Concurrent performance of dual FTTP lines

Hi

We have 2 BT fttp broadband lines (carried on the same fibre cable) coming into our business premises. Until recently they were 300/50 lines. Speaking with BT recently, I was offered a new 24 month deal with both lines upgraded to 900/100. The upgrade on both lines has just taken place and testing each line individually shows that they're both delivering the full 900mbps down and 100 up.

I also tested the speed of both lines when performing speed tests on both lines at the same time (to get an idea of the load on our router). What I found was that one line would run at full speed but the other would be much slower. The load on the router cpu never went over 30% and the network switch also showed no issues so I'm sure our network isn't an issue. The PCs doing the speed tests were the same that showed full 900/100 speeds when testing the lines individually so they also weren't a problem.

This isn't a big deal as we don't really need that throughput but, as we now have it, I'd like to know it's working properly. Should this be happening or should we get full speed on both lines at the same time?

Thanks for any light you can shed.

Which ONT do you have? Huawei or Nokia?

To confirm, you're testing this load balancing and not actually testing both lines are you? The first test I would do would be to connect each FTTP line up to a different PC, dial the PPPoE connection, and then kick two speed tests off at the same time. Once you've confirmed that you get the full speeds on both you can look at how your router is doing the load balancing.

As the post above hints at, if you have a 4-port Huawei ONT then it only has a gigabit link internally to the LAN ports so you can't get more than 1Gb of throughput through it.

Edited by jpm (Wed 24-Apr-24 13:27:02)

In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

Which ONT do you have? Huawei or Nokia?

According to this page, it's a Huawei 4 port ONT.

That would explain why you can't get full speed on both lines down at the same time.
I take it you get full upload on both?

Thanks
Dan

You need to go back to BT and they need to order a Nokia ONT or another cable out of the CBT.

In reply to a post by danielhyde:

That would explain why you can't get full speed on both lines down at the same time.
I take it you get full upload on both?

Yes, full speed upload on both lines concurrently.

In reply to a post by Josser:

In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

Which ONT do you have? Huawei or Nokia?

According to this page, it's a Huawei 4 port ONT.

That'll be it. I was in a similar situation and ended up replacing the Openreach ONT myself with a very slightly different model. Your ONT has only a gigabit connection between the optical and the 4 Ethernet ports so when you're using both that gigabit is shared. Think you've been given a potential solution elsewhere that's a little more 'formal'.

In reply to a post by jpm:

You need to go back to BT and they need to order a Nokia ONT or another cable out of the CBT.

Is that something they will do as a matter of course, as the equipment they installed can't now cope with the service they are now providing? Or will they make a fuss/charge?

David

Edited by Josser (Wed 24-Apr-24 15:00:03)

They won't charge, they might not understand what you are asking for and it might require you to raise it as a complaint though.

The thing to bear in mind is that this isn't a complaint about minimum speed guarantees, this is a complaint that the ONT is physically unable to support the 2x1Gb services that have been provisioned.