Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[kjw]

Afternoon,

I know this makes not a bit of difference but I have noticed the Zen IP profiles seem to be set a bit lower than those of BT.

Max I have managed to hit on a speed test is around 920 / 100 yet I have seen people on BT manage to burst up to around 940/120.

As I say it doesn't really matter but just wondered if this is normal behaviour for a Zen provisioned line?

Cheers,

K.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Have you checked that directly from a PC to the ONT to ensure its not a router limitation?

[kjw]

I don't think it can be as to be honest its the upload I was more intrigued by and that seems to be pretty solid at 100 where as the upload gets way into 900 (CPU of the pfSense box at around 7% so don't think its limited)

In all honesty I am not that concerned just wondered if Zen was a bit more conservative on the IP profile, I came from 40/10 so not going to complain!

I did find my virtualised pfSense setup was adding 5ms of latency and pegging the cpu of the VM at 100% so moved it to bare metal and that massively improved things.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Even on VDSL I find throughput lower via pfSense than PPPoE via Windows 10.

[kjw]

You definitely need a decent CPU once you start getting into full fibre territory, PPPoE in BSD just isn't that great (yours should be good for 10G haha, my old i5-4590t is barely breaking a sweat. I do have an i7-6700 but think that may be massive overkill)

On another note been very happy with Zen so far, emailed in a few times and had quick reply's.

What's interesting is my install is still dated for first part 28th June, second part 7th July but I was actually installed a week ago and went live yesterday.. I guess they`ll catch up eventually or ill get a month for free we will see

[Alex Atkin UK]

My router can easily handle Gigabit, at least in one direction.

I actually tested this today by setting up a PPPoE Server on it and NATing to the primary LAN.  Its something about the how the OS itself is working that reduces throughput on REAL WAN connections.  It hit about 50% load and bearing in mind I have several OpenVPN clients on there too, so its definitely going to be pushing it once I get FTTP.

I've actually found I had to lock it to 2.4Ghz as if it turbo boosts to 2.6Ghz even on my current configuration, if I max out the VPNs it was hitting tjMax of the CPU despite only hitting 25% CPU load.

[kjw]

Next stop.. setup the IPV6 prefix they have sent over!

[Alex Atkin UK]

It was a little glitchy when I first went to pfSense but they since fixed it, should work very easily.

[craigv]

I'm on the same package as you, and I think the best I've seen is 930mbps down, 110mbps up. The upload speed is very consistent, but I find the download typically is between 890-910 most the time, but there are many factors which could account for that I'm sure.

You definitely need a decent CPU once you start getting into full fibre territory, PPPoE in BSD just isn't that great (yours should be good for 10G haha, my old i5-4590t is barely breaking a sweat. I do have an i7-6700 but think that may be massive overkill)

On another note been very happy with Zen so far, emailed in a few times and had quick reply's.

You definitely do need a decent (or at least not terrible) CPU - learnt this the hard way when my pfsense box would only push ~500mbps initially! This in part is related to a pfsense (well FreeBSD?) issue where the PPPoE traffic can't be spread over multiple cores. 

I also don't have a bad word to say about Zen after around 8 years as customer, which is why I stuck to them when I moved to FTTP

C

[Alex Atkin UK]

I'm on the same package as you, and I think the best I've seen is 930mbps down, 110mbps up. The upload speed is very consistent, but I find the download typically is between 890-910 most the time, but there are many factors which could account for that I'm sure.

Makes sense as on download you're allocated half the PONs downstream bandwidth whereas upload is slightly more than 1/10, so the odds of contention with the neighbours is much higher on downloads.

[kjw]

You definitely do need a decent (or at least not terrible) CPU - learnt this the hard way when my pfsense box would only push ~500mbps initially! This in part is related to a pfsense (well FreeBSD?) issue where the PPPoE traffic can't be spread over multiple cores. 

CPU is hitting around 11% when downloading at full speed without any trickery enabled yet so hopefully in a good place on that front now!

Makes sense as on download you're allocated half the PONs downstream bandwidth whereas upload is slightly more than 1/10, so the odds of contention with the neighbours is much higher on downloads.

I am hoping all my PON mates only pay for the slower services hopefully it doesn't change things too much once I do not have it all to myself! Managed to get installed within a week of go live whilst a few other people I know in the area have been given dates in July!

Another question if you don't mind.. is there a way to tell if you are going via BTW or TTB or Zens own backhaul?

Again purely out of interest really

[Alex Atkin UK]

With only 30 people on a PON and probably not having that many for some time, I honestly don't expect throttling to become a problem until they are already ready to roll out XGPON.  With the BT package offering minimum guarantees, I suspect this is what we can expect on any high-end ISP, even if they do not have the guarantee.

Its actually CitreFibre I'd expect to have more problems as on the top package you literally have the whole PONs upstream bandwidth, so will almost certainly never sustain that speed unless you are alone on the PON.  Then again, its cheaper than Openreach so hardly a complaint.

[kjw]

Its actually CitreFibre I'd expect to have more problems as on the top package you literally have the whole PONs upstream bandwidth, so will almost certainly never sustain that speed unless you are alone on the PON.  Then again, its cheaper than Openreach so hardly a complaint.

Indeed, someone with a penchant for torrents could cause mayhem very quickly.

[burakkucat]

Another question if you don't mind.. is there a way to tell if you are going via BTW or TTB or Zens own backhaul?

Again purely out of interest really

I believe one can determine the backhaul, upon which the service has been provisioned, by performing a traceroute and analysing the intermediate hops. It's not something I have ever done and I may be caterwauling nonsense . . . so let's see if other members have an opinion.

[kjw]

Well if some in the know, knows....

1  vt1.cor2.lond1.ptn.zen.net.uk (51.148.72.22)  7.108 ms  6.994 ms  6.491 ms
 2  lag-9.p1.thn-lon.zen.net.uk (51.148.73.160)  7.227 ms  7.522 ms  7.365 ms
 3  lag-1.br1.thn-lon.zen.net.uk (51.148.73.153)  7.242 ms  7.258 ms  7.240 ms
 4  lonap.as13335.net (5.57.81.75)  8.232 ms  7.474 ms  7.990 ms
 5  one.one.one.one (1.1.1.1)  7.366 ms  7.420 ms  7.349 ms