Does anyone consistently get 900Mbps ?

We were with Zen on FTTC and now we have just upgraded to the full 900 Mbps. package and we stayed with Zen for virtually zero contention / lots of spare capacity and a flat line speed graph.

However, up to now the speeds are very poor; they vary wildly with download speeds between 381 Mbps and 123 Mbps and upload speeds between 110 Mbps and 9 Mbps on a connection that is supposed to get 900 Mbps.

We have not seen any speeds over 381 Mbps.

The big question is "Does Anyone with Zen get a rock solid 900 Mbps connection" ?

Right now I am taking speed test readings over a period of days as it is considered that may be a contention issue but to say the least I am somewhat sceptical

Edited by Fido (Wed 07-Oct-20 18:31:57)

How, and with what, are you running these tests ?

I assume you've already tested with a PC directly connected to the ONT to rule out router issues? If not, that should be your first port of call.

In reply to a post by Highland76:

I assume you've already tested with a PC directly connected to the ONT to rule out router issues? If not, that should be your first port of call.

Hi Highland76,

Yes; I did try plugging my PC directly into the ONT and it made absolutely no difference as the speeds were still low and they were still all over the place. - (My laptop is up to date everything and I use CAT6A cables).

After my first post on this, I did record a new high speed of 871 Mbps, (just before 8:00PM this evening), so my line and equipment does seem capable of getting near to 900 Mbps. - However, an hour later, the next speed test was only 88 Mbps so the speed of 871 Mbps seems to have been a fluke.

It does seem to be contention but I chose Zen because Zen has overcapacity and my FTTC Zen line never has a whiff of contention so I don't know where the problem is but it's not good.

The Zen Website refers to an average speed of 900 Mbps: which indicates that it could sometimes exceed 900 Mbps and sometime be a bit below 900 Mbps but this is [censored] especially since the browsing is slow.

The ping on the speed tests is usually recorded as being 12 and the jitter is usually recorded as 1.

The 64,000 Dollar Question is: does anyone with residential Zen FTTP consistently get speeds around 900 Mbps and a fast snappy connection ?

Do residential customers from other FTTP providers consistently get speeds around 900 Mbps and a fast snappy connection ?


Regards,
Fido

Thanks. Sorry can’t help you with your main question as I’m not with Zen but with TalkTalk Business on their equivalent service (Fibre 900). But a couple of important things to bear in mind:

1) Very few speed testers will show the full speeds (~900 Mbps) on the 1 Gig service irrespective of ISP. I find the Xilo test server on Speedtest.net tends to be quite reliable.

2) BT and TalkTalk have a minimum speed guarantee of 450 Mbps on their Fibre 900 products. I’d imagine Zen would have a similar speed guarantee, no way on earth would they guarantee 900 Mbps 24/7 as it’s a shared service.

If you’re not seeing 500+ Mbps even at quiet times (eg 3am) then it won’t be down to contention. Probably an issue on Zen’s or BTW/Openreach’s side, assuming your kit is fine.

Try the Thinkbroadband speed test and post the results, also find a large real file from somewhere to download and see what speeds you get.

Post deleted by adslmax

In reply to a post by fredfox:

find a large real file from somewhere to download and see what speeds you get.

This one! biggest large real file to test true throughput speed 10Gb http://proof.ovh.net/files/10Gio.dat

In reply to a post by Fido:

However, up to now the speeds are very poor; they vary wildly with download speeds between 381 Mbps and 123 Mbps and upload speeds between 110 Mbps and 9 Mbps on a connection that is supposed to get 900 Mbps.

We have not seen any speeds over 381 Mbps.

The big question is "Does Anyone with Zen get a rock solid 900 Mbps connection" ?

Right now I am taking speed test readings over a period of days as it is considered that may be a contention issue but to say the least I am somewhat sceptical

The best bet is to pick a random Linux ISO and download from a mirror in the UK and download using wget or curl on the command line with a wired connection between the test machine and the ONT.

However the ability to max out a high speed connection is very difficult and almost never achieved in the real world in my 16 years of experience enjoying 1Gbps and faster internet connections at work (Universities have enjoyed high speed connectivity for a long time).

Right now this is being typed on a machine with a 10Gbps connection, (remote desktop on the the console server for the HPC facility at work, the University has significantly more than that available in total, that's just my link to the core), I am lucky to ever get near 1Gbps when downloading stuff. However in carefully controlled tests I can get 5-6Gbps to other nearby Universities. I can get a bit more within the University. The link is good for lots of speed, but no speed test I have ever done gets anywhere near showing my true speed.

On the other hand I could pick three or four different mirrors, set off downloads of Linux ISO's and see each one achieve ~500Mps.

Deleted due to duplication

Edited by Fido (Thu 08-Oct-20 13:36:13)