Neighbour wants to share UPC broadband line from street

kuro2k

Hi all,

I'm just looking for a bit of advice........ I live in a terraced house and currently have 100mb broadband from UPC. My neighbor has contacted me and has asked if he can share the UPC line coming into the house from the street, apparently his house was never connected.

The UPC technician will probably try and get the connection completed today or tomorrow and I'm just wondering how this will effect my service, will I loose bandwidth/speed?

I'm not really sure if I should allow it, any advice?

Thanks all

Sponge Bob

I doubt you will lose speed. Get the technicians mobile number so you can ring them and get them back to fix any problem that may arise.

jor el

You're already sharing it with everyone else on the street, so one more won't make any difference.

kuro2k

jor el wrote: »

You're already sharing it with everyone else on the street, so one more won't make any difference.

Ok, fair enough but I presume the quality of the main cable UPC use in the street is of a higher grade to the one coming into my house.

I've contacted UPC since my original post and tech support are unable to tell me if the work will reduce my service in any way.

I guess my biggest concern is that when I run a speedtest from the UPC website it tells me I'm getting 105mb but on speedtest.net its only 21mb.

coylemj

The overall bandwidth provided to each neighbourhood is based on the number of customers and what speed each is paying for. The service that's provided to your neighbours is a matter for UPC and not you. You're already sharing the local bandwidth with the people upstream so as another poster has said, one more downstream user is going to make no difference to your service.

jor el

kuro2k wrote: »

I guess my biggest concern is that when I run a speedtest from the UPC website it tells me I'm getting 105mb but on speedtest.net its only 21mb.

Pick a different server on Speedtest, as their servers are hosted by various ISPs, and some simply don't have the bandwidth. I ran a test last night and got between 10Mbps and 96Mbps on different servers. Downloading regular Internet content is closer to the 96Mbps range too, so I just don't believe the slow results.

The best speed check is to download a large file from a fast host, such as an ISO image from Heanet's mirror servers. Use a download manager with multiple connection and see what speed that reaches.

kuro2k

coylemj wrote: »

The overall bandwidth provided to each neighbourhood is based on the number of customers and what speed each is paying for. The service that's provided to your neighbours is a matter for UPC and not you. You're already sharing the local bandwidth with the people upstream so as another poster has said, one more downstream user is going to make no difference to your service.

Thanks for the reply but I'm confused why you think I care about my neighbours service, I'm only concerned that my service will be reduduced after the work is complete.

I agree I'm sharing the local bandwidth/main cable with the other houses in the neighbourhood but my concern is that the cable that links my house to the main cable outside in the street will not be able to cope with the demands of the two houses.

I've called UPC and they can't tell me if it would, I presume I'm not the first UPC customer to be in this situation so I'm not sure why they are being so vauge.

Don't get me wrong I want to be a good neighbour (same neighbour is already using my chimmey for his sky tv)

kuro2k

jor el wrote: »

Pick a different server on Speedtest, as their servers are hosted by various ISPs, and some simply don't have the bandwidth. I ran a test last night and got between 10Mbps and 96Mbps on different servers. Downloading regular Internet content is closer to the 96Mbps range too, so I just don't believe the slow results.

The best speed check is to download a large file from a fast host, such as an ISO image from Heanet's mirror servers. Use a download manager with multiple connection and see what speed that reaches.

I checked the other servers and tbh I didn't see any improvement, I'll try to download a large file from Heanet's mirror servers when I get home.

Thanks again

lucernarian

It's the way cable tv services work, all the connections work off a shared pipe (much like mains water) and in normal circumstances, the UPC connection can be "split" as many times as necessary, so long as the overall signal strength is fine for each outlet. A UPC technician will measure this and will do it in a way that will not cause you to lose any signal strength. So long as the signal's strong enough, one extra customer will make practically no difference to your speed even under the worst circumstances.

There is no intrinsic difference between the main cable in the street and the smaller cable to your TV other than the bigger can carry a stronger signal for a further distance. Even if the signal on one smaller cable is shared between two houses, there won't be a problem if done correctly.

UPC customer service wouldn't be trained in that kind of query, they're all trained on the assumption they deal with people who are already served by the cable network or else get wireless cable (MMDS). When I tried to get a house connected in Dublin 2 back in December, I found the same problem.

kuro2k

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

It's the way cable tv services work, all the connections work off a shared pipe (much like mains water) and in normal circumstances, the UPC connection can be "split" as many times as necessary, so long as the overall signal strength is fine for each outlet. A UPC technician will measure this and will do it in a way that will not cause you to lose any signal strength. So long as the signal's strong enough, one extra customer will make practically no difference to your speed even under the worst circumstances.

There is no intrinsic difference between the main cable in the street and the smaller cable to your TV other than the bigger can carry a stronger signal for a further distance. Even if the signal on one smaller cable is shared between two houses, there won't be a problem if done correctly.

UPC customer service wouldn't be trained in that kind of query, they're all trained on the assumption they deal with people who are already served by the cable network or else get wireless cable (MMDS). When I tried to get a house connected in Dublin 2 back in December, I found the same problem.

Thanks for the info, I'll just make sure the UPC technician measures the signal strenght before and after to ensure I've no loss in broadband service.

My biggest worry is that I don't want to be in a situation where I'm blaming my neighbours instalation if my own service goes to sh*t in a month or so.....

cargo

kuro2k wrote: »

Thanks for the info, I'll just make sure the UPC technician measures the signal strenght before and after to ensure I've no loss in broadband service.

My biggest worry is that I don't want to be in a situation where I'm blaming my neighbours instalation if my own service goes to sh*t in a month or so.....

DOCSIS (the standard used to deliver UPC's service over the cable) doesn't work like for example dsl services where the performance is dependent on signal levels. As the previous poster is trying to point out DOCSIS is a kind of "you get it or you dont" so the technician is not going to splice the cable if he thinks both of ye will be down afterwards.

as for UPC sharing the cable I believe that's how they deliver the services to a lot of houses. The run one cable along the outside of a row of houses and tap off into individual houses along the way.

kuro2k

cargo wrote: »

as for UPC sharing the cable I believe that's how they deliver the services to a lot of houses. The run one cable along the outside of a row of houses and tap off into individual houses along the way.

I wouldn't have a problem if we were sharing the main exterior cable but in this case the technician want to use my internal cable (located under my staircase) by drilling a internal hole between the two houses...

I just can't understand how this is standard procedure

cargo

kuro2k wrote: »

I wouldn't have a problem if we were sharing the main exterior cable but in this case the technician want to use my internal cable (located under my staircase) by drilling a internal hole between the two houses...

I just can't understand how this is standard procedure

Oh... thats a bit new

kuro2k

kuro2k wrote: »

I wouldn't have a problem if we were sharing the main exterior cable but in this case the technician want to use my internal cable (located under my staircase) by drilling a internal hole between the two houses...

I just can't understand how this is standard procedure

cargo wrote: »

Oh... thats a bit new

The cables are currently running underground into each house, unfortunately the original owner of the house next door refused access when the cables were buried by chorus 20 years ago.

Sponge Bob

Thats different, 20 year old co ax is not amenable to very much splitting, could they upgrade the outside cable to heavier duty co ax and split at the front wall of your house with a drop to each house from there.

BorneTobyWilde

Wish i had faster broadband
Crazy slow

kuro2k

jor el wrote: »

Pick a different server on Speedtest, as their servers are hosted by various ISPs, and some simply don't have the bandwidth. I ran a test last night and got between 10Mbps and 96Mbps on different servers. Downloading regular Internet content is closer to the 96Mbps range too, so I just don't believe the slow results.

The best speed check is to download a large file from a fast host, such as an ISO image from Heanet's mirror servers. Use a download manager with multiple connection and see what speed that reaches.

I checked the current speed of the line again, I'm currently paying for 100mb broadband.

Except for the UPC website I don't seem to be getting anything near what I am paying for.

UPC Speedtest



heanet file download



Limerick



Galway



Dublin



Cork

the_syco

Try grabbing ftp://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/fedora/linux/releases/16/Fedora/i386/iso/Fedora-16-i386-netinst.iso (266MB) by itself, and with a download manager, and see what speeds you get.

dyer

your download speed of the ISO looks okay at 11mb/s

100Mbps translates to around 12.5MB/s

Mbps - Megabits per second / MB/s - MegaBytes per second

lucernarian

How many times does it have to be said, speedtest.net is NOT a gold standard test for download speeds or especially ping times!!