In reply to a post by jimbof:

The office is my own, so I have a site-site VPN set up in my Ubiquiti hardware (the two sites are on separate subnets so it is all routed transparently over VPN). I've got a USG4Pro at home but only a USG3 in the office, that one will need upgrading as it isn't fast enough to saturate this link over VPN (assuming no other issues).

Yes, I also have site-to-site VPNs running but using the Fritz. I would add some Edgerouters (as recommended here) but I can't get to the other sites at the moment for obvious reasons. I'll have a look at the Ubiquity too, thanks.

I did try and avoid Zen sending me the Fritz as it's just going to go into the attic with all the rest of the Telco routers

I was already using FritzBoxes (although a better model than Zen send). When I upgraded or re-contracted or something I asked to have the 'free' router just so as I'd have it for troubleshooting. There's no way I'm going to reset my router to factory spec (even with the option of saving the config file). I don't expect you'll have enough issues with Zen to get annoyed!

Edit: I now see EdgeRouter is Ubiquity!

Edited by Woolwich (Mon 08-Feb-21 14:15:21)

In reply to a post by Woolwich:

I was already using FritzBoxes (although a better model than Zen send). When I upgraded or re-contracted or something I asked to have the 'free' router just so as I'd have it for troubleshooting. There's no way I'm going to reset my router to factory spec (even with the option of saving the config file). I don't expect you'll have enough issues with Zen to get annoyed!

I'm hoping it will be plain sailing...
I ordered FTTP 900 on Thursday, and the OR guy was out today already doing a survey in the snow no less...! It's just arrived in the area and I think I'll be the first connected at this rate (though a small amount of digging might get in the way of that...)

In reply to a post by Woolwich:

Edit: I now see EdgeRouter is Ubiquity!

Yes, they're very similar under the hood, though the Unifi stuff has a controller device (either on the network or on the cloud) that manages all the boxes on the network and "provisions" them with settings from the GUI, instead of having to learn some router OS to do it. Depending on which way you look at it, this is either a neat setup, or an annoyance.

There was a time when I used to build custom Linux based routers and firewalls for fun and profit, but these days it's something I don't get so much fun out of - they're basically understood problems and I just want it done as easily as possible. The site-site VPN setup on the Unifi interface was all of about 5 mouse clicks...

In reply to a post by AndrewNi:

In reply to a post by jimbof:

Have you elicited any feedback from Zen as to why this happens and what it is about the gateways that is so different? It's not like there are a ton of hops there to figure out...

No, but I think I know. Zen have presences in Manchester and London. In the past, this was easily visible on a trace (wh-man.zen.net.uk & th-lon.zen.net.uk). Manchester had the higher latency for me because I'm in the SW.

My FTTP just went live. So far all the latencies I've seem PPPoE connections have are very good. You can just about make out on TBB ping charts the change of gateway "step", but it only seems to be around a 2ms spread for the different gateways I've seen so far; in the 7-9ms region. At its best it is a ms better than my FTTC with EE, and at worst a ms worse. Long may it continue!

In reply to a post by jimbof:

In reply to a post by AndrewNi:

In reply to a post by jimbof:

Have you elicited any feedback from Zen as to why this happens and what it is about the gateways that is so different? It's not like there are a ton of hops there to figure out...

No, but I think I know. Zen have presences in Manchester and London. In the past, this was easily visible on a trace (wh-man.zen.net.uk & th-lon.zen.net.uk). Manchester had the higher latency for me because I'm in the SW.

My FTTP just went live. So far all the latencies I've seem PPPoE connections have are very good. You can just about make out on TBB ping charts the change of gateway "step", but it only seems to be around a 2ms spread for the different gateways I've seen so far; in the 7-9ms region. At its best it is a ms better than my FTTC with EE, and at worst a ms worse. Long may it continue!

Lucky you, I've been on fttp for a couple of weeks and sit around 18ms. Quite disappointed in that really. I assume it's down to connecting to London instead of Manchester despite living in Lancashire.

I'm joining this conversation late, and without having read the rest of the thread (probably a mistake), but just to say that I have Zen FTTP and use a Draytek router and they didn't try to force a Fritz on me at the time I upgraded to FTTP.

Just following up on this. I got my 900/115 home Zen connection all installed, and with the Unifi USG3 and the USG4Pro at home I'm able to do SMB over the site-to-site VPN and achieve real world transfers of around 6.5MB (megabytes!) a second in the home -> office direction, and 8MB/sec in the office -> home direction . The office has 80/80 symmetrical.

To achieve this I did have to turn off some of the router features that were preventing the hardware offload from working. So no smart queues and no IDS.

The above means I probably won't bother upgrading the USG3 as that kind of speed is more than good enough given the limitations of the office 80/80.

In reply to a post by Corbula:

Lucky you, I've been on fttp for a couple of weeks and sit around 18ms. Quite disappointed in that really. I assume it's down to connecting to London instead of Manchester despite living in Lancashire.

I'm with IDNet FTTP which I believe uses Zen for some of the journey.

Latency for me varies between 12ms and 6ms (I'm in Leicester) to sites in London. I get various routes giving 12ms, 8ms and 6ms. So if I connect and its 12ms, I just have to drop PPPoE and reconnect a few times until I'm on the fastest route (to London servers at least). As this is FTTP, I stay connected for months at a time so it's no hardship.

Just thought it was an interesting observation to add to the thread.