Vodafone fibreoptic 910. Problems.

T.T.D

hi guys after some advice I upgraded from copper broadband to fibre-optic broadband to the house with Vodafone last week.

The fibre optic broadband band only went live in my area two weeks ago After the BT open reach upgrade in the area.

once this one live I ordered fibre 910 with a Vodafone.

BT engineer came out and put a fibre-optic cable from the lamp post to the house and put a box on the external house brickwork. Then an engineer came up and install the internal box.

That evening the broadband went live.

I reset my router, but it would only sync to 80 Mb-per second.

i contacted Vodafone who said it was a cabling issue. They sent me a new Ethernet to connect router to the box.

The cable came DPD next day. 

I installed it and still no joy stuck at 80Mbps.

They sent another cable this time after a hard reset again, it managed 505mbps via WiFi. 

The minimum guaranteed is 455 once it got to 505 Vodafone support went down hill from there. 

The fibre speed should not be that low surely? I’m getting the promised upload speed of over 100mb but  the Download seems to struggle at 505 max. I should in theory get somewhere close to 850-900. 

I questioned the router, being old, and I should have been sent a power box as the advert said it was included. 

Vodafone said all upgrades from existing customers keep their old boxes and don’t get new ones. 

I questioned the speed and because it was just above the minimum guarantee they said it was good enough I suggested that this seems too low for the distance from exchange and the new lines BT laid in the area recently and all new equipment, bar the router, I said the router could be the limiting factor or there’s an issue with the fibre cable. 

Vodafone keeps parroting the same line “we’re providing above the minimum guaranteed by contract therefore from our end there isn’t any issue with the line or the router”. 

If i want to upgrade for £16.99 more a month the can upgrade me to a 1.2G line and upgrade the router was the latest offer but I would be subject to cancellation fees if I don’t cancel soon.
Surely if there want a problem with both then upgrading the package is useless as I’d still get 505? 

So my question is. Is the router the limiting factor here? 

Or there is a problem on the broadband line or both?  

I don’t have a PC as we’ve managed with phones and tablets. 

We have 5 Phones, 5 Smart TV’s, 3 X-box’s, 1 PlayStation 1 Phillips hue bridge with 6 Smart bulbs connected, 4 Alexa (mixed products) on the network. At any given time. 

I’ve disconnected these and just used my phone through a speed test in Ookla and the best is 505 and fluctuates between 135 and 235 when they’re all on. 

What’s the possible issue here? Router too old or the fibre line.

Vodafone just do not care and have no interest in supporting finding out why the line is slower than expected. 

littleboo

You need to test the speed from a wired device to rule out any wireless limitations

Mark_d

You says the 505MBps was via wifi?  Have you tested with a wired ethernet connection?  Wifi can be affected by interference from all kinds of things.

It sounds unlikely that the router is the problem but it could be.

You have a 910MBps connection with guarantee of 455MBps.  This suggests that it could be wider Openreach network issues affecting your speed.

vacheron

If you are getting 80Mbps to a wired device, this suggests that something in the path, either the computer Network card, or and intervening hub or switch is limited (or configured to run at) 100Mbps. 

Are you sure there is gigabit network hardware all the way to the wired device?

Also, Ookla and the like will not give reliable speed readings once you approach 1Gbps as it is limited on the data speed caps of the source provider. When I had 1.2Gbps with Virgin I had to use a specific test (Samknows IIRC) that lets the router test the speed internally as Gigabit LAN will not transfer data at that speed unless you have 2.5 or 10 GBps hardware which almost no domestic premises currently do.  

QrizB

T.T.D said:

I don’t have a PC as we’ve managed with phones and tablets. 

As above, you can't get a reliable speed test over wifi.

T.T.D said:

I questioned the router, being old, and I should have been sent a power box as the advert said it was included. Vodafone said all upgrades from existing customers keep their old boxes and don’t get new ones. 

Which Vodafone router do you have?

I used to have a THG3000 (it's still here, now I think about it) and it had quite a useful diagnostics page. Does your router tell you what speed it has connected at?

Edit: something like this; I'm only FTTC, so I'm obviously slower than you):

Mark_d said:

You says the 505MBps was via wifi? Have you tested with a wired ethernet connection?

With only phones and tablets, OP will need to either borrow a laptop/PC with a gigabit ethernet port or buy/borrow a USB dock that provides one. And a cable.

iniltous

Measuring speed with WiFi devices rather than wired devices doesn’t show the speed you pay for , there are too many environmental and technical variables to judge speed using that , so although you may only use wireless devices Vodafone, and every other ISP don’t guarantee WiFi speeds , only speeds to the router .
 TBH , there isn’t really anything a wireless device can do with 900Mb that it can’t do equally well on 300 or 500 Mb , about the only way you would  ever notice is with a speed tester …for example, watching  4K video on a TV is around 25Mb , less on a mobile or tablet …if you were downloading a massive file (to a PC for example) the difference between 500 and 900 would be noticeable in the time to download, but generally mobile devices don’t handle massive downloads , and even if they do (like a upgrade to the operating system ) it’s not going to be much different in the time taken .

vacheron

iniltous said:

..... TBH , there isn’t really anything a wireless device can do with 900Mb that it can’t do equally well on 300 or 500 Mb , about the only way you would  ever notice is with a speed tester....

Completely agree.

As I mentioned above I had Virgin's 1130Mbps service for a year as I was offered a stupid retention deal at the time (£18 per month from memory).

As soon as the end of contract price rise was announced I dropped back to 150Mbps and literally nobody in my family noticed any difference in their daily lives, despite 1080p / 4K streaming on multiple devices, 3 gaming PC's, home automation, 4 smartphones / tablets and a media server.

What is most amusing (or infuriating depending on your point of view), is that as an existing customer, the Virgin media speed test page tells me "Good news! your 150Mbps connection can support up to 9 independent HD streams", whereas if you state as a new customer that you have a family of 4 who stream movies and TV, you apparently need at least 500-900Mbps to do so! 

Ayr_Rage

As above, check the router stats regarding the incoming speeds.

Then test from the router to a device with a Gigabit LAN adapter and a suitable cable.

Test over WiFi are often limited by the device's adapter and attainable link speed with the router.

T.T.D

I’ll get a laptop and cable tomorrow.


I’ll test it then.

I get a firmwares failed error when asking the router to update its firmware. 

There are not up and down stream numbers to look at as Vodafone removed the ability to see those a few years ago. 

I’ll report to you guys when I do the test.