Peplink B One - slow Speedtest results

Hi, not very skilled in networking, having an issue after upgrading my network system.

I had previously a ubiquity dream
Machine pro. It was connected to ISP modem that was set to static IP. I was getting 1gb download speeds when speed testing with fast.com

I have since moved the ubiquity stuff out of the studio and replaced it with a Cisco switch and Peplink B One to handle failover.

The problem is after installing it all, I am only getting 200mbps download from fast.com when doing the speed tests with the B One as the router

I’m confused, as surely the ISP providers modem dictates what the speed test should be. A simple router change surely should deliver the same results?

However when I testmy net I get 1GB speeds

I’m just confused as to why it doesn’t show the same speeds no matter how many times I run it.

To start with, always use more than one speed test site. My suggested minimum is three. One nice one is speed.cloudflare.com.

You said nothing about Ethernet testing or Wifi testing. Wifi can vary drastically.

Is the Cisco switch between the Peplink router and the modem?

What do you mean by “when I test my net”?

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Hi Michael.

Thanks for the reply.
Apologies I left out a lot of info there.

It’s all Ethernet, no wifi, the virgin media modem is set to static IP, this is linked directly to WAN1 on the Peplink. a secondary ISP modem is wired to WAN2 on the Peplink.
LAN1 is patched into the Cisco switch and the rest of the computer devices are patched off the switch.

I understand the potential for huge differences between Speedtest pages. What is confusing and concerning, is the ISP has not changed. The only change in our setup is swapping from
Ubiquity to Peplink for the router. This is why I don’t know why fast.com is giving such a massive difference in speed when the Peplink is the router, over the ubiquity.

Testmy.net was the Speedtest website I was referring to that gave the 1GB.

I should also add, prior to swapping router for Peplink B one, all Speedtest website used have close to 1GB download speed, since B one is installed, some read 1Gb however many others only ready between 100-20mbps

FWIW, I tried a few test sites just now.
Our connection is a 1Gbps fiber (and LTE and DSL as fallbacks, not relevant here) through a MAX BR1 Pro 5G.
speedtest.net app: 922/796 (down/up) (to the local ISP switch)
speedtest.net web: 929/795 (regional test server)
fast.com: 1,000/800
testmy.net: 563/46 (!!)
speed.cloudflare.com: 897/518

Since these tests were within minutes of each other, across the same line using the same equipment, this suggests that the (possible) bottleneck is not the local connection but rather the back-haul connection from the ISP to the speed-test server.

I’d suggest using speed-test servers where you have (some) control over which one you test against. speedtest.net provides that functionality, and has served us well as a reliable test of the local connectivity.

Sigurd

The speed test is best done with only 1 active ISP connection.

Peplink routers let you tell them how fast your connection is and they do a pretty good of adhering to this in my experience. So, in your WAN properties section, it may be that one of your WAN connections is configured for 200Mbps down. Check both WAN1 properties and WAN2 properties. This is the most likely reason for the large slowdown, if I had to guess.

And simpler tests are always better than complicated ones, so plug the device you are running the test on, directly into the router, not into the Cisco switch.

Check that the Peplink is talking GB speed to the modem. I forget if this is shown in the Status tab or the support.cgi page. It almost definitely is, because if something went wrong here, your speed would be 10 or 100, not 200. Still, its good to check.

That there is a static IP in the modem should not play a part in this. Plus you have two modems, so two pubic IPs.

My odyssey getting my Balance One to reach its 600Mbps rating last year can be found in Are all Balance One’s running half speed on 8.3?. In the end after trying a number of speed test sites, I reported that I “Finally achieved 600Mbps download on Ookla speedtest.net through Balance One; 767/174 Mbps was the high after multiple tests on multiple servers. The key was using the Edge browser (Win 10) instead of Chrome, configuring speedtest.net to Single Connection instead of Multi Connection, and I did not log into the Balance One (the Dashboard display uses CPU). Selecting Single Connection severely limits the upload speeds for some unknown reason. Upload speeds increased to a high of 567Mbps on one of the Multi Connection tests."

P.S. Peplink’s description of how they test router thoughput with iPerf

P.S.S. @Noah_Helterbrand comments on Balance 20x throughput that “Each feature enabled on the router reduces its throughput. In my experience, with all features enabled, stateful routing caps out around 300Mbps. Your biggest offenders are VPN, QoS, and enabling anything on the Content Blocking page.”

I also have a B One. I am (mostly) getting GB speeds. Results are below.

For setup I have a few VLANs, internal firewall rules, outbound rules, intrusion detection, and a few other random things. No content blocking or QoS as of now. Seems to be handling everything just fine. I do not have the AP on though, I have a separate AP that is trunked off the B One.

Speeds (Down/Up, in Mbps)

speedtest.net: 940/945
speed.cloudflare.com: 783/615
fast.com: 910/840
testmy.net: 400/100 (it did notice peak speeds around 950 up and down)

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