the 1000mbps customers get some kind of routing priority or something.

[BlueTemplar]

Well, copper at least has the very nice property of only requiring electricity at the central phone node, and still have working communications.

This makes it the best option by far for communication in hour-long blackouts when, for instance, cell phones and cellphone towers would have ran down their batteries.

[oceanplexian]

Actually the big ILECs like Verizon started deprecating copper loops, at least when I was in that industry 10 years ago. They would install a box in a neighborhood with fiber backhaul to the Central Office and a mini DSLAM, and then deliver shitty DSL from said box.

The great thing about this was they could circumvent telecommunications law that requires them to rent out circuits at a competitive rate to small carriers, basically putting the nail in the coffin of small, independent DSL ISPs, since the copper loops are gone. And you, the customer, are now stuck with 6Mbps DSL from a single provider for $80 a month.

[legalcorrection]

>And you, the customer, are now stuck with 6Mbps DSL from a single provider for $80 a month.

Almost everywhere in the US you can get at least 25mbps for less than $80 a month. And within almost all cities and their suburbs, you can easily get 100mbps+ for less than that.

Unbundled network elements was a stupid utopian idea to begin with. No one who knows a lick about broadband policy actually wants to go back to anything like that. The current model is essentially that you're responsible for building your own infrastructure if you want to be an ISP. That has actually spurred an incredible amount of investment in infrastructure across the country, since you know that if you spend a ton of money laying a thousand miles of fiber, you'll be able to reap the rewards of it, not have to rent it out at cost to your competitors.

American internet service is the best or one of the best in the world for a large, populous country. Certainly, the major European powers don't come close (remember when Europe had to beg Netflix and others to reduce video quality to 720p early in the pandemic? US internet service held up perfectly without any throttling.). Only Japan and large parts of China are comparable (again, not counting small or lightly populated countries).

[darkwater]

Maybe there are some details I'm missing but I live in a small town in Southern Europe (population 2500) and I have symmetrical 600Mbps FFTH for 50€/month with one cell line included. And they are almost real, I peak at ~550Mbps

[legalcorrection]

https://www.nme.com/news/tv/eu-netflix-other-platforms-slow-...

There's a lot more to robust internet service than what you get on speedtest.net or in optimal conditions. Further, the internet speed statistics show that European internet service is on average slower than American service. It's great that you good service, but the point I'm making is that American service is on average faster and more robust, and we got there by abandoning the unbundled network elements nonsense.

[charcircuit]

My house can only get a max of 6Mbps from DSL, but I do have 12 since I am able to use 2 DSL at one.

[BlueTemplar]

Oh, yeah, that can be fun, in theory I can have at the same time :

- 4 different fiber ISPs (in practice only 2-3, because 2-3 of them are sharing the same fiber line)

- 1 ADSL on the copper line

- up to 4 5G connections

- who knows how many satellite connections

That would be total overkill for 99+% of the people of course, but it's really nice to have 0 downtime when switching ISPs because the previous one still works when you start using the new one !

[girvo]

Tell that to how my NBN seems to be setup. With a blackout, our internet is gone too even though my modem (and home server) are on a UPS. Wonder what causes that.

And regardless, while that might be a useful property in certain circumstances, the copper-based NBN we've ended up with is so woeful, that they're basically declaring technical bankruptcy and moving to FTTP after all that in the end anyway. Just a decade late and with billions down the drain for sub-par expensive flaky internet.

[HenrikB]

This is true also for fiber. Depending on the ISP fiber setup, the fiber can run for many 10's of km without a power relay.

I can run 1 Gbps symmetric for ~48h without power by running my optical network terminal (ONT) and a teeny travel router on battery packs. (Used this set up through several long power outages.)

[cupofpython]

>25+ year old coax jacks in walls, 4-way splitters jammed into ceilings, leaky outdoor connectors that have been chewed on by squirrels, etc

all the above describes my apartment connection in Astoria. and the neighbors were DIY tapped into it too. At any given time I lived there there was an appointment scheduled or being scheduled to have a field worker try to fix the downtime issues. they never did and i moved out

[cillian64]

Do you expect the same problems with GPON, which also has a shared medium? At least with fibre you don’t get reflection problems from other people’s dodgy terminations, but you are relying on them obeying the TDMA for upstream.

[rsaxvc]

Rogue ONTs either fire out of time slice and break other packets or just stick on and jam the OLT.

The OLT can often pick out which ONT is doing it.