Not reaching advertised fiber broadband speeds

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Not reaching advertised fiber broadband speeds

stankbear29

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#254420 11-Aug-2019 16:46

Hey all,

We've been on Spark's Fiber Max plan for the past year and have only achieved 200mbps of their advertised (up to) 900mbps download speeds. We live in a newly built apartment (less than 1 year old) in Auckland CBD.

Our setup is:

We run half-hourly speed tests from the Unifi Cloud Key and have average around 200mbps. All cables between devices are CAT 6. This result is consistent from:

Client A on ethernet
Client B on 5Ghz wifi
plugged directly into the USG (bypassing the Switch), both before and after configuring AP networks and VLANs.

Speed tests from the clients are from speedtest.net, and I believe the speed test on the Unifi Controller uses speedtest-cli (which targets speedtest.net).

We've raised the issue with Spark, and they asked Chorus to run tests on the line which they say are fine, and I'm pretty confident that the issue isn't in our setup.

What gives? Is there something obviously incorrect in my setup?

If indeed everything is fine, in theory I could switch to Spark's Fiber 200 plan and still get similar speeds? If that is the case, could I make a complaint to the Telecom Dispute Resolution or ComCom for false advertising?

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#2294246 11-Aug-2019 16:51

Are you testing using the windows speedtest App or using the browser based speedtest?

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DjShadow

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#2294247 11-Aug-2019 16:51

Can you enable Hardware Offload?

snnet

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#2294249 11-Aug-2019 16:54

Just so you know the age of your apartment is pretty irrelevant.

sbiddle

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#2294252 11-Aug-2019 16:59

Plug your Spark HG659 into the ONT and perform the test over Ethernet. What do you get?

There are one of two scenarios here - a) you're somehow incorrectly provisioned on a 200Mbps plan (your upload speed will verify this) or b) your hardware is at fault.

Based on the literally hundreds of threads on here complaining about speed there is probably a 99.9% chance it is your hardware and not a Spark issue.

stankbear29

5 posts

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#2294254 11-Aug-2019 17:07

@Linux Yep, I have tried

@DjShadow I think that's a feature only available in the USG Pro and EdgeRouter models.

EDIT: It is available for the USG, and has been enabled by default.

@snnet Just ruling out aged hardware.

@sbiddle Unfortunately I don't have a Spark modem with me, but I'm looking at buying/borrowing one. Our upload speeds are around ~240mbps. I happen to have replaced all the Unifi equipment already for other reasons.

Linux

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#2294257 11-Aug-2019 17:14

If you are getting those upload speeds then the issue is back in your network somewhere!

hio77

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#2294258 11-Aug-2019 17:14

DjShadow:

Can you enable Hardware Offload?

Given your results, i'd highly suspect it's exactly this.

I dont know exactly what speed the USG can route PPPoE VLAN 10 at, but i highly suspect given the roundness of your download and upload speeds your problem is at the choice of hardware not the network at all.

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Any comments made are personal opinion and do not reflect directly on the position my current or past employers may have.

freitasm

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#2294269 11-Aug-2019 17:44

stankbear29: ... and I'm pretty confident that the issue isn't in our setup.

It is highly likely it is.

Are these Windows machines? On the machine running the ethernet test can you boot from a Linux live CD/USB and test again?

What do you get from fast.com when booting from the live CD?

My technology disclosure

stankbear29

5 posts

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#2294280 11-Aug-2019 18:11

Are these Windows machines? On the machine running the ethernet test can you boot from a Linux live CD/USB and test again?

What do you get from fast.com when booting from the live CD?

These are ArchLinux, Mac, and Windows.

Talkiet

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#2294282 11-Aug-2019 18:18

There's nothing obviously wrong from what you have described, but as others have mentioned it's still extremely likely to be your setup. The best thing you can do is test with a Spark 659b and a single known good machine plugged into that via ethernet. (Known good means has been tested at another site to get 900+, NOT that it's just kickass hardware - that's only "suspected good" :-)

Also, use the windows Speedtest app, try manually selecting the Spark AUckland speedtest server (and other AKL speedtest servers), and try fast.com when you have the basic network setup.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

Jase2985

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#2294290 11-Aug-2019 18:39

are you sure your machine can do gigabit speeds over ethernet?

what are the specs of the machine?

Inphinity

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#2294382 11-Aug-2019 20:01

What model USG, and do you have any features like QoS enabled?

toejam316

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#2294408 11-Aug-2019 20:40

The USG is equiv to an ERLite3, so in theory if everything's configured right you should still hit around 800Mbps.

Have you ensured you've got Hardware Acceleration and Offload enabled under Advanced in the controller config? By the sound of it, this hasn't been done and has been mentioned a couple of times already, but that should fix things up a fair bit.

Anything I say is the ramblings of an ill informed, opinionated so-and-so, and not representative of any of my past, present or future employers, and is also probably best disregarded.

stankbear29

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#2295024 12-Aug-2019 19:07

@Talkiet Fair call.

@Jase2985 These are from Linux running on Lenovo X1 Carbon, Windows running on i7 8700k, and MacBook Pros.

@Inphinity, @toejam316 The small square one. Hardware offload is on, and features like DPI, IPS, and Smart Queues which disables hardware offload are all off.

richms

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#2295027 12-Aug-2019 19:10

I have seen 960 on my USG down when its not doing its longstanding bug of 50% CPU being used by some IPv6 process. Even with that happening its still on the low 800s but with a somewhat poorer experiance when browsing since I think its DNS server is what suffers with the high CPU.

Richard rich.ms

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