BT Infinity & FTTx Discussion

[auralex]

I'm currently waiting to move into my new house with my partner, checking out the broadband availibility I only really have two choices; BT or EE! currenly thinking of BT Fibre 1 for 26 a month with no phone line. My concern is the Superhub, I've read it cant do modem mode and would like to use my own router etc. Would Fibre 1 be FTTP? allowing me to get a tplink modem/router?

 

[ChrisD.]

I'm currently waiting to move into my new house with my partner, checking out the broadband availibility I only really have two choices; BT or EE! currenly thinking of BT Fibre 1 for 26 a month with no phone line. My concern is the Superhub, I've read it cant do modem mode and would like to use my own router etc. Would Fibre 1 be FTTP? allowing me to get a tplink modem/router?

Sounds like FTTC, in which case to use your own router you'll need to get a VDSL modem like the Draytek Vigor 130.

 

[ChrisD.]

It took Zen over two weeks but they finally called me on Friday to say my contract has been cancelled at their cost.

Very happy with Aquiss so far.

 

[Sparx]

It took Zen over two weeks but they finally called me on Friday to say my contract has been cancelled at their cost.

Very happy with Aquiss so far.

Of course, shortly after you going live…

ISP Aquiss Start UK Summer Sale on FTTP Broadband Packages

Shropshire-based UK ISP Aquiss has today launched a "Summer Sale" promotion across their Openreach based Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband packages for h

www.ispreview.co.uk

 

[ChrisD.]

I had 3 months half price anyway so not too fussed. It’s also £8 cheaper a month than I was paying to Zen at the full price.

 

[Silly Goose On The Loose]

Any tips for bufferbloat on FTTP 500, which I'm still seeing? New router?

 

[Silly Goose On The Loose]

Loving my 500Mb TalkTalk FTTP. Incredible upgrade over the 65Mb I was on before.

I never touched their Eero; went straight to my Linksys Velop mesh system.

I tried the Eero, the range was dreadful

 

[xb8browney]

Looks like grain connect are accepting orders in my area this week, it does say it's not actually available yet but it's far enough to let me sign up. We've also got city fibre building local.

Will be moving from virgin who have been spot on for 9 years.

 

[HungryHippos]

Toob have been prepping my area for 1Gbit symmetrical now for a while, heard about it 2-3 months ago and they've been doing work in the area.

Can hopefully place an order soon, halve my internet costs and gain some extras speed to boost!

 

[ChrisD.]

Any tips for bufferbloat on FTTP 500, which I'm still seeing? New router?

It's likely not to be buffer bloat you're experiencing, but more of a requirement to limit upload bandwidth.

 

[Silly Goose On The Loose]

It's likely not to be buffer bloat you're experiencing, but more of a requirement to limit upload bandwidth.

I'm not sure what you mean, can you clarify?

I see it on download as well.

 

[ChrisD.]

I'm not sure what you mean, can you clarify?

I see it on download as well.

If you are downloading a lot/watching streams etc, the receiving device has to ACK which will saturate your upload. If it's not capped, this causes latency to increase and even packet loss.

Use QoS to limit upload and download to around 95% of max, this may need some tuning. Different companies call QoS different things, I don't know if ISP garbage 'hubs' will do this or not.

 

[ChrisD.]

chris@Christophers-MacBook-Pro-14 ~ % networkQuality -v                                                                                              
==== SUMMARY ====                                                                                                                                    
Upload capacity: 75.253 Mbps                                                                                                                         
Download capacity: 808.456 Mbps                                                                                                                      
Upload flows: 20                                                                                                                                     
Download flows: 12                                                                                                                                   
Responsiveness: High (2900 RPM)                                                                                                                      
Base RTT: 16                                                                                                                                         
Start: 30/07/2022, 17:44:02                                                                                                                          
End: 30/07/2022, 17:44:16                                                                                                                            
OS Version: Version 12.5 (Build 21G72)

This is Zen, be interesting to see what it's like on Aquiss.

Not a huge difference and I'm tinkering still, but it's better than Zen albeit slightly. The real difference I notice is the latency.

==== SUMMARY ====                                                                                         
Upload capacity: 82.830 Mbps
Download capacity: 791.934 Mbps
Upload flows: 20
Download flows: 12
Responsiveness: High (3503 RPM)

 

[ecksmen]

FTTP installed, been about 24 hours. Whilst the graphs do look improved, I can't honestly say I noticed any issues with VM however it is clearly a cleaner line (BT 900)

 

[Fastball7174]

Hi All,

I have recently moved to a Zen FTTP Connection 900/110 (along with the GEA & Manchester Gateway double curse lol), and at the same time moved to an OPNSense Router.

Has anyone configured 1500 MTU successfully on the PPPoE connection? I thought it was as simple as Setting INTERFACES > WAN > MTU to 1508 (to get calculated PPP MTU: 1500) but that doesn't work - it breaks the internet.

I am using IPv6 also (DHCPv6, Prefix Delegation size 48, Use IPv4 Connectivity) - all works fine, but out of principle I want to enable 1500MTU if I can.

Anyone that might have done it on OPNSense, or similar, I'd appreciate a steer. pFsense the equivalent of the above seems to work?

 

[ChrisD.]

I have recently moved to a Zen FTTP Connection 900/110 (along with the GEA & Manchester Gateway double curse lol)

Unlucky, I argued with them that they broke their own Ts&Cs. It took a while but they have finally cancelled my contract without penalty.

@RSR has done a lot of work with 1500 MTU, not sure if he has tried with OPNsense or not. I've got mine working with Untangle and it worked with Zen as well as my new ISP.

 

[RSR]

Anyone that might have done it on OPNSense, or similar, I'd appreciate a steer. pFsense the equivalent of the above seems to work?

In theory OPNsense should auto calcuate it, as it was added back a while ago as a feature. I believe they recomend adding a value of 1508 on the WAN interface as then this kicks off a work flow to update it on the PPPoE and Interface. Also don't use any of the advanced options, as this option doesn't work and all it does it change a config file which isn't used.

One thing I found testing both pfSense / OPNsense / Untangle as I found out with TTB, if the ISP doesn't support 1500 MTU it will force it down to 1492.

Let me fire up my test VM and will report back.

 

[RSR]

@Fastball7174

OPNsense interface settings:



TTB with 1508 set:



Notice the interface MTU has set 1508 but if you check it using shell, it sets 1508 on the PPPoE interface and 1500 on the main interface which is what happens when a ISP doesn't support Mini Jumbo frames.

Zen FTTP with 1508 set:



Notice the MTU difference in the interface.

You can always verify the MTU by using the following link: https://www.speedguide.net/analyzer.php

 

[RSR]

A good tip with pfSense / OPNsense firewall is adding the following tunable option if you are using PPPoE:

net.isr.dispatch=deferred

Here is a bit more background reading on the tweak:

203856 – [igb] PPPoE RX traffic is limitied to one queue

bugs.freebsd.org

Feature #4821: PPPoE WANs do not take full advantage of NIC driver queues for receiving traffic - pfSense - pfSense bugtracker

Redmine

redmine.pfsense.org

There are number of others you can apply but I have never really found they make much of a difference.

 

[RSR]

Here is a speed test using OPNsense with MTU 1500 set and the above tweak set.



I do also have a YouTube stream on in the background, so its a bit lower than normal.