General : Virgin testing 2.2 Gbps

[Skie]

Asus have quite a range of routers now with 2.5 and 10gbps ports, and high end motherboards are shipping with similar port mixes.

The Hub4 is a bottleneck. Nobody wants to use Wifi for the desktop gaming PC.

[BenMcr]

Originally Posted by roughbeast

Already Hub 4 dishes out almost 1.2Gb for those on the Oomph deal, but over more than one Gb port at a time. Surely, the principle of sharing 2.2Gb over a number of 1Gb ports is no different than what we have now. Admittedly this is only for larger households with data-hungry users, but surely it is a viable product.

At the time the Hub 4 was designed, 2.5Gb ports weren't an option from Arris (Commscope). They now have Gateways with a 2.5Gb port on them - although it seems to lose two 1Gb ports to make up for it

https://www.commscope.com/product-ty...modems/tg9452/

Other manufacturers will be doing the same now, so whenever the Hub 5 comes along it will likely have at least one 2.5Gb port on it.

[ChuckVader]

Originally Posted by roughbeast

I don't know if you are right about this or not. No matter how techy someone is, unless they have a need for 2.2Gb available bandwidth surely they won't waste their cash on it. To me the most likely customers are a large family with teens etc or a student household. Having said that I wouldn't expect massive take up in the first instance.

Past 200Mbps you are well in to diminishing returns, plus the bottleneck moves to somewhere else in the network, when you get north of 500Mbps. Most people are probably wasting their money past that point, but in the case of VM you need to go there if you want a better upload speed.

As an example I have discussed some connections that have typical peak usages on 7Gbps on a 10Gbps connection and that's a university network with several thousand users. That peak load is the evening and is down to Netflix ...

Originally Posted by Skie

Asus have quite a range of routers now with 2.5 and 10gbps ports, and high end motherboards are shipping with similar port mixes.

The Hub4 is a bottleneck. Nobody wants to use Wifi for the desktop gaming PC.

The Hub 4 used in modem only mode with the right routers isn't a bottleneck as such. Here is my current speedtest on my desktop PC.

[roughbeast]

Originally Posted by ChuckVader

Past 200Mbps you are well in to diminishing returns, plus the bottleneck moves to somewhere else in the network, when you get north of 500Mbps. Most people are probably wasting their money past that point, but in the case of VM you need to go there if you want a better upload speed.

As an example I have discussed some connections that have typical peak usages on 7Gbps on a 10Gbps connection and that's a university network with several thousand users. That peak load is the evening and is down to Netflix ...



The Hub 4 used in modem only mode with the right routers isn't a bottleneck as such. Here is my current speedtest on my desktop PC.

I get this or slightly higher with my AX11000. It has the necessary WAN to LAN throughput, but without combining two SHUB 4 ethernet ports, something the hub doesn't facilitate, I cannot achieve over 1Gb. How did you get 116Mbps?

[ChuckVader]

Originally Posted by roughbeast

I get this or slightly higher with my AX11000. It has the necessary WAN to LAN throughput, but without combining two SHUB 4 ethernet ports, something the hub doesn't facilitate, I cannot achieve over 1Gb. How did you get 116Mbps?

The limitation of a single gigabit port is around 930-945(ish) Mbps depending on the strength of the prevailing wind.

The Super Hub 4 (and 3) for that matter do support link round-robin aggregation on 2 or more connections. It is not widely known and seems to be misunderstood which is part of the reason I posted this.

So long as your other router can do this, which I am not sure whether yours can or can't (nice looking router, reminds me of the ship out of The Abyss.) then and assuming the device you are testing on has at least a 2.5Gb NIC then you will be able to use the full bandwidth which is up to 1.2Gbps on VM.

For reference, I am using a Mikrotik CCR1009-7G-1C-1S+ with a 10Gb link to the rest of my network and the test PC has a 10Gb NIC too.

[roughbeast]

Originally Posted by ChuckVader

The limitation of a single gigabit port is around 930-945(ish) Mbps depending on the strength of the prevailing wind.

The Super Hub 4 (and 3) for that matter do support link round-robin aggregation on 2 or more connections. It is not widely known and seems to be misunderstood which is part of the reason I posted this.

So long as your other router can do this, which I am not sure whether yours can or can't (nice looking router, reminds me of the ship out of The Abyss.) then and assuming the device you are testing on has at least a 2.5Gb NIC then you will be able to use the full bandwidth which is up to 1.2Gbps on VM.

For reference, I am using a Mikrotik CCR1009-7G-1C-1S+ with a 10Gb link to the rest of my network and the test PC has a 10Gb NIC too.

The AX11000 will handle port aggregation / dual WAN and has a 2.5Gb port. I guess all I would need is a 10Gb NIC for my main PC, but I'm not about to invest in the Mikrotik CCR1009-7G-1C-1S+ .

I'll let you know if it works out.

[ChuckVader]

Originally Posted by roughbeast

The AX11000 will handle port aggregation / dual WAN and has a 2.5Gb port. I guess all I would need is a 10Gb NIC for my main PC, but I'm not about to invest in the Mikrotik CCR1009-7G-1C-1S+ .

I'll let you know if it works out.

Sorry wasn't suggesting you should buy the Mikrotik just referencing it as an example.

Are you running the Merlin custom firmware on yours as not sure the stock router will do what needs to be done?

Having a quick look at the manual, the WAN port is the 2.5Gb port so not sure if you could actually use that downstream to your desktop PC.

Link Aggregation appears to only work on ports 1 and 2 and then is 802.3ad which if I remember correctly didn't work with the SH when I last tried. Only round robin worked when I last tested it setting it up. I know a few others found the same issue.

Dual WAN won't give what you need in this case.

Therefore unless the Merlin firmware offers more configuration am not convinced if it will work to give the higher speeds.

You would need to have something upstream of your modem between the SH and the modem but then you start getting potential more NATing etc. Somebody was going to try a managed switch but haven't heard back if that worked or not.

You could try configuring it anyway without upgrading the NIC. I don't know if it is my imagination but one thing to note is that the SH4 seems to take longer to establish the connection this way. E.g. reboot takes several minutes before Internet is back.

---------- Post added at 11:02 ---------- Previous post was at 09:34 ----------

Here a couple of links (hope that is allowed) about it for more reading, didn't realise I got it working so long ago as it was Jan 2020...

https://forums.servethehome.com/inde...dia-isp.26354/

and also a nice article written up by a fellow forum member on another site.

https://tech.msh100.uk/virgin/networ...ter-than-gbit/

[Rankrotten]

You don't need the server grade Mikrotik routerboard. I use a RB4011iGS+RM with all four Virgin hub LAN ports bonded together using balance-rr.

It has a choice of RJ45 GigE or 10GBe SFP+ outputs depending on your requirements. 1145Mbps out from Virgin on the 10GBe side.

Rock solid performer, has been up 24/7 all year and no issues whatsoever in the comms cupboard.

IMG_7103.jpg

[ChuckVader]

Originally Posted by Rankrotten

You don't need the server grade Mikrotik routerboard. I use a RB4011iGS+RM with all four Virgin hub LAN ports bonded together using balance-rr.

It has a choice of RJ45 GigE or 10GBe SFP+ outputs depending on your requirements. 1145Mbps out from Virgin on the 10GBe side.

Rock solid performer, has been up 24/7 all year and no issues whatsoever in the comms cupboard.

Attachment 29195

Yep don't disagree with you there, I looked at the RB4011 as the option to start with, think it is even mentioned on the link I put. I did however want some of the features that were present on the one I went with in the end. Both very nice and stable as you say.

Unlike the SH4 which only just had its password masked and router stats fail after a bit and thinks it is not connected to the Internet

[NoCableForMe]

Tested up to 8gig in Cambridgeshire a few years back. Was fibre though

[roughbeast]

Originally Posted by ChuckVader

Sorry wasn't suggesting you should buy the Mikrotik just referencing it as an example.

Are you running the Merlin custom firmware on yours as not sure the stock router will do what needs to be done?

Having a quick look at the manual, the WAN port is the 2.5Gb port so not sure if you could actually use that downstream to your desktop PC.

Link Aggregation appears to only work on ports 1 and 2 and then is 802.3ad which if I remember correctly didn't work with the SH when I last tried. Only round robin worked when I last tested it setting it up. I know a few others found the same issue.

Dual WAN won't give what you need in this case.

Therefore unless the Merlin firmware offers more configuration am not convinced if it will work to give the higher speeds.

You would need to have something upstream of your modem between the SH and the modem but then you start getting potential more NATing etc. Somebody was going to try a managed switch but haven't heard back if that worked or not.

You could try configuring it anyway without upgrading the NIC. I don't know if it is my imagination but one thing to note is that the SH4 seems to take longer to establish the connection this way. E.g. reboot takes several minutes before Internet is back.

---------- Post added at 11:02 ---------- Previous post was at 09:34 ----------

Here a couple of links (hope that is allowed) about it for more reading, didn't realise I got it working so long ago as it was Jan 2020...

https://forums.servethehome.com/inde...dia-isp.26354/

and also a nice article written up by a fellow forum member on another site.

https://tech.msh100.uk/virgin/networ...ter-than-gbit/

Thanks. It doesn't look hopeful, unless I am prepared to invest a lot of time.

I wasn't taking the Mikrotik as a recommendation. Any additional kit will cost me and I don't want to spend more cash on something that only gets me just over an extra 100Mb bandwidth. (Remembering when we used to be grateful for an extra Mb)

The 2.5Gb port can be used downstream if I were to need it. I use the standard firmware atm, but would change to Merlin if I saw an advantage.

[ChuckVader]

Originally Posted by roughbeast

Thanks. It doesn't look hopeful, unless I am prepared to invest a lot of time.

I wasn't taking the Mikrotik as a recommendation. Any additional kit will cost me and I don't want to spend more cash on something that only gets me just over an extra 100Mb bandwidth. (Remembering when we used to be grateful for an extra Mb)

The 2.5Gb port can be used downstream if I were to need it. I use the standard firmware atm, but would change to Merlin if I saw an advantage.

Luxury, I remember when we used to live in ole in road, get up 30 minutes before we went to bed ...

I had VM's first digital service at 512Kb but that was such a jump compared to dial up.

The thing that annoyed me is that the Gig One syncs at nearly 1.2Gbps and with the speed tests I get now are 22% quicker than just one gigabit connection to the SH.

Why they couldn't just put a 2.5Gb port on the SH4, the cost difference would not have been that much and it would have future proofed them for when the 2.2Gbps service rolls out.

Having said that I do think we are getting to the point of silly speeds for home usage, and for the majority of the time 200Mbps would be sufficient for a regular size family.

[rtho782]

Originally Posted by ChuckVader

Why they couldn't just put a 2.5Gb port on the SH4, the cost difference would not have been that much and it would have future proofed them for when the 2.2Gbps service rolls out.

For whatever reason Liberty Global will only buy modems from Arris these days (and seemingly only horrible puma chipset ones) and at the time of the SH4 there was no modem with a 2.5G port.

Personally I think they should ideally have SFP+, but even better would be for VM to allow people to use their own modems like US cable ISPs do.

[ChuckVader]

Originally Posted by rtho782

For whatever reason Liberty Global will only buy modems from Arris these days (and seemingly only horrible puma chipset ones) and at the time of the SH4 there was no modem with a 2.5G port.

Personally I think they should ideally have SFP+, but even better would be for VM to allow people to use their own modems like US cable ISPs do.

I remember looking at the time and there were 2.5Gbps Arris ones available from Germany. However, given the lead time on rebranding them and ordering process etc plus additional cost then LG probably wouldn't have bothered.

I am still half tempted to try and import one, but confirming that cloning the MAC would work as well as T&Cs is still prohibitive.

Same they don't do a business version that consumer could upgrade to which as you say could include SFP+ and solve all the problems easily for those that would pay a little bit more on a one off cost.

[pythagoras]

will the hub 4 still do port aggregation on ports 1 and 2 when in modem mode?

If so the this may help roughbeast:
https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1039053/

regards

John