Does your internet Throttle during Peak Period.

[xiaofan]

Speedtest results are meaningless, most ISPs run their own local servers so you're only testing the local loop, and many will prioritise this traffic over regular usage.

I think it is very useful to diagnostic home network issues.

Wired speedtest is one of the first thing to do to diagnostic issues before trying to diagnostic wireless network speed issues.

I ran OOkla SpeedTest from my OpenWRT/pfSense/OPNsense installations as well just to see if the CPU can support 1Gbps wired or not. I also use it to test VPN performances.

Then I use other Speedtest tools like iperf3/crusader/etc for testing purpose.

 

[xiaofan]

GPON - home fibre uses GPON which allows for up to 128 users to share a single port.

This is not applicable in Singapore as @Mach3.2 found an IMDA regulation saying the split ratio is required to be 1:24 for most consumers.

 

[xiaofan]

Using IPv6 will reduce the load on the router - no NAT, no having to recompute the checksum for every single packet, any traffic that flows over IPv6 will put significantly less strain on the processing resources of the router. It's also possible to turn off state tracking completely to reduce the load even further, although this will result in no inbound traffic filtering so you should understand what you're doing before taking this step (in practice modern end users devices are absolutely fine, but there is a small risk with certain embedded devices that have weak passwords or known vulnerabilities - small because it's unlikely an attacker would be able to work out the address even if the device is wide open and accessible with a default password)

I do not agree with this one as you still need to run IPv4 at the same time. Windows/MacOS/Linux may favour IPv6 traffic than IPv4 traffice but in the end there are many servers on the internet are only with IPv4. As long as that is the reality, you may not see much benefits in terms of loading to the home router.

I always enable IPv6 firewall as well on my Asus router and OpenWRT/pfSense installation.

I do not see any difference in this regard, either with the lower performance OpenWRT installations or Asus routers or more powerful Intel mini PC based virtual OpenWRT/pfSense installations.

 

[bert64]

This is not applicable in Singapore as @Mach3.2 found an IMDA regulation saying the split ratio is required to be 1:24 for most consumers.

Ahh wasn't aware of this regulation, so the ratio isn't as bad as it could be but it can still be up to 1:24 (assuming the rules are followed and enforced which is not a given - especially for something like this which would be extremely difficult to prove).
The spec at least allows for 1:128 as a worst case, but you could also get lucky and have 1:1, or be sharing with idle/light users. Or you could be unlucky and be sharing a port with 23 heavy torrent users.

 

[xiaofan]

Ahh wasn't aware of this regulation, so the ratio isn't as bad as it could be but it can still be up to 1:24 (assuming the rules are followed and enforced which is not a given - especially for something like this which would be extremely difficult to prove).
The spec at least allows for 1:128 as a worst case, but you could also get lucky and have 1:1, or be sharing with idle/light users. Or you could be unlucky and be sharing a port with 23 heavy torrent users.

1:24 and 1:1 ratio are mentioned in Chapter 3 of the following document for RESIDENTIAL END-USER CONNECTION.
https://www.imda.gov.sg/-/media/imd...-offer/dec-2023/sch-1-approved-7-dec-2023.pdf

Reference post from @Mach3.2 -- requirement is either 1:1 or 1:24. I tend to think Singapore ISPs will be quite compliant to the regulations.
https://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/...what-they-claim.7006382/page-3#post-152017039

The most recent (Dec 2023) Netlink Trust Interconnection Offer made mentions of either a 1:1 or 1:24 split ratio.

See page 9
https://www.imda.gov.sg/regulations...ork/netlink-trusts-interconnection-offer-2023

Also, there isn't any publicly available customised agreement to run anything other than the standardised split ratios stated in schedule 1 of the approved ICO.

https://www.imda.gov.sg/regulations...netlink-trusts-existing-customised-agreements

 

[bert64]

I do not agree with this one as you still need to run IPv4 at the same time. Windows/MacOS/Linux may favour IPv6 traffic than IPv4 traffice but in the end there are may servers on the internet are only with IPv4. As long as that is the reality, you may not see much benefits in terms of loading to the home router.

I always enable IPv6 firewall as well on my Asus router and OpenWRT/pfSense installation.

I do not see any difference in this regard, either with the lower performance OpenWRT installations or Asus routers or more powerful Intel mini PC based virtual OpenWRT/pfSense installations.

You can turn IPv4 off entirely with M1 and use their NAT64 gateway to access legacy sites - offload the NAT overhead to M1.

In practice most of the big sites and CDNs use IPv6, so it will account for more than half of a typical user's traffic so overall cpu usage will be reduced even if you're running dual stack since a lot less traffic will have to take the slower path.

The IPv6 firewall will do connection tracking and filtering, but it doesn't do NAT or recomputing the checksum so the cpu usage is still lower. Turning it off entirely (see the no state options in pfsense) makes a quite noticeable difference especially if your equipment is under specced.
You can also turn it off for specific hosts.

 

[bert64]

1:24 and 1:1 ratio are mentioned in Chapter 3 of the following document for RESIDENTIAL END-USER CONNECTION.
https://www.imda.gov.sg/-/media/imd...-offer/dec-2023/sch-1-approved-7-dec-2023.pdf

Reference post from @Mach3.2 -- requirement is either 1:1 or 1:24. I tend to think Singapore ISPs will be quite compliant to the regulations.
https://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/...what-they-claim.7006382/page-3#post-152017039

IMDA also require all ISPs to provide IPv6 since 2012:

https://www.imda.gov.sg/~/media/imd...noislandingprinciple/intpronoislprinciple.pdf

Several don't comply with this at all and it's very easy to prove, yet not enforced at all.
For the sharing ratio which is much harder to prove without looking at the physical equipment, it wouldn't surprise me to see corners being cut.

Also that document refers to passive optical split at the NLT level, the ISP can aggregate several of these if they wanted.

 

[Henry Ng]

Don't confuse congestion with throttling...

You don't have a dedicated 1gbps connection at home, you have a "best effort" 1gbps connection which is shared with other users in several places. A dedicated 1gbps would cost a LOT more.

Wireless - the wireless spectrum is shared by everyone within range and beyond - even users that are out of range while their networks won't be strong enough for you to connect and use, their traffic will still generate noise which interferes with your usage... Also devices using older wireless standards will hog more of the spectrum than newer standards.

GPON - home fibre uses GPON which allows for up to 128 users to share a single port.

Upstream - the connections from your ISP to the rest of the internet is shared between all users of the ISP... Most ISPs will have multiple links of varying capacity to different places, any of those links could become saturated.

Target servers - whatever you're connecting to is also shared amongst everyone accessing the same service.

It's quite normal that things would slow down at peak times, this is how they meet the price point of the service, and the limitations of wifi are unavoidable laws of physics.

Yes, most of the time ISP is throttling us and not congestion but they make us think it is congestion. Actually, to earn money they can do all kind of things.

 

[Henry Ng]

You can turn IPv4 off entirely with M1 and use their NAT64 gateway to access legacy sites - offload the NAT overhead to M1.

In practice most of the big sites and CDNs use IPv6, so it will account for more than half of a typical user's traffic so overall cpu usage will be reduced even if you're running dual stack since a lot less traffic will have to take the slower path.

The IPv6 firewall will do connection tracking and filtering, but it doesn't do NAT or recomputing the checksum so the cpu usage is still lower. Turning it off entirely (see the no state options in pfsense) makes a quite noticeable difference especially if your equipment is under specced.
You can also turn it off for specific hosts.

Yes you can off ipv4 and use ipv6 alone but not all sites can support ipv6.

 

[Mach3.2]

Yes, most of the time ISP is throttling us and not congestion but they make us think it is congestion.

And how do you know this?

 

[Henry Ng]

And how do you know this?

Read > https://www.starhub.com/personal/support/article.html?id=q4dK353VvY5VWiRYFjSVr7
That is why my speed slow down at night. I complain they ignore.

 

[windwaver]

I see. Are you testing with local SpeedTest server or overseas speedtest server?

Which ISP and which router are you using?

The earlier post in this thread mentioned that M1 had the issue. Last time I was guessing that M1 had higher typical split ratio but no one would be able to confirm. And IMDA has the common standard for all ISPs in this regard. The post was in early 2018 so M1 should have sorted out the issue now.

Lousy routers may also have the issue (even for wired client) and you need to restart the router periodically to clean up the memory leak caused by firmware bug.

Just an example, if you are doing quite a bit of torrent, typical consumer router may not be able to handle that. Extra load in the peak hours may cause the poor router to collapse because of the last straw. And take note quite ISPs (other than VQ/MR) do throttle BT traffic. BTW, I support the BT throttle policy of the ISPs.

The following info may not be fair to M1 since it may have more 500Mbps customers than other ISPs. Similarly for Starhub.

No torrent at all, just office work, surf net and watch some videos, Starhub.

 

[bert64]

Yes you can off ipv4 and use ipv6 alone but not all sites can support ipv6.

No the point is that M1 have a NAT64 gateway which means you can access legacy sites using pure IPv6 on your devices - M1 handles the translation from v6 to legacy IP and thus the NAT overhead if accessing a legacy site, whereas access to modern sites goes directly and bypasses the translation gateway.

There are also public gateways for this - see https://nat64.xyz

Lots of mobile networks around the world are IPv6-only and have millions of users, they can access legacy sites via NAT64/DNS64. This setup is a lot more scalable than legacy CGNAT or dual stack, and you can place the translation gateway anywhere instead of it needing to be on-path. Mobile networks are almost always CGNAT or NAT64. Some networks using this kind of setup in production are:

• M1 SG (enabled by default, but dual stack as well)
• T-mobile USA
• Orange Poland
• JIO India
• Three UK (not all customers are migrated to the new infra yet)
• Telstra Australia (default for iOS users, optional for Android)
• Sky Italy (fixed line broadband)
• NTT Japan (fibre broadband)

Some devices also implement CLAT (ios, macos, android, windows 10/11 but only on cellular connections) - that is the device itself emulates a legacy network, but the kernel then converts the traffic to ipv6 and sends it to the nat64 gateway, so all the traffic leaving your device is pure v6 even if the individual application thinks its connected to a legacy address.

There is also a technology called DS-LITE which is basically a CLAT on the router, so the actual connection is v6-only and then traffic to legacy sites gets translated by a nat64 gateway at the isp.

Microsoft also have a similar setup on their corporate LAN, IPv6-only for most devices and only legacy outbound traffic goes via a translation gateway. Facebook, Google, large parts of the US government etc also do the same.

 

[bert64]

Read > https://www.starhub.com/personal/support/article.html?id=q4dK353VvY5VWiRYFjSVr7
That is why my speed slow down at night. I complain they ignore.

It's quite easy to fool such systems...

Beyond the initial handshake (SSL, SSH, VPN etc), network level devices cannot tell what is being transferred. If you have a p2p connection over port 443 using SSL the network management equipment has no way to differentiate it from HTTPS traffic.

 

[xiaofan]

No torrent at all, just office work, surf net and watch some videos, Starhub.

In that case, you may want to check with local SpeedTest first. If local speedtest results got issue, then you may have to check with Starhub. By right Starhub has only issues with 5Gbps/10Gbps plan but not 1Gbps plan. So most likely this is not the issue.

If local SpeedTest got no issues, you may have to tell more details about the Internet you are surfing and video you are watching. It may be the server issues especially if you are using overseas servers. In that case, it is not really the issues with Starhub.

For subsea cable cut issue, you may want to check the following MR website. It may affect some overseas servers.
https://myrepublic.net/sg/outage-notification-and-updates-broadband-voice-network/

 

[xiaofan]

No the point is that M1 have a NAT64 gateway which means you can access legacy sites using pure IPv6 on your devices - M1 handles the translation from v6 to legacy IP and thus the NAT overhead if accessing a legacy site, whereas access to modern sites goes directly and bypasses the translation gateway.

There are also public gateways for this - see https://nat64.xyz

I understand the point you try to make, but in reality, even the most enthusiastic IPv6 users seldom go this route.

I do see the benefits of IPv6 myself. But I think we have to live with the reality that IPv4 will be there for many years and dual stack IPv4/IPv6 is the way to go for most of the users who have IPv6.

In reality you cannot call IPv4 only sites legacy sites as many of the websites and corporate network are still IPv4 only.

BTW, I myself may experiment with NAT64 soon since Singtel /56 native IPv6 becomes quite stable for me, just as a learning exercise.

 

[xiaofan]

It's quite easy to fool such systems...

Beyond the initial handshake (SSL, SSH, VPN etc), network level devices cannot tell what is being transferred. If you have a p2p connection over port 443 using SSL the network management equipment has no way to differentiate it from HTTPS traffic.

That is because the local ISPs just do simple jobs and they will not really stop hard core torrent users. As per the other report, Singtel is the ISP which throttle torrent traffic most aggressively but it is actullay quite easy to bypass.

Take note I do support the throttle policy of torrent traffic. Let's face it, most of the torrent traffic are for illegal pirated contents...

In reality there are means to differenciate such traffic without decrypt the traffic. But they would probably do not want to invest or spend the efforts. Just look at the capabiltiy of China GFW, they can use other means to identify whatever methods you mentioned and then throttle or block the traffic.

Singapore ISPs also block quite some websites, but it is said that you can easily bypass the blocking with just using non-ISP DNS servers.

 

[Henry Ng]

In that case, you may want to check with local SpeedTest first. If local speedtest results got issue, then you may have to check with Starhub. By right Starhub has only issues with 5Gbps/10Gbps plan but not 1Gbps plan. So most likely this is not the issue.

If local SpeedTest got no issues, you may have to tell more details about the Internet you are surfing and video you are watching. It may be the server issues especially if you are using overseas servers. In that case, it is not really the issues with Starhub.

For subsea cable cut issue, you may want to check the following MR website. It may affect some overseas servers.
https://myrepublic.net/sg/outage-notification-and-updates-broadband-voice-network/

May be throttling mechanism got issue and throttling us wrongly.

 

[hwzlite]

Read > https://www.starhub.com/personal/support/article.html?id=q4dK353VvY5VWiRYFjSVr7
That is why my speed slow down at night. I complain they ignore.

No torrent at all, just office work, surf net and watch some videos, Starhub.

If throttling really at work , can try alleviate it with free Cloudflare warp mode or go to the extreme of using
GoodbyeDPI — Deep Packet Inspection circumvention utility

 

[lobukong]

No torrent at all, just office work, surf net and watch some videos, Starhub.

Your usage is <25Mbps, how can any ISP throttle that.
Could you ping a server and get the comparison of peak vs non-peak hours?