Piers Daniell

Interesting piece on thinkbroadband.com with regards to router speeds over the O2/Be network we did a few months back. Basically as part of the wholesale offering for ADSL2+ we had to collate data on all the types of routers they may use and test them under lab conditions.

Although the Cisco’s came out near the bottom they did perform well with upload and in my mind have proved the most reliable and still what I would recommend to customers.

A lot of focus on the wholesale platform is giving other ISPs the ability to bond multiple lines together to get EFM speeds using the nationwide Be ADSL2+ network. We have had a lot of success recently with Cisco’s MLPPP protocol enabling multiple lines to act as one end to end. As you can see from the below graph showing a thinkbroadband.com speed test that it achieved 26.7 Mb/s download and 4.0 Mb/s upload on two lines bonded at over 1,500 meters from the exchange. This accurately doubles the capacity of the individual lines.

We are continuing to work with our partners on developing this offering to include more than two lines so that leased line speeds are achieved across this network.

We have some advertising running in the press at the moment on the new wholesale platform in partnership with Be. The platform allows for other network operators to have direct L2TP (Layer 2) access to the Be ADSL2+ cloud so that they can offer this network to their client base. Being the only network in the UK to fully support Annex-M (ie 2.6 Mb/s upload) and Cisco hardware there has been a lot of interest from ISPs looking to take this service on.

Another major milestone has been our ability to demonstrate end to end line bonding using Cisco’s MLPPP (Multilink PPP) protocol on this platform which partners can offer to their client. Being able to bond four lines to deliver up to 80 Mb/s down and 10 Mb/s upstream is a powerful message.

Exciting developments in the world of Fluidata with the latest announcement of us partnering with Be to offer their ADSL2+ technology to other ISPs. We have been using the network for the past two years and have developed some of our own unique technology to make the most of the 20 Mb/s down and 2.6 Mb/s upload speeds that the product can support. With this latest announcement we will be able to offer this platform directly to the rest of the industry giving more access to this leading edge network.

Wholesaling the network is different to dealing directly with consumers as it is important to give as much control to the partner so that they can add their service rap to the product. We believe we have achieved this with the L2TP interface and direct access to the DSLAM at each exchange giving partners unparalleled visibility of each customer. This not only gives the partner better tools to support their clients but also reduces the burden on us to invest in a call centre and instead we can continue just to invest in 3^rd level engineers.

One interesting aspect of this network is the support for Cisco hardware. Tiscali recently had to announce to their channel that their ADSL2+ with Annex-M wouldn’t work with Cisco whereas we have been using it for a number of years without a single issue. This is probably due to the Alcatel chipset being deployed in both the routers and the exchanges. This is an important point as most businesses like to deploy Cisco hardware as ‘you don’t get fired for buying Cisco’.

Hopefully all the years at the receiving end of the channel will have translated into a superb partnership experience for ISPs looking for alternative providers.