This topic

Full Fibre 900 Speeds

imacken — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 11:11:16 GMT

I was converted to full fibre 900 on Friday, and just wanted to see if the situation here is as expected.

1) I get up to about 930 mbs on my PC connected by ethernet to the hub. OK.

2) With very little activity with other devices, I am seeing about 200 on my iPhone and iPad.

3) my laptop is showing around 70, and the Network Status box shows 72Mbps. Is that a hardware limitation, or something wrong?

4) If I am doing a big download, e.g. game, on my PC it shows about 600Mbps, but if I test my iPhone or iPad, they are then showing about 15-20Mbps. Doesn't seem right.

Does this seem OK?

Re: Full Fibre 900 Speeds

ICEMAN-Hoyle — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 11:21:29 GMT

Sounds about right - I have had it for 2 weeks and the speeds greatly vary, but my speeds are the same as yours at best.

Re: Full Fibre 900 Speeds

imjolly — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 11:38:09 GMT

this was a rough speed guide on forum previously

As an example of what I mean in terms of devices not being able to support the full breadth of speed available on Full Fibre 900, take a look at the table below. This is just for a couple of Apple Smart Phones and Tablets along with popular Samsung models,

Apple (Smartphones)	Dualband (2.4 & 5Ghz)	Theoretical Max speed on 2.4Ghz connection	Theoretical Max speed on 5Ghz connection
IPHONE SE	Yes	60mbps	300mbps
IPHONE SE 2020	Yes	135mbps	600mbps

Samsung (Smartphones)	Dualband (2.4 & 5Ghz)	Theoretical Max speed on 2.4Ghz connection	Theoretical Max speed on 5Ghz connection
galaxy-s10e	Yes	135mbps	600mbps
galaxy-s10-5g	Yes	135mbps	600mbps

Apple (Tablets)	Dualband (2.4 & 5Ghz)	Theoretical Max speed on 2.4Ghz connection	Theoretical Max speed on 5Ghz connection
IPAD pro 3rd gen (Nov 2018)	Yes	135mbps	600mbps
IPAD pro 4th gen (March 2020)	Yes	135mbps	600mbps

Samsung (Tablet)	Dualband (2.4 & 5Ghz)	Theoretical Max speed on 2.4Ghz connection	Theoretical Max speed on 5Ghz connection
galaxy-tab-s5e	Yes	100mbps	300mbps
galaxy-tab-s6	Yes	60mbps	600mbps

Ethernet should ensure you get the maximum possible speed but I also appreciate that connecting this way is not always possible

Re: Full Fibre 900 Speeds

steephill — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 13:31:19 GMT

I can routinely get 640mbps on a 2022 iPad and a recent W11 gaming laptop, both about 3 metres from the SH2. Upstairs from the SH2 I still get about 400mbps.
The speed reported by various apps does vary though for no apparent reason as after days of OOKLA reporting 640 it dropped to 460 for several days using the same app and sever location.

Re: Full Fibre 900 Speeds

imacken — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 15:44:31 GMT

Thanks guys. What about points 3) and 4)?

Re: Full Fibre 900 Speeds

imjolly — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 15:56:05 GMT

3 is you laptop oldish and network card only 100 not 1000

Re: Full Fibre 900 Speeds

robh66 — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 18:53:33 GMT

And sometimes the iPhone won’t always pick up the 5Ghz frequency and will use the default of 2.4Ghz. As sometimes I can get 400mb and the average I get is about 200mb.

Re: Full Fibre 900 Speeds

imacken — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 09:24:42 GMT

Thanks for the replies, guys. I think it's probably 4) that concerns me the most. I thought that the benefit of getting this service was that the bandwidth was spread around devices more. If my network is being ground to a halt with one device hogging when doing large downloads, then that's not really good.

Re: Full Fibre 900 Speeds

licquorice — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 09:39:50 GMT

If you wish to limit bandwidth to invidual devices, you need a third party router with QoS capability.

Re: Full Fibre 900 Speeds

imacken — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 10:27:36 GMT

I don't want to restrict bandwidth to devices, what I would like to see is a better sharing between devices. I thought that would be normal.
Not good that one device can hog almost it all!

Re: Full Fibre 900 Speeds

steephill — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 12:28:27 GMT

Does the speed distribution have any real effect though? Realistically how often are you likely to be downloading games at 600Mbps and for how long? A few minutes at a time once a day? If you are still getting 20Mbps on your other devices then that is more than enough for most tasks e.g. HD streaming or video calling.

I don't know how the SmartHub2 balances loads as it doesn't have QoS but if you want more control you need to spend money on a different router.

Re: Full Fibre 900 Speeds

imjolly — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 12:45:27 GMT

@imacken wrote:
I don't want to restrict bandwidth to devices, what I would like to see is a better sharing between devices. I thought that would be normal.
Not good that one device can hog almost it all!

that's why as @licquorice posted you need a router which allows you to restrict the bandwidth to devices and that way your 900mb can be shared between devices as you decide

Re: Full Fibre 900 Speeds

imacken — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 06:21:20 GMT

Thanks for that.
I don’t want to restrict bandwidth to devices as I would like the full amount to be used by a device if no other devices were particularly active.
For example, say I’m doing a big download on my PC at 900, then if 4 iPhones/iPads become active, then I would like to see them receive about 100 (random figure) and the PC would throttle to 500. At the moment, the PC keeps its speed - more or less - and other devices get very little.
Random numbers and simplistic scenario, but hopefully it explains things.
Would another router be able to do that?

Re: Full Fibre 900 Speeds

Keith_Beddoe — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 07:13:31 GMT

You could use a different router with priority settings, but if you have Digital Voice, then you have no choice but to use the Smart Hub 2.

Re: Full Fibre 900 Speeds

Keith_Beddoe — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 07:46:44 GMT

Another option, provided your PC is connected using Ethernet, is a managed Ethernet switch which can restrict speed to a specific port.

There may also be PC based tools to restrict download speed.

Most routers that support priority and bandwidth, allow you to reserve bandwidth to specific IP addresses.

Re: Full Fibre 900 Speeds

licquorice — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 08:09:31 GMT

@imacken have a read of this https://www.howtogeek.com/75660/the-beginners-guide-to-qos-on-your-router/

Re: Full Fibre 900 Speeds

Anonymous — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 08:15:18 GMT

I'm not sure that you're comparing apples with apples. I would expect that if you were to commence the download of the same large file, from the same source, on two different devices connected by ethernet, that they would indeed share the bandwidth. Comparing a large download on ethernet with a brief speed test on WiFi isn't really the same thing. There shouldn't really be any need for QoS on a 900Mb connection.

As previously mentioned, one of the major disadvantages of the SH2 is it's inability to separate the SSIDs for the 2.4 & 5GHz bands. So you have no control over whether a device connects to the faster 5GHz band or not. You haven't said if you're using DV or not. If you are then a mesh system in access point mode should give you that control. If not then you could try another router.

But having said that, I suspect you're also falling into the trap of obsessing over numbers rather than performance. In your example, what could you do on a mobile device with a 100Mb connection that you can't currently do with 20Mb?

Re: Full Fibre 900 Speeds

imacken — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 09:29:03 GMT

Obsessing over numbers? Not sure about that. I was simply giving the above as a random example.

In practice, it does cause an issue, as when a large download is going on, I can see nly 1-2Mbs on my TV streaming services.

Even though my contract for this only started on Friday, I have been moved to EE and their hub is arriving tomorrow. Will that make a difference?

No, I don't have Digital Voice.

Thanks again guys.

Re: Full Fibre 900 Speeds

Keith_Beddoe — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 09:36:13 GMT

@imacken

You may be best to ask on the EE forum, as you are their customer now, and will be using their service and equipment.

https://community.ee.co.uk/

Re: Full Fibre 900 Speeds

Anonymous — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 10:26:53 GMT

There are two versions of EE Hub. One is a new, WiFi 6 Hub & one is a BT SH2 is a new dress, so until it arrives you connect it, you won't know which one or whether it's an improvement.

This post shows the different models. Note the smooth base of the WiFi6 Smart Hub Plus.

It seems very odd that a download would lock out streaming services, not least because it's rare that a server would support the full 900Mb bandwidth available, so there should be plenty to spare for streaming. If this were a common issue I'd expect to see plenty of similar complaints.