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Time For Takeoff

AccordXTC
I'm a reliable contributor

Hello

 

Anyone getting a notice on there door about Rogers being committed to connecting Canadians with the latest technology? Our service has been down since early this morning and still down. I wasn't aware of anything new coming out besides Ignite TV and don't have nor want the service. 

 

What's this all about? 

 

 

 

 

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38 REPLIES 38

Re: Time For Takeoff

toolcubed
I'm a senior contributor
I received a letter on my door last March about a new “vault” being installed beside my house. The letter wasn’t directly from Rogers, but rather from a 3rd party sub-contracted by Rogers. It said it was part of Rogers’ commitment to install more fibre. It also said there was no ETA on when it would be installed. I’ve been trying to find out from Rogers but I haven’t been successful.

Re: Time For Takeoff

Could be any number of things possibly..

Could be upgrading stuff like the local nodes.. upgrading the hardware there, allow better internet, faster connections, etc.

I remember getting an email recently with similar.. which I think was primarily focusing on the cellular structure? 
(more towers, getting ready for 5g, etc)

Re: Time For Takeoff

AccordXTC
I'm a reliable contributor

Services were back up around 4pm yesterday but not sure on the improvements yet. The speeds are slower then before after restarting the modem. Maybe the work is not completed yet in the area to know yet or see. 

 

The only thing I would have liked to know is time to complete the work or ETA this way I know if I have a current issue or not.

Re: Time For Takeoff

toolcubed
I'm a senior contributor

"Prepare for liftoff" network enhancement notification left on my door

 

Hi everyone, a flyer was left on my door yesterday (see screenshot attached).  In fact, this was left on every door in my neighbourhood.  I called the number on the flyer and spoke to someone at Rogers who said it was a "fibre to the curb" upgrade.  He couldn't explain or provide any additional details.  I've never heard of fibre to the "curb"...I've heard of fibre to the node and fibre to the home, but not to the "curb".  Does anyone know what this means?  Is Rogers pushing fibre right to my local tap, and then it would just be coax from the tap straight into my home??

 

pic.jpeg

Re: Time For Takeoff

RyzenFX
I'm a reliable contributor

@toolcubed

 

Interesting. Does your neighborhood have a history of having a high utilization on the upload/ or is always bandwidth starved?

Re: Time For Takeoff

National Broadband Network Australia is going the "fibre to the curb" route in its upgrade to fibre optics.  This involves running fibre to a pit just in front of the home, near or at the curb.  The home is then connected to the fibre via traditional copper cabling.  

 

Maybe Rogers is going this route instead, which is to push the copper core out of its aluminum shield and blow in fibre optic cable to replace it.  You end up with fibre optics from the neighbourhood  node to the local tap (pedestal) with copper cabling to the home:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQJUSGLCi0M

 

Its either that, or you're going to see lawns and driveways ripped up to install newer copper cabling or fibre optics.  Keep us posted on which method is used.  

Re: Time For Takeoff

toolcubed
I'm a senior contributor
Will do. Construction has already started a couple of streets over. And several weeks back, a few guys came around to mark up the sidewalks and grass with spray paint and mini flags where water and gas is located...they did this all over my half of the neighbourhood. Presumably to prep for the work Rogers is going to be doing, which appears to be quite a bit of digging. This is all very exciting stuff 🙂 I’ll keep you guys posted, possibly with pics of progress if I have the time.

Edit: Datalink, thanks for that video. Very cool 🙂

Re: Time For Takeoff

toolcubed
I'm a senior contributor
UPDATE

Construction has started on my street. Spoke to one of the guys from NX Utilities, which is the company doing the work. They’re boring and laying new conduit from the fibre node to the nearby taps/pedestals closer to our homes. Then they’re going to feed fibre thru those conduits and Rogers will do the splicing and finalize the hookup in early Dec. Confirmed it’s fibre to the curb. FINALLY! I’ve been waiting for these improvements for a VERY long time 🙂

Re: Time For Takeoff

57
Resident Expert
Resident Expert

Rogers has had FTTN in most places for a long time and RF-coax to the home has been enough to provide good bandwidth for the several hundred people typically connected to a node (offering as high as 1GB downloads) .

 

Now that many more people are demanding more bandwidth (even though most of them don't need it) I'm guessing that the RF-coax (from the node) is now not enough to meet the demands where many people demand high bandwidth.  So, you need FTTC (curb) to meet those demands with fewer people connected to the Curb box (pedestal).  I'm guessing that RF-coax to the home (from the curb) will be adequate for the near future, eventually giving way to Fibre also.  Of course IPTV (IgniteTV) also plays into this.

 

Bell's legacy twisted pair cables could not provide the bandwidth (25-100 mpbs max depending), so they had to go FTTH to be competitive.

Re: Time For Takeoff

BS
I'm a senior advisor

It will be interesting to see the impacts of these changes - there are signs up in our area that they will be doing the work soon and have been working throughout the town and this helps me understand what they have been up to.

 

This may account for why suddenly I had Bell reps at my door again this week, talking about how they have fiber cable to the pedestal.  I took him on a short walk down the street to the Bell Fibe node (the big white boxes) and explained where the node for Rogers was sitting, just down the street from there, and the combination of new and old pedestals along the street.  I also showed him where there are new pedestals and old pedestals for Bell along the street, and that new pedestals had been installed on new acquisitions and that a tech had told me that it was still copper to the new pedestal, it just prepares them to connect fiber once it is laid from the node to the curb as is mentioned here, and then also allows in their system to go directly to the home from the pedestal.

 

I pointed out to him by showing him two loose pedestals from both companies, that it is coax on the Rogers pedestal, and copper punch downs on the old Bell ones.

 

He then back paddled and said oh they were preparing to put that all in place, but that I can currently get 100Mbs down and asynchronous up with the new pedestal and be fully prepared for when full GB comes.

 

I opened up my phone off my wifi and showed him that online, a quick search on my postal code showed 100Mbs and 10Mbs with a warning that it can range from 1.8 minimum to 10 maximum.

 

He suggested that it didn't reflect that they are able to change it over, that it is ready for that now.

 

I left him at that, with the comment, that upload speed isn't relevant, and my caps and speed are fine for our needs and what mattered at this point at this house is the price.

 

As a side note, he first suggested he could get lower than my current package, which he did, but by coincidence, he forgot to put in my HBO/Movies/Crave and that two months free doesn't help get lower, nor did he include three of the key channels we watch that are added to our Rogers service.  Bye bye.  It was a distraction for me, I am house bound, so it is entertaining to listen, to debunk things I am told (I know just too much for them).  But then again, when I was calling Rogers today about the usage page on MyRogers, they tried to market a data package on our phones (just a small increase - 15 + 2.20 with loss of BCB for me or 5.00 + 4.40 lost BCB for my wife - makes so, somewhere around 240 with tax per year for my wife and over 300.00 for my wife). I have heard this same pitch 3 times in the last 6 months when phoning in on issues not related.  Everyone is trying to get me to spend more while my goal is to spend less with less service of course.

 

But it is great to see that the companies are being creative at dealing with the last mile to the home.  My only hope is that it doesn't result in too much of those notices of we have to increase prices to improve services.  It will just mean that I cut my services - just my reality of life, but great for those who are able to afford these improvements, which definitely will have to come with more IP tv and more bandwidth usage, whether we really need it or not.

 

Thanks for keeping us up to date on what has been learned about these improvements - certainly, both companies are still racing to the finish line on how to get the fastest, most reliable services out to as many people as possible.

 

Bruce

Re: Time For Takeoff

toolcubed
I'm a senior contributor
UPDATE:

Construction is done. It was pretty crazy. They needed access to my property. Rolled in a mini boring machine and tore up my lawn! Thankfully everything is back to normal.

Today, a Bell truck rolled in to string the fibre cable thru the newly installed conduits. Yes, you read that right....a BELL truck lol. I went out to talk to the guys and they confirmed that they (Bell) are installing the physical fibre cable for Rogers. I find 2 things funny with that - 1. Rogers has contracted Bell (their largest competitor) to lay the fibre; and 2. Bell doesn’t even have any of their own fibre infrastructure around here as I can only get 50Mbps VDSL service from them. Looking forward to Rogers coming in and completing the splicing/hookup soon!

Re: Time For Takeoff

RyzenFX
I'm a reliable contributor

@toolcubed

 

Great to hear that progress is being made. Do you know if they will use the existing Rogers pedestal located in front of your property to terminate the fibre, or will they dig a separate terminatation box underground (like Bell usually does in their FTTH setups)?

Re: Time For Takeoff

BS
I'm a senior advisor

Interesting question - I will have to ask the next time a tech is on the street - I do know that in our area, every pedestal that has been replaced in the last few years is not the tiny round ones, but now the large highly ventilated rectangular box ones, so my guess would be that they will be replacing pedestals like Bell.

 

I know that in my neigbourhood that Bell has been replacing pedestals for new connections, although still FTTN, not home, and it has allowed them to increase the speed to those homes on the standard copper feed to 150 down when people have received both got their Fibe TV installs.  In each location where there were more than one house connected to Fibe TV, we saw their speed moved to 150 down, still 10 up, due to the increased bandwidth that came from these new pedestals (don't iknow technologically what is achieving the result), but those who just have Internet, phone and sattelite, (lots of them in our area still - we are about 30% Rogers, 30% Sattelite with Bell Internet, and other mixes, and about 20 % are now on digital antennas).  The world in my neighbourhood of Internet, TV and phone is certainly a changing.  As I have walked the neighbourhood and talked to people about their services, we are a bit of a generally lower middle class area, all used to be middle class, most are staying on lower speeds, digital cable.  There is not an Ignite install in our neighbourhood that I am aware of, in fact, I haven't seen a Rogers truck down our roads in quite a while, although they are certainly moving across the north end of Whitby quickly with the upgrades being described here.  But I know from my neighbours, for most of us, price is the driving factor, but doesn't take away from my interest of what they are doing.

 

 Bruce

Re: Time For Takeoff

RyzenFX
I'm a reliable contributor

@toolcubed

 

If you can, take a picture of your DOCSIS WAN stats before and after the upgrade. I wonder how the signal strength, SNR, will change with this upgrade. 

Re: Time For Takeoff

toolcubed
I'm a senior contributor

They did A LOT of digging up and down my street and several other streets in the neighbourhood.  I included some pics below (sorry, not sure why they're sideways).  I also posted my current modem stats at the bottom of this post.  I'll post the new stats once the hookup is all done in a few weeks.  In summary, they did the following:

 

1. They replaced an underground fibre termination/junction box with a very large 4ft high by 3ft wide fibre vault located down my street (sorry, no pic of this one but it's the same as the second pic below).  My neighbourhood now has 4 of these large vaults!!!

2. They replaced a light green ventilated pedestal located at the corner of my house with an underground fibre termination/junction box (see first pic below).

3. They installed a brand new 4ft high by 3ft wide fibre vault across my side street (see second pic below).  Again, this is just 1 of 4 in total in my neighbourhood.  Prior to the node split they did back in Sep/Oct, we only had 1 of these vaults.

4. They ran fibre between each of the boxes mentioned above as well as running fibre to the green pedestal where the coax running to my house is located (they did not replace this pedestal and I did not include a pic of it).

 

This is the underground fibre junction box I mentioned in #2 above:

 

image3.jpeg

 

This is the fibre vault I mentioned in #3 above...4 of these bad boys in my neighbourhood:

 

image2.jpeg

 

Here's the behemoth they rolled onto my property to dig!:

 

image1.jpeg

 

My modem stats now (fibre splicing/hookup is NOT done yet):

Downstream Overview
Port IDFrequency (MHz)ModulationSignal strength (dBmV)Channel IDSignal noise ratio (dB)
1591000000256QAM0.900737.636
2855000000256QAM1.800338.605
3861000000256QAM1.700438.605
4579000000256QAM0.800537.356
5585000000256QAM0.800637.636
6849000000256QAM2.000238.605
7597000000256QAM1.000837.636
8603000000256QAM1.000937.636
9609000000256QAM1.1001037.636
10615000000256QAM1.1001137.636
11621000000256QAM1.0001237.636
12633000000256QAM1.2001337.356
13639000000256QAM1.3001438.605
14645000000256QAM1.8001537.636
15651000000256QAM1.9001638.605
16657000000256QAM1.8001737.636
17663000000256QAM1.8001838.605
18669000000256QAM1.6001937.356
19675000000256QAM1.9002037.636
20681000000256QAM1.9002138.605
21687000000256QAM1.9002237.636
22693000000256QAM1.8002337.636
23699000000256QAM2.0002437.636
24705000000256QAM1.9002538.605
25711000000256QAM1.3002637.636
26717000000256QAM1.2002737.636
27723000000256QAM1.2002837.636
28825000000256QAM1.7002937.636
29831000000256QAM1.6003037.356
30837000000256QAM1.6003138.605
31843000000256QAM1.6003237.636
32303000000256QAM-0.300138.605
OFDM Downstream Overview
ReceiverFFT typeSubcarr 0 Frequency(MHz)PLC lockedNCP lockedMDC1 lockedPLC power(dBmv)
04K275600000YESYESYES0.700001
1NANANONONONA
Upstream Overview
Port IDFrequency (MHz)ModulationSignal strength (dBmV)Channel IDBandwidth
130596000ATDMA - 64QAM37.75016400000
238596000ATDMA - 64QAM41.00033200000
323700000ATDMA - 64QAM37.75026400000

Re: Time For Takeoff

RyzenFX
I'm a reliable contributor

Pretty cool stuff going on in your neighborhood. 

 

From what you've described so far, it's possible that they decided to segment your neighborhood by providing 3 additional nodes, making for a total of 4 nodes. These 4 nodes will definitely alleviate the congestion you're experiencing.

 

For the underground fibre junction box as (picture #1), those are usually where the amplifiers are housed, so they could be removed as it is no longer needed due to the FTTC approach. Sounds like they could be aiming for a Node+0 approach in your neighborhood.

Re: Time For Takeoff

toolcubed
I'm a senior contributor

@RyzenFX

 

NX Utilities and Rogers crews were out in full force yesterday and today working on a good deal of the hookup between nodes and pedestals.  My cable services were down for over 2 hours today.  I went out to speak to the techs and they confirmed a few things for me.  First, they confirmed that this is NOT FTTC.  It's simply network segmentation.  While it's fibre to the node (we now have 4 nodes in the neighbourhood), it's still coax from the nodes to the pedestals, but it's new/upgraded coax.  The Rogers tech also told me that there's another planned maintenance session scheduled for next Tues, Dec 11th, which is when they're going to "cutover"...not sure what that means exactly because they've already done quite a bit of work yesterday and today.  When they left, I rebooted my modem and tv boxes, and took a look at signal levels.  The CODA took quite a bit longer to reboot, and when I logged into it, I noticed signal across all 32 DOCSIS 3.0 channels were all above +10db.  The OFDM channel was at +8db.  The NB3 TV boxes were at +3.5db on most channels.  So I decided to get rid of the 2-way splitter and amplifier completely, and I hooked everything up to a single 4-way Antronix splitter (-7db on all 4 ports).  Just to be clear, all 4 of my devices (modem, home phone, and 2 NB3 boxes) are on a single 4-way splitter where the main line coming into the house is also connected to...that's it.  That brought the NB3 signal to around 0db on most channels.  Here are my CODA levels (again, this is on a 4-way splitter...still a tad high in my opinion):

 

Downstream Overview

Port IDFrequency (MHz)ModulationSignal strength (dBmV)Channel IDSignal noise ratio (dB)
1591000000256QAM5.300737.636
2849000000256QAM6.100237.356
3855000000256QAM5.500337.636
4861000000256QAM5.200437.636
5579000000256QAM5.200537.356
6585000000256QAM5.400637.636
7303000000256QAM2.900138.983
8597000000256QAM5.000837.636
9603000000256QAM5.300937.636
10609000000256QAM5.4001037.356
11615000000256QAM5.1001137.356
12621000000256QAM4.9001237.356
13633000000256QAM5.5001337.636
14639000000256QAM5.4001437.636
15645000000256QAM6.3001537.356
16651000000256QAM6.7001637.636
17657000000256QAM6.4001737.636
18663000000256QAM6.1001837.636
19669000000256QAM6.1001937.356
20675000000256QAM6.4002037.636
21681000000256QAM6.3002137.636
22687000000256QAM6.5002237.636
23693000000256QAM6.7002337.356
24699000000256QAM6.7002437.356
25705000000256QAM6.2002537.636
26711000000256QAM5.9002637.356
27717000000256QAM6.0002737.356
28723000000256QAM5.8002837.356
29825000000256QAM5.9002937.636
30831000000256QAM5.8003037.356
31837000000256QAM5.4003137.636
32843000000256QAM5.3003237.636
OFDM Downstream Overview
ReceiverFFT typeSubcarr 0 Frequency(MHz)PLC lockedNCP lockedMDC1 lockedPLC power(dBmv)
0NANANONONONA
14K275600000YESYESYES3.900002
Upstream Overview
Port IDFrequency (MHz)ModulationSignal strength (dBmV)Channel IDBandwidth
130596000ATDMA - 64QAM40.50016400000
238595785ATDMA - 64QAM43.25033200000
323700000ATDMA - 64QAM39.25026400000

Re: Time For Takeoff

Yup, those DOCSIS 3.1 signal levels are high, but, their ok where they are.  The upstream are higher due to the splitter, so, thats understandable.  The DOCSIS 3.1 levels are probably higher than normal but you would have to call tech support to determine what those numbers are. 

 

If the techs are around I'd ask about the high signal levels.  I wonder if they're going to dial that down since those nodes aren't driving all of the modems in the neighbourhood now.  

 

If you run a wired speedtest using the www.speedtest.net Toronto Vmedia server, what do you get for results?

Re: Time For Takeoff

toolcubed
I'm a senior contributor
540-560 down and 21 up over wifi on my 500/20 plan. Wired will likely be similar or slightly higher on download speed.

Another thing...now I don’t have a MOCA filter because I’m only using the splitter. Can I grab one somewhere (like a Rogers store) or do I have to get a tech to visit for that? I REALLY want to avoid a tech visit.

Re: Time For Takeoff

I'd call the nearest Rogers store and ask.  I doubt they would have any, but, hey, you never know.   Failing that, if you happen to see a tech in the neighbourhood, I'd ask the tech for one.  

 

Are you using a MoCO 2.0 qualified splitter?  

 

http://www.hollandelectronics.com/catalog/catalog.php?product_id=catv-moca-splitter

 

Here's the spec sheet for the MoCA filters.  Assuming that the splitter is indoors, a MOCA-IHF would do:

 

http://www.hollandelectronics.com/pdf/MoCA-Series-Filters-1.6.pdf

 

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