FTTP 300Mbps Trial - Speed test results of 344, 337 and 333Mbps produced

[#1]

Yesterday Dave Tomlinson (of plusnet of course) emailed me and in an explanation of why maybe 330Mbps couldn't be reached concluded: 'The best we've seen so far on the 300Mbps trial is 292Mbps, and I think that given the constraints of how the different networks work at the moment that's probably about the best it gets.'
As I've now beaten that record I thought it deserved a post and maybe other people on the trial have been seeing similar faster speeds? Also it shows the Technicolor TG799vn v2 router used can handle speeds of 300 and even 330Mbps.
This morning I've seen repeated speeds above 300Mbps, with the best via speedtest.net of 344.93, 337.39, 333.09 and 330.60Mbps. Using speedtester.bt.com the best results were 313.38, 313.15 and 312.79Mbps and a single test with Thinkbroadband gave 292.3Mbps.
I've captured screen prints and links to the fastest results which I'll send to Dave Tomlinson for his interest.
As these speeds were given between 4 and 6am maybe they aren't replicable in busier times. . ?!
Peter

[#2]

Sorry, I have to write a quick message to tell you just how jealous I am and how much I hate you... 

[#3]

Covet thy neighbour's broadband connection. 

[#4]

I started the Trial with my Cisco e4200 Gigabit router, could only manage 100Mb download speed, swapped to a Netgear N600 manged 250Mb Max on speed tests.
So the router is the limiting speed factor.
Only when plugging in my computer direct to the ONT I got the following result:

[#5]

Hi Started The trial last week, so far nothing has happened. only getting as follows
16.34mb/s down - 8.17mb/s up- 15ms ping?
any ideas using Newtgear WRN1000V2 Router.

[#6]

Tim, you're on the 80/20 FTTC trial, not the 330/30 FTTP trial that Peter's referring to.

[#7]

Awesome!! You can't fault those speeds can you?

[#8]

Impressive! Thanks for sharing, you must be top of the leaderboard with those results (if there is one!)
Can I ask how speedtest.net performs for you during those test runs? I have a little bee in my bonnet and am desperately trying to replicate similar results but can't get close!
My router can't handle over 100Mbps so have to switch to a direct connection to the ONT for testing purposes. Just thought I'd mention, that when switcing to/from the ZyXEL NBG4604, it takes about 6-7 minutes to authenticate - not sure if this is normal behaviour for this technology as ADSL was quicker?
So, my speedtest.net experience... hit begin test, 10ms Ping every time. Slight pause, then the needle flies off the scale  . It then seems as if it as peaked too soon and the progress graph comes crashing down half way through, it tries to rebuild momentum once or twice but cant seem to regain it's composure! It ends on ~130Mb on a good run. BT showing about the same at the moment.
Cheers

[#9]

Sherlock - I see the same behaviour from speedtest.net so I'd say it's normal.
If you're looking to replicate similar results I suggest:
1) Do multiple tests - I did 140 in the tests on Saturday (and used 30GB of data) and it becomes addictive to see what the next test will give. If you are eating into your allowance due to testing Dave Tomlinson may reset it to zero, thus allowing you to test during the charged for period.
2) Use Cat 5e or Cat 6 cable of course. . . and be connected directly to the ONT or router (for those with faster routers)
3) Use a PC with a Gigabit Ethernet card (of course again)
I also find it takes a long time to authenticate routers and also directly to the ONT. In my testing blitz on Saturday I also tried to connect directly to the ONT and also reconnect to my Netgear WNR3500 v2 to test but couldn't, so went back to the Technicolor.
When I next have time I'm going to do testing at different times of day, but of course will need to get the rest of the family off the internet so may not be possible.
acarneiro - 346 Mbps was a theoretical speed - I don't know if you'd be jealous of the 'real world' speed of 26 Mbps I measured when connected in my study via Develp dLan AV200 homeplugs and the family were also online. Maybe one day I'll run an Ethernet cable to the router. . .
Peter

[#10]

Thanks for the detailed feedback Peter,
It's encouraging to see we're experiencing the same behaviour with authentication and speedtest.net. Since your reply I have been conducting further tests on and off but can't get any improvement on my speed!
In summary, I have done lots of tests with different setups - all with direct ONT connection due to slow router, short lengths of Cat 5e or Cat 6 cables and various gigabit enabled desktop/laptop computers incuding a fairly new quad core machine, and made sure no software was running that could slow down performance!
Also tried different times of day / night, even quieter times based on this: http://www.plus.net/support/service/network_performance/broadband_bandwidth_usage.shtml
It makes no difference, but I've observed which gateway I'm connected to just in case that had any influence on results: http://usertools.plus.net/@gateway/
I have the pro add-on and have experienced the odd buffering with standard definition BBC video streaming.
Here's one of my better download test reports:
==================================================
URL              : http://download.thinkbroadband.com/1GB.zip
Name              :
Status            : Finished
Speed (Bytes)    : 16388.1 KB/Sec
Speed (Bits)      : 134.25 Mbps
Downloaded        : 1048576.0 KB
Start Time        : 30/06/2012 00:01:41
Download Duration : 00:01:04
Download Order    : 1
==================================================
Speedtest.net is averaging at around 105 - 110Mbps, upload ranging between 20-25Mbps. The last BT speedtest came in at 57Mbps! IP profile is at 319.25Mbps so still on the right product 
If you're about Dave, can you shed any light on this? It seems like something isn't quite right behind the scenes as If I understand correctly, FTTP isn't affected by line length so much as with ADSL distance to the exchange and FTTC distance to the cabinet.
Cheers

[#11]

Sherlock
Your speed doesn't sound right to me. Last Thursday between 6.30am and 7.30am I ran 60 tests and saw mostly speeds in the 300s with a high of 379.01Mbps, and then during a shorter test around 2pm I saw speeds in the high 200s and also many in the 300s, with a high of 392.57. . . these were all through the Technicolor router, using speedtest.net.
I'd advise you raise a ticket with plusnet asking them to look at your line/configuration.
Peter

[#12]

I've been a little slack in reporting my speed test results so I've done a few this morning.
2012-07-02 11:17:46 (22.2 MB/s) - `1GB.zip'
012-07-02 11:19:12 (10.5 MB/s) - `test500.zip'
2012-07-02 11:21:16 (15.1 MB/s) - `test500.zip.
2012-07-02 11:22:05 (23.8 MB/s) - `100mb.test
2012-07-02 11:22:34 (18.7 MB/s) - `100mb.bin'
2012-07-02 11:23:28 (23.2 MB/s) - `1GB.zip
These results are a lot better than I was getting at the beginning of trial
My usenet traffic is still only getting to 17MB/s but thats with SSL connections so I guess would be closer to the speeds above without.
Still not 330MB/s per second though
Si

[#13]

Hi Folks,
Just a quick update since the last post...
I raised a ticket requesting further investigation, some tests were carried out an and engineer booked for last Friday. The engineer didn't show, but coincidentally, as of that very evening I'm now getting the best performance yet!
Again, with direct connection to the ONT as before, and just using speedtest.net as a barometer, the previous best ever result was 137Mbps. On the evening of the scheduled engineer visit and the following morning I saw over double the previous best with a record of 279Mbps from a small handful of tests!
In general the overall experience is better, web pages don't load bit by bit - instead they just appear, HD streaming is uninterrupted, downloads are faster - with a ~60MB file for example, by the time a location is selected to save the file, the download is already done. When I get a chance, I will experiment further and log the results to see what can really be achieved! But for now I have plugged my bottleneck back in as I need to use more than one web enabled device at at time.
Unfortunately, I can't help anyone that may have a similar throughput issue as we're unable to identify what remedial work was carried out to rectify this - I can see that several individuals at Plusnet got involved, so I send a big thanks to all of them.
Just need to acquire a better router that can support the throughput now 
Thanks

[#14]

Hi everyone,
My first post!
I've been on the 330Mbps trial for a couple of months now and am absolutely LOVING it!  However, the one area which doesn't meet quite meet my expectations is the speed I still get on usenet.  When I try speedtest/thinkbroadband etc., I can easily hit  220-250Mbps - but usenet maxes out at 9.2 MB/s (with an average of 6.5ish MB/s) when I should be 25+ MB/s (if I were to drop SSL).  
Question for those who are on usenet: who is your service provider? I suspect that is probably the bottleneck here.  I'm currently on Astraweb's EU SSL connection and have tried everything from changing port numbers/connections etc and am still averaging close to 6 MB/s.
Thoughts?
Note - The connection is wired with a CAT6 cable to a 3rd generation time capsule.
Thanks for your help!
Best,

[#15]

There seems to be some careless use of units in this topic!
1MBps = 8Mbps
B is bytes, b is bits.