Slow FTTP 900

[unitedrabster]

Lovely to see that my speed is still all over the place. No email or phone call to check if service has improved. 1 day I get nearly 900Mbps tonight 120Mbps, tomorrow will probably be 24 or maybe it'll be 400. Now they're saying speed from exchange to hub is fine. Complaint raised on 30th April nothing done about it. That's a month since the fibres been fitted and it's till not stable. Cat 8e cable from ONT to hub and CAT 7e from hub to PC. Nothing else plugged in. No WiFi being used. I'm guessing they've  sent me a trash hub (not for the first time). Getting seriously hacked off with paying for something I'm not getting

[gosforth]

@unitedrabster Unfortunately, BT customer service over the phone is, how to say it politely, useless or almost non existent, when coming to FF900…

Premise number one is speed guarantee: 450/10 (yes, that’s right, 10 Mbps upload is what they willing to guarantee!!! Absolutely rip off!).

Premise number two, this not meant internet speed You getting, but sync speed of your line, which, in most cases will be just ok, between your respective exchange and your router! Another rip off, and totally false advertisement regarding “gigabit internet connection”.

In real world, you will simply see real internet speed vary A LOT (and I mean  here like A LOT). That will be down of congestion happening on respective area, exchange, etc. etc.

But, be fair, any such drop should not last more then couple minutes, max hour or two, and especially within off peak times, or, early morning (very late night), you SHOULD SEE decent speed, somewhere at range 750-900 Mbps down, and stable 100+ Mbps up…

Please be aware, as if You see upload speed capped on 50 Mbps, that’s not right either! Please search forum here for solution (essentially contact MODs, and they will gets you sorted to stable 110+ on upload…

Problem of SH2, which I explored, was, as it was really really affected by huge utilisation of WiFi network. How I mean this? When I allowed to use WiFi on my SH2, it was just really unreliable, and slow, not only on WiFi part, but absolutely affecting also LAN part…  I guessing here, power of SH2 was not enough to deal with either 900/110 Mbps, very congested both WiFi bands, and traffic on it.. At my place, there is more then 50 FTTH broadband services active over apartment building, many of them from BT.. And there was biggest problem… BT SH2 working either at “Smart” or 1,6,11 channel on 2.4 and “Smart” or 36, 42, 48 channel on 5 GHz. YOU CAN NOT change it to another channel. That’s it.. and when you have 40+ this devices all around, and another dozen others, from other providers, it will be just one big big mess!

My replacement SH2 immediately performed in similar way. Up to moment, when I switched off WiFi on it (please be aware, it will still provide either BT-WiFi SSID(s) and either “hidden” SSID even you switch off 2.4 and 5 GHz in admin!!! - If you wanna prevent that, You need to opt-out from BT WiFi, but You will loose access to it as user, obviously.

My speed drops are much less noticeable now. In general, I am not dropping under 500/110 Mbps down/up.

WiFi away from congested channels giving me 300-450/110 Mbps down/up on band A, and 500-650/120 Mbps on Band B (with DFS on). Hard wired 750-920/110-120 Mbps down/up most of the time.

WiFi is handled by separate tri band AC router, which acting as full bodied router, not only access point, placed into DMZ on SH2, and for IPV6 used in bridge mode (essentially IPV6 is managed by SH2 still).

Noticeable improvement in stability and performance is really clearly presented.

I do believe, as BT SH2 can’t perform well with FF900 especially when WiFi bands are really utilised and congested where placed,  and this really slow it down, all around, including “unreliable” and disgrace speeds.

[supertedster]

You're only as fast as the computer you're connecting to!

Not many can serve you GBit downloads.

The product is designed to provide a wide bandwidth for multiple users streaming at the same time.  Not one user hogging the whole pipeline.

[gosforth]

@supertedster that's another kind of issue... 

BUT, I am getting decent 750+/100+ Mbps down/up hard wired CAT6 into 5 years old "office desktop" with just i5 7th GEN and 16 GB ram, with onboard LAN gigabit port. 

I shall expect, it will be not "quick enough" to handle it, but it just do it right and as expected.

@unitedrabster mentioned higher CAT cables, and of course, basic premise is, his wired setup will be on par to handle speeds expected.

Problem here is misleading advertisement, while BT selling something, which they are not really willing to guarantee.

I can live with 450 Mbps guarantee down, but upload speed guarantee 10 Mbps is just one bad joke, and it's not even acceptable on April fool day like.

As multiple devices will concurrently split available bandwidth, that's expected behaviour, as well as anything on Wifi will be just quick, as combination of infrastructure and devices. But he mentioned, as problem exists on just one device, hard wired, and while high category of cables, I shall expect, as that problem is solved, and his network is capable to handle what should be 900/110 bandwith.

[unitedrabster]

PC that's connected to the hub is more than capable of receiving 1Gbps

Ryzen 3800x, on an MSI X570 Gaming Plus mobo with 1Gbps relatedk erhernet card confirmed switched to 1Gbps, 32Gb  Hyperx Fury DDR 3200ram, MSI Mech OC rx5700xt, ADATA sx8200 1Tb nvme, wd blue 250GB nvme, Kingston 120 GB ssd wd 2Tb Green HDD. At the same time that WiFi download speed tell me that the hub to exchange speed is good 400Mbps, switch WiFi off and ethernet speed is all over the place. 120Mbps or 20Mbps or at one point it flicked to show 1.0Gbps. Speed has been tested using FAST, ookla, btwholesale speed tester. Bt home hub speed test reports exchange to hub speed is good.

I'm guessing the SH2 WAN to ethernet is trash. Waiting on a netgear nighthawk XR500 arriving as I have no faith in the SH2

[supertedster]

I've seen erratic behaviour with the LAN ports on my SH2 too. You can look in the admin log to see their link speed.

Using all of the ports caused at least one to drop from Gbit speeds.

I cured this by only running one cable from the hub to a Gbit switch. The switch then serves the rest of my network at full speeds.
I guess we're asking too much of the poor little thing! 🙂

[gosforth]

@unitedrabster that’s decent and impressive setup, which clearly should not be issue to benefit from 900/110 speed..

If You can, switch off WiFi on SH2, and try performance of the broadband connection purely on LAN. 

It was in first place, when I came to decision go for separate router for WiFi (alongside as above described and screenshots provided jam on both 2.4 and 5 GHz bands, where SH2 is able operate).

Immediately when I turn WiFi off, I got improvement on stability on LAN side. It just looks, as it can’t handle pressure all around and even You personally not using WiFi side, it’s making trouble…

If you planning use Digital Voice (DECT) you will still need to have SH2 involved, even as DECT base, and DMZ it to Nighthawk. 

If you don’t need Digital Voice, put SH2 back to brown cardboard box, and forgot it…

Troubles, which You might experience:

IPV6 is somehow specific issue with BT. They using “no address” and /56 allocations, but many routers insisting to provide WAN address (not have option “no address”) and /64 allocations.

My overcome is, at least for now, as IPV6 on my aftermarket router is set as IPV6 bridge, and simply pass through it to SH2 to handle. Not elegant, but I given up with BT Customer service, because at moment You mention using third party equipment, you are done, they refuse do anything.

Like this, they see SH2, they are happy to do customer service 🙂 

Like this, I have still DECT Digital Voice - ok

Like this, IP4 is handled by aftermarket router directly, and DMZ over SH2, which ignore any devices on IPV4, but router behind.

IPV6 is passed to SH2, and handled correctly with BT expectation 🙂