FTTP Gbit package speed query

Hi all might get a bit long winded here so apologise in advance

So i know most ISPs advertise Gbit packages as 900ish due the the ASA rules on average speed, but most of the time people obviously get faster 940-60ish which is the rough limit of a Gbe nic after overhead,

does anyone know though usually what ISPs actually physically cap the speed at, for EG MS3 are rolling out in my area just waiting for availability checker to give the clear to order from one of the ISPs selling it as i want the extra upload speed vs my current VM gig package,

Now MS3 roll out 2 different Nokia ONTs depending on residential or business package, Residential has a 2.5G port and the business has a 10G port (can negotiate at 1/2.5/5/10)

currently my network is 2.5G (mixture of 2.5G/1G devices) and with VM this results in getting 1150 down and 100 up after overheads because im using the hub 5 with the 2.5G port so not limited by a 1G port and VM over provision.

So anyway with plugin the ONT into my current setup i wouldn't be limited the a 1gig port but at minimum a 2.5G port, would i then get true 1000+meg still or do isps tend to put an actual cap on of eg 1000 so in theory it would still max out at 940-60 or do they also slightly over provision like VM do but generally not noticed when using a standard Gbit nic setup

again sorry for the ramble im sure i could of cut it down a bit lol

Cheers Ash

I believe VM has increased their gigabit offering to over 1gbit so you actually get 1gigabit after overheads. As for OR, they will be doing a 1.2gbit product which should give you 1gbit after overheads, and a 1.8gbit product which from other forum posters it will be about 1.66gbits after overheads. If you order a 1gbit product, you are unlikely to get the 2.5gb nokia ont (for now).

Upload is 120mbits i believe on the two new products.

It depends what rate limit MS3 set, if you can't find anybody else on their service with a gigabit connection and a 2.5Gbit-capable LAN then its something you will have to ask them.

The few ISPs I checked all advertise 900Mbps.

In reply to a post by jpm:

It depends what rate limit MS3 set, if you can't find anybody else on their service with a gigabit connection and a 2.5Gbit-capable LAN then its something you will have to ask them.

The few ISPs I checked all advertise 900Mbps.

The whole thing with ms3 is weird, some are selling 900mbit packages others 1gbit, i now understand the confusion the OP may have

In reply to a post by Taras:

In reply to a post by jpm:

It depends what rate limit MS3 set, if you can't find anybody else on their service with a gigabit connection and a 2.5Gbit-capable LAN then its something you will have to ask them.

The few ISPs I checked all advertise 900Mbps.

The whole thing with ms3 is weird, some are selling 900mbit packages others 1gbit, i now understand the confusion the OP may have

yea this more than anything ive literally been a virgin customer from the Yorkshire cable days ive had the odd year on FTTC in between but but spent 90% of my internet life with telewest/virgin media,

don't get me wrong im not going to moan if in the end i get 9xx download because the move is mainly for upload, im not really going to miss the extra few hundred down lol, its just more of a wonder how it works question, i don't really know much about how FTTP providers provision their packages. EG like others have said VM do over provision so my gig1 packages is actually 1.2Gb /110Mb and i get 1150/98 out of it,

The ISP ive been looking at is squirrel.uk.net they are one that advertise as 900 so i wondered if generally FTTP ISPs configure it to be say bang on 1000 because most people only have ONTs with Gbit ports anyway of if like VM they had it set higher but again was limited by the port,

i guess in the long run ill just have to wait and see i don't know anyone else with a MS3 connection period let alone anyone using it on a 2.5Gb+ network setup, TBF id never even heard of them until i saw a planning permission notice pop up and googled them to find out what they were lol.

Cheers all Ash

In reply to a post by acpsd775:

like others have said VM do over provision so my gig1 packages is actually 1.2Gb /110Mb and i get 1150/98 out of it

Back in the 1999 days of the NTL cable modem trials the 500/128 service was overprovisioned to 600kbps. I assume it was so that customers saw "50 Kbps" downloads in the original internet browsers and it was 'faster' than BT ADSL.

My 250 Mbps service is overprovisioned at 287,500,061 bps... (287 Mbps) as you can see in the Hub screens.

I thought MS3 was OR based but obviously they aren't after looking at the packages and so they may over-provison. if you are looking for the upload then that maybe provisions differently than the downloads.

I remember having, satellite internet with the return path being dial up - was great for downloads but painful for everything else, and a couple of unrestricted moments i saw 60mbits download.

I always love when services get little restrictions but its always abused in the end

In reply to a post by Taras:

I thought MS3 was OR based but obviously they aren't after looking at the packages and so they may over-provison. if you are looking for the upload then that maybe provisions differently than the downloads.

they seem to use PIA to just use OR poles when i first saw the permission i thought it was OR till i googled them. TBF im not fussed who they are just glad finally getting option of decent upload speeds lol

I think it's likely the 900 packages are just the providers trying to comply with the ASA rules and are all 1Gbps services, i.e. approximately 940-960 Mbps application payload.

I wouldn't imagine they overprovision, otherwise all the providers would be advertising 1Gbps speeds.


My understanding of the currently partners/providers is some run their own networks (layer 2) and others white label a MS3 managed service (layer 3).
I'm not 100% sure how accurate this list is, I may have just failed at finding the providers autonomous system number.

Layer 2

- Zone Broadband AS35437
- Squirrel AS212109
- Octaplus AS205771
- Link Broadband AS204316

Layer 3

- Hull Fibre
- Infinics
- Open Fibre
- Fiber Zone
- Direct Save Telecom


I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with either type, but layer 2 providers will have more control over their peering & transit and provide their own IP ranges.
MS3 currently transit with Cogent, are in the process of peering at LINX LON1 (10Gbps, the link is up but no routes) and adding another transit provider.

The main things to look out for are use of CGNAT, the ability to provide a public IP and the reputation/history of their IPs.

For instance a few reviews on Trustpilot for Squirrel report issues with several services such as Disney, Ticketmaster and Sky. I do notice submitting their IP ranges into https://ipinfo.io/ show they are "type": "hosting" rather than "isp" so undoubtably other databases are also incorrect.

I do wish all the providers sites had more information about for instance if they use PPPoE or DHCP, is it CGNAT and is a static IP available.

I can't decide who to go with, I'll probably end up supporting one of the local providers but then if they are all layer 3 providers what difference does it make which you go with? so may as well go with the cheapest.

I cant speak for any other services, but BT Business '900' service appears to be 990Mbps with overheads which works out at a maximum usable throughput for an http/https/speed test of approximately 976Mbps.

cheers for the info when i first found out about MS3 i did narrow it down to Squirrel & Infinics and did contact both they both use DHCP, Infinics offers a dynamic IPV4 with no option of static or V6 or any intention in the near future and Squirrel By default give a Static IPv4 and /56 IPv6 range so at least for now im set on squirrel as for the extra £5 a month it just seems more worth it, so neither of those 2 at least use GCNAT ,

i kinda wish some of the bigger ISPs were available but lets face it MS3 are only small really so probably not worth the hassle for the main ISPs to jump on like it is with EG CityFibre,

i did get stung back in the day supporting the smaller guys in the Digital region days with LBO, they were all good for the first 6 months, then it went totally balls up i ended up getting let out of my contract but they even ballsed that up and generated me a final bill for over £1000 which took me almost 3 years of back and fourth with a debt company to get it wiped off

Just wondered if you have ended up going with an MS3 provider?

Squirrel certainly look the most tempting to me.

It's still not live yet keep checking lol but it looks like it will be squirrel soon as I can actually place an order

Sorry to bother you again, I wondered if you've signed up to anyone yet?

I’ve been having a terrible time myself with Squirrel, it's been active for 3 weeks, but I've reverted to using our other ISP that doesn't cease for another 2 weeks.

Packet loss on BQM nightly coincides with performance dropping to 10-30 Mbps - but curiously not from everything.

Squirrel have assured me they aren't the cause of congestion and don't see the same problem elsewhere on the network, but it seems to have taken 10 days to get them to report the problem to MS3.

Our Squirrel: https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...
Random MS3 IP: https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

Both our Squirrel connection and a random MS3 IP are showing the same packet loss pattern, therefore I don't think the issue I'm seeing is with Squirrel and it seems to be a congestion or faulty equipment issue with MS3 down to London - I've checked the ONT reported light level and it remains stable and within spec (-19.5dBm).

In reply to a post by miken06:

Sorry to bother you again, I wondered if you've signed up to anyone yet?

I’ve been having a terrible time myself with Squirrel, it's been active for 3 weeks, but I've reverted to using our other ISP that doesn't cease for another 2 weeks.

Packet loss on BQM nightly coincides with performance dropping to 10-30 Mbps - but curiously not from everything.

Squirrel have assured me they aren't the cause of congestion and don't see the same problem elsewhere on the network, but it seems to have taken 10 days to get them to report the problem to MS3.

Our Squirrel: https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...
Random MS3 IP: https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

Both our Squirrel connection and a random MS3 IP are showing the same packet loss pattern, therefore I don't think the issue I'm seeing is with Squirrel and it seems to be a congestion or faulty equipment issue with MS3 down to London - I've checked the ONT reported light level and it remains stable and within spec (-19.5dBm).

Not yet no still not avalible to order Ms3 said the aim was for August but the website still just says coming soon. I'm not holding out any hope for at least a few month now though as I havnt seen any of the workmen now for about a month and there are still poles in the area that havnt been completed still just bundles of fibre rolled up. though my street had the boxes at top of the poles and fibres pulled through the street for well over a month so I'm not sure if something has gone wrong to cause a delay or not but I'm no closer to an order able service lol

Did this get sored in the end for you,

MS3 finally went live to order 2 days ago, id since done some more looking and was torn between my original plan of squirrel or yayzi as they'd become available via MS3, i ended up tipping towards yayzi because of their 1gig+ package with easy upgrade to 2.5 when available next year,

But typical to my continued luck of delays their website is crapping out and not letting me place an order with an endless post code loop and their support was just terrible in getting back to me to resolve it so went with my initial gut and took the plunge on squirrel after all and so far the order process has gone through smoothly just got a long wait time for install of jan 19th

So be happy to hear what your experiance is like now its been a while

Ash

Don't think this has been answered yet. Openreach cap at exactly 1000 Mbps at the OLT. The ISPs are required to similarly rate limit traffic on the way to Openreach at the same numbers as the Openreach products.

You lose a bit to PPPoE and a bit to Ethernet port. If you were to have a 2.5 GbE port you'll get a bit more but it still won't be a full gigabit: that'd require a higher rate limit from Openreach and no PPPoE or Openreach increasing rate limit even more to compensate for it.

I'm not sure about MS3 but assume they're the same given they wholesale. Some totally integrated providers with no wholesale and gigabit ONU/Ts won't cap at all but let the ONU do it. Bell Canada come to mind as one proven to do this but I'm sure if folks were to use different ONUs to the ones provided on other networks some will have a pleasant surprise.

Edited by XGS_Is_On (Sat 16-Dec-23 01:54:08)

I must have forgot to update earlier on i kinda got an answer direct from the isps on the main point of the question Squirrel do infact limit it to Gbit with overheads so even with a 2.5+ network i wouldn't see past about 940M but yayzi for example offer a pro package that would give similar speeds to VM upto 1.2G with appropriate hardware and even upto 2.4G though only n CF not currently on MS3 (coming soon!), but i just cant seem to place an order with them so just went to squirrel for now, i wont really notice much of a difference between vms 1150 and quirells 940 the 10x fold on upload will benefit me more than keeping the extra few megs on download speed haha,

oh and all MS3 providers use DHCP like VM so dont have to think about anything to do with PPPoE

Edited by acpsd775 (Sat 16-Dec-23 02:06:41)

My problems were resolved the first week of September; it was congestion between MS3 and Squirrel. We’ve had the service for a little over 4 months now and it has been without any major issues.

There have been a few times MS3, or Squirrel have done maintenance overnight; usually at around 2am-4am and as far as I know we don’t get notified ahead of time.

A maintenance period a couple of months ago raised my latency to London/Squirrel by about 1.5ms, I’m not bothered by the increase, but I did wonder if maybe MS3 switched to a new provider for more capacity to get their traffic to London – could be completely wrong but I didn’t think a router/hardware change would cause such an increase and was more likely a longer distance.

Occasionally there can be issues with our IP address, for instance I can't get on bet365 (Web server is returning an unknown error Error code 520; Visit cloudflare.com for more information.). Seems just overzealous blocklists e.g., 23.230.0.0/16 is EGIHosting and Squirrel lease 23.230.54.0/23 so if somewhere is blocking the whole /16 then Squirrel also gets caught up.
To be fair I haven’t raised it with Squirrel or bet365 since it wasn’t me trying to access it.

I use OPNsense with 2 cores of a N100 with 2.5Gbps ports on a 2.5Gbps network, hits ~940Mbps, I haven’t got around to re-enabling IPv6 yet (removed while I had two WANs). I don’t know if it has changed but I did notice IPv6 routing could be a bit weird, if I recall BQM was going something like Cogent London to Paris then back to Cogent London.

Squirrel is a bit odd or maybe it’s normal practise but MS3 came and did the install then Squirrel posts a router, but since I was using my own router I just kept an eye on the ONT lights and the service was activated within a few hours, DHCP on the router and you’re away (had no issues trying different routers, get the same IP, DHCP is on a short 5 minute lease).

Speeds are usually consistent; but they do have a relatively small amount of transit & peering capacity and for the last 2 or 3 popular game releases/updates it has slowed down quite considerably, I guess for there size it’s just not reasonable to have tons of capacity or large ports for bursting if it’s only utilised 1 day every month or two but I’d hope eventually they get to a size were they can make changes to resolve it.

There public peering capacity has slowly increased (LINX 5Gbps, LONAP 4Gbps) but a lot of traffic (including BQM) seem to use the transit providers Cogent (AS174) and Hydra (AS25369) – I couldn’t find a lot of ISPs using Hydra, I’d guess they’re just cheap compared to what others use (typically NTT, Lumen, etc.). Regardless I haven't really experienced any problems with high speeds except the mentioned game release capacity.

BQM does show some packetloss, but I don’t plan on raising it with them, it’s something like 1 packet maybe every 15 minutes sometimes. I see other Squirrel customers with the same, could be a Squirrel router or anywhere in between.

I believe MS3 have continued to have their own congestion problems with their layer 3 platform which I’d suspect is part of the reason they aren’t offering >1Gbps speeds on the network.

Generally, I’m very happy with the Squirrel service and would recommend it to others. Any times contacting support have been excellent, they seem to have knowledgeable staff which I hope they can keep up as they grow. The other reason I went with them was they manage their own network so can do their own capacity planning, peering etc.

Because of the initial problems Squirrel delayed the first month fee, then I believe it is 3 months at £1 followed by £35 for the remainder of the 24-month contract which I don’t think is bad for static IPv4 and IPv6, I think at the time they were the cheapest on the MS3 network and it’s a huge saving compared to what we had out of contract with KCOM.

Remains to be seen what they’ll be able to offer to recontract in ~20 months, hopefully there isn’t a large price jump, I did notice Squirrel over MS3 is much cheaper than their other networks (Gigaclear £49; FibreHeroes £42) so it will probably depend on if MS3 increase wholesale prices.

I think 2.5Gbps is probably a difficult sell especially if like Yayzi it’s 70% more than 940, we’ve been downloading 3-5TB/month, uploads having switched to a symmetrical service the same as without at 5-10% vs download. It’s difficult to see how having ~2.5x the speed would have made any difference to justify such a price increase.

Edited by miken06 (Sat 16-Dec-23 15:06:45)

In reply to a post by miken06:

My problems were resolved the first week of September; it was congestion between MS3 and Squirrel. We’ve had the service for a little over 4 months now and it has been without any major issues.

There have been a few times MS3, or Squirrel have done maintenance overnight; usually at around 2am-4am and as far as I know we don’t get notified ahead of time.

A maintenance period a couple of months ago raised my latency to London/Squirrel by about 1.5ms, I’m not bothered by the increase, but I did wonder if maybe MS3 switched to a new provider for more capacity to get their traffic to London – could be completely wrong but I didn’t think a router/hardware change would cause such an increase and was more likely a longer distance.

Occasionally there can be issues with our IP address, for instance I can't get on bet365 (Web server is returning an unknown error Error code 520; Visit cloudflare.com for more information.). Seems just overzealous blocklists e.g., 23.230.0.0/16 is EGIHosting and Squirrel lease 23.230.54.0/23 so if somewhere is blocking the whole /16 then Squirrel also gets caught up.
To be fair I haven’t raised it with Squirrel or bet365 since it wasn’t me trying to access it.

I use OPNsense with 2 cores of a N100 with 2.5Gbps ports on a 2.5Gbps network, hits ~940Mbps, I haven’t got around to re-enabling IPv6 yet (removed while I had two WANs). I don’t know if it has changed but I did notice IPv6 routing could be a bit weird, if I recall BQM was going something like Cogent London to Paris then back to Cogent London.

Squirrel is a bit odd or maybe it’s normal practise but MS3 came and did the install then Squirrel posts a router, but since I was using my own router I just kept an eye on the ONT lights and the service was activated within a few hours, DHCP on the router and you’re away (had no issues trying different routers, get the same IP, DHCP is on a short 5 minute lease).

Speeds are usually consistent; but they do have a relatively small amount of transit & peering capacity and for the last 2 or 3 popular game releases/updates it has slowed down quite considerably, I guess for there size it’s just not reasonable to have tons of capacity or large ports for bursting if it’s only utilised 1 day every month or two but I’d hope eventually they get to a size were they can make changes to resolve it.

There public peering capacity has slowly increased (LINX 5Gbps, LONAP 4Gbps) but a lot of traffic (including BQM) seem to use the transit providers Cogent (AS174) and Hydra (AS25369) – I couldn’t find a lot of ISPs using Hydra, I’d guess they’re just cheap compared to what others use (typically NTT, Lumen, etc.). Regardless I haven't really experienced any problems with high speeds except the mentioned game release capacity.

BQM does show some packetloss, but I don’t plan on raising it with them, it’s something like 1 packet maybe every 15 minutes sometimes. I see other Squirrel customers with the same, could be a Squirrel router or anywhere in between.

I believe MS3 have continued to have their own congestion problems with their layer 3 platform which I’d suspect is part of the reason they aren’t offering >1Gbps speeds on the network.

Generally, I’m very happy with the Squirrel service and would recommend it to others. Any times contacting support have been excellent, they seem to have knowledgeable staff which I hope they can keep up as they grow. The other reason I went with them was they manage their own network so can do their own capacity planning, peering etc.

Because of the initial problems Squirrel delayed the first month fee, then I believe it is 3 months at £1 followed by £35 for the remainder of the 24-month contract which I don’t think is bad for static IPv4 and IPv6, I think at the time they were the cheapest on the MS3 network and it’s a huge saving compared to what we had out of contract with KCOM.

Remains to be seen what they’ll be able to offer to recontract in ~20 months, hopefully there isn’t a large price jump, I did notice Squirrel over MS3 is much cheaper than their other networks (Gigaclear £49; FibreHeroes £42) so it will probably depend on if MS3 increase wholesale prices.

I think 2.5Gbps is probably a difficult sell especially if like Yayzi it’s 70% more than 940, we’ve been downloading 3-5TB/month, uploads having switched to a symmetrical service the same as without at 5-10% vs download. It’s difficult to see how having ~2.5x the speed would have made any difference to justify such a price increase.

Thanks for getting back glad to see problems resolved, yea i noticed its an of practice of not sending the router till the day after the ONT is installed rather than it being there ready ad waiting for you like practically every other ISP in the UK, but already told them i don't plan on using the supplied router and the same my self will be going direct into my OPNsense setup so it isnt a concern

unfortunately all their offers have ended at time of my order just straight onto £35/pm but im not really too fussed its still cheaper than my VM package lol

i talked to them about the 2.5G package possibility and they say they've have done some testing and ready on their end it is actually down to MS3 to sort their end out, it is a niche product though i agree and wont be for the masses,
I'm just impatient haha i do random projects that require setting up multiple Virtual machines and bulk downloading isos and various VHDs, the quicker i get them the quicker i can get started so on, i also have some servers running in my home lab that do various back up and restores ETC,ive got by with my current connection fine so im in no rush but if it becomes available the option is there right, again i get this is a niche situation but its something id pay for lol, yayzi charge £50 for their 2.4gig package and if squirell was the same id be happy with that, my current virgin gig1 package (1150/110) is £49 so no majour change to my billing really

well glad to see its going well for you they generally have good reviews though they nearly all seem to come from people via fibre heros so nice to get a reply from someone on a MS3 connection

Ash