Nice, hopefully not long now
Let us know how it goes.

I was also updated today and was told that there is an issue with our account (or something like that) which will be resolved on or by Friday where the new order will be placed.

I asked once again (just to make sure I am not quoted a different price than what we was quoted before) if its still available for us at the price we agreed to (told her the price) and she said yes its still available to us at that quoted price and that they just need to resolve the issue which will be completed on / by Friday.

I know that they have already said this all before but hopefully it will this time get resolved and the order gets placed.

Paul

All done! It went offline for a few seconds twice between midnight and 1am for me (according to the router log). I don't think the FireBrick 2900 is up to the job though, or something else is causing a slower result than I am expecting (speedtest.net - I believe multithreaded, I'm testing via Unraid). Still, between 250-500 megabits down and around 100-110 megabits up is superb (wired test). My current Wifi network won't max out the downstream, which is understandable (Wifi gen 5 - Orbi RBK50). I'll need Wifi gen 6 to get much closer to that, which is still too new to consider.

At a later date I will change the FB2900 to the EdgeRouter 8 Pro, which I believe should then maximise the downstream capability on wired devices as long as I only use QoS on the upstream (which I am, no need for QoS on roughly a gigabit capacity haha). I can't switch the router for now as I also use the FB2900 as a VoIP PBX.

Hopefully you'll be experiencing the world of gigabit FTTP very soon, fingers crossed Friday is the day when they can place the regrade order.

Edited by Ixel (Thu 23-Apr-20 08:22:30)

Awesome, pleased it has been completed.
I had quite a few problems finding a server to test against. Both TBB and numerous servers on speedtest had problems hitting more than 3-400Mbits. I cycled through a few servers before finding one that could hit 700mbit.
I'm using a ubiquiti amplifi Hardwired to my office and to be honest I thought it was my router causing the bottleneck, so much so that I ordered a ASUS GT-AX11000 to test it with. To be honest, there was no difference over ethernet although WIFI6 is awesome, my phone tested at 400Mbit The missus hated the router though, too big so it went back and I'm back to using the AmplifiHD with 3 APs, 2 of which are wired.
I do like the look of the Orbi AX6000 and the amplifi Alien but I'm not paying £700 for the privilege of wifi6 just yet.

In reply to a post by Ixel:

All done! It went offline for a few seconds twice between midnight and 1am for me (according to the router log). I don't think the FireBrick 2900 is up to the job though, or something else is causing a slower result than I am expecting (speedtest.net - I believe multithreaded, I'm testing via Unraid). Still, between 250-500 megabits down and around 100-110 megabits up is superb (wired test). My current Wifi network won't max out the downstream, which is understandable (Wifi gen 5 - Orbi RBK50). I'll need Wifi gen 6 to get much closer to that, which is still too new to consider.

At a later date I will change the FB2900 to the EdgeRouter 8 Pro, which I believe should then maximise the downstream capability on wired devices as long as I only use QoS on the upstream (which I am, no need for QoS on roughly a gigabit capacity haha). I can't switch the router for now as I also use the FB2900 as a VoIP PBX.

Hopefully you'll be experiencing the world of gigabit FTTP very soon, fingers crossed Friday is the day when they can place the regrade order.

I see, good to know it's not necessarily all related to my current network hardware then.

As for buying a Wifi 6 kit, yeah that's understandable, neither am I at the moment. The technology as I understand is still draft and there's been a few reports of users apparently having issues with Orbi's Wifi 6 kit. I'll stay with the RBK50 for now, perhaps in 6 months from now the Wifi 6 products might become more viable in price and possibly Wifi 6 will be considered to be a finalised specification too. I think the FB2900 is one of my bottlenecks though, as specs say it can only handle around 750 megabits per second if I recall correctly, so that will eventually need changing if I want wired devices to potentially be able to utilise up to the gigabit downstream.

Most importantly I have much better upload capacity and that's an important reason for me wanting the regrade.

In reply to a post by Ixel:

As for buying a Wifi 6 kit, yeah that's understandable, neither am I at the moment. The technology as I understand is still draft and there's been a few reports of users apparently having issues with Orbi's Wifi 6 kit.

I don't think its draft, there are some good articles on Small Net Builder. I have the ASUS RT-AX88U on my Virgin Media 200mbps line. I have dual mode enabled, so AC and N devices work with it quite well. I don't yet have any 6 (AX) devices. The dual WPA2 and WPA3 mode is clever. Only a 10 year old Core2 Duo laptop with very early intel WiFi N card won't connect, and I haven't bothered to troubleshoot.

The kit is still expensive, so I would only recommend it you like the "top end" but the developer of the Merlin firmware also uses an AX88U but says its expensive.

Check out the articles on SNB.

In reply to a post by Ixel:

All done! It went offline for a few seconds twice between midnight and 1am for me (according to the router log). I don't think the FireBrick 2900 is up to the job though, or something else is causing a slower result than I am expecting (speedtest.net - I believe multithreaded, I'm testing via Unraid). Still, between 250-500 megabits down and around 100-110 megabits up is superb (wired test).

There are some oddities with browsers. I just got 400ish with speedtest, but switch to their windows app and it's bang on 895, every time, using the same server location. Most speedtests seem to say 890-910ish though.

Actual real world is mostly a lot less, other than a Microsoft download that did max it out. Usenet can max it out too, but that's 40 connections - this is probably the best use for it, 7 Gigabytes in 60 seconds

Edited by deleted (Thu 23-Apr-20 14:29:05)

In reply to a post by Ixel:

All done! It went offline for a few seconds twice between midnight and 1am for me (according to the router log). I don't think the FireBrick 2900 is up to the job though, or something else is causing a slower result than I am expecting (speedtest.net - I believe multithreaded, I'm testing via Unraid). Still, between 250-500 megabits down and around 100-110 megabits up is superb (wired test). My current Wifi network won't max out the downstream, which is understandable (Wifi gen 5 - Orbi RBK50). I'll need Wifi gen 6 to get much closer to that, which is still too new to consider.

Nice, I am glad its all finally up and running for you

In reply to a post by Ixel:

At a later date I will change the FB2900 to the EdgeRouter 8 Pro, which I believe should then maximise the downstream capability on wired devices as long as I only use QoS on the upstream (which I am, no need for QoS on roughly a gigabit capacity haha). I can't switch the router for now as I also use the FB2900 as a VoIP PBX.

Yeah I have a new MikroTik Tik RB4011iGS+RM router which should handle our speeds great, just need to go through and setting it up.

In reply to a post by Ixel:

Hopefully you'll be experiencing the world of gigabit FTTP very soon, fingers crossed Friday is the day when they can place the regrade order.

Well funny that you say that, just check MyBT and there is a new open order added today which is due to go live tomorrow, so not too sure if its midnight tonight or tomorrow night, probably tomorrow night.

It states its at the following order progress stage:

Fri 24 Apr 2020

Product update for Broadband
New broadband and contract

So either midnight tonight or tomorrow night

Paul

Nice, hopefully it means your regrade will be going live tonight (after midnight). Good luck.

I've improved my speed on wifi, I'm now using custom firmware for the Orbi RBK50 which seems to have helped a little. I've also changed some of the wifi settings to see what kind of impact they have (e.g. MU-MIMO, implicit Beamforming, Fast Roaming, etc).

As for the FireBrick 2900, I've configured it to shape the connection, for now, at 500/90 ish. Wifi speed tests are reaching close to the 500 megabits downstream limit I've currently configured which is also nice. I'll test higher limits soon and take note of when bufferbloat starts to become noticeable. I used to use shaper settings of roughly 80% of the package speed, which worked well for minimising ping spikes and virtually no bufferbloat. The only reason I'm currently shaping the downstream is because the FireBrick can't seem to handle much more than 700 megabits per second, at which point bufferbloat starts showing up due to no doubt hitting the upper limit of what the router can process.

Eventually I'll switch back to the EdgeRouter Pro 8, which I've had as a spare router that was originally replaced by the FireBrick as I had line bonding on FTTC with AAISP.

Edited by Ixel (Thu 23-Apr-20 17:30:49)

In reply to a post by Ixel:

Nice, hopefully it means your regrade will be going live tonight (after midnight). Good luck.

Yeah, hopefully, you never know with BT. LUL
But yeah I am sure it will all go as planned this time round.

In reply to a post by Ixel:

I've improved my speed on wifi, I'm now using custom firmware for the Orbi RBK50 which seems to have helped a little. I've also changed some of the wifi settings to see what kind of impact they have (e.g. MU-MIMO, implicit Beamforming, Fast Roaming, etc).

Just looked those up, so one is a Router (RBR50) and the other(s) are AP (RBS50) ?

I plan to use our current Linksys WRT 3200 ACM as an access point in the middle / rear of our house, Wi-Fi isn't really needed at the front part of the house, and if it becomes required I will just add an access point.

But I might just look into some new AP for the house as a whole.

In reply to a post by Ixel:

As for the FireBrick 2900, I've configured it to shape the connection, for now, at 500/90 ish. Wifi speed tests are reaching close to the 500 megabits downstream limit I've currently configured which is also nice. I'll test higher limits soon and take note of when bufferbloat starts to become noticeable. I used to use shaper settings of roughly 80% of the package speed, which worked well for minimising ping spikes and virtually no bufferbloat. The only reason I'm currently shaping the downstream is because the FireBrick can't seem to handle much more than 700 megabits per second, at which point bufferbloat starts showing up due to no doubt hitting the upper limit of what the router can process.

Eventually I'll switch back to the EdgeRouter Pro 8, which I've had as a spare router that was originally replaced by the FireBrick as I had line bonding on FTTC with AAISP.

So your FB2900 is the fully loaded version with bonding / load sharing then, would make sense to pay the extra £50 to get that.

As to buffer bloat, yeah we suffer with buffer bloat and or QOS issues here currently, also I would be watching a Twitch Live Stream and somebody would start up an online game and I will get buffering for a second or two which can be annoying as hell if you are moderating it.

Paul

In reply to a post by Ixel:

All done! It went offline for a few seconds twice between midnight and 1am for me (according to the router log). I don't think the FireBrick 2900 is up to the job though, or something else is causing a slower result than I am expecting

From the FireBrick website

The FB2900 is the successor to the FB2700, with redesigned main board, Power supply board. Using faster CPU and including an physical port in the form of an SFP carrier. Throughput has been measured at 750Mb/s making this ideal for Today's FTTC and FTTP connected premises.

Edited by j0hn83 (Thu 23-Apr-20 18:13:52)