BT Ultrafast - first thoughts

I am on BT's G Fast trial for business users (£1 a month for six months) and thought I would share my initial thoughts.

I was previously on Infinity 2 and given I can see the cabinet from my window got speeds of 78 down and 20 up.

After booking the upgrade I was sent a BT Business Hub 5 (which I already had anyway).

On installation day the engineer went to the cabinet to switch my line to the new service and then fitted a new faceplate to my master socket, He then doubted the Hub would connect to the service.

After some investigation it seems the trial on business and residential lines is being conducted differently. Residential get a combined hub and modem. Business use the Hub 5 plus a Huawei MT992 modem.

His own tests gave speeds of 327 down and 45 up. (There is 63 metres of copper between me and the cabinet). That was using his test gear. His BT supplied phone app cannot do speeds over 100Mbps!

On connecting up my network we got speeds of 92/23 on th BT Wholesale checker. Engineer said that was nothing to worry about as the tester also wouldn't go above 100.

Turns out this is wrong. Problem was two-fold. Firstly the network card in my PC was locked down to 100 for some reason - so it was never going to report a speed above that. Secondly the cable connecting it to the hub wasn't in its first flush of youth. Experimenting with various different cables and routings has now reported speeds of 309/31. I also get consistently better speeds if I set the network card speed to 1Gbps rather than auto negotiate.

I have also tried the newly supplied Hub 5 and my original one and get similar speeds so it seems the Hub has not been tweaked for Ultrafast.

My line is still in the 10 day settling in period and I have noticed at times that the speed drops to as low(!) as 130.

I also have a Cat6 lead on order to see what effect that has.

Using WiFi on my phone and the 5GHz connection I get speeds typically of 180/31.

So overall I am pleased with the service I am getting. My primary reason for going for it (apart from the initial price) is the higher upload speed. I send a lot of large files to the cloud so a boost in that speed is welcome. I am hopeful some more tinkering and the new cable will increase that further.

Download speeds above 100 won't really affect most day to day users at the moment, there are too many slower points elsewhere in the chain to take advantage of it. It does work well with downloading my files from OneDrive however and they are noticeably faster.

Hopefully as the engineers do more installs they will avoid some of the pitfalls and assumptions I experienced - in the meantime this post might help you if you are joining the trial.

When I first tried to run my PC t 1Gbps I did find that the patch lead I was using was only good for 100Mbps. No obvious reason to my eyes.

100Mb ethernet only uses pins 1,2,3 & 6. !000Mb uses all 8 pins so perhaps your cable had a broken conductor?

In reply to a post by bobm11:

His own tests gave speeds of 327 down and 45 up. .

Experimenting with various different cables and routings has now reported speeds of 309/31.

As you appear to be synced at the max 330/50 on G.Fast I would have thought your upload speedtests would show at least 40 Mbps...even after taking the overheads into account. Unless they've magically installed FTTP to your premises and put you on the 330/30 service ?

I must admit I am surprised. I am waiting for my Cat 6 lead to arrive before I do more tests.

The Additional test page of the BTW Speedchecker says "Upstream Rate IP profile on your line is - 50 Mbps"

So I am fairly certain I haven't been capped at 30Mbps

I know wired ethernet is always better but if you're considering going wireless (802.11ac) to a desktop pc then I would highly recommend this Asus PCI card. Use that with any 4x4 stream 802.11ac router and Bobs yer uncle

This is one of their speed tests I believe http://tbb.st/1498650610209466055

Others are pushing single thread to what you'd more expect http://tbb.st/1496272629115041655 (that is a FTTP location though)

In reply to a post by bobm11:

I am on BT's G Fast trial for business users (£1 a month for six months)

And how much after 6 months?

I thought G.Fast get 330/50?

Could be, it was no doubt a cheap one, might not have had 4 pairs!

Bob

Shows that end use equipment is yet again going to raise it's head, with Network card settings (and abilities) and Ethernet cable specs going to catch out a lot of people.

I expect to see a number of complaints about slower than expected speeds on G-fast due to these issues as people get caught out by the tendency for network settings to drop to 100Mb in many PCs for no reason I can detect.

Many people also assume that all Ethernet cables are the same and can do any speed you want, when reality is that many are not up to speeds above 100Mb ( (which may drive the network card issue above!) and when used as extension cables the better ones can degrade due to broken/dislodged wires when moved around a lot ( or coiled up in a bag). Longer cables can also restrict the speed ( 20m-30m+)

It may be useful if Andrew could put a guide to potential issues on here for G-Fast customer equipment as they are dentified that we can refer people to.

I don't know why ISPs don't deploy some form of bandwidth testing facility (e.g. iPerf3) to their routers (possibly even locked down to only accept requests from the ISP) which can be ran remotely by support desk staff.

Would allow them to quickly rule out the wider network if the issue is internal. I would hope no ISP is silly enough to supply a 330Mbps G.Fast connection with only 'Fast Ethernet' (100Mbps).

That first one is me - but still experimenting with cables and PC settings so not really representative yet.

Have also been experimenting with moving the hub nearer the PC. Long lead between hub and modem, shorter lead to PC rather than the other way round.

Andrew

Would it be possible, when you find a spare 10min!, to put up a short guide on what people need to check on their 'customer' equipment when getting a G-Fast connection that doesn't meet their expectations. We can then refer people to this or they can find it themselves

Thanks

Suggestions so far are

Network Card settings
Quality of Ethernet cables ( Any recommendations on standards).
Ensuring the use of a Gb port ( not 100Mb port)

(I am assuming that the ISP supplied routers are suitable)

Toon

Some devices may have both Ge and 100Mb ports.

I have also been shocked by how many new laptops and notebooks are only fitted with an FE ( 100Mb max) network card.

I know one ISP that provided trial customers with their branded router that only had 100Mbps ports. I'm not going to say who, but there is a lot of equipment out there not capable of running above 100Mbps.

I suspect that firewalls built into routers are often a bottleneck, even if the interfaces connect at gigabit speeds.

There's a lot of cheap Cat 5e ethernet cables on eBay etc that all claim to support GigE, but more often than not they are made from copper-coated Aluminium (CCA), and struggle to get more than 100mbps especially as the cable length increases.

I always look for reputable suppliers that guarantee the cable is 100% copper.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

This is one of their speed tests I believe http://tbb.st/1498650610209466055

Others are pushing single thread to what you'd more expect http://tbb.st/1496272629115041655 (that is a FTTP location though)

Apologies for the delay. Day job got in the way!

Have now got two Cat6 cables to test and they have increased the download speed.

Using the BTW checker I consistently get between 300 and 310. Same with a couple of others. The one on this site is giving me an average of 200. All four show the upload speed in the range of 30 - and I cannot seem to better that.

I have switched to the Business 5 Hub simply because it allows it to be pinged from the net rather than setting up a DMZ with the home hub. This allows me to use the quality monitor this site. No change in speed results.

A couple of questions...

When I download the 1GB test file from this site it suggests it should take 75 seconds at 120Mbps. Assuming I am getting a minimum of 200Mbps (depending which tester you use) I seem to get the file in around 105 secs. Any suggestions where I should look to improve that?

Secondly - is there a link which would produce an image of my average test results - I can get a link to produce a particular test but would like an average one. Or is it there and I have missed it?