Community Fibre

TNA · 12 Oct 2023 at 19:39

icstm said:
Are you also behind CGNAT?

Connection is wired to PC. Tested last night. It did about the first 9GB of a transfer before the erratic pattern started, when that happens the average speed over a min is about 60MB/s rather than ~110MB/s

I am on CGNAT, not seen that. Almost always get max speed when downloading on steam as long as Steam server is not busy which for me I have only seen a couple of times. Mostly I get 116MB/s.

The only issue I had seems to be resolved since that time many of us got cut off. What was happening was YouTube when set at 4K it would struggle. Pretty sure that had something to do with the way they setup their CGNAT as it no longer does that.

Get the feeling those who are not on CGNAT are getting the more premium service here and they are still trying to get CGNAT to work properly. But as I say since that time I have been fine. But will be keeping an eye on it.

Still better than Virgin and no need to haggle end of contract.

Any websites that can handle full speed you guys want me to test?

parityboy · 12 Oct 2023 at 21:27

@icstm

Having thought about it, it may well be CGNAT running out of ports, which would explain the pattern you´re seeing. Having said that, if you have a data transfer already in progress (via a simple, single connection protocol like HTTP), your entry in the NAT table should stay once it has been allocated. The only thing I can think of is that their CGNAT implementation gives priority to new connections and kicks off long-standing ones (much like a busy cell phone tower) and then has to re-establish your connection.

Orcvader · 13 Oct 2023 at 11:21

icstm said:
Are you also behind CGNAT?

Connection is wired to PC. Tested last night. It did about the first 9GB of a transfer before the erratic pattern started, when that happens the average speed over a min is about 60MB/s rather than ~110MB/s

That's a point, CF was luckily available for me just weeks before they CGNAT'ed new customers. Could be not enough spare ports like suggested above.

icstm · 16 Oct 2023 at 18:53

Thanks all for your thoughts. I think I found the problem...
It might be my new A400 SSD. Even though it is new its performance has degraded very rapidly. So not only is it slow when full, it is slow being written to when empty?!?
I could chalk it up as a £14 lesson in checking even the specs of SSDs (who would have thought that they could not cope with speeds that even HDDs cope with (my 14TB drive can write at over 150MB/s sustained, as it does that each time the A400 transfers data over...

But is it worth returning to Amazon, would they do much? It was bought in the summer.

Orcvader · 16 Oct 2023 at 19:13

icstm said:
Thanks all for your thoughts. I think I found the problem...
It might be my new A400 SSD. Even though it is new its performance has degraded very rapidly. So not only is it slow when full, it is slow being written to when empty?!?
I could chalk it up as a £14 lesson in checking even the specs of SSDs (who would have thought that they could not cope with speeds that even HDDs cope with (my 14TB drive can write at over 150MB/s sustained, as it does that each time the A400 transfers data over...

But is it worth returning to Amazon, would they do much? It was bought in the summer.

According to reviews the A400 doesn't have DRAM cache, so it will significantly affect performance. Perhaps if you force TRIM to kick in it might claim back some performance?

icstm · 16 Oct 2023 at 21:58

Orcvader said:
According to reviews the A400 doesn't have DRAM cache, so it will significantly affect performance. Perhaps if you force TRIM to kick in it might claim back some performance?

Funny you suggest that, it currently shows up as HDD, rather than SSD within Windows 10!
The Winsat command does not seem to fix.

parityboy · 17 Oct 2023 at 23:06

@icstm

Kingston drives aren't exactly known for their stellar performance.

Even a Samsung 850 Pro off ebay will outrun them.

Armadillo · 26 Oct 2023 at 16:09

Are the voip details for community fibre in the little box thing that the phone plugs into or are they in the community fibre linksys firmware? Seems you can put openwrt on some of the velop routers, I think mine can have it, but wondering if it will break voip phone.

Caged · 26 Oct 2023 at 16:18

It's all in the little Grandstream box.

doodah · 31 Oct 2023 at 13:30

Just moved to a new house and I'm struggling to get remote connections to work for my Emby server.

We were with CF in the old place and on the same package at the new place (1GB). I've tried opening/forwarding ports but it still doesn't work then came across a comment that it's CG-NAT related. I do now remember someone mentioning on here about CG-NAT and ports. But if that's the case, why did it work fine at our old place and not with the new one?

Orcvader · 31 Oct 2023 at 13:35

doodah said:
Just moved to a new house and I'm struggling to get remote connections to work for my Emby server.

We were with CF in the old place and on the same package at the new place (1GB). I've tried opening/forwarding ports but it still doesn't work then came across a comment that it's CG-NAT related. I do now remember someone mentioning on here about CG-NAT and ports. But if that's the case, why did it work fine at our old place and not with the new one?

CGNAT was only introduced to new connections a couple of months ago. So chances are on your old address, you had a dedicated IP address, but since moving, as it's a new connection you're now under CGNAT. You're better off setting up a VPN anyway to the server, it's more secure compared to opening ports.

doodah · 31 Oct 2023 at 14:05

Orcvader said:
CGNAT was only introduced to new connections a couple of months ago. So chances are on your old address, you had a dedicated IP address, but since moving, as it's a new connection you're now under CGNAT. You're better off setting up a VPN anyway to the server, it's more secure compared to opening ports.

Thank you, been scratching my head thinking I'd done something wrong. And yeah, keen to make more secure - it certainly wasn't on the old run. I forgot to cancel my NordVPN subscription, so could potentially use that. However, when I've tried to use a VPN - the bandwidth performance drop is quite significant.

Edit - hopefully workaround doesn't require tinkering client side.

Orcvader · 31 Oct 2023 at 14:26

doodah said:
Thank you, been scratching my head thinking I'd done something wrong. And yeah, keen to make more secure - it certainly wasn't on the old run. I forgot to cancel my NordVPN subscription, so could potentially use that. However, when I've tried to use a VPN - the bandwidth performance drop is quite significant.

Ah I didn't mean a VPN to a remote service, I mean setting up a VPN host on the the Emby server if possible. But then that also requires a compatible VPN client on your client devices too. However looking up what Emby actually is seeing you're using it to stream media, perhaps a VPN would actually make it more of a hassle to use.

doodah · 31 Oct 2023 at 14:38

Ah I see, yeah whatever the solution is - it has to be my side only. Getting family members to do something on their side already sounds like a minefield.

Looking at the Emby forums, these look like my preferred options:

Third - Use a one way tunnel that's only needed for your server to bypass the ISP CGNAT. This is similar to #2 except you use the hosting account public IP and basically setup a forward for ports 8096/8920 to go through the tunnel to your server. The advantage of this is that you just give the public IP address used for your hosting to anyone and they setup their Emby Client as normal. All the inbound traffic is relayed to your server. You can setup and relay any type of traffic you want this way.

Forth - My preference but the most work. Open an account for free at Cloudflare by registering a domain name you will use to access your Emby Server. Cloudflare is a security screen/cdn network so a good thing. They also allow you to setup a tunnel (their software) from your server to their network. So that works around the cgnat issue. You will have all kinds of new security and performance controls on their dashboard as well. You will also be using a certificate from them for secured access on port 443. You can now open a browser and type in https://YourEmbyDomainName.com and it goes through their network to your server. They cache images making your screens load faster in the future.

Armadillo · 31 Oct 2023 at 15:38

Caged said:
It's all in the little Grandstream box.

Thanks.

I'll have a proper look about getting openwrt on it then if the phone should still be fine.

energizer123 · 31 Oct 2023 at 21:52

I'm on the 3gb and happy so far with performance. Got my 10 gig network card coming tomorrow, currently on 2.5g ethernet (on motherboard).

Does anyone find that the modem gets very hot. The router is warm, but the modem is toasty.

Also the port from the modem to the router (router side).

Tejstar · 1 Nov 2023 at 10:24

energizer123 said:
I'm on the 3gb and happy so far with performance. Got my 10 gig network card coming tomorrow, currently on 2.5g ethernet (on motherboard).

Are you able to share a pic of the back of the router that was supplied by CF please? Trying to figure out if there is a spare 10G LAN to go to the PC.

Also which 10GB card did you get for your computer?

kona786 · 1 Nov 2023 at 11:02

Community fibre installed their fibre outlets on my parents street like 9 months ago. Still not live. Weird. This is in Enfield.

TNA · 1 Nov 2023 at 11:46

kona786 said:
Community fibre installed their fibre outlets on my parents street like 9 months ago. Still not live. Weird. This is in Enfield.

Contact them via twitter and ask what's up. Only way I got an answer which turned out to be accurate was via twitter. On the phone or email they were useless about it.

energizer123 · 1 Nov 2023 at 20:40

Tejstar said:
Are you able to share a pic of the back of the router that was supplied by CF please? Trying to figure out if there is a spare 10G LAN to go to the PC.

Also which 10GB card did you get for your computer?

Will do. There is a spare 10 gb to go to your pc.

Got a tp link. Wanted a card I could plug straight into Ethernet with a decent heat sink.