Sponsored Links

Openreach 900mbps vs Virgin Media 1gig

Well for a while I have VM IPoE gig1, and CityFibre PPPoE 1000/1000

Latency is 4ms which is insane, insane upload speed.

However when downloading packet loss is in the gutter, like it was on VDSL, investigating, and keep finding pfSense PPPoE packet loss posts. :(

Will report back if I fix it. I also have a more powerful kit I have yet to deploy on pfSense. Of course PPPoE might be nothing to do with it as VM do seem to allow more buffered packets than other ISPs.

--

Will come back to this later, I have significantly reduced the loss by making sure max-mss working properly and baby jumbo frames, 1452 was murdering it, that also boosted fast.com from 870mbps which was a little low up to 930-940. I also made the CPU clock more aggressive, tomorrow or Wednesday ill get the more powerful kit in place to feed that PPPoE beast
Just wondering do you get the same web browsing and packet loss issues when you use the ISP router? As pfSense is known to not work well with PPPoE due to flawed implementation.

If/when I finally get fibre I might choose a PPPoE ISP like BT or EE, but if they have those issues even on the ISP router then I guess I'd be limited to only Sky or TalkTalk.
 
Sponsored Links
I chose to not use a ISP supplied router, I know PPPoE isnt multi threaded on FreeBSD which in itself obviously reduces peak performance although I do consider the protocol itself flawed in some aspects.

It looks like from the observation of my testing yesterday when using a default MTU of 1492 the fragmentation adds significant overhead, much more than what one would expect as things did improve notably after that was reconfigured and also making sure scrub was configured correctly to use max-mss. I think pfSense however needs to redesign their MTU GUI, if you configure the MTU and leave the MSS box blank, and MTU is below 1500, it doesnt add any MSS headers, for that to happen you have to manually populate the MSS box, on top of that the value in the MSS box has to be the MTU which isnt intuitive at all, as the box clearly states its the MSS value. e.g. if you put 1460 in the MSS box you end up with 1420 maximum MSS. Just had a quick rethink, I can certainly understand why MSS is separate, as the client itself behind the firewall could add its own MSS headers, the MSS on the firewall is a case of forcefully injecting the headers so without the need to worry about client devices doing it.

Over the the period of this week, maybe even within next day or two I will be using more powerful kit I have already purchased earlier in the year but just havent got round to deploying.

I have no issues whatsoever on IPoE.

Bear in mind I had these issues on VDSL which only has a max throughput of circa 74mbps, on that the issue was ridiculous, packet loss would be appearing as low as 60% utilisation. A lot didnt make sense and with all the factors in play like ISP's configured to only buffer low amount of packets, their own QoS, Openreach QoS etc. it was never clear cut.

But as soon as I started digging deeper and discovered 4g had none of the symptoms, and later on VM cable, I knew it was related somehow to the DSL setup specifically.
 
On new unit is very good now, not same issues VDSL had.
Even the old unit was fine I think after I did the MSS changes and increased the CPU clock speeds.
 
I would have got both, tested both, and kept whatever was cheapest/worked best :P
 
I chose to not use a ISP supplied router, I know PPPoE isnt multi threaded on FreeBSD which in itself obviously reduces peak performance although I do consider the protocol itself flawed in some aspects.

It looks like from the observation of my testing yesterday when using a default MTU of 1492 the fragmentation adds significant overhead, much more than what one would expect as things did improve notably after that was reconfigured and also making sure scrub was configured correctly to use max-mss. I think pfSense however needs to redesign their MTU GUI, if you configure the MTU and leave the MSS box blank, and MTU is below 1500, it doesnt add any MSS headers, for that to happen you have to manually populate the MSS box, on top of that the value in the MSS box has to be the MTU which isnt intuitive at all, as the box clearly states its the MSS value. e.g. if you put 1460 in the MSS box you end up with 1420 maximum MSS. Just had a quick rethink, I can certainly understand why MSS is separate, as the client itself behind the firewall could add its own MSS headers, the MSS on the firewall is a case of forcefully injecting the headers so without the need to worry about client devices doing it.

Over the the period of this week, maybe even within next day or two I will be using more powerful kit I have already purchased earlier in the year but just havent got round to deploying.

I have no issues whatsoever on IPoE.

Bear in mind I had these issues on VDSL which only has a max throughput of circa 74mbps, on that the issue was ridiculous, packet loss would be appearing as low as 60% utilisation. A lot didnt make sense and with all the factors in play like ISP's configured to only buffer low amount of packets, their own QoS, Openreach QoS etc. it was never clear cut.

But as soon as I started digging deeper and discovered 4g had none of the symptoms, and later on VM cable, I knew it was related somehow to the DSL setup specifically.
Interesting, as I use AAISP which is PPPoE and opnSense and have no problem getting 800MBps on a single threaded test.
 
Top
Cheap BIG ISPs for 100Mbps+
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £22.99
132Mbps
Gift: None
Vodafone UK ISP Logo
Vodafone £24.00 - 26.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
NOW UK ISP Logo
NOW £24.00
100Mbps
Gift: None
Plusnet UK ISP Logo
Plusnet £25.99
145Mbps
Gift: £50 Reward Card
Large Availability | View All
Cheapest ISPs for 100Mbps+
Gigaclear UK ISP Logo
Gigaclear £17.00
200Mbps
Gift: None
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £22.99
132Mbps
Gift: None
Hey! Broadband UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Youfibre UK ISP Logo
Youfibre £23.99
150Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
Sponsored Links
The Top 15 Category Tags
  1. FTTP (6028)
  2. BT (3639)
  3. Politics (2721)
  4. Business (2440)
  5. Openreach (2405)
  6. Building Digital UK (2330)
  7. Mobile Broadband (2146)
  8. FTTC (2083)
  9. Statistics (1902)
  10. 4G (1816)
  11. Virgin Media (1764)
  12. Ofcom Regulation (1582)
  13. Fibre Optic (1467)
  14. Wireless Internet (1462)
  15. 5G (1407)
Sponsored

Copyright © 1999 to Present - ISPreview.co.uk - All Rights Reserved - Terms  ,  Privacy and Cookie Policy  ,  Links  ,  Website Rules