What Are My Internet Connection Choices?

Copper And Aluminium Lines.

The Oldest Connections. Still The Only Choice For 98% of UK Businesses.

All Copper.

Biggest disadvantage is technically called "reflective impedance". This is the physical effect of line length.

It means that the longer the line the slower the transmission speed.

Therefore the further from the exchange you are the slower your internet connection will be.

Your speed is also affected by:

The number of wire joints between you and the exchange.

The number of people being served by that loop connection. Known as contention.

A simple explanation is -

External Contention Is the number of other premises being served and -

Internal Contention is the number of people accessing your internet connection in your premises, on your line.

Domestic ADSL connections have a contention ratio of 50 to 1.

this means that your speed is divided by up to 50 other premises simultaneously using your exchange loop.

Business ADSL connections have a contention ratio of 20 to 1.

this means that your speed is divided by up to 20 other premises simultaneously using your exchange loop.

At high multiple usage times this can reduce your connection speed.

Various technologies are now used to increase the effective speed of your ADSL connection, such as ADSL2 and ADSL2+.

I will cover this in a seperate blog article.

FTTC.

Fibre To The Cabinet.

Many premises now have fibre to their local street connection box which is served by a fibre optic connection.

Whilst not as good as a direct fibre connection to your premises because you still need a copper connection between your premises and the street box, it does mean that much faster connection speeds are possible because the copper connection is very short.

FTTP.

Fibre To The Premises.

This is where the connection to the exchange is direct fibre all the way and provides the fastest speeds possible.

Usually contention free (known as uncontended or having a contention ratio of 1 to 1) it is unaffected by sharing.

It still has internal contention but because of the high speed this is unlikely to be an issue.

It is the most expensive option but is usually more than justified because of the business efficiency gains for your business and the number of people who can simultaneously connect without speed issues.

GPON.

Gigabit Passive Optical Network.

A wires only connection, where you would supply your own router. we will show you how to do this.

A very good alternative to FTTP because it is substantially cheaper whilst still delivering very high speeds.

The connection can be shared among 8 premises but this is very unlikely to cause any issues and in any event high minimum speeds are guaranteed by the supplier.