Does fibre make a difference

That tends to be how it is sold - work from home while the kids stream movies and watch TV (itself a sad commentary on modern life but I digress).

It does make a worthwhile difference on large downloads - as I said 100G is less than haf an hour at 500Mbps whereas it was 5-6 hours on the 50Mbp/s connection (which I still have as it has a pool of static IPv4 addresses which I use for a couple of servers).

5-6 hours for a game download can easily be “no gaming tonight” whereas half an hour is “wait until after tea”.

I don’t watch TV but my partner does occasionally. However, given the ADSL offerings where we are (at the end of 3 km of wet string, apparently), fibre seems to be the only way we can get more than 2Mbs :roll_eyes:

At long last, we can report that we have a landline and proper internet connection - via fibre.

The technicians came yesterday and installed the box and told us that the phone line would be up and running within 2-24 hours. And it is! Since 18th September we have been without a phoneline so we can get back to normal now.

We are at the end of the line from the Control Box (about 5km) so we used to have a very weak signal:
via ADSL our speeds were -
Ping 21. Download speed 2.05mbps. Upload speed 0.80mbps.

Today our speed read:
Ping 6. Download speed 903.85mbps. Upload speed 690.80mbps.

We are so glad we’ve almost got to the end of this sorry saga. All we have to sort out now is we need to get a longer optic cable - the one supplied with the Livebox5 is 1.6m but we need 2.5m. The technicians yesterday supplied us with a temporary fix until Orange can supply a new one.

And then there’s the invoicing to sort out as we have been billed for the past two months. But that should be no problem !

This could have gone in with the Cheerful News postings but I thought it best to write the follow-up in here.

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How many people actually need these super high speeds?

Not many, unless they have a household full of teenagers - but you get super high speed as standard with fibre so it’s just a given.

And it means you will be ready in a few years when you buy a super duper 16K 2000-inch TV set. :smiley:

Not many, but it helps the overall flow of traffic as a user spends less time downloading stuff if it’s coming in at a higher speed.

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Right now not many - though as I said in another post a quarter or half an hour to download a game update (which can be huge) to your Xbox or PlayStation vs 5 hours or more can be the difference between “playing this game tonight” and “come back tomorrow”.

Following on from the follow-up :

The temporary connection we have has already been attacked by the kittens. I think it was the colour of the wire that attracted them. They’re game for anything new so this cable was another ‘toy’ for them to play with. The cable is only about a quarter of the size of the Livebox5 cable but the good news is that a new one is on its way. It should be with us by the weekend and the invoicing situation has been sorted out. The Helpline confirmed that we will be credited with 100€ as compensation and the invoices we paid (that we shouldn’t have paid) will be credited.

The Airbox that was on loan and the Livebox4 have been returned so all we need to do now is keep an eye on the next lot of invoicing and our bank statement to see that they fullfil their promise.

End of story :smiley:

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And the kittens? :slight_smile:

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Well we got fibre yesterday and it definitely made a difference (not that that’s all that surprising since the ADSL performance was little better than dial-up!)

Now the only problems are to find out what the admin password is and to find the old Livebox power supply cable in order to return it (since we used a UPS to power it recently and my partner “tidied it away”)

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Is it not on a label on the bottom of the router?

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No. The wifi code is but not the password which allows administrative access to the box.

EDIT: (Unless it’s masquerading as Part No or something like that)

Does this help? (I’ve shortened the URL using Tiny)

I seem to remember it was also on the manual that came with the box and maybe also a card.

That was the wifi Sue! This is a Livebox 6 and there’s nothing in the container to indicate an admin password to use when accessing the Livebox from a PC via Ethernet, just a mention that you had one in the “lettre d’abonnement” which I didn’t.

Ah! Do you have an easily accessible shop? Ours is about 20 mins away and they’re very helpful.

That’s where we take our old boxes. Is the cable important, since the box will go in the bin?

Yes - we were thinking of taking the old Livebox there anyway (about 40 minutes away) and I was gearing myself up to explain that we’d lost the power supply cable. I wasn’t whether they’d know the admin password but I suppose it’s worth asking :thinking:

It should just be the first 8 characters of the SSID.

For your first use you have to use the first 8 characters of the wifi password, which is printed on the device label. Once you are in you can/should change it.

I am not familiar with Liveboxes but I would guess it’s a generic 12V PSU like this, which you could get from FleaBay or Amazon?

(obvs that’s a UK one but you get my drift)