Stop using Ziggo coax

[iamkarlson]

Hello there,
First of all, sorry for english.

I recently got a contract with Ziggo because I had no choice and now I got this coax box. I called their customer support and surprisingly they told me that since last year, they are obliged by law to provide direct access to a media converter like KPN or any other provider does. I'm trying to find any proof of this so I can convince them to make this connection for me but it's really hard. All I could find is marketing nonsense from Ziggo&Vodafone officials about how good coax connection is. This is of course a lie because their coax router adds at least a couple of ms latency for any connection. I believe it's due to poor coax montage inside the house. I mean even for privacy reasons they have a device in my home under full control with has radio, and you can do so many things with such a fleet of coax routers.

What's the current state of Ziggo phasing out coax and how can I force them to provide me with direct access to the media converter?

[Umbrah]

Je hebt vrije modemkeuze: review: Vrije modemkeuze is een feit - Na jaren strijd delen providers specif... -- Ziggo gebruikt DOCSIS3.1 en daar zul je dus een omvormer/converter voor moeten vinden, of het hun apparatuur is (al dan niet in bridge mode), of je eigen (zoals een Fritzbox 6690).

Ziggo heeft inderdaad wát hogere latency dan FTTH, maar met de peering van sommige budget providers merk je er in de praktijk niet veel van, de peering van Ziggo is vrij redelijk, en de peering van een Odido is érg ruk.

Ziggo zal misschien wat vaker FTTH leggen in nieuwbouw, maar bestaande bouw niet echt aanpassen, tot de wijkkast ís het namelijk al optical. En coax zit gewoon véél capaciteit op. Docsis4 gaat tot 10gbit down, 6gbit up. De latency van de techniek is mede door de optische wijkkasten eigenlijk niet slechter. En je kan je eigen apparatuur gebruiken. Of de ziggo apparatuur in bridge mode zetten.

[RonnieKo]

*knip*

[ Voor 168% gewijzigd door Yariva op 30-05-2025 21:53 ]

[Yariva]

Engelstalige posts zijn toegestaan en zijn nergens in de regels van dit sub-forum of de algemene regels verboden. De OP heeft wel kans dat er veel minder reacties op de post komen dan wanneer deze in het Nederlands zou zijn geschreven. Maar dat is OP's probleem.

[nelizmastr]

Voor coax/docsis is er geen mediaconverter, je hebt een modem nodig. Je bent vrij om er bijv. een Fritzbox of een ander compatibel apparaat aan te knopen, maar er moet te allen tijde een kabelmodem compatibel met de huidige eurodocsis standaard in zitten.

In zeer beperkte gevallen leveren ze wel over glasvezel, maar daarvoor is de keuze alleen maar moeilijker omdat je dan weer een modem moet hebben dat docsis over fiber kan praten.

Wil je de simpelse oplossing? Zet de Ziggo modem in bridge, dan is het een mediaconverter. Knoop er dan lekker je eigen meuk aan of wat je dan ook zelf wil

[ Voor 16% gewijzigd door nelizmastr op 30-05-2025 21:55 ]

[Shinji]

iamkarlson schreef op vrijdag 30 mei 2025 @ 21:27:
Hello there,
First of all, sorry for english.

I recently got a contract with Ziggo because I had no choice and now I got this coax box. I called their customer support and surprisingly they told me that since last year, they are obliged by law to provide direct access to a media converter like KPN or any other provider does. I'm trying to find any proof of this so I can convince them to make this connection for me but it's really hard. All I could find is marketing nonsense from Ziggo&Vodafone officials about how good coax connection is. This is of course a lie because their coax router adds at least a couple of ms latency for any connection. I believe it's due to poor coax montage inside the house. I mean even for privacy reasons they have a device in my home under full control with has radio, and you can do so many things with such a fleet of coax routers.

What's the current state of Ziggo phasing out coax and how can I force them to provide me with direct access to the media converter?

I don’t know if you can read the Dutch answers on your questions, but basically you are stuck with coax if you stick with Ziggo. If by using the word mediaconverter you expect ziggo to give you access to a fiber connection then this will not happen, Ziggo is starting to use fiber to the home in some newly build locations but it will be a long time until they will replace the coax cables already installed.

You have an option to use your own modem (which is enforced by a law). But the choice of devices usable is very limited. If you want to build your own network with your own router/firewall/ap you can ask them to put the current modem in “bridge mode”. You connect your own equipment to port 1 on the Ziggo box and get the public IP on your own equipment.

[jurroen]

Unfortunately, you can't stop using coax - unless you are in one of the very few locations that are truly FttH (XGS-PON, not RFoG).

There aren't any media converters / ONTs that work for coax. At least not with the EuroDOCSIS variant that Ziggo uses.

Right now, I am not aware of any better options than to either bridge the Ziggo modem (and let your own equipment handle the routing, firewalling etc) - or get your own modem from the limited offering. Certain Fritz!Box models come to mind.

But let's take a few steps back. You mention experiencing a higher latency. It would be helpful to know how high that latency actually is (and also how you measure it).

Regarding the CPE - well, I fully understand that one - same attitude here. But as mentioned, your options are unfortunately rather limited.

You could try to setup a neighborhood survey with one of the fiber suppliers - but it isn't always as trivial and might involve quite a bit of effort from your side.

Last but not least, there are some business fiber providers that will happily connect you to their network. But expect at the very least pricing that is five to ten times the amount Ziggo charges, a long contract and very likely a steep fee to run the cable to your house. 100K for 5KM isn't absurd, unfortunately. Might even be way higher for longer distances, added complexity (rivers, main roads etc). I think it is a pretty fair assumption that this is not an option.

[iamkarlson]

Alright, thank you all for the answers. It seems like I'm sadly stuck with coax and would have to find my way around it.

[The Eagle]

De latency van een kabelmodem, is, al die er al is, minimaal en altijd verwaarloosbaar. Wat ze leveren is een router met ingebouwd kabelmodem. Je zit dus rechtstreeks op hun infra.

Dat het ding bij jou in huis misschien verbindingsissues heeft, kan door een brakke kabelinstallatie komen. Maar dat kan alleen als het ding niet bij het AOP (abonee overname punt) geinstalleerd is.

Voor de rest zijn al je aannames niet valide. Privacy ed zijn een groot ding in europa, dit in tegenstelling tot in sommige andere delen van de wereld.
Het spul werkt gewoon, spioneert niet. Ik zeg niet mopperen en gewoon gebruiken

[FooLsKi]

Right, 'cause you don't grasp the workings of Eurodocsis, people should stop using Ziggo coax?
If there's no FttH where you live, you can always go to DSL, where you have higher latencies.
I've used Ziggo (and predecessors) for a little over 25 years and I never had major complaints about the quality. The one time I did, they investigated and replaced the AOP. Ping was usually under 20ms, IIRC.

The bad thing about ZiggoVodafone is their 'customer service', who lie and make up sh*t. For me, that's the only reason I'm not going back there. Their technology (and especially DVB-C) is very decent.

[skimine]

iamkarlson schreef op vrijdag 30 mei 2025 @ 21:27:
Hello there,
First of all, sorry for english.

I recently got a contract with Ziggo because I had no choice and now I got this coax box. I called their customer support and surprisingly they told me that since last year, they are obliged by law to provide direct access to a media converter like KPN or any other provider does. I'm trying to find any proof of this so I can convince them to make this connection for me but it's really hard.

As mentioned by @jurroen you are free to buy your own coax modem and use it instead of the Ziggo-provided one. I think you can just call customer support to get any configuration information needed to set it up. But they are not obligated to provide any help beyond that because it is your own equipment.

All I could find is marketing nonsense from Ziggo&Vodafone officials about how good coax connection is. This is of course a lie because their coax router adds at least a couple of ms latency for any connection.

What is your specific usecase? Because generally the little extra latency compared to fiber is negligible.

I believe it's due to poor coax montage inside the house.

It could be that there are issues with the coax connection in the house. For this you can call Ziggo customer service so they can send over a technician to investigate. Sometimes they have to upgrade the coax termination point because of changes in their network.

I mean even for privacy reasons they have a device in my home under full control with has radio, and you can do so many things with such a fleet of coax routers.

This is generally not an issue (in the Netherlands). When it comes to spying the average smartphone is way more interesting approach. Besides, even with your own hardware any provider could potentially spy on you in another part of their network.

What's the current state of Ziggo phasing out coax and how can I force them to provide me with direct access to the media converter?

Completely phasing-out coax will not come anytime soon as this is super expensive and the current network is good enough so they don't have many reasons to replace it.

[Umbrah]

Honestly, I've lived abroad, and had to deal with Coax in other countries, and while it varies per country: The Netherlands is actually really good. It's nothing compared to, say, the UK, where to my knowledge the only coax provider (and often other than VDSL IF at all) is Virgin Media.

Virgin is known for:

- Provider level QoS
- Overprovisioning the cable
- Locking down hardware extremely and delivering crappy hardware

So you'd end up with anything other than mom and pop services like netflix being horribly slow during rush hours, whilst your poor CPU-capped provider delivered device is horribly antiquated barely managing a reasonable packages/min load.

Ziggo is nothing like that, as the beforementioned freedom of device choice (there ARE eurodocsys 3.x compatible alternatives, as the Fritzbox I mentioned before, which are actually good), they have to adhere to net neutrality, and they have rather fierce competition: a while the pre-FTTH providers like KPN were seriously sweating and running a "counter the cable"-project, whereas Ziggo is now actually at least trying to do something to counter the fact that having 8gbit FTTH is actually a possibility, and "mom and pop" speeds are dirt cheap.

I'm currently on Freedom Internet through a KPN FTTH setup, with my own devices, and whilst it's true the latency is a bit lower, when looking at tweakers.net or azure it's usually at most a 1ms difference which could just as easily be related to peering (and to give some context: that's like going from 6ms to 5ms: within margin of error)

I really don't understand your issue with coax, honestly, FTTH, like ethernet, has advantages, but let's not forget it was primarily invented to go vast distances and be non-conductive, rather than be faster.

There is no economic reason, with the fact that said coax can currently do 10gbit down/6gbit up, to replace it by optics especially because the bottlenecks have already been resolved. The only issue you could have is the product definition that Ziggo offers:

- The bandwidth mixes they offer (they still do a kind-of 8:1 thing, which is looking at my own synchronous bandwidth being monitored by my own stuff actually matches, but because of work I do "spike" big uploads often, the sum is still 8:1) might not be up your taste, which is NOT a coax issue
- Their choice of peering (though it is pretty decent) might not be to your desire
- The bundling of products like DVB-C TV (which does have the highest bandwidth/channel so technically the best image quality)
- Their customer service/in-depth tech knowledge when you call them

Again -- all of it not a real technological limitation: coax is fine. And the equipment is "okay" and you have MULTIPLE ways to fix that (like: the bridge mode that was mentioned before which makes the CPU of those devices literally sit at near-0% because it doesn't do anything and is more or less only a docsis-to-ethernet converter which give a direct public IP to whatever you hook up, no NAT, no routing, no nothing)

[CAPSLOCK2000]

iamkarlson schreef op vrijdag 30 mei 2025 @ 21:27:
I believe it's due to poor coax montage inside the house. I mean even for privacy reasons they have a device in my home under full control with has radio, and you can do so many things with such a fleet of coax routers.

What's the current state of Ziggo phasing out coax and how can I force them to provide me with direct access to the media converter?

The law says you have the right to replace Ziggo's router with your own device. Ziggo even has to provide limited support such as providing the right settings. (Obviously it's your responsibility to buy a compatible device).

Ziggo does not do fiber to end-users (with a few small exceptions) only coax. Coax does not use media-converters, you can connect the coax cable directly to your router. If it is shoddy montage before the hand-over point Ziggo should fix it (the green coax cable). They should be able to measure this remotely. However I don't expect them to care about a few ms.
After the handoverpoint it's all yours.

[O085105116N]

"What's the current state of Ziggo phasing out coax and how can I force them to provide me with direct access to the media converter?"

1: Ziggo is not phasing out coax
2: You can install your own compatible modem, so you don't need to use the Ziggo modem.
3: Their coax network is fairly stable, I personally haven't had any major issues/outages.
4: direct access to the mediaconverter, I assume the modem, define direct acces, you have "admin" access.
5: Ziggo has the option to put their modem in bridge mode, so you indeed, it just becomes a mediaconverter.

[shure-fan]

Why is the latency so important?

Please tell us about the reason why you want certain services? Are you running a server behind the connection? Or something else going on?

[Kasper1985]

The coax network is pushed to its limits but only “the last mile” is still coax.

The “connectbox” they provide you with is a massive box compared to some but it works (for the most part). In the ziggo app it can be switched into modem only mode (if you’re lucky you don’t need to call them) so you can use your own router.

I actually have both ftth fiber and ziggo and the difference in latency is about 10ms. Which might be relevant if you play professional esports or depend on a low latency connection professionally. But for those cases (as others mentioned) there’s always the option of a dedicated FTTH line.
KPN and others are still expanding the fiber network at full speed ahead so you might get lucky and only be stuck with ziggo for a year or so.

[The Eagle]

*knip* op de man en wannabe mod.

[ Voor 86% gewijzigd door rens-br op 02-06-2025 07:37 ]

[nelizmastr]

FooLsKi schreef op zaterdag 31 mei 2025 @ 12:29:

If there's no FttH where you live, you can always go to DSL, where you have higher latencies.

DSL heeft lagere latency dan kabel (DOCSIS) hoor. Ik heb nog nooit een Ziggo/UPC onder de 10-15ms gezien (ook onbelast) en ken de nodige DSL aansluitingen in het 5-10ms bereik die nog altijd in gebruik zijn (zowel particulier als zakelijk). Als je daarboven zit is het wel een hele slechte lijn.

[FooLsKi]

nelizmastr schreef op zondag 1 juni 2025 @ 12:43:
[...]


DSL heeft lagere latency dan kabel (DOCSIS) hoor. Ik heb nog nooit een Ziggo/UPC onder de 10-15ms gezien (ook onbelast) en ken de nodige DSL aansluitingen in het 5-10ms bereik die nog altijd in gebruik zijn (zowel particulier als zakelijk). Als je daarboven zit is het wel een hele slechte lijn.

Mijn (toegegeven, zeer beperkte) ervaring met DSL is dat het erg traag was met hoge latencies. Dat was ook al flink lang geleden

[jurroen]

FooLsKi schreef op zondag 1 juni 2025 @ 14:41:
[...]

Mijn (toegegeven, zeer beperkte) ervaring met DSL is dat het erg traag was met hoge latencies. Dat was ook al flink lang geleden

Mijn vroegere ervaring (bdVDSL2+) is dat Ziggo een hogere latency heeft. Volgens mij was mijn uplink toen rond de 12ms, waar Ziggo rond de 17ms zat. En nu, met fiber: 3-4ms over KPN netwerk, 1-2ms over Eurofiber netwerk. Is alsnog niet iets wat voor de meeste mensen relevant is, pas als je een pro-gamer bent of om een andere reden vrijwel zero latency nodig hebt.

En dan bedoel ik ook echt nodig hebben, niet dat het enkel de mindset is "lager is beter".