I read in the local press, that my area was now Gig1 ready, finally, about time, what took you so long! but in the press, no points for communicating with your existing customers there Virgin.
So I cannot upgrade on line, the site says to chat if I want an upgrade but no working chat. No points there Virgin.
Off to 150 and the dreaded customer services. Talked to one chap who as soon as I say I want an upgrade reassigns the call. (Here we go!) Wow it is to Cardiff and an extremely helpful chap(Even if I did struggle with his welsh accent, I am slightly deaf and really do struggle with strong accents, India customer services I simply have to abandon the call)
Only an extra £1/month for the next 18 months, so agree and yodel dropped the box on the doorstep and ran yesterday morning. So much for wanting a signature.
Open it and it contains, hub4, power supply, power lead, card with WiFi SSID/Password and a plastic spanner. Despite the message to consult the guide on the box. No guide. No points there Virgin.
So disconnect the hub3, connect the hub 4 and wait for it to do it's business and eventually I see on my phone the SSID. So connect by WiFi and browser off to the hub. where it wants the password. Damn, hub is in the dark comms cabinet, so camera on phone and take a pic of the underneath and eventually log in, set the password and modem mode. Reconnect my firewall, reboot the hub and nothing. I am watching the WAN interface no address is getting assigned.
Is this new hub active? do I need to call the dreaded customer services? so pin hole reset as it is currently a brick, back to wifi browser on hub and use a second phone/mobile data trying to find any activation instructions on line when suddenly I get a text from Virgin that my new service has been activated.
So back to modem mode, reboot and plug in a laptop and it gets an address. Great, a speedtest and 940/51 yup all looks good, so remove laptop and reboot, plug in the firewall and eventually I get an address on the WAN and another speed test.
What..500Mb, I used to have a solid 660. checking cables, watching CPU load during speed check, I cannot see anything. The only thing that occurred to me was my WAN interface is a built in Realtek (Because the WAN is the slowest part of my infrastructure) and everything else is on intel. So moved the WAN onto a spare intel port, reboot the hub yet again as a new MAC on the hub and eventually a new address assigned and speed test.
This time 910/50, firewall CPU load about 50% during test. So I am now getting the speeds I expect, but what a faff. so many reboots of the hub and so much waiting for it to complete the process. Can the firmware not be upgraded to detect a change in connected device and serve the address to the new device? When I was with Telewest, I had two addresses on their modem! half the reboots would not have been required.
But I guess the real issue for me was the throughput the Realtek interface was delivering. Is this a lesson for other modem mode / own firewall/router whatever you have, to ensure your device is capable of 1Gb throughput not just what the interface definition is!
Next step for me is to perform some base diags. I need to drop a iperf box onto my DMZ and do a true throughput test of my firewall (DMZ is on intel) and out of interest also do it to the Realtek.
