In reply to a post by jimbof:

Zen 900 FTTP here, Norwich CIty Centre. My connection shows a GEA migration on 22/Jun, and though my min ping has improved, throughput is significantly worse. I could always hit 900mbps down prior to migration, now in the evening I'm struggling to get much over 500mbps. I see much more frequent red markers at the top of my TBB ping charts.

This is how my connection changed on the evening of the migration.
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

Best next steps?

Report it to their support to start the investigation

What router are you using please? You're the first 'possible' victim outside the North West!

Edited by SteveBushell999 (Sun 03-Jul-22 10:28:40)

If nothing else it shows that Zen continued with the GEA migration even though migrated customers continued to have issues.

In reply to a post by dect:

If nothing else it shows that Zen continued with the GEA migration even though migrated customers continued to have issues.

VERY good point! Don't think even FakeJake's GEA migrated connection was declared 'clean' then (although we don't really know what happened there to fix things, and Zen aren't saying......)

In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Is that on the Nokia (and Adtran) units? Thought the MA Huawei stuff had dedicated cards.

The Huawei stuff uses dedicated cards indeed. Not sure on the other two so didn't mention specifics per vendor.

The ECI stuff the PON and Cablelink serving it were apparently on the same card. The cabinets used dedicated cards.

Completely forgot we had discussed this the other week…ECI History 101 😅

It's a Ubiquiti Unifi USG-4 Pro, which has been good as gold. Is it really thought that the routers make that much of a difference? The router is set up to be able to have sufficient throughput to saturate the ~910mbps down / 110mbps up I used to achieve.

I do have the Zen-provided Fritz 7530, which I just use as a VOIP/DECT bridge at the moment (I ported my copper phone number to AAISP when I moved to FTTP).

I forsee a very frustrating future for me though in trying to deal with it. Speed tests are still usually over 500mbps (though last night wired tests to Zen via Speedtest were down at 350mbps), and I don't have much appetite for re-configuring with different routers to prove something that pretty obviously has happened as a result of a Zen reconfiguration. I've got about 10 months left to run on a 24 month contract on it.

That the latency jitter has changed so much makes me wonder if that is a clue. I was always at around 6ms with almost no jitter, but now I'm at 4-5ms with 1-2ms jitter. Obviously by no means a terrible connection, but still, very annoying it has got markedly worse than it was.

Is it really thought that the routers make that much of a difference?

Oh my God YES! read back in the previous parts of this thread.... Using the Fritz 7530 modem (2 different ones of them) I was getting 20-100Mbits.... Same with a Zen test Technicolor router, but with my Mac directly connected to the ONT (PPPOE) I got my full 500Mbps, then tried an apple TimeCapsule (ancient hardware), but gave a pretty constant 200Mbps.

The problem is that the disconnects were still happening throughout all this, which made for a rather unreliable connection, but pure download speeds, as above.... It 'seems' to be exactly how the TCP stack is working, perhaps BSD (OSX) is 'better', but perhaps not! Running a Windows 10 box direct to the ONT with PPPOE gave 500Mbps, but the exact same hardware running Windows Server 2016 only 100Mbps.

So, short answer.... YES, the actual TCP stack that connects to the ONT matters very much (when this fault condition is present).

I completely understand your reluctance to mess with routers, that's a 'service' that FakeJake and myself provided for over 2 months, and got absolutely nowhere with Zen. Make sure you point out your observations to Zen, and if you like quote my input as to experience with routers / PPPOE.

I didn't want to change from Zen as I need fixed IP and domain hosting for work and email etc here. It's sounding very much like you have the same issue though.

It 'seems' to be exactly how the TCP stack is working, perhaps BSD (OSX) is 'better', but perhaps not!

BSD and the Berkeley code base was *the* original TCP/IP implementation of the forerunner of the modern internet…ARPANET…

BSD and TCP/IP History

Rodney Grimes podcast about BSD and TCP/IP

Yes, and Windows has been through several different TCP implementations over the years, so not sure of the differences on my box booting Win 10 and Server 2016, but the behaviour obviously isn't due to hardware differences.

The Ubiquiti looks to be a pretty professional piece of kit, but I don't know what OS it actually uses, the Fritz is Linux I believe.

In reply to a post by jimbof:

It's a Ubiquiti Unifi USG-4 Pro, which has been good as gold. Is it really thought that the routers make that much of a difference? The router is set up to be able to have sufficient throughput to saturate the ~910mbps down / 110mbps up I used to achieve.

I would not say that the issues have anything to do with the router used.

When 900 mbps FTTP was first installed on my line on 7th October 2020 I was using the supplied Fritzbox 7530 which had speed issues at the time and I then tried the Fritzbox 7590, (that I already owned as I had been using it on my previous ZEN FTTC 80/20 line), but the Fritzbox 7590 had the same speed issues as the Supplied Fritzbox 7530. - (Both of these Fritzboxes had poor WIFI Range and I ended up with four Fritzbox Repeaters spread throughout the house so I bought an Asus RT AX88U, (since FTTP does not need a router with a modem and I wanted better WIFI range), and the RT AX88U had the same issues until some thing happened in mid December 2020 when it started to work quite well until the GEA Change. - (My router never lost connection unless the power went down or I reset it).

I did not like the Fritzbox 7530 on FTTP because it does not have a separate WAN Port and both the 7530 and the Fritzbox 7590 had poor WIFI but the Asus RT AX88U is a great Router with a fast CPU/processor and good WIFI range and it can also enable the user to carry out Ookla Speed tests from inside the router itself which is handy when you have speed issues.

Yesterday my speeds were up and down between around 200 mbps and 500 mbps and they seemed to be capped at 500 mbps.

Today; I an getting quite a few 920 mbps tests and none lower than 500 mbps.

Personally, I would say that a properly set up router should have sufficient throughput and the router is a Red Herring especially if more than one has been tried.

Regards,
Fido