By Dan Cash Briant Broadband • Broadband • General Information • Home Entertainment • WiFi • • 0 Comments

How Does Broadband Internet Get From Your ISP To Your Computer?

wireless router, wifi router, router, wireless, digital broadband, broadband, digital, wireless, full fibre, fast fibre, superfast fibre, ultrafast fibre, What technology you have connecting your home to the World Wide Web will drastically affect the speed at which you can access broadband internet.

Up until recently almost all internet infrastructure would have been via ADSL, essentially the old phone cable networking which has been with us for generations. While the internet was a luxury that not everybody needed low speeds and a limited network were sufficient, but now that it’s considered a utility, and a part of the basket of goods by which the retail price index is measured.

Today, with the unrelenting demand for faster and faster broadband the old copper cables can’t cope. The technology was originally designed to transmit the human voice to other people (relatively) nearby. The human voice operates at around 50Hz and most phone calls people make were to friends and neighbours who live nearby. However, by introducing the internet to the equation the phone lines now need to deliver data at 2.45GHz all over the world.

To overcome the limitations a number of solutions have been invented. First among these is Fibre To The Cabinet (FTTC). FTTC is based on fibre optic technology, taking advantage of the fact that by using light instead of electrical impulses to transmit data it can deliver speeds many times that which cable alone can provide. FTTC is something of a compromise in  terms of data speeds and convenience of installation. Fibre optic lines are installed as far as the kerbside cabinets you find at the end of most streets. From there they use the existing copper wires to connect your home to the web. That copper leg does slow the data down, however, because the rest of the data’s journey is fibre optic, the overall system is much faster than copper cable alone. FTTC involves using existing connections to the home, so there is no digging up pavements or installing new overhead lines to each property. Read more

By Dan Cash Briant Broadband • Broadband • Do It Yourself • General Information • Home Entertainment • Tips and Tricks • WiFi • 0 Comments

The Causes Of A Slow Wi-Fi Router And How To Fix It

router, wireless, digital, broadband, internet,It’s no good having up to 900 Mbps Full Fibre if your Wi-Fi connection to your devices is slow. You could plug an ethernet cable from your computer to the router, but that defeats the point of Wi-Fi, and what about all the devices which can’t be plugged in? There are several reasons for poor Wi-Fi, some of which could need investment in extenders, Point to Point transmitters, and mesh discs, but some of them are simple solutions you can take care of in a few minutes.

Router Placement

Where your router is positioned within the home can have an incredible effect on the speed your internet connected devices work. Placing it near the front door, where the cable comes into your home, seems like an obvious idea, but if most of your internet use takes place at the back of the house, upstairs, or in a home office located in the garden then the distance the signal has to travel, and the obstacles it has to pass through can have a great effect on the amount of bandwidth available to each machine.

To overcome this, simply place your router nearer where the action is. If your family doesn’t all sit in the same room to access the internet (and what family would!?) try to place the router at the centre of the home. This means that each laptop, phone, smart speaker and TV will have an equal opportunity to get signal. And place it somewhere high up. It might be tempting to put it on the floor behind a desk, somewhere out of the way, but putting it on the desk, or better yet on a high shelf. This extends the broadcast range and means less objects the signal has to pass through before reaching your device. Read more

By Dan Cash Briant Broadband • Broadband • General Information • Tips and Tricks • WiFi • 0 Comments

Why Briant Broadband Is Different From The Big Boys Of Internet Data

broadband, ISP, internet service provider, full fibre, wireless, wireless internet, A while ago someone unfriendly left a comment on Briant Broadband’s Facebook page about how he couldn’t trust a small ISP because we didn’t have the same clout as the “big boys”. It left us wondering if he thought we were cooking up data in a still in the back garden, or how he thought that any internet provider came about.

As an ISP it’s our job to ensure that you get the best speeds available. We need to ensure that your connection is stable and reliable, and we need to ensure that you get it at the best price. If that wasn’t enough juggling, because Briant Broadband is an installer as well as a data provider we need to provide routers, wireless receivers, and even pull fibre cable under the ground or suspend it from telegraph poles in order to connect you to our service. We are partnered with CityFibre, a national company who are deeply embedded in the scheme to roll out fibre connectivity to 99% of British homes by 2030, but there are some areas they aren’t going to be able to reach for years. And some areas, such as private housing developments and gated communities, as well as particularly remote homesteads where they may never reach at all.

Briant Broadband have solutions. In one remote private estate we established a wireless solution so homes in the area can all benefit from Superfast internet at speeds up to 200 Mbps whereas before they had to rely on copper phone lines for their internet connection which delivered around 10 or 20 Mbps. Another solution which is open to us is to install our own fibre network, connecting all the houses in a community to our own spine and then connecting that to CityFibre’s infrastructure. Read more

By Dan Cash Briant Broadband • Broadband • WiFi • • 0 Comments

Not Connected To Full Fibre Yet? Wireless Broadband Could Be For You

wireless, wireless broadband, superfast broadband, broadband, internet, ISPSure you’ve heard of Wi-Fi, but it’s not the same thing as Wireless broadband. Wi-Fi is the process by which you send and receive internet data between your computer, connected devices, Smart TV and phone when you’re not using your data allowance. Wireless broadband on the other hand is the way your internet service provider gets data to your house if Full Fibre or Fibre to the Cabinet aren’t currently available in your area.

How Does Wireless Internet Work?

Wireless is different from Wi-Fi, 4g or GSM (the mobile phone network) as it does a different job using different technology. Wireless is deployed in areas, such as remote rural areas as it is an cost effective alternative to laying fibre optic cables or installing phone transmitters which might provide coverage which will only reach a few customers. Instead of having phone masts put up, these remote areas have internet ‘beamed’ to them via a mast which the Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP) installs and trains on the area they wish to cover. So long as you can get ‘line of sight’ between the receiver which the ISP provides and their transmitter, you will be able to get high speed broadband. The speeds you can get may not be as fast as Full Fibre or Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC), but they will certainly be far better than anything which was previously available using old copper phone infrastructure. Read more

By Dan Cash Briant Broadband • Broadband • General Information • Home Entertainment • WiFi • • • • 0 Comments

Full Fibre, FTTP, FTTH and FTTC. What Is Going On!?

fibre, fibre optic, fibre optic cable, FTTP, FTTH, FTTC, Full Fibre, Fibre Broadband, broadband, fast fibre, If you’re shopping around for a new broadband internet provider because your old one was too expensive or unreliable you’ve probably been introduced to some new terms which we shall attempt to explain.

You’ll no doubt have heard of FTTC, FTTP and FTTH. The good news is that Full Fibre, FTTP and FTTH are exactly the same thing. They stand for ‘Fibre To The Property’ and ‘Fibre To the Home’ so essentially they both mean that the fibre connection goes all the way from your local exchange down your street, across your garden, through the wall and into your router. Once its there it can deliver up to 900 Mbps which can then be distributed via Wi-Fi or an ethernet cable directly to a laptop or desktop machine, Smart devices and TV.

So what is FTTC?

FTTC is ‘Fibre To The Cabinet’. The cabinet in question is the green phone cabinet you probably have at the end of your street. Sometimes you’ll see a phone engineer sitting in front of one deftly knitting among a bird’s nest of cables and you wonder how they can possibly make any sense of the jumble of wires in front of them. So the fibre goes from the exchange, down your street, but instead of going across your garden and into your wall, it stops at this cabinet and gets connected to your copper phone line instead. Because the copper wire is already installed right up the phone socket in your home it’s much cheaper to install and far less disruptive as there is much less digging of residential streets involved. Dynamic Line Management takes care of ensuring that your connection remains, error free, fast and stable automatically. Read more