Interwebs outside the UK

ThatsWhatSheSaid · 5 Dec 2021 at 11:00

While the UK is barely rolling out 1Gbit FTTP... here I'm waiting on a 10GbE NIC to take full advantage of the connection:

z10m · 5 Dec 2021 at 11:05

Yep. UK feels like 3rd world country when it comes to internet connectivity.

Terminal_Boy · 5 Dec 2021 at 11:15

z10m said:
Yep. UK feels like 3rd world country when it comes to internet connectivity.

Come to rural France… I’m paying €40 a month for 12mb down/2mb up via WIMAX connection which drops out during heavy rain.

I have a near neighbour paying a similar amount for an ASDL connection which manages 1mb down/100kb up on a good day.

The French government has an ongoing scheme to get decent connectivity to rural France as the mobile coverage is sketchy AF and a lot of government services are almost entirely online these days. There’s fibre optic broadband in the village 5-6 km away, but they haven’t run it out our way yet as their subcontractors are dragging their feet.

Semple · 5 Dec 2021 at 11:16

z10m said:
Yep. UK feels like 3rd world country when it comes to internet connectivity.

That may look like the case but the majority of people in the UK won't have the hardware to utilise a 10GbE link.

DCs will already be linked with at least 10GbE.

ThatsWhatSheSaid · 5 Dec 2021 at 11:26

Semple said:
That may look like the case but the majority of people in the UK won't have the hardware to utilise a 10GbE link.

DCs will already be linked with at least 10GbE.

Yeah... I spent over £800 just to get the wired side up to speed... 2 8-port switches (1 PoE) & modem.

Considering dropping the same on a Ruckus R650 to get WiFi 6 with a 2.5GbE uplink... or I just give up on super-fast wireless, it's always a pain.

Phones are managing about 200/200 & MBP about 400/400.

The1nonly1 · 5 Dec 2021 at 12:10

I wish I had that speed. I am lucky to get 1Gbit FTTP but always room for more

Caged · 5 Dec 2021 at 13:18

I'm usually sympathetic to "the internet in the UK is bad" arguments but being unhappy there isn't widespread access to 10Gb symmetric residential products is a sign that you need to gain a bit of perspective.

WJA96 · 5 Dec 2021 at 15:10

+1 on the “this post is just ePeen”.

I had a symmetrical 2Gbps leased line in the office and I dropped it to 1Gbps simply because to max it out for backups I needed a 2Gbps connection at the other end and that simply was silly. So I dropped it to 1Gbps and I can fully utilise that.

For a home user, 1Gbps is enough to max out most home networks and that pretty much makes it the current sweet-spot. Even then, most systems you connect to won’t give you 1Gbps all to yourself so again, it’s not exactly vital that you have it.

I know plenty of people on the standard Openreach VDSL 40/10 or 80/20 packages and they’re perfectly happy. It’s the poor people stuck on ADSL at less than 20Mbps are the ones who need a speed increase.

mid_gen · 5 Dec 2021 at 16:34

Caged said:
I'm usually sympathetic to "the internet in the UK is bad" arguments but being unhappy there isn't widespread access to 10Gb symmetric residential products is a sign that you need to gain a bit of perspective.

It's a nonsense really.

I've got the 900mb FTTP service and the limiting factor is the other services, by a long shot. I don't think I've even got close to 50% utilisation in the real world, outside of speedtests.

ThatsWhatSheSaid · 5 Dec 2021 at 22:23

Did some research & the Engenius APs get some great reviews. Plus the feature set for price is rather good. I hadn't heard of them before.

The few speed and coverage tests I could find, show them up with the WiFi6 throughput of the Extreme Networks options. $200 for a 2.5GbE uplink, supposed Ruckus-competing range & actual throughput tests at nearly 1Gbit on wireless. Plus either a dirt cheap on-prem controller or you can run it for free in a VM.

Managed to get 2x EWS377 & 2x EWS357 imported from the states for $570 + $45 shipping and 7.7% VAT... fingers crossed they perform.

ThatsWhatSheSaid · 5 Dec 2021 at 22:33

WJA96 said:
+1 on the “this post is just ePeen”.

I had a symmetrical 2Gbps leased line in the office and I dropped it to 1Gbps simply because to max it out for backups I needed a 2Gbps connection at the other end and that simply was silly. So I dropped it to 1Gbps and I can fully utilise that.

For a home user, 1Gbps is enough to max out most home networks and that pretty much makes it the current sweet-spot. Even then, most systems you connect to won’t give you 1Gbps all to yourself so again, it’s not exactly vital that you have it.

I know plenty of people on the standard Openreach VDSL 40/10 or 80/20 packages and they’re perfectly happy. It’s the poor people stuck on ADSL at less than 20Mbps are the ones who need a speed increase.

I'm not typical user... I'm already maxxing out the 5GbE port on this motherboard:

And that's to a spinning platter array.

Not everything of course, but you'd be surprised just how many services out there now can leverage a connection over 1Gbit now.

12TB in 6-7 hours is kind cool... when the new NIC arrives, I should be able to max out the array.

Turn · 5 Dec 2021 at 22:38

mid_gen said:
I've got the 900mb FTTP service and the limiting factor is the other services, by a long shot. I don't think I've even got close to 50% utilisation in the real world, outside of speedtests.

What ISP are you with?
I seem to be able to always max out my connection from any popular services with the right infrastructure.

Since I have FTTP, any upgrade to 10Gbps and beyond is easy as it only requires changing the equipment used.

ThatsWhatSheSaid · 5 Dec 2021 at 22:56

Yeah... I've had 1Gbit FTTP since 2017 & never had any problems maxing out that connection.

Easy go-to test would be steam, origin or battlenet... they can usually max it out.

I was curious, so just tested out Origin & it maxxed out the 2.5GbE on this laptop.

EDIT: It settled down to just over 160MB/s constant:

Rainmaker · 6 Dec 2021 at 00:30

Cool.

Tell us more about your setup if you don't mind. Router? Firewall? Is your LAN copper or fibre? What's your array like? ZFS? Are you running any servers or just one jumbo desktop/workstation? Hopefully the Engenius stuff works out for you, Wendell seems to like them but I've had good luck with Ruckus personally.

WJA96 · 6 Dec 2021 at 02:52

ThatsWhatSheSaid said:
I'm not typical user... I'm already maxxing out the 5GbE port on this motherboard:

And that's to a spinning platter array.

Not everything of course, but you'd be surprised just how many services out there now can leverage a connection over 1Gbit now.

12TB in 6-7 hours is kind cool... when the new NIC arrives, I should be able to max out the array.

Thats fair enough, but you opened this post by having a pop at how awful broadband was in the UK. I can get a 100Gb leased line in the UK, if I want to pay for it. I assume you have the Internet L package, which seems to be available in a very small number of locations whereas the identically priced M and S packages (300Mbps and 100Mbps) are more commonly available but still not everywhere. I would suggest that more people in the UK can get the 900Mbps package than can get the 300Mbps package in Switzerland. Just ePeen. And anti-British too.

Turn · 6 Dec 2021 at 04:54

ThatsWhatSheSaid said:
EDIT: It settled down to just over 160MB/s constant:

Yeah mines just 110MB/s constant with Origin.
I know for sure Steam uses multiple servers to deliver these updates & i'd assume Origin does the same hence no difficulty to max out the connection.

Semple · 6 Dec 2021 at 07:04

WJA96 said:
+1 on the “this post is just ePeen”.

I had a symmetrical 2Gbps leased line in the office and I dropped it to 1Gbps simply because to max it out for backups I needed a 2Gbps connection at the other end and that simply was silly. So I dropped it to 1Gbps and I can fully utilise that.

For a home user, 1Gbps is enough to max out most home networks and that pretty much makes it the current sweet-spot. Even then, most systems you connect to won’t give you 1Gbps all to yourself so again, it’s not exactly vital that you have it.

I know plenty of people on the standard Openreach VDSL 40/10 or 80/20 packages and they’re perfectly happy. It’s the poor people stuck on ADSL at less than 20Mbps are the ones who need a speed increase.

Not to mention that majority of home users have no need for such speeds. I've stuck to standard FTTC speeds because I see the faster packages as an unnecessary expense for the two of us at home. I would guess we barely use 50% of the bandwidth at peak times.

Yes it may mean it takes me 5 minutes longer to download a game versus someone with a 1GbE link, but I don't see that as a big issue. If we're ever in a position where games are 1Tb+ and downloading on a 80/20 connection takes most of the day, then the need will arise to upgrade.

mid_gen · 6 Dec 2021 at 07:17

0007 said:
What ISP are you with?
I seem to be able to always max out my connection from any popular services with the right infrastructure.

Since I have FTTP, any upgrade to 10Gbps and beyond is easy as it only requires changing the equipment used.

BT.

Tbh, the router could be an issue, it's an RT-AC66U that's 10 years old now....although it was fine when I had a 1gb symmetric line in HK.

Origin and Xbox apps tend to hover around 70mb. This is on PC....consoles are still wireless as I haven't got round to the wiring job yet.

ThatsWhatSheSaid · 6 Dec 2021 at 13:36

Rainmaker said:
Cool. Tell us more about your setup if you don't mind. Router? Firewall? Is your LAN copper or fibre? What's your array like? ZFS? Are you running any servers or just one jumbo desktop/workstation? Hopefully the Engenius stuff works out for you, Wendell seems to like them but I've had good luck with Ruckus personally.

Router, I'm using the only 10G GPON capable unit I could find with a 10GbE on the LAN side, a ZyXel AX7501-B0... the standard router seemed to have some lag and only has 2.5GbE on the LAN side.

Once the 10GbE NICs arrive, I'll be upgrading my pfSense box with them, as well as the other PCs... it's a dual-core intel Mini ITX unit I built in a fanless streacom case years ago with a small SSD... it's still overkill for home use, even when it gets 10GbE. Then the ZyXel will go into bridge mode.

LAN is copper cat8.1 - much easier than fiber for internal use & 40GbE capable.

The copy above was to a QNAP 8x18TB array running raid-5... I was surprised to see that throughput to a raid-5 array, the QNAP must be working some magic. I have a 60x18TB 45drives unit being built, hasn't shipped yet. Then a couple of Dell VMWare hosts for local dev work and a 5900X PC I put together for chia plotting.

I'm normally a Ruckus fan, I have 2x R320 at the moment, but it's not enough. These walls are so thick, I need at least 1 per floor... plus I hope to get more throughput. I was going to try the R650, but that would have been quite expensive & the actual single device throughput improvement doesn't look to be all that much - I think it's a controller limitation. The Engenius devices have reviews showing an actual sustained throughput near 1Gbit, plus the latency benefits for multiple devices thanks to WiFi6, so I'm looking forward to testing them out.

ThatsWhatSheSaid · 6 Dec 2021 at 13:41

WJA96 said:
Thats fair enough, but you opened this post by having a pop at how awful broadband was in the UK. I can get a 100Gb leased line in the UK, if I want to pay for it. I assume you have the Internet L package, which seems to be available in a very small number of locations whereas the identically priced M and S packages (300Mbps and 100Mbps) are more commonly available but still not everywhere. I would suggest that more people in the UK can get the 900Mbps package than can get the 300Mbps package in Switzerland. Just ePeen. And anti-British too.

Assumptions... the colour doesn't wear well on you