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It has finally happened 😊

The fibre internet has reached our semi-remote location here in Vale de Prazeres.

We have been hoping and waiting for this service since we first transferred our MEO broadband and TV to this house. Having previously enjoyed the fibre internet at the apartment in Fundão it was a huge let-down to find that we could only get a connection over the copper telephone line. The person in the MEO shop said we could have up to 40Mb/s download but when the system was installed this was obviously wrong. The router was configured for 16Mb/s download and 2Mb/s upload and the true speeds we could achieve were embarrassing at usually around 4-6Mb/s download and less than 1Mb/s upload.

Last year a new, local company provided a faster broadband service using 'over-the-air' technology. We subscribed to that and found the operating speeds were as advertised, a huge improvement. Unfortunately, there were a couple of limiting factors, the main problem being that only an IPv6 address was provided to the outside internet, this meant that incoming connections to the web server and other services had to be routed through a third-party service to give access to clients with only IPv4 addresses. This was a significant issue and although it worked, it caused some undesirable effects.

Finding out that fibre was being rolled out in our region was a welcome surprise. We certainly had not expected it to happen so soon and with the help of a 'manager' we are now connected to the internet via high-speed fiber with TV service and advertised speeds of 1Gb/s download and 400Mb/s upload. Testing the speed with a single computer connected directly to the router with a Cat-7 cable showed a download speed varying between 400 and 680 Mb/s and an upload speed of 250-300 Mb/s.

In the real world, the router is connected via a 16 port network switch hosting surveillance cameras, TVs, various 'smart' home devices, and our home media server. With the internal cabling around the house being Cat-6a, the internet speeds are still impressive at nearly 300Mb/s both downstream and upstream while watching two different TV channels and displaying three video camera streams locally.

Obviously, we are very happy with the installation and hope that the improved bandwidth is noticeable to the users of our website.

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