Full Fibre 900 speeds??

Hi There,

So Friday i had the ONT installed in my house for the BT Fibre 900 package, installation was only due to be done on the 8th June but managed to get a cancellation so great news i got it earlier than expected.

Using my own netgear XR500 router which does allow 1gig, however i have only seen speeds over the weekend of around 500 download.

My question is for the ones who already have this is there a settling in period for the service to reach its potential 900 speed or should i be getting the full speeds from the off?

I am thinking with me getting the install earlier than the confirmed date of 8th June BT still has on record that my installation is not complete so maybe that is a factor i dont know, noticed my external IP address is changing every few hours even without disconnecting which is odd to me.


Hoping that it does increase as there was a 500 package that i did not pick and purposely went for the 900 for the higher speeds.

BQM is showing a little packet loss constantly when i check which i am not sure is normal with this service.


https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

Edited by deleted (Mon 01-Jun-20 10:54:21)

Are you using wired or wireless networking to test your speed? 500 would be a perfectly acceptable result from a wifi connection

If you are using a wired connection then there is an issue and the first thing I would check would be cables

There is no ramp-up period with fibre broadband - you should have full speed from day 1

No that is wired results, iphone 11 pro giving me about 200 - 350 on wifi.

Cables as in the single Ethernet from the wan port of the ONT to the Netgear router, it is a new cat 7 1 metre cable but i will try to test another to make sure, dont think it is that lead tbh.

Like you said i would have presumed full speed from day 1, maybe my theory that i am not scheduled to have this until 8th June is the issue however if the engineer came early to install they should have switched me on but there system says still processing at the moment.

Just because your router has a gigabit WAN port doesn't mean its chipset is capable of routing at gigabit speeds - remember the router is also checking firewall rules, performing PPPoE, NAT etc. Check that you have any NAT acceleration or CTF option enabled - on Asus routers it's called CTF. You may need to disable parental controls as well. Consumer routers can struggle to handle PPPoE connections above 500Mbps without using hardware acceleration.

thanks for reply, sure i will check those things cheers for that.

I did however try the BT smart hub they sent for this new service and that also was giving similar results on a wired speed test so it does appear to be lower on both, not sure if i need to change the config on that to get 900 but wouldn't have presumed so.

The XR500 will max out around 500Mb with many of its features enabled.
That from various posts on the Netgear forum.

You should troubleshoot with the BT Smart Hub either way.

Edited by j0hn83 (Mon 01-Jun-20 13:19:36)

Yes i tried the smart hub and got similar speeds of around 500, maybe i will contact the fibre team at BT and see what they say.

Regarding my BQM does that look normal for such a line, i noticed a user in here who has the same service his graph looks alot more steady and can hardly see any visible colours above the line.

if you look at the link in my original post and tell me what you think.

Plug a PC directly into the ONT and create a PPPOE connection then see. That takes any router out of picture.

The monitor chart looks good. They all vary a bit but as long as it is as it is now that's good. You will get higher peaks during times you are actively using the connection, especially speed tests that swamp the connection to its maximum.

Regarding the 500M speed, I would check your network cable or try another one and also check how your network card on your PC is configured. It might be set to half duplex rather than full duplex, you need full duplex to get 1Gig Ethernet.

Testing direct to the ONT via a PPPoE connection from your PC is a good step for troubleshooting.

In reply to a post by Seedorf:

Regarding my BQM does that look normal for such a line, i noticed a user in here who has the same service his graph looks alot more steady and can hardly see any visible colours above the line.

Your minimum latency in the BQM (green line) will vary depending on distance to London - mine is much lower than yours but then I live in London. Do you live in the North?