Sam knows box

pm.

Hi all

I received a Sam knows box today. Simple to set up and all up and running. I am on vm 360 but when I log into my Sam knows box it is showing only a 50mb dl speed.

This seems very low. I have the Sam knows box plugged into my vm router and all other lan cables plugged into the samknows box..... The box was only activated at 7pm so maybe it's congestion? I doubt it tho, any ideas?

ED E

Wait, it will only have done one round so far.

jca

I don't think you're supposed to have the other LAN cables plugged into the samknows box. I have mine connected to a port from the router and from it to the desktop. All my other LAN cables are connected to the router. As I changed providers, I have mine 3 years, it detected the speed changes straight away. It got a fright when I jumped from 65 to 360!!

pm.

Yes it's early days so far... According to the instructions it's only the SK box that connects to the router. I will upload a pic of the instructions tomorrow

pm.

Have a look at the attached

Kristopherus

pm. wrote: »

Have a look at the attached

You'll get a monthly report from Sam Knows and those variations on your examples will be tiny as it will give a 30-day report in 1 page.

ED E

jca wrote: »

I don't think you're supposed to have the other LAN cables plugged into the samknows box.

Thats exactly how you're meant to set it up. He's got it correct, yours is wrong but the impact should be pretty minor.


pm thats two cycles now, I'd swap the ethernet cable between Sam and your router just in case.

pm.

ED E wrote: »

Thats exactly how you're meant to set it up. He's got it correct, yours is wrong but the impact should be pretty minor.


pm thats two cycles now, I'd swap the ethernet cable between Sam and your router just in case.

OK I think I have a spare cat 6 I will give that a go... It's not looking good so far tho. The dl speeds are pretty sh1t

jca

ED E wrote: »

Thats exactly how you're meant to set it up. He's got it correct, yours is wrong but the impact should be pretty minor.


pm thats two cycles now, I'd swap the ethernet cable between Sam and your router just in case.

Making the Sam knows box the router? No I don't think so. My setup that I've been using according to the setup instructions that came with it are as follows, VM box in modem mode connected to Tplink C8, cable from Tplink to blue internet port in samknows, cable from SK to desktop. All other wired connections home plugs, nas etc are connected to the C8. Ignore my ramblings ED_E..

PAKNET

jca wrote: »

Making the Sam knows box the router? No I don't think so. My setup that I've been using according to the setup instructions that came with it are as follows, VM box in modem mode connected to Tplink C8, cable from Tplink to blue internet port in samknows, cable from SK to desktop. All other wired connections home plugs, nas etc are connected to the C8.

The Samknows is not routing, it's just passing through traffic.

You are supposed to have it between the main router and *all* other devices on the network, nothing should connect into the main router alongside or before the Samknows.

That way, it knows not to run speedtest's while you're using the broadband line because this will both affect your normal day-to-day browsing and skew the test results.

jca

PAKNET wrote: »

The Samknows is not routing, it's just passing through traffic.

You are supposed to have it between the main router and *all* other devices on the network, nothing should connect into the main router alongside or before the Samknows.

That way, it knows not to run speedtest's while you're using the broadband line because this will both affect your normal day-to-day browsing and skew the test results.

Feck..Would leaving it the way I have it now make much difference? It fits very neatly beside the desktop and I don't have to look at all those stupid flashing lights.

ED E

jca wrote: »

Feck..Would leaving it the way I have it now make much difference? It fits very neatly beside the desktop and I don't have to look at all those stupid flashing lights.

Potentially false low readings. Impact will be tiny unless your usage is very heavy.

jca

ED E wrote: »

Potentially false low readings. Impact will be tiny unless your usage is very heavy.

Usage would be heavy enough. With my setup, Vm,TpLink,SK. What way should I have it wired up? I'm getting confused now

ED E

Router - Samknows - All devices

If you've more than 4 devices, connect a switch to the Samknows.

pm.

This is not good... I hit my max speed just after 2am and by 8am I'm getting below 80 should I be contacting VM?

At that rate I would be better off on the lesser package

PAKNET

pm. wrote: »

This is not good... I hit my max speed just after 2am and by 8am I'm getting below 80 should I be contacting VM?

At that rate I would be better off on the lesser package

Could be either local contention or a symptom of Virgin Media's walled garden routing.

If you run a speedtest yourself what sort of speeds do you get?

ED E

Are you on DSLite?

http://ipv6-test.com/

pm.

ED E wrote: »

Are you on DSLite?

http://ipv6-test.com/

I'm not sure ED can you tell from the attached

ED E

pm. wrote: »

I'm not sure ED can you tell from the attached

Nope, you're not. So thats another thing its not.

Does look like a busy node.

Leave it sit like that for another couple days to confirm and maybe download from the HEANET mirrors (any file) at peak times to see what speed that gives.

jca

I rewired my setup to, VM modem->C8->SK with all wired devices connected to SK, everything feels much snappier, pages loading instantly etc.

pm.

You should have done vm box Sam knows and then your c8... That's what the instructions say

pm.

pm. wrote: »

You should have done vm box Sam knows and then your c8... That's what the instructions say

There you go

ED E

This is "Healthy" for a 120_12 link back in Nov/December.




Mine is off the air at the minute but Ive no reason to believe it would read low on this 240_24. Intend going 360_36 soon and Ill put it back into service then.

PAKNET

pm. wrote: »

You should have done vm box Sam knows and then your c8... That's what the instructions say

The Virgin modem is in bridge mode with the C8 doing the routing.

Samknows has to go directly after the router for the network but before any peripheral devices.

So no, the VM (Bridge) -> C8 (Routing) -> SK ordering is correct.

jca

pm. wrote: »

You should have done vm box Sam knows and then your c8... That's what the instructions say

I'll try that later. I didn't think it would work with the VM in modem mode. wouldn't the SK still need to be given an ip address?

pm.

PAKNET wrote: »

The Virgin modem is in bridge mode with the C8 doing the routing.

Samknows has to go directly after the router for the network but before any peripheral devices.

So no, the VM (Bridge) -> C8 (Routing) -> SK ordering is correct.

My mistake...

ED E

jca wrote: »

I'll try that later. I didn't think it would work with the VM in modem mode. wouldn't the SK still need to be given an ip address?

PAKNET wrote: »

The Virgin modem is in bridge mode with the C8 doing the routing.

Samknows has to go directly after the router for the network but before any peripheral devices.

So no, the VM (Bridge) -> C8 (Routing) -> SK ordering is correct.

Either will work ok.

The SK to the C8 is the correct way (think switch) according to SK but either work fine and direct to the VM gives you absolute privacy (but potentially skewed results).

Source: Thats how mine was setup

pm.

I retract that apologie

PAKNET

ED E wrote: »

Either will work ok.

The SK to the C8 is the correct way (think switch) according to SK but either work fine and direct to the VM gives you absolute privacy (but potentially skewed results).

Source: Thats how mine was setup

Sorry, I forgot VM will allow multiple WAN IP's to be assigned to devices LAN side of the modem So yes then it would work, SK will just get another WAN IP.

Now, the question is of course how long they will allow that and what happens if they should suddenly decide strictly only one WAN IP per cable modem. End of.

Let's face it, Virgin aren't the most predictable, upfront or honest when it comes to making changes, however significant, to their network configs!

ED E

Its up to 3. Designed for SME's I suspect.

Its so niche I dont see it being touched, but who knows when LGI are involved.

jca

Feck sake lads, I've changed it to VM -> SK -> C8, I'll see how it goes, everything seems to be working perfectly.

pm.

So after letting the Sam knows box do its thing for the last few days it's easy to see that vm are not delivering the speeds as advertised. With siro coming to our estate in the next couple of weeks would I be better off to ditch vm

I'm in a contract with vm until August 17 but do I have grounds to get out if vm fail to fix the issue?

I have attached a screen shot. You will see that in the middle of the night I get full speed, but at peak times it drops to below 40. What would you advise?

ED E

Jesus, thats a congested node all right. Surprised at VM letting it get that bad.

Can I ask, would the area (say within 500m in any direction) be lots of younger people/families?

pm.

About 70/80 houses in our estate with a few young families maybe 30% of the houses would have young families

Could I jump ship even though I'm still in contract? Or would vm fix this?

ED E

You'll have to complain repeatedly and if they still cant fix it then they're release you from contract.

boobycharlton

Be interesting to see if my results are similar when my box arrives. We've gone from having an elderly lady next-door with no SSID being broadcast so presumably no broadband, to a house rented by four 20 somethings. They have VM as I can see the SSID as well as Chromecasts etc too. My speeds have noticeably gotten slower since they moved in (wired +wireless) but would be nice to see it shown in the detail like samknows box presents.

pm.

If it's anything like mine you are in for a shock.. The SK box ran a test at 11pm and the speed was 86mpbs and at 3 am it was 366mbps.

I put a complaint on the vm section be interesting to see what they say.

How reliable ate the results from the SK box? Does it use similar to speed test.net to gauge the results?

No doubt vm will try pawn.e off and tell me that the SK box is unreliable

pm.

Forgot to attach

jca

I'm really lucky with my connection, its lowest speed was 320 last month and that was during the night, ul is 36 consistently, being a brand new system probably helps. I rewired the sk to the Tplink. I spoke too soon i just had a look at mine and it dropped to 80 on a few occasions too.

pm.

Lads I posted in the vm section and Brian the representative for vm replied back with a link to the vm speed test. I ran it hardwired to my laptop and got full speed.

I tan it a few minutes later and got 250 or so mbps while on speed test all I got was 60 a few mins later.

How reliable are the results from the Sam knows box? Is there a site I can download a large field just to see what speed I get?

ED E

Samknows wont tell us where their nodes are but at least one is Dublin as my latency to it makes it very unlikely to be further.


Try:
https://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/oracle-linux/OL7/u3/x86_64/OracleLinux-R7-U3-Server-x86_64-dvd.iso

As a large(4.3GB) download. Just remember 360Mb is 45MB/s so anything over about 42MB/s is pretty much a perfect score.

pm.

Thanks ed e.... I just ran a speed test on the vm site and got close to full speed. I then went to dl that file and I get between 8 and 11 mb/s in around were the samknows box has the true speed

Oat23

There was a submission on the /r/ireland subreddit yesterday with complaints about VM. This is a problem with their network and has been getting worse for the past 14 months since they launched their 360MB service.

In February of last year an engineer was sent to my house to make sure nothing was wrong with my equipment. After monitoring the connection for 3 days, he determined that the local node was overloaded and an upgrade would have to be done. Nothing has been done since then despite being promised 3 or 4 different dates for a fix. My average speed during peak hours has continued to get worse and is much lower than what it was back then (90MB - 150MB). Virgin have continued to overload the node even more, raking in the money and leaving us all with this dogsh*t service.

HEAnet result


Here are my Sam Knows results from the past few days with the SK box being the only thing connected to my VM modem as we have been away. Nothing else has been connected to the network the past 5 days so the results have not been tainted in any way.


http://imgur.com/a/Kshw2
http://imgur.com/a/BTfsa

ED E

@pm basically your speed is fine, as long as the only internet you want is within the Virgin network.

All ISPs will give you up to X to the border of their network. Once it passes onto the next provider all bets are off. Unfortunately speed within their network is no good to us, we want speed from Steam or RTE or Level3, not Virgin.


@Oat: If all tests are bad its a local congestion, if Virgins tests are ok then its peering and nothing local at all.

Oat23

ED E wrote: »

@Oat: If all tests are bad its a local congestion, if Virgins tests are ok then its peering and nothing local at all.

Virgin's own test is awful too.

ED E

Worse than Dublin streets at 8AM on a Monday. Dont envy ya.

pm.

Oat23 wrote: »

Virgin's own test is awful too.

That's absolutely sh1t... Tbf to Brian the vm rep he is going to look into my connection. If I am not satisfied I will get out of my contract and go with the new Vodafone bb that has been launched in my area

Oat23

pm. wrote: »

That's absolutely sh1t... Tbf to Brian the vm rep he is going to look into my connection. If I am not satisfied I will get out of my contract and go with the new Vodafone bb that has been launched in my area

SIRO? Yeah I was really excited for that too until I heard about the 1TB fair use cap which rules it out for me . Hopefully vodafone reconsider that. My neighbor recently jumped from Virgin to SIRO and says it's much better.

Speeds back to normal now as most have gone to bed..

isnottheword

Anyone on Vodafone Simply Broadband product - up to 100Mbps with a sam knows box?

Just installed the box yesterday. Getting 43Mbps consistently. Should I be getting better? Is there any controls on a product that's offered with an 'up to' specification??

pm.

TBF to VM they are sending an engineer out to me next week... Can't complain about the customer service so far

PAKNET

isnottheword wrote: »

Anyone on Vodafone Simply Broadband product - up to 100Mbps with a sam knows box?

Just installed the box yesterday. Getting 43Mbps consistently. Should I be getting better? Is there any controls on a product that's offered with an 'up to' specification??

Depends entirely on what your line is synchronising to the cabinet at (which is driven most by the distance from you to the cabinet and whether your cabinet has had a feature called vectoring enabled or not).

If all your line can support is a 43Mbps downstream sync, then you're bang on target as regards line performance.

If however your line was syncing at 50Mbps+ then there may be something amiss because you should be maxing the line on the SK box, at the very least, during the early hours of the morning.