How to make the most of a 1.15Gbps (Gig1) Virgin Media ISP

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

Paramonos

New Member
Mar 9, 2020
4
1
1
Quick update: Instead of doing the above, in the first instance I need to understand how 'bonding rr' works using two of the gigabit lans from the SH4. I happen to have a 'spare' barebones PC with an i7-8700 which I'll attempt to convert to a server. So I'll install a 4 gigabit lan card (Intel I350-T4 card with OpenBSD drivers) into it and run pfsense in a VM and attempt to bond the connection in that. If that's successful, I'll install a 10Gb lan card into the server and my main PC as well as (probably cat5e) cabling and do without WiFi complete (for now). I'll report back later in the week if I'm successful.
 

Paramonos

New Member
Mar 9, 2020
4
1
1
Quick update: Built a PC, installed Ubuntu and set up a VM with pfsense. In the PC I installed a 4x1GB lan and a 10GB lan card. I routed a 10GB lan line to my main PC. As above, I used two of the SH4 lan lines and bonded them (in pfsense you combine two WAN's and send all LAN traffic via the new bonded WAN gateway using the firewall). The result - this does allow you to get 1150 mbps from the SH4! Great result. Next I'll set up another VM in the new router/server PC with OpenNAS and Raid0 a bunch of SSD's to create a nice fast file server (thats one way to use the 10GB line).
 
  • Like
Reactions: a5ian300zx

Leehowell1983

New Member
Apr 25, 2020
5
0
1
Ok so anybody that is interested managed to bond 2 connections to the SH4 in a Mikrotik router with a 10Gb port to the rest of my network.



Seems to behave itself ok but still need a little bit more tweaks :)


I have just upgraded to VM 1gb and i’m having the same problem. I use a Netgear Nighthawk ax80 wifi6 and still only get 700mbs max. On the sh4 im lucky to get 500. The nighthawk supports link aggeration but when i connect to the sh4 it says error can’t establish WAN aggeration connection. I called VM to as if i could buy a CM1200 modem but they refused. What Mikrotik router did you use??
 

ChuckMountain

Member
Nov 6, 2019
30
4
8
Quick update: Built a PC, installed Ubuntu and set up a VM with pfsense. In the PC I installed a 4x1GB lan and a 10GB lan card. I routed a 10GB lan line to my main PC. As above, I used two of the SH4 lan lines and bonded them (in pfsense you combine two WAN's and send all LAN traffic via the new bonded WAN gateway using the firewall). The result - this does allow you to get 1150 mbps from the SH4! Great result. Next I'll set up another VM in the new router/server PC with OpenNAS and Raid0 a bunch of SSD's to create a nice fast file server (thats one way to use the 10GB line).
Sorry for some missed this post. Glad you got it worked with an alternative method. Is it still playing ball?

Sometimes I find that the download traffic will stick to one of the bonded WAN connections more than the other, but the upload is happy being split...

I have just upgraded to VM 1gb and i’m having the same problem. I use a Netgear Nighthawk ax80 wifi6 and still only get 700mbs max. On the sh4 im lucky to get 500. The nighthawk supports link aggeration but when i connect to the sh4 it says error can’t establish WAN aggeration connection. I called VM to as if i could buy a CM1200 modem but they refused. What Mikrotik router did you use??
I am using a CCR1009 router. Using round robin which seems to give both interfaces the same MAC address.

When you called VM about the CM1200 did ask if you could use it? I suppose you can buy it anywhere it is available?

I doubt their front end support would know but I do wonder if it would be worth trying it and cloning the MAC address of the VM SH4.
 

Leehowell1983

New Member
Apr 25, 2020
5
0
1
I am using a CCR1009 router. Using round robin which seems to give both interfaces the same MAC address.

When you called VM about the CM1200 did ask if you could use it? I suppose you can buy it anywhere it is available?

I doubt their front end support would know but I do wonder if it would be worth trying it and cloning the MAC address of the VM SH4.

They seemed confused i was asking and said the sh4 can do 1100 i told them it only has 1gb ports so 940 would me best case they told me i was wrong and kept on about samknows tests. I gave up and started looking into mac cloning. As far as i could see the cm1200 had no option to input mac address was looking for a dotsis 3.1 that supported mac cloning and Aggeration when i came across this forum. I was loosing hope until i saw you got 1100. Was that wired to the CCR1009??
 

ChuckMountain

Member
Nov 6, 2019
30
4
8
They seemed confused i was asking and said the sh4 can do 1100 i told them it only has 1gb ports so 940 would me best case they told me i was wrong and kept on about samknows tests. I gave up and started looking into mac cloning. As far as i could see the cm1200 had no option to input mac address was looking for a dotsis 3.1 that supported mac cloning and Aggeration when i came across this forum. I was loosing hope until i saw you got 1100. Was that wired to the CCR1009??
I suspect the VM staff will be working off scripts/knowledge articles and won't be aware of practical implications of gigabit overheads etc.

Mine was wired to the CCR1009, WiFi wise I get a similar figure to yours from a UniFi AC-HD at around 700Mbps. From memory that's the max I have got and typically more like to be in the 200-300Mbps range due to distance from the AP. Having said that's more than quick enough for most things on wireless :)
 

Leehowell1983

New Member
Apr 25, 2020
5
0
1
I suspect the VM staff will be working off scripts/knowledge articles and won't be aware of practical implications of gigabit overheads etc.

Mine was wired to the CCR1009, WiFi wise I get a similar figure to yours from a UniFi AC-HD at around 700Mbps. From memory that's the max I have got and typically more like to be in the 200-300Mbps range due to distance from the AP. Having said that's more than quick enough for most things on wireless :)
I agree VM staff had very limited knowledge. Ive been looking into CCR1009 the OS looks very interesting. Quite expencive but the way i see it I'm paying for 1gb so the longer i accept getting 1/2 the more money i waste so in the long run it will pay for itsself. I’ll try and find one under £400
 

ChuckMountain

Member
Nov 6, 2019
30
4
8
I agree VM staff had very limited knowledge. Ive been looking into CCR1009 the OS looks very interesting. Quite expencive but the way i see it I'm paying for 1gb so the longer i accept getting 1/2 the more money i waste so in the long run it will pay for itsself. I’ll try and find one under £400
Yep its a quite high amount for a home setup but it does do a lot and compared to other comparable devices is priced lower. The specific model I had was CCR1009-7G-1C-1S+ as I need the 10Gb SFP+ connection

The other one I considered at the time was the RB4011 MikroTik which also has a 10Gb SFP+ port and is available for under £200 (I also think there is a wireless version). The reason I didn't go for it was as this model does not switch all inputs at line speed and I thought what the heck ...

https://i.mt.lv/cdn/rb_files/RB4011iGSplusRM-180905135303.png

https://i.mt.lv/cdn/rb_files/CCR1009-7G-1C-1Splus-170321154504.png


By the way I think you are going to struggle to get much faster over wireless. Do you have any AX Clients or wired devices?
 

Leehowell1983

New Member
Apr 25, 2020
5
0
1
C20AF9B7-991F-4139-94BA-E427A27521C6.jpeg
Yep its a quite high amount for a home setup but it does do a lot and compared to other comparable devices is priced lower. The specific model I had was CCR1009-7G-1C-1S+ as I need the 10Gb SFP+ connection

The other one I considered at the time was the RB4011 MikroTik which also has a 10Gb SFP+ port and is available for under £200 (I also think there is a wireless version). The reason I didn't go for it was as this model does not switch all inputs at line speed and I thought what the heck ...

https://i.mt.lv/cdn/rb_files/RB4011iGSplusRM-180905135303.png

https://i.mt.lv/cdn/rb_files/CCR1009-7G-1C-1Splus-170321154504.png


By the way I think you are going to struggle to get much faster over wireless. Do you have any AX Clients or wired devices?


Did you have to buy one of these for the 10gb to rj45??
 

ChuckMountain

Member
Nov 6, 2019
30
4
8
View attachment 13728



Did you have to buy one of these for the 10gb to rj45??
It depends on how you are hooking it up. So my router connects to my main switch via a 10Gb DAC cable which was around £20 from Amazon. This main switch has a further 3 SFP+ of which I used 2 more DAC cables though slightly longer and one of the adapters you link though a Mikrotik brand. This one connects to a 10Gb adaptor for my MacBook.
 

Leehowell1983

New Member
Apr 25, 2020
5
0
1
It depends on how you are hooking it up. So my router connects to my main switch via a 10Gb DAC cable which was around £20 from Amazon. This main switch has a further 3 SFP+ of which I used 2 more DAC cables though slightly longer and one of the adapters you link though a Mikrotik brand. This one connects to a 10Gb adaptor for my MacBook.
I tried to do link aggeration with a netgear GS108Tv2. Couldn’t get it to work on my ax8. It kept saying error so i swapped the ax8 (rax80) for a ax12 (rax200) because it has a 2.5gb port I now get 900+ on wifi and wired.
Ive been looking at a gs110mx or gs110emx to try and get over 940 as they have 10gb ports. This is my best so far on wifi
 

Attachments

newabc

Well-Known Member
Jan 20, 2019
477
250
63
For a LACP switch, TP-Link T1500G-8T can do "802.3ad LACP"(not just static link aggregation) at the price of $50-$60 comparing to netgear. Or going for a cisco 2960 in ebay is also a good choice.
 

Bart39

New Member
May 31, 2020
1
0
1
Quick update: Built a PC, installed Ubuntu and set up a VM with pfsense. In the PC I installed a 4x1GB lan and a 10GB lan card. I routed a 10GB lan line to my main PC. As above, I used two of the SH4 lan lines and bonded them (in pfsense you combine two WAN's and send all LAN traffic via the new bonded WAN gateway using the firewall). The result - this does allow you to get 1150 mbps from the SH4! Great result. Next I'll set up another VM in the new router/server PC with OpenNAS and Raid0 a bunch of SSD's to create a nice fast file server (thats one way to use the 10GB line).
i would be interested in your settings on how you did this (hub 4 and pfsense settings) as i am trying to do the same thing and can't get it to work
 

chris6273

New Member
Jul 2, 2020
2
4
3
I am not sure how the SH4 is working behind the scenes because of the limited GUI from it.

What I have found is that you can bond in both regular mode and modem only mode and get the same results as above. However, at the moment modem only mode appears to revert to a single connection (for downloads anyway) after a period of time (24 hours?). I am not sure if the same applies in regular mode or not as haven't had chance to test if yet.

I don't know if the load balanced round robin approach is the same as LAGG Load Balance on pfsense or not.

How are you getting on with it?
May I ask how you went about configuring the bonding mode within RouterOS?

I've attempted the same thing on my hEX (rb750gr3) and despite trying different settings on the Bonded interface (balance-rr.etc), I've not been able to achieve anything more than ~940Mbps (Around the typical capacity I'd expect on a 1Gbps interface). Some of the settings have obviously produced even less throughput.

I can see upstream traffic leaving the hEX distributed perfectly across the two slave interfaces to the SH4, but nothing I've tried has allowed me to exceed ~940Mbps on the downstream side.
 

ChuckMountain

Member
Nov 6, 2019
30
4
8
May I ask how you went about configuring the bonding mode within RouterOS?

I've attempted the same thing on my hEX (rb750gr3) and despite trying different settings on the Bonded interface (balance-rr.etc), I've not been able to achieve anything more than ~940Mbps (Around the typical capacity I'd expect on a 1Gbps interface). Some of the settings have obviously produced even less throughput.

I can see upstream traffic leaving the hEX distributed perfectly across the two slave interfaces to the SH4, but nothing I've tried has allowed me to exceed ~940Mbps on the downstream side.
How are you testing it as your router does not have any 10Gbit ports? Are you bonding two of the other ports?
 
  • Like
Reactions: chris6273

chris6273

New Member
Jul 2, 2020
2
4
3
How are you testing it as your router does not have any 10Gbit ports? Are you bonding two of the other ports?
Yes that's right, I was bonding two uplinks to the SuperHub 4 and then two links to my PC.

So a little bit has happened since Friday - I determined by looking at the Board Diagram from MikroTik, that the RB750GR3 'only' looks to have 2 x 1Gbps lanes from the switch chip to the CPU. One is shared between ether1, 3, 5 & the other shared between ether2 & 4. My attempt last week at this was using ether1 & ether2 for one trunk and ether3 & ether4 for the other trunk.

I'm not sure whether these are full duplex lanes or not, but two things I noticed when performing a multithreaded download on my PC as well as a speedtest at the same time on a laptop:
  • I got packetloss & a lot of it! - From experience, I expect to get a higher RTT when a link is maxed out, not constant packetloss,
  • Poor load sharing - The speedtest on the laptop was only peaking at 5-10Mbps, whereas the PC was up and down like crazy. Completely contradicts experience.
The above convinced me it was a resource issue (Despite the CPU not being much above 60%), so I went out (virtually speaking) and bought an RB4011iGS (AP edition) which arrived today.

After setting up two "balance-rr" trunks as before (One across ether1 & ether6 and the other across ether2 & ether7) and making a more-or-less identical firewall config to the hEX (Taking the opportunity to clear it up), I performed a speedtest and voila!

1gbps speedtest.png

My bonded interface configuration if it helps anyone:

wan-config.png

Now to see how long this trunk to the Superhub 4 lasts in Modem Mode - Hopefully longer than the 24 hours you mentioned back in March.
 

bennnnm07

New Member
Jul 15, 2020
1
0
1
@ChuckMountain @Paramonos Can you confirm your current architecture? I currently have VM 1gig, VM hub is modem mode and pfSense is my router. Reading this thread I have noticed you mention Mikrotik routers. I currently have one of these lying around that I could use, it's the CCR-1036-8G-2s+EM with 2x 10GB SFP+ ports.

My current architecture looks like the below:
VM Hub > pfSense (with VLANs) > Meraki 1GB switch > Rest of network.

On a good day, I only manage to achieve around 840Mbps on a wired connection.
 

ChuckMountain

Member
Nov 6, 2019
30
4
8
VM can be either in normal mode or modem mode but needs two connections to the device in my case a CCR-1009, from then it is 10Gbit to my main switch.

Depending on what the Round Robin decides you can end up with traffic over 1 or both connections, the former will max out at 930Mbps (ish) and the latter will get your 1.2Gbps (ish). I have found it does last longer than the 24 hours but that it does not always go over both connections for one computer.

Not that much stuff hits more than 900Mbps anyway so it is a bit of a moot point anyway :)
 

ZikD22

New Member
Nov 3, 2020
1
0
1
Hi folks, just got Virgin Gig 1 installed and trying to bond a pair of ethernets from the Hub 4 to my switch and onto a 10GBe NIC in my PC. Failing miserably using a Netgear GS110EMX managed switch with static LAG enabled. May have to go down the Microtik route with the 4011 and an SFP+

Everyone happy with the performance thus far?
 

Blueyonderer

New Member
Oct 13, 2020
13
3
3
As a long time lurker I've often visited this thread in the past. I finally got my act together yesterday and replaced my Asus RT-AX5300 router with a Mikrotik CCR1009-7G-1C-1S+ and 10GBE SFP+ transceiver. After a couple of minor teething issues I successfully got the new router to connect to my Superhub 4 in modem mode using the balance-rr config information supplied here. It's been giving me connections in excess of 1000Mbps reliably since I set it up last night.

So, thanks for posting this (but don't tell my wife! ;) )
 
Last edited: