Download speed issue with new FTTP service

I’ve terminated my Full Fibre 500 contact with BT (due to end in December) and swapped to Zen Internet’s Full Fibre 900 service, which is also for two years but won’t increase in price during that time and will work out more than £10 a month cheaper than BT. However, that is not the main subject of this message.

My new ISP has provided me with a FRITZ!Box 7530 AX router, which I am still evaluating. A negative point, compared to the ASUS RT-AX88U that I have is that it doesn’t have OpenVPN and trying to use an alternative VPN server on the new router has so-far eluded me. Also, and I’m still testing this to see if it’s a setting issue, the 5 GHz band has become unreachable on my Windows 11 laptop a couple of times, requiring a reboot of the router. I’ve changed the channel to 44, which I know has worked well with all my devices using the ASUS router, but if I lose connection again, I’ll check to see if other devices in my network have also lost connection.

The problem with the ASUS router is that although it has worked well with the BT Full Fibre 500, it is much more flaky with Zen’s Full Fibre 900, especially on download. I don’t know whether this is because Zen uses the new CityFibre infrastructure that has been installed in Worcester or whether it is the new ONT that has been installed or whether it is as yet, some other unknown reason. The FRITZ!Box does achieve the full download speed however.

Question: Does anyone know of a third party AX router that definitely does work properly with CityFibre’s infrastructure on a 900 Mb/s download service such as Zen’s Full Fibre 900? I’d just like to have an alternative product in mind in case the FRITZ!Box continues to give me problems.

I don't know whether this will work or not, but I'm going to try to provide a link to my Dropbox account, where I have uploaded some screenshots of the results of speed tests. Here goes:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/8k8rxia7mh71gi0bu0sci...

Edited by SixtiesFan (Tue 07-Mar-23 11:47:45)

In reply to a post by SixtiesFan:

A negative point, compared to the ASUS RT-AX88U that I have is that it doesn’t have OpenVPN and trying to use an alternative VPN server on the new router has so-far eluded me

Do you mean you want to make OpenVPN connections *to* your house, from outside, e.g. when travelling?

If so, you can just stick an OpenVPN server behind the router, and port-forward the relevant UDP port to it.

Or do you mean you're trying to make some sort of *outbound* VPN connection, for use with an external service like NordVPN or whatever?

It's the first option, i.e., wanting to be able to access my home network when not at home. I think the option you suggest may be available as a VPN package on my Synology NAS, but I'll have to look into it when I have some free time on my hands.

Is this any use

https://en.avm.de/service/vpn/

I tried that, but when I got to the step to install the missing driver for the Fritz app on my Laptop, none could be found, so I had to give up. I'm currently trying to see if I can set up a VPN server on my Synology Diskstation using OpenVPN.

Out of interest did you try the wireguard option? Reading around it seems to require much less cpu than openvvpn. When i set up a system about 10 years ago I was unable to find a router with enough cpu to make openvpn a practical option for a small office.

Wireguard certainly works well for me on my Fritz!7590 - as does the "old" IPSec tunnel.

Tailscale is another even easier option if you have a device that can run it. Even a Raspi can run this or OpenVPN just don't expect full line speeds which is fine for remote access puposes.

I couldn't find a way to use the Wireguard option on my 7530 AX, so I have had to set up an IPsec VPN on my Synology Diskstation (it's quite a procedure, including having to add a registry key on the computer). I think it's working now.

Unless your Fritz is running version 7.39 or above of the software the option will not appear.

https://en.avm.de/service/knowledge-base/dok/FRITZ-B...

Wireguard requires a client.

https://www.wireguard.com/install/

My FRITZ!Box 7530 AX is running version 7.31 and it says that it is up to date.

In reply to a post by SixtiesFan:

My FRITZ!Box 7530 AX is running version 7.31 and it says that it is up to date.

That's because it's the latest version for your device.

https://ftp.avm.de/fritzbox/fritzbox-7530-ax/other/f...

You can download the Lab (beta) version 7.51 from here:
https://en.avm.de/fritz-lab/fresh-from-development/f...

The beta includes wireguard support and a bunch of other features that are all listed on the Labs link posted above.