BT Infinity & FTTx Discussion

Turn · 24 Jun 2022 at 23:11

ChrisD. said:
Any other ISPs offering a static IP address for around £60 a months for OR 900/100?

Vodafone, support is *****, service is good.
Rarely have to contact them if you're on FTTP unless it's a billing issue so not a big deal to me.

Caged · 24 Jun 2022 at 23:23

ChrisD. said:
Any other ISPs offering a static IP address for around £60 a months for OR 900/100?

Cuckoo will do it for £1/month, 900Mbps FTTP is £54.99. No IPv6 though.

johnno93 · 25 Jun 2022 at 00:16

There's a thread on Think Broadband relating to performance issues with Zen after a GEA migration. Seems there is a problem with Zen's own equipment. Seems some people have managed to get migrated back to BT Wholesale backhaul which fixed the issue.

ChrisD. · 25 Jun 2022 at 09:43

Caged said:
Cuckoo will do it for £1/month, 900Mbps FTTP is £54.99. No IPv6 though.

Who is their backhaul?

johnno93 said:
There's a thread on Think Broadband relating to performance issues with Zen after a GEA migration. Seems there is a problem with Zen's own equipment. Seems some people have managed to get migrated back to BT Wholesale backhaul which fixed the issue.

I’ve opened a ticket, I still have a year on my contract but I’m hopefully they can do something.

Caged · 25 Jun 2022 at 10:14

Cuckoo basically resell TalkTalk so you get to use the TalkTalk network without having to deal with TalkTalk

ChrisD. · 25 Jun 2022 at 10:41

I'll see what Zen say. I'm not particularly happy that they've changed what I pay for and made it worse, and it seems many are in the same boat.

VaderDSL · 25 Jun 2022 at 11:37

My GEA migration went through in April, fortunately no issues here, same speeds, same latency as before.

ChrisD. · 25 Jun 2022 at 11:41

Count yourself lucky, I either get 12ms latency or 24ms latency depending on which gateway I hit. It used to be 5-6ms! I run my NSX manager in an AWS DC and it whinges if latency is less than 10ms so I have been working fine with Zen... until the GEA migration. I guess this is where I see how good support are.

VaderDSL · 25 Jun 2022 at 11:42

ChrisD. said:
Count yourself lucky, I either get 12ms latency or 24ms latency depending on which gateway I hit. It used to be 5-6ms! I run my NSX manager in an AWS DC and it whinges if latency is less than 10ms so I have been working fine with Zen... until the GEA migration. I guess this is where I see how good support are.

Ah yeah, I guess with those requirements it can be trickier. Hopefully you get it sorted. My latencies have always been around 8-12 even before and now the same after the migration, never been much below 10.

ChrisD. · 25 Jun 2022 at 12:03

Cuckoo do a rolling monthly contract so I’ve contacted them to see if they can provision a new line on a spare ONT port.

RSR · 25 Jun 2022 at 14:56

Just been testing with Untangle and ive successfully got to set a persistant 1500 on the PPPoE interface.

Changes in Untangle (If anyone is interested)

Config > Network > Advanced > Network Cards

eth0 (WAN Connection) - Change MTU to 1508 from Auto

PPPoE Config location:

cat /etc/ppp/peers/dsl-provider

Default - 1492

Code:

# Configuration file for PPP, using PPP over Ethernet
# to connect to a DSL provider.
#
# See the manual page pppd(8) for information on all the options.

##
# Section 1
#
# Stuff to configure...

# MUST CHANGE: Uncomment the following line, replacing the [email protected]
# by the DSL user name given to your by your DSL provider.
# (There should be a matching entry in /etc/ppp/pap-secrets with the password.)
#user [email protected]

# Use the pppoe program to send the ppp packets over the Ethernet link
# This line should work fine if this computer is the only one accessing
# the Internet through this DSL connection. This is the right line to use
# for most people.
pty "/usr/sbin/pppoe -I eth0 -T 80 -m 1452"

# An even more conservative version of the previous line, if things
# don't work using -m 1452...
#pty "/usr/sbin/pppoe -I eth0 -T 80 -m 1412"

# If the computer connected to the Internet using pppoe is not being used
# by other computers as a gateway to the Internet, you can try the following
# line instead, for a small gain in speed:
#pty "/usr/sbin/pppoe -I eth0 -T 80"


# The following two options should work fine for most DSL users.

# Assumes that your IP address is allocated dynamically
# by your DSL provider...
noipdefault
# Try to get the name server addresses from the ISP.
usepeerdns
# Use this connection as the default route.
# Comment out if you already have the correct default route installed.
defaultroute

##
# Section 2
#
# Uncomment if your DSL provider charges by minute connected
# and you want to use demand-dialing.
#
# Disconnect after 300 seconds (5 minutes) of idle time.

#demand
#idle 300

##
# Section 3
#
# You shouldn't need to change these options...

hide-password
lcp-echo-interval 20
lcp-echo-failure 3
# Override any connect script that may have been set in /etc/ppp/options.
connect /bin/true
noauth
persist
mtu 1492

# RFC 2516, paragraph 7 mandates that the following options MUST NOT be
# requested and MUST be rejected if requested by the peer:
# Address-and-Control-Field-Compression (ACFC)
noaccomp
# Asynchronous-Control-Character-Map (ACCM)
default-asyncmap

Updated - 1500

Code:

# Configuration file for PPP, using PPP over Ethernet
# to connect to a DSL provider.
#
# See the manual page pppd(8) for information on all the options.

##
# Section 1
#
# Stuff to configure...

# MUST CHANGE: Uncomment the following line, replacing the [email protected]
# by the DSL user name given to your by your DSL provider.
# (There should be a matching entry in /etc/ppp/pap-secrets with the password.)
#user [email protected]

# Use the pppoe program to send the ppp packets over the Ethernet link
# This line should work fine if this computer is the only one accessing
# the Internet through this DSL connection. This is the right line to use
# for most people.
pty "/usr/sbin/pppoe -I eth0 -T 80 -m 1452"

# An even more conservative version of the previous line, if things
# don't work using -m 1452...
#pty "/usr/sbin/pppoe -I eth0 -T 80 -m 1412"

# If the computer connected to the Internet using pppoe is not being used
# by other computers as a gateway to the Internet, you can try the following
# line instead, for a small gain in speed:
#pty "/usr/sbin/pppoe -I eth0 -T 80"


# The following two options should work fine for most DSL users.

# Assumes that your IP address is allocated dynamically
# by your DSL provider...
noipdefault
# Try to get the name server addresses from the ISP.
usepeerdns
# Use this connection as the default route.
# Comment out if you already have the correct default route installed.
defaultroute

##
# Section 2
#
# Uncomment if your DSL provider charges by minute connected
# and you want to use demand-dialing.
#
# Disconnect after 300 seconds (5 minutes) of idle time.

#demand
#idle 300

##
# Section 3
#
# You shouldn't need to change these options...

hide-password
lcp-echo-interval 20
lcp-echo-failure 3
# Override any connect script that may have been set in /etc/ppp/options.
connect /bin/true
noauth
persist
mtu 1500

# RFC 2516, paragraph 7 mandates that the following options MUST NOT be
# requested and MUST be rejected if requested by the peer:
# Address-and-Control-Field-Compression (ACFC)
noaccomp
# Asynchronous-Control-Character-Map (ACCM)
default-asyncmap

Testing with https://www.speedguide.net/analyzer.php shows 1500

This change from my testing seems persistant through reboots, its not a easy as pfSense but its fairly straight forward to setup.

ChrisD. · 25 Jun 2022 at 15:12

That will likely be overridden after an upgrade. But thanks, I’ll check it out.

ChrisD. · 25 Jun 2022 at 15:36

Zen have (verbally at least) agreed with me that they have and have 30 days to put it right, if not they're release me from my contract. I did have to send them a decent amount of detail about the connection, TBB graphs, pings, traceroutes etc.

RSR · 25 Jun 2022 at 16:09

I've also raised a case with Ubiquiti to see if there is any way to make the PPPoE 1500 MTU persistant

As its annoying to SSH to the UDM-Pro

Run the following time any changes are made:

Code:

sed -i 's/ 1492/ 1500/g' /etc/ppp/peers/ppp0
ip link set dev eth8 mtu 1508
ifconfig eth8 down && ifconfig eth8 up
killall pppd

I'll tinker about a bit to see if I can script it if not but it does get the full connection speed on Zen.

ChrisD. · 25 Jun 2022 at 16:21

Those numbers would be a dream. Have you been GEA migrated at all?

Isn't the UDM running some form of Linux? Have you tried to cron it?

ChrisD. · 25 Jun 2022 at 16:33

Hmm, Untangle not booting fully after making that change.

EDIT. I forgot to change the ESXi host vSwitch MTU, schoolboy error.

RSR · 25 Jun 2022 at 16:41

ChrisD. said:
Those numbers would be a dream. Have you been GEA migrated at all?

Isn't the UDM running some form of Linux? Have you tried to cron it?

I looked at that but it would get wiped out on reboot or network config change.

I did see someone has a script on the Ubiquiti Community has put something on their Github about it.

GitHub - TotalGriffLock/udmp-jumbo-frames-ppp: Shell script to configure and monitor the baby jumbo frame configuration on the UDM Pro WAN interface

Shell script to configure and monitor the baby jumbo frame configuration on the UDM Pro WAN interface - TotalGriffLock/udmp-jumbo-frames-ppp

github.com

RSR · 25 Jun 2022 at 16:46

ChrisD. said:
Hmm, Untangle not booting fully after making that change.

I have a dedicated NIC for the PPPoE straight to the ONT / DSL Modem from my VMware ESXi host, otherwise if you run PPPoE over the network (VLAN) you will need to adjust the MTU on that. The good thing with having it in a testing VM environment, you can snap it to easily roll it back.

The only change in the cat /etc/ppp/peers/dsl-provider is changing the MTU from 1492 to 1500, the interface to 1508 which allows for increased MTU (Mini Jumbo)

ChrisD. · 25 Jun 2022 at 16:54

Similar setup here, I have a 4x 1Gbps PCI Card for WAN and a 2x 10 Gbps card for LAN. I just forgot to update the vSwitch config from the default 1500.

RSR · 25 Jun 2022 at 16:59

I deliberately placed a new order with Zen rather than migrate my FTTC connection, so not sure if I am on GEA or not.

On a side note, I am going to move my FTTC to Talk Talk as a backup.

Here is my trace route if that helps.

FTTP

Code:

Tracing route to bbc.co.uk [151.101.128.81]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  udmp.home.local [10.10.1.1]
  2     7 ms     8 ms     7 ms  lo0-0.bng2.ixn-lon.zen.net.uk [51.148.77.129]
  3     3 ms     5 ms     5 ms  lag-5.p2.ixn-lon.zen.net.uk [51.148.73.91]
  4     4 ms     5 ms     4 ms  lag-2.p2.thn-lon.zen.net.uk [51.148.73.138]
  5     4 ms     5 ms     5 ms  lag-1.br2.ixn-lon.zen.net.uk [51.148.73.169]
  6     4 ms     4 ms     3 ms  195.66.225.91
  7     3 ms     3 ms     4 ms  151.101.128.81

Trace complete.

FTTC

Code:

Tracing route to bbc.co.uk [151.101.64.81]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  untangle.home.local [10.10.1.2]
  2     8 ms     8 ms     8 ms  lo0-0.bng1.ixn-lon.zen.net.uk [51.148.77.128]
  3     6 ms     6 ms     6 ms  lag-3.p1.ixn-lon.zen.net.uk [51.148.73.85]
  4     7 ms     6 ms     6 ms  lag-2.p1.thn-lon.zen.net.uk [51.148.73.132]
  5     6 ms     6 ms     6 ms  lag-2.br2.thn-lon.zen.net.uk [51.148.73.155]
  6     6 ms     6 ms     6 ms  195.66.225.91
  7     7 ms     6 ms     6 ms  151.101.64.81

Trace complete.