There is definitely a real world performance problem with Balance One Core with 8.4.0 RC 1 (build 5585) not reaching is rated 600Mbps stateful firewall specification. It is reaching 300Mbps on Ookla’s Speedtest.com, the gold standard speed test for most people, and 450Mbps on Fast.com which increases the size of their average payload. Ookla sticks with the MTU size, a reasonable real world test approach.
This has been verified for multiple Balance One Core routers, and by more than one person. I bench tested three different Balance One Core routers, after resetting to factory defaults, on a 1.2Gbps Comcast line using a Firewalla Gold Plus in between a 1Gbps modem and the Balance One, then in between Surf Soho. The Firewalla easily reaches 900Mbps. The Surf Soho reaches 120Mbps on Ookla and Fast, its rated speed. The Balance One Core is reaching 50% of its rated speed on Ookla and 75% of its rated speed on Fast.com, the same results as when directly connected to the 1Gbps modem.
The difference between the Surf Soho and the Balance One Core is the CPU usage. This is particularly evident when running the Firewalla internal speed test where the Surf Soho can reach 140-150Mbps at 70-80% CPU while the Balance One Core can reach 550Mbps to 650Mbps at 90-100% CPU. The Firewalla uses much bigger packet sizes than the modem MTU to achieve this.
I also discovered that the difference in speed tests results is highly dependent on what the router is doing internally. I.e., at idle the Peplink routers CPU can range from 17% to 35%. And I always thought it was Comcast that was causing variable speed test results!
I hope that Peplink engineers can rapidly confirm the Balance One Core speed test results, and then let us know what the next steps will be. Peplink has always been conservative in their numbers, so my hope is that there is some bug that is easily fixed, although my testing on 8.3.0 and 8.2.1 produced similar results, so this is not unique to 8.4.0 RC 1. Or will this take longer to remedy? Or worse, will we have to live with the reduced Balance One performance on version 9 and beyond?
The reason and solution have been provided. It is due to the default settings of the GPS chipset can’t meet the speed requirement as the speed is too fast. We have configured the GPS chipset and below is my last response to you:
Since the expansion module from XXXX-XXXX-6206 has now been moved back onto its original MBX of XXXX-XXXX-6BC7, you should replace XXXX-XXXX-6BC7 with XXXX-XXXX-7630.
Great, I just found a feature present in RC1 which was not there before but is also not mentioned in the Release Notes?
I can now do Band Selection specifically for each SIM type, so SIM A, SIM B, RemoteSIM, FusionSIM and SpeedFusion Connect 5G/LTE.
Not sure if the way of how it looks is the most logical, but it does work like this. It would be nice for a SIM type to be hidden if it is not selected in the selectable SIM options.
So now we can move all our devices to 8.4.0 firmware when it is released .
what device are you seeing this on? i really really need this feature (i’m using third party multi-IMSI SIMs since SFC5g/lte isn’t supported in the menus like you’ve shown)
@TK_Liew can you please comment on why the max transit duo isn’t including the starlink feature? I was pretty excited. Even with limited starlink features this would be something I’d think some people would consider paying to have. Obstruction data for example.
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