nbn™ can be quick to conclude that a customer’s internal cabling is the culprit for slow speed issues and drop outs on an FTTN service, but can the cabling in your premise cause such a problem? In Short, Yes.
Your internal cabling can make a significant difference in the stability, speed and ultimately your overall experience of your nbn™ FTTN (Fibre-to-the-Node) service.
Let’s take a trip back in time, back to when our telephone network simply handled plain old telephone services (or POTS/PSTN for short). Generally, the wiring inside your premises didn’t really matter too much, as long as the wires were connected, you could hear the person on the other end. There were two (2) typical ways in which a premises were cabled for standard POTS/PSTN lines, which were “Daisy-Chained” or “Star Topology”.
Basic Star Topology - In this case, all of the wire pairs within a premises are connected in some centralized location. In most cases, there is a distribution bridge located somewhere close to the demarcation point at the customer premise.
Daisy Chain Topology - In a daisy chain, one set of wires is run throughout the entire home with telephone outlets connecting to the previous socket in a "daisy chain".
So what difference does this cabling make?
The example attainable data rates for the Daisy Chain and Star configurations from a test case are shown in the table below. Please note that the baseline data rates for this particular test were measured at 86.7Mbits/s downstream, 32.9Mbits/s upstream.
As you can see, the presence of Star and/or Daisy Chained Cabling can have a significant reduction in your lines maximum attainable rate (maximum throughput speed). In this particular study, the daisy chain configuration observed a 47% reduction in downstream and 1% reduction upstream. In the star configuration, there was a 62% reduction in downstream and 23% reduction upstream.
What can I do?
For the best performance on the nbn™ FTTN (Fibre-to-the-Node) network, we recommend that our customers contact a local licensed telecommunications cabler to have their in-premise cabling checked and remedied. New and old premises can benefit from in-premise cabling remediation and nbn™ frequently request that a customer’s internal cabling be checked to assist in resolving a fault. More information from nbn™ including a link to a listing of registered cablers can be found at https://www.nbnco.com.au/learn/optimisation