Optimising Sky Hub Router Speed

[Trojan Horse]

Hey guys

I upgraded all my wiring to some cat 6 stuff, swapped out my 2nd router downstairs for a switch and it worked faster and got a nice speed bump up from 48 mbps to 55mbps

I get 60mbps from the wall as shown on my sky hub but I was wondering if I could squeeze any extra speed somehow? Would I get faster speed wiring up a Pi, switching to cloudflare 1.1.1.1 DNS, or something like that?

I get 56 direct to the router and 55 with my powerline so I'm really happy with that - just while I'm trying to up the speed it would be nice to know if there is anything I am missing

 

[MissChief]

When it comes to Fibre you're quite limited, but it might be worth checking your SNR. If you can get DLM to drop this to 3db then you might get a boost. Alternatively you might be at 3db already.

 

[Stephanie Peterson]

You will see some speed ups using something like pihole to cache and process DNS queries, not only that you will gain by it throwing out blacklisted advertising addresses.
I have also added my own managed wireless AP's to speed up that side and have pfsense plus a squid proxy running on a VM (pihole is also on the server as a VM, not on a pi)

Between them all the tweeks i have done i am maxing out my connection as much as i can without touching the modem side.

 

[Trojan Horse]

When it comes to Fibre you're quite limited, but it might be worth checking your SNR. If you can get DLM to drop this to 3db then you might get a boost. Alternatively you might be at 3db already.

How do I check my SNR? Is it 9.1?

http://prntscr.com/oard4k

 

[Trojan Horse]

You will see some speed ups using something like pihole to cache and process DNS queries, not only that you will gain by it throwing out blacklisted advertising addresses.
I have also added my own managed wireless AP's to speed up that side and have pfsense plus a squid proxy running on a VM (pihole is also on the server as a VM, not on a pi)

Between them all the tweeks i have done i am maxing out my connection as much as i can without touching the modem side.

What speed do you get from your box and how much did you optimise it by?

 

[Stephanie Peterson]

I cant really say how much its sped up, it certainly feels snappier - on heavy advertising pages or youtube ext web browsing is significantly faster, pages load way way quicker although you can get a lot of the way there simply by using addblock.
Base speed tests with speedtest.net show no improvement,not surprising. This is because the tests it does never causes a bottleneck anyway. Same with torrents, outright download speed is not affected. I get 43Mb through VDSL and thats my max.

DNS caching, addblocking (at browser and DNS level) plus running a proxy server (squid) all contribute to web pages loading and filling quicker. Pfsense can also handle traffic quicker although i have it more for security and vlan management on the managed switch i also have.

The easiest to do are pihole and addblock, that will get you quite far. All you need is a pi or similar (or a VM on a nas or something) - if you want to go further then by all means look at doing your own router in software (pfsense) and use manage switches and APs but these things are more advanced and really not needed for home users (even thought they can be bought cheep)

 

[Trojan Horse]

I cant really say how much its sped up, it certainly feels snappier - on heavy advertising pages or youtube ext web browsing is significantly faster, pages load way way quicker although you can get a lot of the way there simply by using addblock.
Base speed tests with speedtest.net show no improvement,not surprising. This is because the tests it does never causes a bottleneck anyway. Same with torrents, outright download speed is not affected. I get 43Mb through VDSL and thats my max.

DNS caching, addblocking (at browser and DNS level) plus running a proxy server (squid) all contribute to web pages loading and filling quicker. Pfsense can also handle traffic quicker although i have it more for security and vlan management on the managed switch i also have.

The easiest to do are pihole and addblock, that will get you quite far. All you need is a pi or similar (or a VM on a nas or something) - if you want to go further then by all means look at doing your own router in software (pfsense) and use manage switches and APs but these things are more advanced and really not needed for home users (even thought they can be bought cheep)

Whats difference between just having adblock on my chrome? I never use anything other than chrome anyway and I'd still need to keep adblock enabled on chrome as I use work devices...

How do you do DNS caching? I do a lot of dev work and that would proabbly be bad when I want to see live changes

Work are giving out free servers so I was thinking of setting it up with Ubuntu server - can I add pfsense and other stuff on top of something like that?

 

[Caged]

Your downstream sync rate being bang on 60,000 with a ~9dB noise margin looks suspicious.

Do Sky do a 55Mbps service?

 

[Stephanie Peterson]

Whats difference between just having adblock on my chrome? I never use anything other than chrome anyway and I'd still need to keep adblock enabled on chrome as I use work devices...

How do you do DNS caching? I do a lot of dev work and that would proabbly be bad when I want to see live changes

Work are giving out free servers so I was thinking of setting it up with Ubuntu server - can I add pfsense and other stuff on top of something like that?

Its kind of beyond this thread, you best look at the pihole one for info.
But addblock and pihole will speed up your browsing experience considerably - it wont make a jot to raw speed though for downloads.
Ohh and pfsense is fairly technical and really needs a box with twin network cards (seperate the vlans out) to run properly.

 

[MissChief]

Your downstream sync rate being bang on 60,000 with a ~9dB noise margin looks suspicious.

Do Sky do a 55Mbps service?

We used to, Fibre Unlimited Plus but it wasn’t widely taken up and is no longer offered.