My internet access is faster than my home Gigabit network

[Eug]

This is the speed at which the modem internally benches.

This bunch of tubes feels very, very fast. Internet server speed is now the bottleneck, particularly ad servers. Yes, I leave ads active because the ad blockers cause problems with some sites. I wouldn't even mind most of the ads that much except they seem the last to load.

My Airport Extreme cannot keep up with the speed though. In router mode it can hit 700 or even 900 Mbps but if using PPPoE, it is horrible. Connection issues with this particular modem/service and when it does connect, it's 225 Mbps or less. I'm told this PPPoE slowness is just an inherent issue with it, since I guess back when it came out, most people didn't expect to be doing 250+ Mbps PPPoE. So, now I'm using the Bell Home Hub 3000 gateway as the router, and have left the Airport Extremes as just my WiFi bridges.

The biggest change I notice though is that Netflix just starts at the max resolution with zero delay. With my previous 25/7 VDSL2 service, it would often play at lower resolution for maybe 10 seconds or even longer, before going to max resolution, esp. if I had anything else transferring in the background. With 60/10 cable there was little delay before achieving max rez, but with 1000/100 fibre there is simply no delay.

BTW, the tech said the fibre isn't limited to this speed. It's limited by Bell's equipment on their end.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Wow that's crazy. But how are you getting that speed if your network is not over a gig?

I hope there's no cap on that, or that will get expensive FAST if you go over. What service is that from Bell? I'm on Fibreop, I get 50/30, but considering they don't allow servers, it's more than good enough for me. Could go up to 250/30 if I wanted to. I wish ISPs would quit the whole "no servers" thing though. Would be nice to be able to run my stuff from home, and buy a static IP block etc. I mean, I have the infrastructure for it. It's nice to only pay once for a server vs per month.

 

[Eug]

The speed is the internal speed test from the outside through modem's built-in ONT into the modem. It can't output that fast though since the Ethernet ports are Gigabit, so Bell advertised in the past as maxing out around 940 Mbps.

With my 2010 Core i7 iMac I can get 700 Mbps consistently and 900+ at peak, but my other computers struggle much more. I think one of my old Macs can only hit 400ish Mbps using these browser-based speed tests on a wired network, which actually isn't much faster than what I get on my iPhone through WiFi.

Service is unlimited data usage.

The surprising part is the pricing. In the current promo, 50/50 service was CAD$65, and 150/50 service was $70. But I'm paying $76. So just $5-6 bucks more to make the jump from 150/50 to 1000/100 service.

 

[local]

Hmm I get to pay $100 for 25/5...

 

[jlee]

That's seriously quick. I'm surprised your upload isn't higher if it's fiber, though.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Just got an email today from the city regarding our push to bring municipal fiber in to compete with Comcrap. Talking about putting it to another vote (as is necessary in Colorado) and issuing $140M in bonds for the build out. Unfortunately, that solution hasn't actually been decided on yet. It's also possible they could do something stupid like leave it up to one of the rinky dink clueless ISPs that are left in town, and that will mean it might as well not exist at all.

In Longmont to the south of us, their price for municipal broadband symmetrical 1 GB service is $49.95 per month for charter members.

 

[Eug]

That's seriously quick. I'm surprised your upload isn't higher if it's fiber, though.

Speed is limited by Bell's infrastructure. Max download speeds will go up (unless they throttle it) when their hardware is updated. I don't remember the discussion about upload but think I remember somebody saying something about resource allocation and priorities during the fibre rollout making 100 Mbps up a practical and marketing decision. Not sure though.

I live in a detached home in a low density neighbourhood without pre-existing fibre infrastructure. I wonder if that has anything to do with it. They ran aerial to my house from the utility pole across the street when I signed up. Also the major competitor is cable and they max out at about 45 Mbps up (marketed as 50 up) on their Gigabit offering so this is already over double that. Again, a marketing consideration.

My closest SLAM is about 1100 feet away I think and they were relying on that for FTTN for a long time. Then last year they extended the fibre along the electricity lines which are aerial. For the last 100-200 feet or so I'm guessing, that is done on a house by house basis when people sign up.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

One must remember you are paying for Internet Access. Look at your ISP as being the doorway. Unless you can find an IP address on your access provider's edge network where your access to their network begins then you cannot reasonably determine if marketed delivery is successful. I have not seen an ISP market X delivery of the Internet, just access to it. Hence, a service marketed, say, at 1 Gbps is that to their network, not the Internet in general.

Beyond that, the upstream limit is no doubt traffic shaped at the provider on the access side. I believe this isn't so much a resource limitation (could be on a SONET ring) as to prevent a-holes using consumer sold services in non-consumer activities.

 

[jlee]

One must remember you are paying for Internet Access. Look at your ISP as being the doorway. Unless you can find an IP address on your access provider's edge network where your access to their network begins then you cannot reasonably determine if marketed delivery is successful. I have not seen an ISP market X delivery of the Internet, just access to it. Hence, a service marketed, say, at 1 Gbps is that to their network, not the Internet in general.

Beyond that, the upstream limit is no doubt traffic shaped at the provider on the access side. I believe this isn't so much a resource limitation (could be on a SONET ring) as to prevent a-holes using consumer sold services in non-consumer activities.

Possibly, though Verizon FiOS, Google Fiber, and Cox Gigablast all have symmetrical upload.

 

[Eug]

This is Bell Canada, and they just started the fibre rollout here last year. Before that the best people were getting with them was 50/10 speeds on VDSL2. They are traditionally not very generous with their plans, so I'm not surprised they are limiting the upload. Plus, I know that in some areas they they say not to run home servers on their internet lines.

Also, their major competitor is Rogers Cable, which supports Gigabit speed on paper, with up to 50 Mbps uploads. However, they've been having congestion issues in some areas, and many neighbourhoods are still limited to 500 Mbps download. Furthermore, for upload, it's been very tough for people to get 50 up. Perhaps it is partially related to the fact that all of their modems are DOCSIS 3.0 and not 3.1? Dunno.

BTW, I was on 60/10 Fido cable last month (and now too concurrently). Fido is owned by Rogers so the same infrastructure. It's mostly been OK, but there have been slowdowns to 35/6 during peak times, and the modem after a week needed a reboot due to consistently slower speeds. That didn't sit well with me.

However, my "landline" on Bell is no longer a "landline" and runs over fibre. The line briefly went down yesterday I think (as my alarm system started beeping), and also for some reason my fax wouldn't dial out over that line the day before. I'll have to try again, but supposedly Bell's fibre-based home phone is supposed to work with both alarm systems and fax machines. Plus, although the line is up and working, it disappeared off my account. I can't see it listed anywhere.

Also the modems on both cable and Bell fibre have been nightmares. Firmware update over update in the last few months on cable, and Bell's modem was unstable for the first few months too until it got a number of firmware updates. Luckily for me though, I didn't have to be a guinea pig.

So it seems these guys have some growing pains, as it is early for Gigabit access in Canada.

The Bell modem is interesting though. It is a custom box from Sagemcom for them. It's the Sagemcomm 5566, but that doesn't show up on Sagemcomm's website since it's a custom model. It has an LCD screen with a readout of basic information, and it can send the password and login via email or text to the registered owner's address/phone number in case you forget, just by pressing a button on it. It also has the ONT built into it, and as mentioned is capable of processing faster than Gigabit speeds. It also has a built-in battery so no UPS is needed. It also has a hidden separate backhaul on 5 GHz AC for 4K PVRs and TV receivers. No more coax support. It's either 802.11ac or Ethernet for TV. And the signal strength for non-TV clients (5 GHz and 2.4 GHz) is pretty strong, although not quite as strong as my Airport Extreme in terms of measured dB (on my Nexus 7 using WiFi analyzer). The configuration page is dead simple for basic users, but has configuration pages in the advanced menus that would work for about 90% of homes I think - roughly equivalent to most upper mid-end consumer routers, but with easier advanced configuration, and a dead simple basic configuration pages. It has 4 extra Gigabit ports too. And of course, an output for home phone. It's basically a true all-in-one box for simultaneous TV (on its own separate WiFi backhaul), internet, and home phone, with a nice WiFi router (with guest network support), and built-in UPS, and has the ONT built into it. And they're renting these out for free to customers.

 

[Tweak155]

Ah, so this is just Canadian megabits... Only like 100 real megabits after conversion!

 

[Eug]

Regarding symmetrical service:

It seems those in some new subdivisions and some condo buildings are getting symmetrical service. eg. 300/300 service. Dunno about Gigabit for sure, but I think some are offered 1000/1000 too.

For us in the most of the low density areas, we only get symmetrical service if on 50/50. At the higher tiers it maxes out at 100. So 50/50, 150/50, 300/100, and 1000/100.

Not sure why the difference.

BTW, now that I can get 110 Mbps uploads, I'm wondering if I should get a cloud plan, but I'm not sure who has the best bang-for-the-buck for several hundred GB with a reliable company. I'm not sure I need constant access for most of it though.

Also, it would be nice if I could backup to the cloud with my Synology NAS. I backup daily to local storage and to a second NAS, but a cloud backup would be even better.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Oh wait so is the modem and ONT all one device? What sucks about this is you end up with double NAT if you have your own router/firewall device.

 

[Paperdoc]

I live in Thunder Bay, ON where there is a city-owned utility providing communications of several types to customers. (The have competitors, too.) We just got fibre installed to the house but did not buy their top speed service. Standard price for 75 Mb/s download / 37 Mb/s upload is C$87 / month for fibre internet only. We buy a bundle with basic "land-line style phone service" (but over the fibre) also for C$ 107 / month total. To go to their top fibre speed (200 Mb/s down, 100 up) would add C$40 / month. Speedtest confirms actual connection speeds are very close to specs, and user experience certainly gives the impression of high speed. I notice now that actual downloads from web sites is more dependent on the speed of the source's server system. In the process, we upgraded our home network to Gigabit ethernet including a high-performance Ubiquiti Wifi Access Point device.

Hint for price comparison: these days, C$100 is about US$75.

 

[Eug]

Oh wait so is the modem and ONT all one device? What sucks about this is you end up with double NAT if you have your own router/firewall device.

1. Technically the ONT is removable.You could theoretically take it out and put it in your own router (if there is a slot for it), but then you'd have to fiddle with all the VLAN settings etc. IPTV and the personal network are on different VLANs.

2. The modem does support PPPoE passthrough. It still needs do it itself for the IPTV service, but is happy to let you do it for your own home network, so technically there will be multiple PPPoE logins. If you do PPPoE on your own router, then you won't have double NAT. Unfortunately, in my case, my Airport Extreme (6th gen) does not support this well. It has compatibility issues it seems with this modem, and furthermore, even if it does successfully authenticate over PPPoE, it is limited to about 225 Mbps. (I've since learned this is just a performance limitation of this model, and benches elsewhere have it at about 250 Mbps.) OTOH, it works fine in double NAT, or in bridge mode, reaching speeds of 700-900ish Mbps over the WAN in these modes. Dunno why it's so crappy over PPPoE. So right now I have the modem doing the routing / DHCP allocation and have turned off DHCP on the Airport Extreme. The Airport Extremes are just being used as dumb WiFi access points.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Ah ok, so they just put it all in a box. Interesting. Is it an Alcatel ONT? I wonder if this is basically the same as Fibreop. Would make sense if they use the same platform across their various subsidies.

 

[Eug]

It's a Sagemcomm 5566, which is custom made for Bell Canada.

https://fccid.io/VW3FAST5566

I had my terms mixed up. Yes, the modem is the ONT, but the GPON module is removable, and you can plug it into any router that supports that slot.

On the right of the back image is the compartment where the GPON module is housed.

GPON module on left, plugged into a third party router:

 

[Red Squirrel]

Ahhh I see yeah that's different than what I have, I thought maybe it was two devices inside of a box customized for their setup or something.