UBNT vs. MikroTik

[System Error Message]

Ok, and thats what I thought, it was more to do with my internal traffic. So when you say WAN link I have, you mean link to my house once it comes from Cox (WAN), hits my routers and goes throughout my network internal (LAN), thats where the QoS helps?

yup. The speeds are rated in seconds, and games usually require 30 to 60 times a second on networks so the actual bandwidth you have is much lower. Do a speed test on something like dslreports, take that as your actual speeds and tweak your QoS till you get A quality and A- bufferbloat

 

[NowhereMan]

yup. The speeds are rated in seconds, and games usually require 30 to 60 times a second on networks so the actual bandwidth you have is much lower. Do a speed test on something like dslreports, take that as your actual speeds and tweak your QoS till you get A quality and A- bufferbloat

So I've been doing that DSL Reports speed test recently and I am very curious to what I'm seeing. I pay for Gigbit/Gigablast, 1GB right, I don't know what Cox guarantee's but what DSL Reports tells me is well short of what I think I'm supposed to get. I'm able to get A+/A on the bufferbloat and quality, but speed shows up with blank usually.

The thing that is curious is the speeds for download are like just 150-200(ish)Mbps but it starts out like I expect in the 700-800Mbps range, then after just a few seconds drops down to the lower numbers and stays that way most of the test. Uploads seem to be in the 200-300Mbps range and don't get much higher though I expect a lot higher, when I do other speed tests from like the Speedtest.net (the thick client installed on my Mac) its more 800-900 both ways. So I've never really understood what my real speeds are. The web browser tests seem a lot flakier than that thick client one, which has been pretty consistent, I know there are lots of other factors that come into the equation so my lack of knowledge on the subject keeps me from throwing a fit at Cox. Maybe my settings/preferences on that DSL Reports Speed test aren't set up right, it forced me to do something with the upload method just to get a clean test of my upload speed, not sure what I should have it set to for all the preferences? There is even a built in speed test in my current router admin software, but its not very consistent either. I'd like to just a consistent test that shows me what I'm truly getting.

Also, when I played with the QoS in my routers software, it seemed to make my speed tests worse. So I eventually turned it all off. I tested it from several devices, my Mac, my Xbox, etc. QoS turned off seemed to give them all the better results. But this is a TP-Link wireless router, not a standard router like what you've recommended.

 

[System Error Message]

So I've been doing that DSL Reports speed test recently and I am very curious to what I'm seeing. I pay for Gigbit/Gigablast, 1GB right, I don't know what Cox guarantee's but what DSL Reports tells me is well short of what I think I'm supposed to get. I'm able to get A+/A on the bufferbloat and quality, but speed shows up with blank usually.

The thing that is curious is the speeds for download are like just 150-200(ish)Mbps but it starts out like I expect in the 700-800Mbps range, then after just a few seconds drops down to the lower numbers and stays that way most of the test. Uploads seem to be in the 200-300Mbps range and don't get much higher though I expect a lot higher, when I do other speed tests from like the Speedtest.net (the thick client installed on my Mac) its more 800-900 both ways. So I've never really understood what my real speeds are. The web browser tests seem a lot flakier than that thick client one, which has been pretty consistent, I know there are lots of other factors that come into the equation so my lack of knowledge on the subject keeps me from throwing a fit at Cox. Maybe my settings/preferences on that DSL Reports Speed test aren't set up right, it forced me to do something with the upload method just to get a clean test of my upload speed, not sure what I should have it set to for all the preferences? There is even a built in speed test in my current router admin software, but its not very consistent either. I'd like to just a consistent test that shows me what I'm truly getting.

Also, when I played with the QoS in my routers software, it seemed to make my speed tests worse. So I eventually turned it all off. I tested it from several devices, my Mac, my Xbox, etc. QoS turned off seemed to give them all the better results. But this is a TP-Link wireless router, not a standard router like what you've recommended.

From the sounds of it, it sounds like your router is your bottleneck. A+ quality/bufferbloat rating means that you didnt max out your connection. The true test is when your connection is maxed.

Make sure you test from wire first, then wifi. My test was done from wifi which also shows how good my network is but first you have to get your WAN speeds sorted. I always select fiber

 

[NowhereMan]

From the sounds of it, it sounds like your router is your bottleneck. A+ quality/bufferbloat rating means that you didnt max out your connection. The true test is when your connection is maxed.

Make sure you test from wire first, then wifi. My test was done from wifi which also shows how good my network is but first you have to get your WAN speeds sorted. I always select fiber

So far all I am testing with is wired. It’s a TP-Link AC5400 MU-MIMO router. What part would be the bottleneck? The CPU? RAM?


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[System Error Message]

So far all I am testing with is wired. It’s a TP-Link AC5400 MU-MIMO router. What part would be the bottleneck? The CPU? RAM?


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CPU. The test itself is intensive so if you are using a low end PC like the intel atoms or other low powered stuff or even ARM, it could also be a bottleneck too. Either way a CPU either in router or test PC is slow.

 

[NowhereMan]

My PC is a 2008 MacPro, not sure what the CPU in it is, I’ll look.


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[NowhereMan]

So my MacPro has: 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon, think thats the bottle neck? The router has 4 cores as well, none of them look maxed.

Here was my DSL Report: http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/28908469

 

[System Error Message]

So my MacPro has: 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon, think thats the bottle neck? The router has 4 cores as well, none of them look maxed.

Here was my DSL Report: http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/28908469

your mac is fine, your router isnt. Thats not a 4 core router, its a dual or single core router with 2 or 3 cores that are specifically set for wifi just like broadcom's "5 core" router which is just a dual core ARM with a smaller separate core for each wifi radio. The problem could be your router.

 

[NowhereMan]

your mac is fine, your router isnt. Thats not a 4 core router, its a dual or single core router with 2 or 3 cores that are specifically set for wifi just like broadcom's "5 core" router which is just a dual core ARM with a smaller separate core for each wifi radio. The problem could be your router.

Yeah, the TP-Link Archer C5400X has 1.8GHz 64-bit quad-core CPU and is powered by a low-powered 28nm Broadcom Cortex-A53 chip, which coordinates every process to reduce transmission delay,


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[System Error Message]

Yeah, the TP-Link Archer C5400X has 1.8GHz 64-bit quad-core CPU and is powered by a low-powered 28nm Broadcom Cortex-A53 chip, which coordinates every process to reduce transmission delay,


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that sounds decent. It shouldnt be that slow.

 

[NowhereMan]

that sounds decent. It shouldnt be that slow.

Agreed...and well, and its just inconsistent, I use the thick client from Speedtest on this Mac, it auto selects the closest location, which for some reason thinks is pretty far south of OKC where I live (actually North suburb called Edmond), and the speeds start off looking normal for download then drops off kind of like the DSLReports one does, but then I picked another city thats a bit farther south and it comes back with 900/900, so I don't know or understand all the way my internet is designed outside of my home. Where Cox's actual equipment is and why the Speedtest is faster at some locations farther away etc, I know routers and switches for Cox are all over the place, I just want to get a good idea of what my ISP speeds are and have it consistent. The web browser tests have never gotten me good results, anywhere if its Speedtest or Fast.com or DSLReports etc...never gotten good speeds from a web browser test. The little thick client is the only one that gives me peace of mind that I can get the numbers I pay for.

 

[MichaelCG]

Trying to do a speedtest over the Internet will NEVER be consistent. That is the nature of the beast. You will need to just test to multiple locations and average the results together. There are sooooo many variables outside of your control when trying to do these tests. Latency, packet loss, congestion, etc...all of those vary constantly and will skew your results from test to test.

The only time I can get somewhat consistent results is when the tests come from the Google (my ISP) hosted sites. Otherwise my results show as anywhere from 55Mbps to 900Mbps. As long as I hit the Google hosted sites, my speeds are generally always 900Mbps+.

 

[NowhereMan]

Trying to do a speedtest over the Internet will NEVER be consistent. That is the nature of the beast. You will need to just test to multiple locations and average the results together. There are sooooo many variables outside of your control when trying to do these tests. Latency, packet loss, congestion, etc...all of those vary constantly and will skew your results from test to test.

The only time I can get somewhat consistent results is when the tests come from the Google (my ISP) hosted sites. Otherwise my results show as anywhere from 55Mbps to 900Mbps. As long as I hit the Google hosted sites, my speeds are generally always 900Mbps+.

How do I find out what are Cox hosted sites?


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[MichaelCG]

How do I find out what are Cox hosted sites?


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Manually select your server and go through their list to see if Cox hosts one or not. Depending on network design and conditions, sometimes servers further away may perform better. This is all just going to be trial and error to see what does and doesn't work.

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[sfx2000]

CPU. The test itself is intensive so if you are using a low end PC like the intel atoms or other low powered stuff or even ARM, it could also be a bottleneck too. Either way a CPU either in router or test PC is slow.

The DSL reports test for bufferbloat is very browser and even session dependent - I've seen different results on the same client with different browsers.

ARM's can perform quite well - I've seen great performance with Marvell, even older Cortex-A9's like the Armada XP and 38x chips - same goes with Atom's - the Silvermont based Rangley and Avoton's do really real - and on a gigabit link, can NAT at wired speed...

Most of the problems with the consumer Router/AP's is not the chips themselves, but the board support software offered by the chipset vendors - and the OEM's wrap a skin around it and ship...

UBNT and MicroTik - FWIW, do write and maintain their own code - that's why we see decent performance, even on low-end HW, so it's completely possible...

That being said - some of the functionality is resource intensive, but that's optimization

 

[Dave123]

I know next to nothing about networking and was able to swap out an ASUS AC68U (now being used as my main mesh AP) for the Mikrotik Hex r3 for my home. For routing, it's the fastest and best bang-for-buck vs UBNT products up to a bit over $100, and can come close to symmetric gigabit, or so I've read. For ~$60.

I did spend time up front learning about Mikrotik so I didn't go in "blind" and that probably saved me a lot of headache. There's YouTube videos that are sort of necessary if you aren't a network engineer. But, it's working and is rock solid. It even boosted my connection speed to xfinity by 5 mb/s over the AC68U in speed tests, which surprised me.

It's very good at what it does. It can do a LOT... if you know what you're doing. I don't, particularly, which is why I got the basic model and haven't (yet) toyed with it much.