Draytek’ s current portfolio offers 950Mps NAT throughput on Ethernet WAN ports, let’s see if that is theoretical or expected.

The test will use a 2763ac running firmware 4.4.3_BT

Hardware Acceleration

The key point on Draytek’s spec sheet for WAN2 throughput is the 950Mbps can be achieved with hardware acceleration enabled.

Hardware acceleration has been an option on Draytek for many years, however historically enabling this came with caveats ranging from the loss of data flow statistics to a reduction in firewall effectiveness.

Out of the box with FW 4.4.3 hardware acceleration is enabled, either Draytek is confident it has matured enough to be able to fit around most users’ requirements, or it needs to be enabled in order to keep the product as a viable product.

Test – HW Acceleration On

Using just enough configuration to get it “online”, WAN2 was enabled for dynamic IP mode.

Test performed on a single machine using iperf3, one NIC port plugged into WAN2 via a switch, other port into LAN1.

Average throughput on 60 second test: 929Mbps

Test – HW Acceleration Off

For those still dubious about HW acceleration on these devices, it was disabled and test re-run.

Average throughput on 60 second test: 541Mbps

QOS

For final test I thought to load it with a standard setup with HW on, not complex but included SNMP, TR-069, ACL lists on management interfaces, I also chucked in 4 VLANs and a few firewall rules.

Two observations here:

In my usual setup I add software-based QOS, this took average test speeds down to 423Mbps.

Second note and may be a quirk, when adding the VLANs and sending router for reboot, the router entered a reboot loop, resolved only by physically cycling power, meaning I lost the error codes for any potential diagnostics.

Switching to HW QOS, test speeds remained excellent at 946Mbps average.

Summary

If you have no concerns around hardware acceleration, the 2763/2765 does what it says on the tin with a typical config. Your mileage will vary especially dependant on the number of NAT sessions it has to deal with in the real world but these tests are certainly promising.

Difference between 2763 and 2765

These units are essentially the same, but as the 2763 is exclusive to the UK you’ll likely find greater stock availability for these over the 2765.

The only difference relates to a chipset for the VDSL on WAN1, the chipset in the 2763 conforms to UK standard VDSL2 but falls out of spec for some European countries where VDSL2 35b code is used. This stemmed from the chip shortage of a few years ago and the alternative chipset was used to boost availability.

Source: https://www.draytek.co.uk/our-solutions/videos/draytek-webinars/vigor-2763-series-new-product-information

For background, I was previously in a FTTC environment getting average speeds due to my distance from the cab, however good enough to assumably be overlooked for the next phase of the Openreach Ultrafast rollout. Not that I’m complaining, 2020 is the year my speed gets a much-needed boost.

2020 also turns out to be the inaugural international work from home year, so had the opportunity to have a front seat view from my home office on the activity and timeline that brought FTTP home.

I’d like to share my observations and timeline as an example of what you can expect should you get the inkling of fibre coming to your street soon.

Before we get started, as my expectations rose, I found this post by Andy’s World invaluable for identifying activity and helping me confirm that FTTP was on its way.

Background

As mentioned, I was already in a FTTC enabled area. From the cab the copper “last mile” travelled underground from the cab to my nearest telegraph pole, then overhead to my property.

I was getting speeds on average of 40Mbps down and 5Mbps up due to the distance from the cab, I also suffered loss of sync approx. every other day. I notice that my overhead line was a lot older than others on the pole, identified by the greying colour and how you could identify both cores on the cable rather than the single looking shielded core of adjacent cables. A 48h MTBF was not ideal but well within Openreach service levels, meaning I couldn’t get this drop cable replaced without a significant cost.

Being in an FTTC area, no matter how bad the connection is usually meaning that it is not up for consideration for upcoming phases of an Openreach FTTP rollout. Couple this to a Virgin media rollout along my street the previous year and this would reason that the demand for FTTP would be low.

Timeline

Early days – May 2020

Entering my second month of working from home, notice a lot of Openreach vans passing my door. I may be more observant of these given my profession, but it was a lot of activity over the normal fault-based callouts.

Later and as I started venturing out of the house again, it looks as though they were commissioning a new cabinet a couple of streets up, therefore assumed the activity was for this.

June 2020

I happen to live near a train station, and was intrigued by the letters through the door.

Since moving in a year earlier, I’ve received a couple of letters of this type. But a new ticketing system combined with increased Openreach activity made me think if maybe this would include fibre. Hopes were still low at this point, but even if the rail infrastructure went for leased line circuits, this would increase the likelihood of FTTP.

Hopes were increased later in the month, when I noticed active involvement in the pole supplying my house.

To coincide, another letter relating to communications works on the rail system piqued my interest further.

August 2020

Another letter, this time for roadworks to clear blocked ducts for Openreach, with my and adjacent poles labelled for work.

This was very telling, as FTTC was already available with a on pole distribution point (DP), either this was to increase the number of copper circuits, or for deployment of a new technology.

25^th August 2020

The conformation I needed; thanks to the Andy’s World post I knew what to look for.

This day a cherry picker arrived soon after 9am, and then commenced the installation of a FTTP termination at my local pole. It was a day later before the “Fibre lines overhead” label appeared but it was clear FTTP was on its way.

Through my work I’m able to check and order connectivity for premises, so now began my daily check to see if/when FTTP would be available.

10^th Sepember  2020

Daily ISP provision check 16, and FTTP appeared as an order option, at 9am it appeared as an option but unable to order to lack of capacity, but an hour later it was fully available:

Before getting ahead and ordering the full 1000/115Mbps, time for a reality check to see what my current router can actually process, resulting in an order of 220/30Mbps later that day.

My ISP like many others allow me to upgrade speed within contract but now downgrade, so this will be a good starting point with the option to increase should I get a router upgrade.

Activation date was set for Wednesday 23/09/2020.

Monday 21^st September 2020

Activation week, and more activity around the Openreach pole. Involving a cherry picker, a team of 3 descended to check over the FTTP distribution point.

Also noticed that the tensioners (Or the metal wire that attaches to the ring on top of the pole and is wrapped around the drop cable hold it to the pole) of my current copper drop cable were unwound slightly.

Tuesday 22^nd September 2020

The day before I had an unexpected reconnaissance visit from the Openreach engineer assigned to my activation the next day.

My previous drop cable for reasons I cannot fathom was run into the house via a corner of the uPVC window frame, so was eager to have the fibre enter the house via a new route. And the five-minute visit was worth it as it was determined that a cherry picker was needed at pole side due to the slope of the road.

Wednesday 23^rd September 2020 – Install Day

ONT- Optical Network Termination – The modem that converts light to electrical data.

Openreach engineer turned up at 9am as promised, and a recap of the installation path.

The assumed installation work would disconnect the copper to the building, and replace the analogue master socket like for like with the new ONT. I needed the FTTC to remain in use while I transition IP addresses so at request the old copper would remain active.

Sub-plan was to leave the copper untouched, and run a new route of fibre only cable into the house. However, when the cherry picker turned up so did a supply of combined copper/fibre cable, allowing the supply of all services via the new route, and to replace the aging copper.

Installation

Fibre installation comes in two parts, the distribution point (either overhead or underground) to the outside of the property, and a fibre from the ONT inside the property out to meet the other.

First the hole was drilled close to the ONT location, the ONT was mounted on the wall and the internal fibre ran to the outside. The internal fibre is much thinner than from the pole due to the less armoured sheathing and benefits with more flexibility, although this comes at a risk of snapping or kinking the fibre, resulting in light loss and ultimately network loss.

Next stage with the help of the cherry picker was to plug in the fibre to the DP on the pole, and run it overhead towards the house. The fibre was secured to the house and run down the side of the building. During this the old copper was disconnected and new was connected at the pole.

Thirdly, the internal and external fibres are joined together. A new box is attached to the external wall that has inside a spool that will hold a few windings of each fibre, as the joining of the cables is considered a failure point, as few windings are included during the initial installation to give extra fibre should the cables need to be re-joined in future.

A portable splicing machine is used to join both fibres by lining them up, heating to fuse the two together, and shrink wrapping the join for protection. The unit also checks the light levels at this location, mine being 17 at this join, 14 at pole.

The fibre is coiled in the external box and closed, completing the installation of the fibre.

Commissioning is a simple as Openreach completing the order, then waiting for the PON light on the modem to illuminate. Such is the technology, there’s no fine tuning or testing of the signal, as long as the light levels at the splicing phase is good, the connection should just would. Although a sanity check wouldn’t go a miss and a quick speed test confirmed I was running on the new connection.

Fibre installed, the analogue side was reconnected with the use of a new mk5c socket, the copper in the new combo cable is extremely thin to the point where you’d struggle to believe it’s a pair. That so, VDSL sync speeds are comparable to the old drop cable, although I don’t think longevity was in mind with this design.

Equipment

As FTTP enters a maturity, the efficiency and cost saving measures improve (depending on your side of the fence).

Early installations had modems which included a PSTN port for analogue phones, and were accompanied by a battery backup unit to keep the phone line active during power failures. Later units dropped the PSTN and battery options, in favour of four RJ45 ports, with the potential to provide 4 separate internet connections via the single fibre and modem.

The new ONT supplied for my residential installation was something new to me, a Nokia G-010G-Q. This unit is far smaller than previously seen, and is sized perfectly to replace in situ a BT analogue master socket. The compromise is from the bare minimum of I/O, with the only connections being power, fibre termination and a single RJ45 port for modulated data.

Results

As expected, my internet connection has been perfectly stable and just what I need when working from home, in particular the upload speed and lower latency is a much-needed improvement for this website, which I host from a home server.

Ironically the install of FTTP has greatly improved the FTTC connection its replacing, now it syncs for days at a time instead of a hopeful 48hour maximum.

If you are like me and insist on using your own router, double check the WAN throughput before deciding on a speed profile. Even though Draytek advertises a 400Mbps firewall throughput, I’m reliably getting a maximum of only 180Mbps. This I would attribute to three active WAN and a couple of VPN all with load balancing options applied.

Where a home server can differentiate greatly from hosted solutions is the speed and relative location on the net. Visitors who view a website relies on the upstream connection at the server end to receive the content, and when this is via domestic internet connection the upstream can much smaller than the heavily advertised downstream connection. So it’s worth checking the theoretical upload speed to establish what kind of service and content can be served.

In terms of location, hosting companies are as close to the internet backbone as feasibly possible to get the best speeds and lower latency. The backbone of the net is handled by major operation companies that handle the bulk of all internet traffic between countries and continents, these in turn have datacentres where the traffic from countries are trunked to the different internet providers and down to the end user. As data makes its way from the backbone to the end user, it can hop between different servers as it meanders towards the final destination. For each hop the networking equipment has to read where to send it on, and route it on the right path. This all takes time, even though it is measured in milliseconds, an extended number of hops and the volume of data packets needed may produce a noticeable wait for a user to see the desired page.

All home user’s computers need deal with negotiating its way through the service providers’ local infrastructure to get to most sites, but when visiting a site hosted on a home server, data may need to navigate another service providers’ network to reach the site. This is where visitors may experience slower loading times compared to mainstream sites.
So how to tell if your home hosted website will be speedy when out in the wild? There’s a few different ways to check:

DIY Simulation

Firstly, let’s address if the upstream connection may be a cause of concern. Start by finding out the true upstream connection speed, this can be achieved by both running an online speed check and noting down the upload/upstream speed. Alternatively look around the modem’s setting pages to establish the theoretical maximum upload speed.
Then use the developer tools that come with most popular web browsers to simulate loading the site with the upstream bandwidth that may be available to visitors. In the browser, using Chrome for this example, press F12 to bring up the developer tools. Then click on the Network tab and choose the No Throttling button. There are a number of pre-sets available but to get the best scenario, create a custom profile.

For the new profile, your upload speed will become the profiles downstream speed, and your downstream speed can be the upload speed, latency is also important, and where the use of Dynamic DNS can really slow a connection down. To find out a realistic latency value, perform an online ping test to your own domain, and choose a latency value based on the results.

Hit F5 to refresh the page and watch how the site loads from an outside visitor’s perspective. The graph created in the developer tools gives insight into what elements of the page loaded and when. Interesting to note is the top row entry with the URL to the chosen page, as this is the time the visitor would have waited before seeing any text or loading action on their screen. It’s critical to get this quickly as with the increasing speeds of the internet, end users will quickly dismiss a site as being not available within a single second of not seeing any new content on screen.
This method is great when updating a site as it gives instant insight to how the page will load for visitors with any page change impacts can be viewed on the fly.

Third Party

The second option is to use a third party, a service that is already out in the internet wilderness and able to provide detailed insight to website loading times. This gives advantages over browser simulation as the virtual visitor is an actual machine on the internet, so any delays that a real visitor will have can be observed. But be aware that these services are servers themselves, and therefore may be closer to the internet backbone than the typical home visitor. Even though it’s a great tool to use periodically to gauge how the site is performing.
I prefer to use webpagetest.org to check my site, as along with bar graphs that display loading times for individual elements, it also gives the option to view a video that visually simulates the loading times just like a real visitor to the site would.

Get Mobile

A third and simpler option is to just find another computer away from the local network and visit the website to get a feel for loading times. I’ve used this in the past and it does indeed give a good indication of speed of load. However, be aware that the biggest skew point of this method is the choice of internet service provider, if the internet connection of your test computer and home server is via the same provider then the data would need only travel through its infrastructure creating a false speed advantage, not to say that it’s incorrect. If a site was to target users of the same ISP in the same locale then this would be considered an advantage, but does not provide an accurate sample of the wider user base. If the test computer was on a different ISP infrastructure, this is a better simulation as packets would still need to go to a datacentre to transfer between companies, much like it would for users over a country regardless of location. But be aware that this method is based on best case scenario.

And thanks to the steer to mobile devices, a public Wi-Fi or mobile data can be used to test a website. Cellular networks will definitely use a different infrastructure to the one the home server resides on, but less chance on public Wi-Fi. But with all networks and especially with public ones your test data may be competing with many other users locally, that can negatively affect the results.

I decided to troubleshoot the issue further, I set up a basic ping to help me pinpoint when the internet was going down

After performing some basic troubleshooting, it transpired that the fault was happening whenever the HDMI cable was connected to the Pi and my Television (Sony Bravia EX4-32).

Thinking it was a bad HDMI cable, I bought another, but to no avail. My next brainwave was that the Pi was emitting EMI (or RFI) which drove me to buy a 10 metre HDMI cable to get the Pi as far away from my router and other networking equipment, alas this didn’t work either.

Troubleshooting further, it turned out that the HDMI cable didn’t need to be properly connected, mealy touching the Pi on any metallic part will cause the internet to cease.

So in essence I am still no closer to solving my Pi/Internet mystery, if you can help me please comment!

All other HDMI works fine as I am now using the 10m HDMI cable as a screen extender on my laptop.

Bootnote:

In my previous post I signed off by stating that that the Pi and my internet were working in harmony. However it turned out that my modem had dialled back my downstream internet speed to 1.5Mbps instead of the usual 3Mbps, normally a result of the modem trying to obtain a more stable internet connection due to, lets say, interference on the line!

Only niggle in my head was that the card I put Raspbmc on was 8GB, and that bigger card would be put to better use in my camera that was using a 4GB card. I thought it would be no problem to reformat cards and swap them over?

Wrong!

The 8GB in the camera was fine, and I used the Raspbmc installer as before to load it on the new SD card. The trouble was that when first booted up the Pi, it seemed to freeze on the

Sending HTTP request to server

No problem I thought, hop on my laptop and find out if other users experienced the same. But low and behold the internet on my laptop ceased to to work, with strange requests for proxy passwords to sites like Facebook and even the Weather gadget on Win 7!

First thoughts were that I cooked my router, as I been downloading a lot and on a warm day to (yes there was a warm day … I think!). But after it was off for as long as I could stand, powered it back on and normal service was resumed.

After rebooting all network equipment it finally dawned that the internet would go down for everything connected to my network when the Pi was powered up! I had never experienced this before and could not for the life of me fathom it out. I thought that it had a defect in the Pi meant that some sort of power surge was knocking out the system? This was quickly dismissed as local traffic was unaffected, meaning the network hardware was operating normally.

A quick glance at my Sky broadband supplied Sagem F@ST 2504 modem showed the internet connection had failed, with the internet indicator glowing orange with a red pulse every second. Stranger still, upon unplugging the Raspberry Pi, connection to the net restored within  seconds!

So how can a network device have the ability to target and destroy an internet connection? Its my understanding that a Pi has no ability to retain settings other than whats stored on a SD card, but this issue continued when using two different memory cards.

Drilling down to an extreme form of troubleshooting, all network devices, including my second switch/access point was disconnected from the Sagem router. leaving just the Pi connected. Then from Midori on Debian Squeeze (remembering that the internal network was unaffected) rebooted the router using the web interface.

Suddenly the Pi could connect, attaching my whole network back together I found that everything was back to normal,

Laptop, Pi, iPhone, everything!

And this is the worst thing, I don’t know what caused this, and what I specifically did in the reboot process that solved it?

So I would love to hear if this has happened to you, and if there was something you can pinpoint as the issue? This one has got me completely stumped!