cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

FTTP 330Mb trial - day 1, not as straight forward as it would seem!

digitalfixer
Grafter
Posts: 41
Thanks: 1
Registered: ‎20-11-2010

FTTP 330Mb trial - day 1, not as straight forward as it would seem!

Well arrived home from work eager to try the new superfast Fibre connection.  Had been told that I might need to reboot OTN but decided first to try it and see if I needed to or not.  So plugged Laptop into Router and tried a quick Speed test via ThinkBroadBand.Com., 9.9mb down and 9.9mb upload!!!!  OK must need rebooting, so re-booted OTN and Router and tried again same result.  What’s going on? 
As router is in loft, decided to carry on investigations in office (back bedroom), tried BT site and this time speed was showing as 94mb down 29mb up.  Must be ThinkBroadBand.Com, so tried site again and got similar results to BT.  Why is it running slow when connected directly to router but faster (still not what I was expecting) when connected to a separate switch then router. 
Decided to go back into loft and try again, but this time I decided to check line speed of connection to router first; 10mb. Aaaaargh!!!!!, seems my laptop and the Netgear router don’t want to auto negotiate at 1Gb instead deciding on 10mb.

So a few minutes later tried the speed test again, now starting to see results along the lines I was expecting.

Still not the 330mb that the line promises but starting to get there.  Watching the router when I do the test I suspect part of the problem may now be the router can’t keep up with the speeds of the line.  I also suspect that the speed test sites cant cope either so might need to look at different speed test sites.
Ok, so that explains why I was getting 10mb when directly connected to router, but why was I only getting 94mb in the office.  Checked Switch which is a Gigabit Switch and connection from laptop was showing as 1Gb (this did auto negotiate).  But the link light on the uplink to the router is only showing as 100mb.  Disconnected switch from cable in office and pluged it directly into Router in Loft, now it shows as a 1Gb connection.  Must be problem with cable, bit more digging, realised cable is only Cat5 (max 100mbs) not Cat5e, worse than that it is buried in wall, so is not going to be easy to replace, but will have too as that is only physical connection to office and with the speed of the Broadband being far in excess of wireless speeds I will need too if I want to see the full benefit of this new connection.
Luckily as wall is dry lined I should be able to pull the old cable through along with a new replacement (cat6 this time).  But that is going to have to wait until tomorrow!
So a few Lessons
1. Make sure the physical connection between the PC and Router do actually connect at the speed you expect.  For 330mb that means you have to connect at 1gb.
2. You can no longer get away with a wireless connection if you want to take full advantage of the speed.
3. Make sure your network really is up to the job.  You need to be able to run at least 1Gb that means you need a minimum of Cat5e cable ideally Cat6.
However, I suppose what most people want to know is it any faster in reality.  Unfortunately, even when connected directly to the router it did not seem any faster, but as I have spent most of the evening trying to sort out other issues its difficult to be sure.  Hopefully, once I have replaced the wiring, and have installed the new router that Dave has sent out things will go a bit better.
9 REPLIES 9
bigladuk
Grafter
Posts: 114
Registered: ‎03-08-2010

Re: FTTP 330Mb trial - day 1, not as straight forward as it would seem!

Nice write up and some great detail for anyone considering 300MB broadband.
I found Speedtest.net gave me the best results

This link shows you all my results for different servers http://www.speedtest.net/results.php?sh=46a5e1c3ee57b27586c8e82db6a74cb5&ria=0 ,notice the server hosted in London by Namesco gets me pretty much 300MB everytime which is odd as nothing else comes close
Everything I download ( which is where I need THIS speed ) is handled by my mini server/NAS which is hardwired via CAT5s to the router which intern is hardwired to the ONT via CAT5e. Everything else I need to do like streaming HD TV via iPlayer, browsing etc works fine over my wifi bottleneck from all my wifi devices.
I guess the question has to be asked is there a need for broadband of this speed  ?
Si
adamwalker
Plusnet Help Team
Plusnet Help Team
Posts: 16,871
Thanks: 882
Fixes: 221
Registered: ‎27-04-2007

Re: FTTP 330Mb trial - day 1, not as straight forward as it would seem!

Thanks for the feedback digitalfixer, do keep us posted as much as you're able too, I'll be interested to see how the speeds are with the new cabling and router in place.
If this post resolved your issue please click the 'This fixed my problem' button
 Adam Walker
 Plusnet Help Team
digitalfixer
Grafter
Posts: 41
Thanks: 1
Registered: ‎20-11-2010

Re: FTTP 330Mb trial - day 1, not as straight forward as it would seem!

Hi Adam,
Well got the new Cat6 cable run and so I can now test from the office.  Still awaiting delivery of the new router from PN but at least I don’t need to perch a laptop on top of some old boxes to test now. Smiley
Anyway tried SpeedTest.net as Si suggested and whilst cant get quite the same results I am now seeing well over 200mbs on a regular basis.  Below are a few examples I have just done.



As you will see from this link the results are very variable depending on the hosting site and location http://www.speedtest.net/results.php?sh=0c7d8228b2097413e3471f0e4a2fb844&ria=0
I suspect the reality is that the ability of the test site to cope with these speeds and the performance of the router are now playing a big part in the results.
Whilst the results demonstrate that the line is performing around the speed I would expect, most of the time I can’t really notice the difference in everyday use.  However, VPN to work (also in MK) does seem a little more responsive but I have no real way of validating that.  Also work only has a 100mbs connection so I don’t see how it can be all that different.
I will see how things go and report back once the router has arrived and been installed.  Any idea what has been sent? For reference I have the NetGear N300 currently.
Gary 
bigladuk
Grafter
Posts: 114
Registered: ‎03-08-2010

Re: FTTP 330Mb trial - day 1, not as straight forward as it would seem!

Love how the speedtest pictures say at the bottom "faster then 99% of GB" LOL
Have you done any big/long downloads to see how your average speed over a short time is looking ? I'm dubious about the speed test sites as the size of the file and speed of our connection means its all over in a few seconds.
Be interesting for the 2 of us to try maxing out our lines at the same time to see what happens.....
dave
Plusnet Help Team
Plusnet Help Team
Posts: 12,257
Thanks: 306
Fixes: 4
Registered: ‎04-04-2007

Re: FTTP 330Mb trial - day 1, not as straight forward as it would seem!

Thanks for the results guys. Gary router should go out today, not got a box for it so had to find something to wrap it in to protect it.
There's two or three backhaul links out of your exchange, I don't know if you're both on the same one, although 3 other orders completed this morning so hopefully we'll get some more feedback from them over the weekend. A co-ordinated download would be interesting to see. Like simulating a local high demand event.
Dave Tomlinson
Enterprise Architect - Network & OSS
Plusnet Technology
Sherlock
Dabbler
Posts: 11
Registered: ‎26-04-2012

Re: FTTP 330Mb trial - day 1, not as straight forward as it would seem!

Hi Guys,
Here's my experience so far... As digitalfixer did, out of curiosity I tried a speedtest prior to rebooting the ONT this morning (18th on speedtest.net) which came in at 90.75 Mb/s Down, 21.50Mb/s Up. Best ever beforehand on 100/15 was 95.48 Down / 14.33 Up, so upload had improved straight away. Ping is almost always 10ms.
A quick reboot later and showing 100.58Mb/s Down, 23.65Mb/s Up. Best result I've had so far but without trying to sound greedy, was expecting a bit more! I'm using a ZyXEL NBG4604 and according to the stats, the LAN ports are running at 1000M, but the WAN port connected to the ONT is at 100M using the supplied Cat5e Cable, I tried a Cat6 cable just in case but no difference.
I tried the BT speedtest which performed at exactly 100Mbps but shows the IP profile of my line as 319.25Mbps!
I'm now connected directly to the ONT (at 1.0Gbps), bypassing the ZyXEL router to see if that was the bottleneck. It's creeping up slowly with results anywhere between 114Mb/s and 122Mb/s. A 1GB test file download was showing a mostly steady 10.5MB/sec taking 1m16s ish.
FttpPeter
Dabbler
Posts: 18
Thanks: 2
Registered: ‎04-02-2011

Re: FTTP 330Mb trial - day 1, not as straight forward as it would seem!

To add my experience after testing over two days.
Am getting in the range of 142 – 174 Mbps download speed and 23 – 29 Mbps up load speeds, connected to the router with CAT6 cable and a Gigabit Ethernet laptop,.
The router’s a Netgear WNR3500v2 and is the bottleneck as when connected direct to the ONT I have seen speeds of 200 – 260 Mbps.
Using speedtest.net I found different servers gave the better results at different times. I also used speedtester.bt.com which gave the best results for the ONT connected test for download speed but not for upload speed.
The Ping direct to bbc.co.uk is an average of 4ms on both the ONT and router, but using speedtest.net it ranged between 7 and 14 ms and using speedtester.bt.com 23 – 28 ms.
Using speedtester.bt.com the IP Profile is shown as 319.25 Mbps down and 30 up.
In Summary:
1. Though my IP profile is 319.25 Mbps, even when directly connected to the ONT am not getting near it – if the speed tests are to be believed
2. Connecting via the Netgear router is considerably slower than via direct to the ONT
Dave, I’d be interested in participating in the ‘co-ordinated download’.
Peter
Adam1V
Grafter
Posts: 223
Registered: ‎31-07-2007

Re: FTTP 330Mb trial - day 1, not as straight forward as it would seem!

Great write up, althought Cat5e is more than adequate for 10/100/1000, after all it was on the original spec for gigabit.
I would only lean towards Cat6 if using alot of VOIP at the same time etc.
adkchum
Dabbler
Posts: 16
Registered: ‎25-02-2011

Re: FTTP 330Mb trial - day 1, not as straight forward as it would seem!

Had my connection activated yesterday, but sadly still only getting speed tests of 60Mb down & 26Mb up.
Waiting for BT to investigate my connection problem.