7 ms·

A British village that built one of the UK’s fastest internet networks

76 points by pujjad 6y ago

bb123 6y ago
For clarity, this is not the same Clapham as the area of central London.
- acallaghan 6y ago
  'Village' should be a clue there
  - brigandish 6y ago
    Wimbledon Village is in London, not that it's really a village any longer. Even when lowercased, a denomination such as village isn't going to be a clue in a city like London with tiny pockets of communities that may have been there since Boudicca was whispered in the local pubs as a code to drink up.
ghyttu 6y ago
Clapham is not remote at all, however, B4rn does serve more remote areas and farms. Also the network started in a village called Arkholme and the HQ based in Melling.
- dang 6y ago
  Ok, we've moved it closer in the title above.
- tialaramex 6y ago
  It's certainly not remote by American standards, but if not for the fact it has a railway station [that's why Clapham (Yorkshire) is on the drop down list of things you might have meant when you ask the railway ticketing system for tickets to Clapham even if you actually meant Clapham Junction the busy interchange in London] it'd be pretty far from anywhere by English standards. And that railway station is a good long walk from the actual village of Clapham anyway. I went there because they have a very large hole in the ground nearby. A stream flowing over the hills reached a crack formed presumably by repeating freezing and thawing, and worked its way down from the brow of one hill to a river below, over a tremendously long period of time the flowing water has worn a cathedral-sized hole inside the hill. Twice a year tourists can get lowered down to see for themselves, cavers set up a proper winch and safety gear and let idiots like me with no experience wander about and gawp at it for a fee. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaping_Gill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaping_Gill
hogFeast 6y ago
It is also funny to look at a map of network speeds in the UK. Everywhere is slow apart from Hull (a relatively gritty fishing town in the North East). This is the only place where the local telephone company wasn't taken over by BT, and was the first city to have full fibre. I understand that it is hard to provide fast internet to some parts of the UK...but most of England, where most people live, is fairly densely populated...this shouldn't be hard. The solution isn't for people to do this themselves, that reverses common sense (how can it be cheaper for some guy to just dig a cable themselves? it makes no sense). It is for the people who should be doing this to just do their job properly (BT have done pretty much everything to make themselves look bad, it is unreal...for some reason people still think Gavin Patterson is a legend rather than a gaffe-prone moron).
- iptrans 6y ago
  The reason why it’s cheaper for some guy to just dig a cable themselves is simple: 80% of network construction costs are labor costs. If your spare time is “free”, of course you are going to be able to compete on costs with a paid professional.
  - kalleboo 6y ago
    And if you're willing to take the risks yourself, you can skimp on health & safety
- tialaramex 6y ago
  96% of households in the UK can get 30 Mbps. Now, some people do lots of hand waving at this point. Surely, they argue, if everybody had gigabit networking instead of just 30 Mbps we'd find some exciting new application to justify it? Nope. Some communities do have this and they don't invent new applications it mostly sits idle. The other fun thing that people say here is "Well but they don't". That's true, they can get 30 Mbps but they choose slightly cheaper offerings that are much lower speed. So why are you desperate to deploy higher bandwidth offerings? If your company finds that take-up of new 30 litre per second water supplies isn't what you hoped for, do you conclude people must need 30 cubic metres per second of water instead and deploy bigger high pressure pipes? Or do you say "Wait a minute, maybe people actually have enough water?"
throw0101a 6y ago
A few years ago Ars also had a good article on Ammon, Idaho, which build an open-access municipal fibre infrastructure that ISPs offer services on: * https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/what-if-switching-fiber-isps-was-as-easy-as-clicking-a-mouse/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/what-... The embedded video is a good intro on muni-fibre: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSQVvFY4lPI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSQVvFY4lPI Personally I think that's how all Internet connectivity should be done: the OIS Level 1/2 stuff is run either by the government, or at least a non-profit, and the IP connectivity is handle by the private sector.
- ghthor 6y ago
  Yes, it's the only way we will get good last mile fiber rollouts.
- walrus01 6y ago
  A number of the county owned public utility districts in Washington state have done exactly that, osi layer 1 and 2 run by the county. Individual ISPs establish NNIs with the county at a core network locations and offer layer 3 (and billing, customer end user support, other value added services).
iwaslensis 6y ago
My Partners family were one of the originals on this (and live just outside the village). It has to be said that it is by far the best broadband I have experienced - even when compared to corporate internet that I work with
- kmlx 6y ago
  i'm curios about the speed. i live in London and use Hyperoptic with the 1000mbps up and down subscription (and according to my ubiquiti, the speeds are real).
  - iwaslensis 6y ago
    In the tests I’ve done they’re achieving in the range of 700 up/down, for them though the big selling point has been the reliability - I can speak from experience (living on a farm myself) that sure the speed isn’t great, maybe in the high teens to low twenties, but the annoying thing is the constant dropouts
jonwinstanley 6y ago
Great to see this story on HN, I have been at a home which was connected to B4RN and got 105mb down/154mb up. And yes, I kept a note of it for some reason.
yuhoo 6y ago
I dont know man, at my east european subhuman (as some british see us gipsies) mansion, where i live without housemates, my gigabit ethernet works pretty much within params. I pay 15 euros for it because we are poor and you know have topup are pools. But these superior white brits had to form a mini army to get there gigabit so i guess they got that going which is fine. Good night, going in of my poor 12 rooms for a nap - my in house fibre had a long day.

76 points by pujjad 6y ago

bb123 6y ago

For clarity, this is not the same Clapham as the area of central London.

acallaghan 6y ago
'Village' should be a clue there
- brigandish 6y ago
  Wimbledon Village is in London, not that it's really a village any longer. Even when lowercased, a denomination such as village isn't going to be a clue in a city like London with tiny pockets of communities that may have been there since Boudicca was whispered in the local pubs as a code to drink up.

ghyttu 6y ago

Clapham is not remote at all, however, B4rn does serve more remote areas and farms. Also the network started in a village called Arkholme and the HQ based in Melling.

dang 6y ago
Ok, we've moved it closer in the title above.
tialaramex 6y ago
It's certainly not remote by American standards, but if not for the fact it has a railway station [that's why Clapham (Yorkshire) is on the drop down list of things you might have meant when you ask the railway ticketing system for tickets to Clapham even if you actually meant Clapham Junction the busy interchange in London] it'd be pretty far from anywhere by English standards. And that railway station is a good long walk from the actual village of Clapham anyway. I went there because they have a very large hole in the ground nearby. A stream flowing over the hills reached a crack formed presumably by repeating freezing and thawing, and worked its way down from the brow of one hill to a river below, over a tremendously long period of time the flowing water has worn a cathedral-sized hole inside the hill. Twice a year tourists can get lowered down to see for themselves, cavers set up a proper winch and safety gear and let idiots like me with no experience wander about and gawp at it for a fee. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaping_Gill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaping_Gill

hogFeast 6y ago

It is also funny to look at a map of network speeds in the UK. Everywhere is slow apart from Hull (a relatively gritty fishing town in the North East). This is the only place where the local telephone company wasn't taken over by BT, and was the first city to have full fibre. I understand that it is hard to provide fast internet to some parts of the UK...but most of England, where most people live, is fairly densely populated...this shouldn't be hard. The solution isn't for people to do this themselves, that reverses common sense (how can it be cheaper for some guy to just dig a cable themselves? it makes no sense). It is for the people who should be doing this to just do their job properly (BT have done pretty much everything to make themselves look bad, it is unreal...for some reason people still think Gavin Patterson is a legend rather than a gaffe-prone moron).

iptrans 6y ago
The reason why it’s cheaper for some guy to just dig a cable themselves is simple: 80% of network construction costs are labor costs. If your spare time is “free”, of course you are going to be able to compete on costs with a paid professional.
- kalleboo 6y ago
  And if you're willing to take the risks yourself, you can skimp on health & safety
tialaramex 6y ago
96% of households in the UK can get 30 Mbps. Now, some people do lots of hand waving at this point. Surely, they argue, if everybody had gigabit networking instead of just 30 Mbps we'd find some exciting new application to justify it? Nope. Some communities do have this and they don't invent new applications it mostly sits idle. The other fun thing that people say here is "Well but they don't". That's true, they can get 30 Mbps but they choose slightly cheaper offerings that are much lower speed. So why are you desperate to deploy higher bandwidth offerings? If your company finds that take-up of new 30 litre per second water supplies isn't what you hoped for, do you conclude people must need 30 cubic metres per second of water instead and deploy bigger high pressure pipes? Or do you say "Wait a minute, maybe people actually have enough water?"

throw0101a 6y ago

A few years ago Ars also had a good article on Ammon, Idaho, which build an open-access municipal fibre infrastructure that ISPs offer services on: * https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/what-if-switching-fiber-isps-was-as-easy-as-clicking-a-mouse/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/what-... The embedded video is a good intro on muni-fibre: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSQVvFY4lPI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSQVvFY4lPI Personally I think that's how all Internet connectivity should be done: the OIS Level 1/2 stuff is run either by the government, or at least a non-profit, and the IP connectivity is handle by the private sector.

ghthor 6y ago
Yes, it's the only way we will get good last mile fiber rollouts.
walrus01 6y ago
A number of the county owned public utility districts in Washington state have done exactly that, osi layer 1 and 2 run by the county. Individual ISPs establish NNIs with the county at a core network locations and offer layer 3 (and billing, customer end user support, other value added services).

iwaslensis 6y ago

My Partners family were one of the originals on this (and live just outside the village). It has to be said that it is by far the best broadband I have experienced - even when compared to corporate internet that I work with

kmlx 6y ago
i'm curios about the speed. i live in London and use Hyperoptic with the 1000mbps up and down subscription (and according to my ubiquiti, the speeds are real).
- iwaslensis 6y ago
  In the tests I’ve done they’re achieving in the range of 700 up/down, for them though the big selling point has been the reliability - I can speak from experience (living on a farm myself) that sure the speed isn’t great, maybe in the high teens to low twenties, but the annoying thing is the constant dropouts

jonwinstanley 6y ago

Great to see this story on HN, I have been at a home which was connected to B4RN and got 105mb down/154mb up. And yes, I kept a note of it for some reason.

yuhoo 6y ago

I dont know man, at my east european subhuman (as some british see us gipsies) mansion, where i live without housemates, my gigabit ethernet works pretty much within params. I pay 15 euros for it because we are poor and you know have topup are pools. But these superior white brits had to form a mini army to get there gigabit so i guess they got that going which is fine. Good night, going in of my poor 12 rooms for a nap - my in house fibre had a long day.