Some friends recently had their NBN Fibre to the Node connection installed, and compared with the old connections I’d been dealing with, it felt extremely fast. This website was even being hosted there for a while, which might explain some of the downtime. ;)

Technically, FTTN runs fibre to a nearby street node and uses the existing copper telephone network for the final section to the premises. The photograph above shows one particular section of old copper I encountered, rather than the condition of every FTTN connection. Look at it. It looks 100-odd years old, doesn’t it? Distance from the node and the condition of the copper can affect VDSL2 performance, which was part of why I was so frustrated with the approach.

I hope we get a government in that can fix this mess up. The copper should have been done away with completely. That was my view in 2016, aimed at the shortcomings of copper-dependent FTTN, not a claim that every connection was unusable.

Dropouts every…

disconnected

Sources

• nbn - Fibre to the Node Explained
• nbn - Setting the Facts Straight on Fibre to the Node