Virgin Media Discussion Thread

[dlockers]

Hi guys, are we allowed to talk Usenet here? Unsure if it's an ISP issue but recently I'm getting missed articles/failed downloads on literally every binary I try and download. Feels far too coincidental? These are all good quality nzbs as far as I'm aware.

 

[Avalon]

Hi guys, are we allowed to talk Usenet here? Unsure if it's an ISP issue but recently I'm getting missed articles/failed downloads on literally every binary I try and download. Feels far too coincidental? These are all good quality nzbs as far as I'm aware.

Nothing odd about discussing usenet, we discuss torrents/FTP’s legitimate use, I just don’t see that many Linux ISO’s posted in the binary groups, but perhaps I am looking in the wrong groups? Usenet completion is generally better if you combine two providers on different backbones, and you need to be selective. It’s also a good idea to add all the servers a provider offers, just make sure the local one is the top priority. For example NGD is running its own backbone and filling historic content from elsewhere right now, ninja is now totally separate. Farm gives access to 3? separate dedicated backbones. If you don’t like Ninja, I really like Eweka, especially now they are full speed. Speed wise you want to use the minimum number of connections required to saturate your connection, that’s generally not the same as the max available.

 

[TNA]

Oh wow. Where to start. Huge post!

First I would to thank you for taking the time to type all that

I think you may have missed the context of my previous posts, I advocate people buying hardware that suits what they want to do, quite often that's not the same as what they think they need to buy. Usually that tends to look like 'I need a new router' followed by asking them what specifically they want a new router to do that the existing one doesn't, that's when it usually becomes clear it's nothing to do with the router side of things and everything to do with wifi coverage/range/speed. They've usually not done a survey, don't know about the noisy neighbours on an overlapping channel, have the router in a poor location and the client will generally be some sort of streaming device sandwiched between a solid wall and an RF shielded TV or that the 99p USB N spec dongle they've put in the back of that nice metal PC case and only sticks out 7mm contains the wireless chipset and antennae they are connecting to the network with and they aren't sure why it's not giving them gigabit. In situations like that, replacing a router broadcasting at the maximum permitted power level with another one doing the same in the same location with the same power level is probably not ideal. Instead spending the money on a decent AP installed in a central location with a wired backhaul will usually be transformative by comparison, especially if happens to handle slower clients hogging the radio's more elegantly. That's not the same as advocating using 'gear the ISP supplied', it's responsible recommendations for the actual issue. The answer would change as the usage case/budget did.

That is fair enough, can’t argue with that

The SH4 can do over gigabit with a suitable wifi client/environment (very much to my amazement when I saw the picture), then again an online speed tests is not exactly a reliable reference point, let alone comparable to a full iperf session. For all people love to moan about the SH3 wifi, it's not been that bad for me. Yes I run Ubiquiti AP's, but that's because it's unreasonable to expect a hub sat in my downstairs lounge to cover another two floors above it. In terms of options, it's a basic router designed to provide a basic service, if you've ever done any form of TS, the simpler the better for the majority. If you want non basic, you put it in modem mode and spec your own kit accordingly. Yes the underlying hardware issues Intel inherited from the TI purchase are still a thing, but the mitigation means in general use they are not noticeable.

Thanks for the info. Not sure how you can say it was not bad and then go on and say you used Wi-Fi extender. Did you use it without the extenders first and compare it with others? Does not really make sense. It is bad as a family member who has it struggles with it and when he did get another router and put the SH3 in modem mode that solved the problem. Hence I am sure there is plenty of room for improvement which it sounds like the SH4 may have improved on.

You're 100% right, he absolutely is. But this isn't a software/networking question, it's a hardware question. He's also on a different continent with vastly different new/used hardware market, so asking him for advice on hardware with a GBP budget is like me asking you for hardware sourcing advice in USD. A CPU is still a CPU, but domestic pricing and distribution differ drastically. I can't stress how different the US is in terms of hardware, I used to joke in the UK I have a room with half a rack, in the US i'd likely have half an isle in a DC as the abundance and price of decent hardware relative to what we pay over here can be eye watering, a bit like the power bills to run it in some states... and don't even get me started on the 120v.

Maybe you should have looked at context yourself and seen the post I quoted where he was giving hardware suggestions? Also in his location it says Bristol, how was I meant to know that was on another continent when this is clearly a UK forum? Typically people that use the location tag would mention the country if it is not the UK.

Anyway, you were probably right as he did not even bother replying to me.

Your first suggestions on hardware candidates didn't demonstrate the greatest of awareness of suitable hardware or it's capabilities/features and you backed away from the price of an off the shelf solution, I took it that pointing out you could buy and install WRT yourself on equally good if not better hardware for way under budget was the advice you needed, you didn't seem to have grasped that you were looking at a generic Quotom/Procelli PC with stickers (mmm stickers) and a custom WRT install. But the thing that I want to stress here is for 200mbit, hardware is not the issue you seem to think it is, beyond a non ancient x64 CPU and a modest amount of RAM/not awful NIC, almost anything from roughly the last decade should comfortably do 200Mbit with QoS.

That may be what you chose to read, but it's really not what I said - the devil is in the detail.

It took me longer to walk down two floors to get a screwdriver and come back up than it did to 'build' a router today. Physical build was under 2 minutes. I removed two screws, slid the lid off a (£59.99 delivered) Lenovo S510 (i3-6100/4GB/500GB HDD/DVDRW), lifted the retaining bracket over the PCIe blanking plate, slotted an i350-T4 v2 in (because I haven't worked out where the T2 is hiding and wasn't playing hide and seek in the rack), closed the retaining bracket, unplugged the power to the DVDRW/HDD and put the lid back on and replaced the two screws. While I was doing that, the USB image was written and verified. Power wise the little Quotom boxes are generally round the 10-18w mark depending on spec/load, i'm always wary of the low end passive cooled versions, they have an unfortunate history and 24/7/365.25 can be problematic if they are under load constantly. My S510 was around 25w? idle last time I looked (ESXi with HDD), I wouldn't imagine it'll drop massively without DVD/HDD, but for the sake of argument even if we say 10w for a Quotom and 20w for the S510 I still have over a decade of idle running - at todays power prices (ex VAT) - before i'm financially worse off and I have £140.01 in my pocket to dry my tears with.

Clearly this is not an area that is one of my strong suits. You, Rainmaker and Dave are obviously on another level, hence why I ask for advice from you guys.

Just as easily as I could say clearly you did not grasp people like me are looking for a simple solution. Do you really think most people will want to run a dedicated piece of hardware and make sure it is up to date to avoid security issues knowing if they get a small thing wrong they may be making things much worse? Clearly people like me are after convenience with a solution you buy that does everything and updates itself to stay safe. The hardware does not need to be overkill, just do what is needed to be done.

You obviously know what you are doing and comfortable doing making your own router hence it takes you no time to do so. Not everyone will be interested in spending the time learning about that.

I didn't mention ASUS My comment was on the basis that if you know enough to care about running a highly configurable dedicated x64 based router, you probably care enough to learn how to set-up and tune/tweak it for your needs, as opposed to buying a pre-installed device.

Every single vendor has had or will have issues and be impacted by a CVE eventually, most respond promptly and move on, that's how it's supposed to work. As far as ASUS go, it's well documented they have a horrible history when it comes to networking products, they ignored known issues for years, left users with data exposed to the internet, faked FCC test data (caught and fined) and have had issues since the beginning with interfaces dropping off routers (still a thing after 6+? generations), along with years of failing to address the Mediatek modem chipset issues (over two generations) while everyone else who used them managed to get them working and only bothered to try and fix the security issues when a reseller threatened to remove them from the platform and the US Gov. began investigating them. Ultimately they had to agree to 25 years of external auditing/fines. That's without the joke that is the RMA side. Even Merlin advises against opening up things like external admin on the ASUS (and by implication his) fork in his release notes. How many times does the same company have to do really bad things and keep making the same hardware/software mistakes and being terrible to deal with before you consider them unworthy of your money and more importantly time? I use certain companies because they're good at dealing with issues if/when they occur, if that costs me more more money, so be it. I can always make more money, I can't make more time.

The reason I mentioned ASUS is because in the past yes I recall you have not been a fan of theirs (also it the router the family member ended up getting and being happy with), I could be wrong though, but based on what you just said now I am probably not.

I am not a fan of ASUS myself and if what you are saying is right then that is terrible. Which companies do you recommend then?

 

[z10m]

I have to agree with @Avalon regarding the interface dropping part in ASUS routers.
I’ve been using AC88U as a wired router with 2 UniFi access points connected to it and it would drop connection to both of them after about a month or two and only power cycle would restore it (remotely triggered reboot wouldn’t fix it).
Now I’m using MikroTik router and that’s been running for 11 days so far with 0 issues but obviously time will tell.

 

[chroniclard]

Hi guys, are we allowed to talk Usenet here? Unsure if it's an ISP issue but recently I'm getting missed articles/failed downloads on literally every binary I try and download. Feels far too coincidental? These are all good quality nzbs as far as I'm aware.

Have not noticed any issues lately. I use newsgroup ninja.

 

[Dave Taht]

I really miss netnews. What does it take to have your own server setup? leafnode? cnews?

 

[Hotwired]

What's happened to seeing upgrade options on your VM account.

I have two accounts and both refuse to show me upgrade options anymore while at the same time both are far from maxed out.

Was considering upgrading for a particular reason and now the only option is to call up.

Hah, come to that even trying to view my contract details is broken.

 

[Duke]

What's happened to seeing upgrade options on your VM account.

I have two accounts and both refuse to show me upgrade options anymore while at the same time both are far from maxed out.

Was considering upgrading for a particular reason and now the only option is to call up.

Hah, come to that even trying to view my contract details is broken.

Its never worked for me, I assumed due to having discounts on the existing package.

 

[ahar]

What's happened to seeing upgrade options on your VM account.

I have two accounts and both refuse to show me upgrade options anymore while at the same time both are far from maxed out.

Was considering upgrading for a particular reason and now the only option is to call up.

Hah, come to that even trying to view my contract details is broken.

Also hasn't worked properly for me for ages. What I mostly get is a suggestion to sign up for the same package as I have now for more money than I pay.

 

[Rainmaker]

Now the bloat in this case could be happening in two places, at the router (which only sees a single queue), or within the wireguard instance (was this userspace or the kernel wireguard?), and in either case there's an inflated baseline RTT to begin with, so congestion control operates more slowly. (I imagine your vpn's termination point is 10-20ms away?)

It really shouldn't take as long as you describe for cobalt at the router to have got control of that queue, but I won't rule it out. More likely, however:

In the kernel implementation of wireguard, jason optimized for cores, not queues, and there is a point at which packets accrue within wireguard (when you cannot encrypt as fast as packets can come in), that's hard to hit, but once you hit it that's where bloat happens. The testing they did was also dominated by one way tests (sigh), not a mixture of large and small packets you typically see over torrent, or the rrul tests. We'd proposed making wireguard fair queued at least, internally, at several points in its development. The plot here shows the 'compute bloat',
when I tested it, running directly on a low powered router, in the early days. https://blog.cerowrt.org/post/wireguard/

If you want to try running a rrul test through it, that ought to be "interesting".

So far as I know the userspace implementation's users are seeing signs of bufferbloat within wireguard. As it's potentially far easier to do fq in userspace, I'd been
considering tackling it in the go or rust versions at some point to see if I could demonstrate a benefit.

Anyway, the rest of your network is fine.

Thanks so much again, Dave. You're a legend, and you've helped immensely! I took the afternoon to digest your post on WireGuard (and check out the various bufferbloat mailing lists), and it makes sense. I still have Jason on Signal so I'll shoot him a message to see if he has any more interesting perspective on bloat inside WireGuard. I'm using the in-kernel implementation btw. My desktop runs AlmaLinux (RHEL clone) atm, with kmod-wireguard on the mainline kernel. Prior to that I did some testing with WireGuard-NT (Windows 11 Pro). My MacBook Pro is ancient as I said, so the (userspace only) implementation suffers regardless, due to the Ivy Bridge dual core mobile CPU. I have tried both Jason's wireguard-go and Cloudflare's rust-written boringtun, and both cap out around 500Mbps on that machine. The tests are meaningless (on the MBP) due to its age, as it suffers overload and bloat even with no VPN, the CPU just can't keep up. I'll be able to afford a shiny new M1 Pro MacBook Pro at some point. Trouble is, the kids always seem to keep needing things buying.

I've been having a little discussion over on the official Virgin Media forums about this. Today I got accused of wrecking VM's network and being liable for disconnection (for using SQM, ha!). Soon ironed out that little wrinkle, but alas no staff interaction or reply - much as I unfortunately expected. I turned on a few more folks to the issues of bloat and how to fix it though, so that's something... Only 7 billion more to go! It's actually funny how reticent even paying customers are, almost desperate to find justification why an ISP can't/won't/shouldn't sort out bloat because... reasons. Alas, I'm happy and I'm starting to fix family and friends'

Still working my way through the rest of your papers and learning as I go... My wife commented (unprompted) yesterday that everything's 'loading fast and feels better - what did you do?'. Win!

 

[Dave Taht]

I looked over boringtun. I think it would benefit from being threaded, but my rust is non-existent. I am encouraged by the quality of the "crossbeam" library I've been looking over on that front, but going from "hello world", to threaded programming in that language, over a weekend, is not happening. it's the "capping at out XMbps/sec" figure that bothers me, that means that packets are being dropped... but where?

 

[Avalon]

Thanks for the info. Not sure how you can say it was not bad and then go on and say you used Wi-Fi extender. Did you use it without the extenders first and compare it with others? Does not really make sense. It is bad as a family member who has it struggles with it and when he did get another router and put the SH3 in modem mode that solved the problem. Hence I am sure there is plenty of room for improvement which it sounds like the SH4 may have improved on.

AP's, not extenders. It makes perfect sense as it's true in my personal testing. Just because my SH3 could give me a usable connection on the top floor doesn't mean I would use it. My SH3 is in modem mode with an i3-7100t/16GB/120GB SSD ex Datto box running Untangle (or at least it was till yesterday). Not a great idea to add wifi on it as it lives inside of a metal comms cabinet mounted in the corner of two solid walls under the stairs... obviously that wouldn't end well and you know my views on making poor hardware/location choices. I've got the S510 down to 16w under OWRT, pretty sure I can get it a little lower, but that's £1.85/m+VAT to run 'as is', hardly gong to break the bank.

Maybe you should have looked at context yourself and seen the post I quoted where he was giving hardware suggestions? Also in his location it says Bristol, how was I meant to know that was on another continent when this is clearly a UK forum? Typically people that use the location tag would mention the country if it is not the UK.

Anyway, you were probably right as he did not even bother replying to me.

I'm confused, the discussion taking place is orientated towards running 3rd party routers/distributions, they all have a learning curve and all require you to do some basic administration/maintenance and are generally useful to people who want to do things the SH range can't. That may be VLAN's, WAN failover/load balancing, PBR, hardware accelerated VPN, QoS, and UTM functions or on-router services (docker for example). You seem to want managed updates, plug and play and little or no learning curve with simplicity and QoS. Other than the latter, they're generally ISP supplied router traits. Personally I wouldn't want an unplanned update taking down a live system at an innopertune moment, but that's just me. Any router can be misconfigured.

If you read Dave's earlier posts in this thread, it's clear he's not in the UK.

Clearly this is not an area that is one of my strong suits. You, Rainmaker and Dave are obviously on another level, hence why I ask for advice from you guys.

Just as easily as I could say clearly you did not grasp people like me are looking for a simple solution. Do you really think most people will want to run a dedicated piece of hardware and make sure it is up to date to avoid security issues knowing if they get a small thing wrong they may be making things much worse? Clearly people like me are after convenience with a solution you buy that does everything and updates itself to stay safe. The hardware does not need to be overkill, just do what is needed to be done.

While it's flattering to be included in such company, I spend my time learning what I need to, that's where the fun is in networking. Again this really sounds like you want an ISP supplied/maintained router. You've had suggestions about hardware, even suggested some yourself, but your response suggests you have no interest in running a dedicated 'piece of hardware' (isn't that exactly what a router is?) or doing any form of set-up/maintaining/config which puts you into ISP supplied kit territory. Rather than focus on why you don't want/aren't able to devote time to learning - no judgement - why don't you try and focus on what you do want and what budget you want to allocate?

The reason I mentioned ASUS is because in the past yes I recall you have not been a fan of theirs (also it the router the family member ended up getting and being happy with), I could be wrong though, but based on what you just said now I am probably not.

I am not a fan of ASUS myself and if what you are saying is right then that is terrible. Which companies do you recommend then?

Most 3rd party routers will essentially be secure by default and close to plug & play, but things like firmware upgrades and configuring forwarding rules, policy based routing, VLAN's and Q0S generally need some level of user interaction as will any firmware updates, it's a trade off.

Hopefully later tonight i'll get to do some playing/testing and catch up on the wealth of information already posted above

 

[deardevildude]

I should hopefully have my Hub 4 for Gig1 tomorrow, well excited for it. Shame the uploads arent better but im looking forward to the download speeds still.

 

[Rainmaker]

I looked over boringtun. I think it would benefit from being threaded, but my rust is non-existent. I am encouraged by the quality of the "crossbeam" library I've been looking over on that front, but going from "hello world", to threaded programming in that language, over a weekend, is not happening. it's the "capping at out XMbps/sec" figure that bothers me, that means that packets are being dropped... but where?

Darned if I know. TBF the CPU is ancient as I said, it’s pinned at 100% usage using WireGuard for any serious downloading. Around 500Mbps is the best it can manage. No such issues on my Threadripper desktop (just changed to Fedora 35 as vaapi wasn’t playing nice on Alma).

ex Datto box running Untangle (or at least it was till yesterday)

You succumbed to the shiny, then? How is OpenWrt treating you?

 

[TNA]

AP's, not extenders. It makes perfect sense as it's true in my personal testing. Just because my SH3 could give me a usable connection on the top floor doesn't mean I would use it. My SH3 is in modem mode with an i3-7100t/16GB/120GB SSD ex Datto box running Untangle (or at least it was till yesterday). Not a great idea to add wifi on it as it lives inside of a metal comms cabinet mounted in the corner of two solid walls under the stairs... obviously that wouldn't end well and you know my views on making poor hardware/location choices. I've got the S510 down to 16w under OWRT, pretty sure I can get it a little lower, but that's £1.85/m+VAT to run 'as is', hardly gong to break the bank.



I'm confused, the discussion taking place is orientated towards running 3rd party routers/distributions, they all have a learning curve and all require you to do some basic administration/maintenance and are generally useful to people who want to do things the SH range can't. That may be VLAN's, WAN failover/load balancing, PBR, hardware accelerated VPN, QoS, and UTM functions or on-router services (docker for example). You seem to want managed updates, plug and play and little or no learning curve with simplicity and QoS. Other than the latter, they're generally ISP supplied router traits. Personally I wouldn't want an unplanned update taking down a live system at an innopertune moment, but that's just me. Any router can be misconfigured.

If you read Dave's earlier posts in this thread, it's clear he's not in the UK.

While it's flattering to be included in such company, I spend my time learning what I need to, that's where the fun is in networking. Again this really sounds like you want an ISP supplied/maintained router. You've had suggestions about hardware, even suggested some yourself, but your response suggests you have no interest in running a dedicated 'piece of hardware' (isn't that exactly what a router is?) or doing any form of set-up/maintaining/config which puts you into ISP supplied kit territory. Rather than focus on why you don't want/aren't able to devote time to learning - no judgement - why don't you try and focus on what you do want and what budget you want to allocate?



Most 3rd party routers will essentially be secure by default and close to plug & play, but things like firmware upgrades and configuring forwarding rules, policy based routing, VLAN's and Q0S generally need some level of user interaction as will any firmware updates, it's a trade off.

Hopefully later tonight i'll get to do some playing/testing and catch up on the wealth of information already posted above

Yep. Basically I am after something with good QoS (Cake sounds very intriguing), low power, self maintained in regards to updates where it does any firmware updates at say 3am, has very good Wi-Fi range, is Wi-Fi 6 and has WPA3

I am not exactly against learning or anything like that, as you say I learn what I need or enjoy. Networking has never been something I enjoyed that much which is why I prefer keeping it simple.

I liked the IQRouter Pro Dave mentioned, but that seems a bit overkill and not exactly cheap. The IQRouter V3 on the other hand does not have WPA 3 and I think is not Wi-Fi 6.

I actually think the SH5 does most of all that, but I doubt they would send me one of those any time soon

 

[Avalon]

You succumbed to the shiny, then? How is OpenWrt treating you?

I can resist anything but temptation

Light and fast so far, anecdotal testing puts it slightly ahead of Untangle, which isn't a massive surprise, I would like to see higher than the 330Mbit with hardware accelerated OVPN I was getting, but pleasantly surprised to be down to 16w with nothing more than disconnecting un-wanted devices and disabling bits via BIOS. The i3-6100 should leave me enough headroom to play with docker, likely now is the point I need to jump to wg. New hub arrives Wednesday for Gig1, but apparently I have a date with a climbing wall before i'm allowed to play :\

 

[Rainmaker]

I can resist anything but temptation

Light and fast so far, anecdotal testing puts it slightly ahead of Untangle, which isn't a massive surprise, I would like to see higher than the 330Mbit with hardware accelerated OVPN I was getting, but pleasantly surprised to be down to 16w with nothing more than disconnecting un-wanted devices and disabling bits via BIOS. The i3-6100 should leave me enough headroom to play with docker, likely now is the point I need to jump to wg. New hub arrives Wednesday for Gig1, but apparently I have a date with a climbing wall before i'm allowed to play :\

Oh, Wednesday's gonna draaaggg for you. As for WireGuard... do it already! Night and day improvement over OpenVPN ime. I can throw you a Mullvad 10Gb key if you want to play before hand.

Edit: A fully independent and functional key to Mullvad, who have 10Gbps servers... To clarify.

 

[Moley]

Virgin are running cable (via existing Openreach ducts so no digging needed) on our street in the next few weeks. Planning to jump from BT to VM asap but my home networking is non-standard - I replaced the BT DSL modem with an Asus router which is separated from my home network by a pf Sense firewall. I'm guessing VM still supply SuperHubs which can be put into modem mode but I would prefer to replace this with a solid third party router instead.

Any recommendations? Can I put the Superhub back in it's box and replace completely or do I have to go down the Modem mode and plug it direct into my firewall?

 

[Caged]

The VM hubs are the cable modems, VM will not activate 3rd party cable modems on their network. You'll have to use it in modem mode.

 

[Rainmaker]

Virgin are running cable (via existing Openreach ducts so no digging needed) on our street in the next few weeks. Planning to jump from BT to VM asap but my home networking is non-standard - I replaced the BT DSL modem with an Asus router which is separated from my home network by a pf Sense firewall. I'm guessing VM still supply SuperHubs which can be put into modem mode but I would prefer to replace this with a solid third party router instead.

Any recommendations? Can I put the Superhub back in it's box and replace completely or do I have to go down the Modem mode and plug it direct into my firewall?

FTTP or coaxial? If they're reusing OR ducting it made me wonder. Either way, modem mode is fine and you can still use your pfSense box (or reinstall it with something like OpenWrt for better AQM, IPFire, etc).