Hub 4 / 5 photos?

Can anyone with a Hub 4 and Hub 5 sent me a photo ([email protected]) of the label on the bottom/side of their router and the power supply - I'm looking for details on the voltage/amperage/polarity, etc.

seb

Did you get pictures? I can send you a hub 4

In reply to a post by gary333:

Did you get pictures? I can send you a hub 4

I got a Hub5 so that would be great

seb

No probs. Sent

In reply to a post by gary333:

No probs. Sent

Thanks to both Sean and you for sending them

Hi Sean/Gary,

Just another thank you.. this is why I was asking :
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/guides/how-to-stay-on...

VM seems to be more power hungry than others.. quite by how much I don't know but if anyone measures DC current in actual use with this solution I'd be interested to know

seb

I have a UPS for my PC but I do not use it for the HUB..

When I do plug the hubs power adapter in either the power adaptor or my USP makes a horrid sound (I cant remember which)

I might try it again when I am off next week.

But If we do get power cuts here then I can just use my UPS to power my hub and not my PC. It will only run my PC for a few mins, The hub tho should last a good hour or two.

In reply to a post by Seansmit17:

I have a UPS for my PC but I do not use it for the HUB..

When I do plug the hubs power adapter in either the power adaptor or my USP makes a horrid sound (I cant remember which)

I might try it again when I am off next week.

But If we do get power cuts here then I can just use my UPS to power my hub and not my PC. It will only run my PC for a few mins, The hub tho should last a good hour or two.

So the traditional UPS won't power low power devices very long in my experience so I'd be careful assuming that.. some of the runtime charts I have seen suggests about an hour even at 1% load on some.. YMMV of course.

Yes, it definitely makes a lot more sense to keep everything as very low voltage DC rather than doing DC to AC and back to DC

Hey - I went live today on gig with virgin.

Is a tuya app output helpful? Think it shows wattage voltage etc.

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

Hey - I went live today on gig with virgin.
Is a tuya app output helpful? Think it shows wattage voltage etc.

I presume that's measured at 230V AC with the brick.

For SuperHub 5, it might be still helpful. We have DC measurements for the ones we did ourselves. We have a reported AC measurement for SuperHub 4 already.

Would be useful to know the range - i.e. peak vs standard. Peak during sustained traffic would be useful in particular.

seb

Yes I noticed you asked for DC which I know is different to the AC. I wasn’t sure on the specifics so thought to ask if it would help at the outlet.

Anyway, I did a test at baseline (4 iPhones, 2 android. 6 smart bulbs, Alexa, 2 tvs on wifi none of them using the wifi for anything other than staying “online” eg not streaming Netflix). At 27 seconds in I ran a Speedtest on an iPhone 12 in the same room as the hub.

The highest measured wattage is 19.7. It fluctuates a fair bit. Don’t think the other stats will be too helpful given the use case but I don’t understand them all enough to know for sure.

Uploaded video of Tuya app overtime. I hope it helps a little:

https://vimeo.com/793664376

Speedtest was close to maxing out the line, so would assume 20 watts is where it’s designed to peak under load. Seems to be just below that.

https://www.speedtest.net/my-result/i/5465548725

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

Speedtest was close to maxing out the line, so would assume 20 watts is where it’s designed to peak under load. Seems to be just below that.

https://www.speedtest.net/my-result/i/5465548725

So to confirm, AC measurement peaking 20W on SuperHub 5 under load?

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

Yes I noticed you asked for DC which I know is different to the AC. I wasn’t sure on the specifics so thought to ask if it would help at the outlet.

Anyway, I did a test at baseline (4 iPhones, 2 android. 6 smart bulbs, Alexa, 2 tvs on wifi none of them using the wifi for anything other than staying “online” eg not streaming Netflix). At 27 seconds in I ran a Speedtest on an iPhone 12 in the same room as the hub.

The highest measured wattage is 19.7. It fluctuates a fair bit. Don’t think the other stats will be too helpful given the use case but I don’t understand them all enough to know for sure.

Uploaded video of Tuya app overtime. I hope it helps a little:

https://vimeo.com/793664376

The reason we measured DC was just as we were looking at using USB batteries to make a cheap power source.
14-20W from that video is useful still though as it shows the comparison to the rated current.
We do see Virgin router taking a fair bit more power interestingly.

Did you get idle load figures?

If no one provides idle, I will hook up a watt meter to mine, but bit awkward with location so was hoping others would give you the data.

Yes, 20 watts under load.

The cable network is quite power hungry with the channel bonding etc. generally cable modems seem to use around this amount of power. At least, xfinity in the USA is around 20 watts also (2018 hub).

With nothing on the wifi - but turned on it comes in at 12.4 watts.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Mon 30-Jan-23 22:35:08)

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

Did you get idle load figures?

If no one provides idle, I will hook up a watt meter to mine, but bit awkward with location so was hoping others would give you the data.

The 14-20W range is fine. More data the better to revise that but we can't be perfect on this.

seb

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

Yes, 20 watts under load.
The cable network is quite power hungry with the channel bonding etc. generally cable modems seem to use around this amount of power. At least, xfinity in the USA is around 20 watts also (2018 hub).
With nothing on the wifi - but turned on it comes in at 12.4 watts.

To be fair FTTP require a little bit more than pure router although it's not THAT much.. but it is interesting. I wonder if we should do a comparison for annual 'hidden' costs of cable broadband on your electricity bill

seb

I would say, that virginmedia actually have it quite efficient. There are hubs out there using 25+.

If we take xfinity (Comcast owner) and their supported devices list: https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/internet-eq...

Filter by wireless AC standard as a minimum & 3.1 support. IE filter to include IAD D3.1 and WiFi(ac).
On their site, the TG3482G - It reports an idle power of 27.4w!

May be fair but not sure consumers comparing UK providers would care about US usage.
However I don't think we have enough data at this stage to really make a fair comparison

At 30p/kWh every extra 5W would take £13/yr (3.6p/day) more in terms of power if I just did the maths right..

In reply to a post by seb:

At 30p/kWh every extra 5W would take £13/yr (3.6p/day) more in terms of power if I just did the maths right..

You did. Although unit prices are closer to 35p at the moment.

The reason for the comparison is as they utilise the same technology standard as Virginmedia cable, we don’t have a comparison in the UK with the same technology.

In my experience, the more equipment eg splitters, switches, cabinets, ventilation of said equipment, the more power hungry the end device seems to be. I’m not sure why that is the case as the end device is not powering the whole set of equipment in the stack. What we can say is that full fibre has very little in terms of excess equipment so the whole cost is much lower and it seems the end user devices are too.

In terms of making the public broadly aware of the costs to run a Virgin router. You enter murky water, as the general public will have no understanding of underlying network types, the technology stack, and how that factors in. It risks upsetting the reputation of Virgin who heavily invest in the public interest, and in my view, unfairly leaving consumers feeling that virgin are so wasteful compared to peer internet providers which are viewed as apples to apples (in this case internet vs internet).

If we find that docsis 3.0 and 3.1 is widely deployed to mass market in the world with dual band gateways / modem combos, and the power usage aligns to VDSL2+ / full fibre, the points more valid. I do not suspect Virgin are producing devices that are wasteful by design. Arris for example is not a budget basic company. They are decades into developing this. The hub 5 is Sagemcom, same vendor used by peer uk ISPs. If there is no real solution that’s readily available to mass market (eg a hub they can get today for free that’s available and supported by their isp) we just instil panic, frustration and more concern over bills, and leave consumers stuck. We run the risk of consumers turning devices off and falling foul to security patching not being applied in a timely manner.

I do wish the device was more efficient and honestly I was surprised by the usage. However, sometimes creating a path of resistance by isps who face technical barriers and lack available remedies, is in my mind, a road we should avoid.

I dont think TBB should be concerned about upsetting VM, if VM get upset they could make a more power efficient device. Its good to provide the power usage data, as it will be important to some people.

My maths for the device using 20w is £5 a month so 5w would be £1.25 a month?

Edited by Chrysalis (Tue 31-Jan-23 15:18:47)

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by seb:

At 30p/kWh every extra 5W would take £13/yr (3.6p/day) more in terms of power if I just did the maths right..

You did. Although unit prices are closer to 35p at the moment.

Close enough to show there's a difference

My point is public isn't looking at how efficient Virgin is or what tech they use - they will compare Virgin vs some non-Virgin solution. If it adds £15 a year to the bill it may affect some people's decision.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I dont think TBB should be concerned about upsetting VM, if VM get upset they could make a more power efficient device. Its good to provide the power usage data, as it will be important to some people.
My maths for the device using 20w is £5 a month so 5w would be £1.25 a month?

I was thinking more about what the difference might be.. We don't have accurate figures for actual usage under various conditions to really judge it yet.

In reply to a post by seb:

My point is public isn't looking at how efficient Virgin is or what tech they use - they will compare Virgin vs some non-Virgin solution. If it adds £15 a year to the bill it may affect some people's decision.

That is very valid. I suspect in practice it might be more than we realise, eg on sky setting various settings and logs off I was getting 8 watts at times of downloading (hard to compare fairly as that’s 80 meg speed). SR203.

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

In reply to a post by seb:

My point is public isn't looking at how efficient Virgin is or what tech they use - they will compare Virgin vs some non-Virgin solution. If it adds £15 a year to the bill it may affect some people's decision.

That is very valid. I suspect in practice it might be more than we realise, eg on sky setting various settings and logs off I was getting 8 watts at times of downloading (hard to compare fairly as that’s 80 meg speed). SR203.

I do think it's a fairly complex area demanding some dedicated time .. not considered logs etc..

I'd like to see real-world photos of this

https://www.businessdirect.bt.com/products/cyberpowe...

BT seem to be claiming on that page that it powers the ONT and a Smart Hub 2 and they have a non-FTTP version of the UPS so I assume there's a difference.

In reply to a post by jpm:

I'd like to see real-world photos of this
https://www.businessdirect.bt.com/products/cyberpowe...
BT seem to be claiming on that page that it powers the ONT and a Smart Hub 2 and they have a non-FTTP version of the UPS so I assume there's a difference.

Mmm the guide linked has illustrations so you can see it's DC output on the back:
https://www.businessdirect.bt.com/content/uni2/docum...

It looks like this:
https://www.cyberpower.com/uk/en/product/series/indo...

Specs say it's 36W and 1.5 hours so I presume that's 54Wh which isn't the worst but neither is it the best.
They say it takes 20 hours to recharge from 0% to 90% on promo with spec sheet saying typical time is 14 hours so I'm not quite sure which to believe.. If it can deliver 1.5 hours at 36W but actual usage is probably much less, it might actually deliver over 3 hours if it's well designed. Obviously would need to test to know.

The one thing to note is this has one output.. unless you have a splitter or there's some pass through (don't think may ONT has one) then I'm not sure how it will power the ONT and modem?