Hi everyone,
I'm relatively new to routeros but have been using linux for firewalls for about the last 15 years with various configurations so know my way around networking, but i'm stumped by a probem with my broadband connection. I have an RB2011 router and a bt infinity connection (UK fttc broadband).

The setup is as follows:
* broadband line comes into house and connects to supplied vdsl modem
* vdsl modem is connected to routerboard using an ethernet cable (winbox says the connection is 1Gb)
* eth1 is used as a wan port
* eth2,3 and 6 are configured in a bridge and connect the lan (2,3 at 1Gb and 6 at 100Mb) this works fine
* pppoe client configured with correct username using wan port (eth1) this connects fine[/list]

When I test the connection using speedtest.net I get 8Mb down and 8Mb up which is much slower than I should be getting
If I disable pppoe, connect the wan port to the bt supplied router, the bt router to the vdsl modem and connect with a dhcp client I get between 15Mb and 60Mb down and upto 15Mb up.

Is there a problem with routeros handling the pppoe connection. MTU and MRU set to max 1500 and MTU appears top get negotiated to 1492 and MRU 1500. Because both down and up are running at 8Mb i'm wondering if there's a problem with the routerboard handling the pppoe connection, except the cpu load doesn't go over 25% while testing it.

Any help would be appreciated.
Pete

Hello Pete,

and I would bet on if you stitch the modem directly in the LAN port of the PC you can get nearly 80% of the whole
bt Internet connection!

But the router from bt is only doing in normal cases SPI/NAT and thats it then so I would imagine that you are then lossing perhaps 1 - 5% of the whole throughput of total.

The RouterBoard is giving you also the option to set up your own firewall and mangle rules and also queues, but this is also "eating" even some bandwidth from your line!

But if you are doing some "miss configuration" you will loose more then perhaps 20% of the total bandwidth!

Another circumstance is also often, that peoples are using the router given by their ISPs and with an integrated modem, put them only in front of their RouterBoards!! But this is then a double SPI/NAT situation and this will also narrow down the
throughout immense or massively.

I personally think it should be anything with your setup, because the RB2011 are sorted with a really powerful cpu and
enough memory to blast away the most routers given by the telecommunication companies! Same here in Germany
from where I drop you this lines, in usual cases the most peoples, so perhaps 30 - 40% are connected to the Internet using a router from the company called AVM , but we were testing this one against a RB2011UAS-2HnD-IN from MikroTik
on a VDSL 50MBit/s link and the RB2011 was clearly the winner!! So I personally think it is something owed to your setup.

Thanks Dobby, I thought it was unlikely that the routerboard would be underpowed but I was worried about some inefficiency in the PPPoE stack. The UK ISPs all want people to use their own routers so they can setup national wifi networks and generally control how people use the internet at home. I will try again and I think the real issue is to do with the MTU being detected by the routerboard being too high, i.e. path MTU discovery being blocked somehow. The MTU gets automatically detected at 1492 but if I send pings of that size I get fragmentation, I have to go to 1464 (from memory) before I stop seeing fragmentation on pings. I'll update later with what happens.
p

I found the problem. I had connected port 1 to the modem which is a 1Gb port on the routerboard. It was auto negotiating to 10Mb though. I tried turning off auto negotiation which didn't work at all, changed over all the cables just in case and tried a different 1Gb port as well but it kept auto negotiating to 10Mb. I changed to a 100Mb port and reconnected and I now get similar speeds to using the ISPs router so its effectively fixed, but I have no idea why auto negotiating is failing. The max speed of the connection is 72Mb so not a problem but I may try it again with a 1Gb switch connected in between to see what happens.

To recap on my setup (as I couldn't find any other instructions on setting up BT infinity with a routerboard

* connect a 100Mb port directly to the supplied modem
* create a pppoe-client using the connected port (e6 in my case), username bthomehub@btbroadband.com and blank password. Leave everything else as defaults
* In IP>firewall change any rules referring to e1-*-gateway to refer to the pppoe interface and also change the masquerade rule to refer to the same interface.

It should just work after that.

p

Hi again Pete,

to use their own routers so they can setup national wifi networks and generally control how people use the internet at home.

Not really. if they want they can do even time, but they are able cutting the amount of employees in the support division
because they must only be familiar with one or two router models!!!!!

connection is 72Mb so not a problem

Fine to hear from yours, this is purely a very different throughput and each far away from 8 MBit/s.
And pointed back to the hardware, the RB2011, don´t worry about this is one of the most powerful RBs MikroTik is selling
compared to the price!!

Yes much better. I found a post from someone with a similar auto negotiation problem with the same modem http://huaweihg612hacking.wordpress.com/about/ in the comments. I expect there is some incompatibility in either the routerboard or the vdsl modem but can't work out what exactly. I have seen plenty of posts about consumer grade equipment being connected though (I expect most manufacturers would have tested and updated firmware for this particular modem though) so not sure what the problem is with the RB2011. If anyone from mikrotik wants to investigate I can send over details of my setup (as long as I get instructions).
p

Hello,

I have the exact same problem and I have posted a thread here (before I found this thread).

I can confirm placing a 10/100 switch between the BT modem and the RB solves the issue but it shouldn't be required. I would like an official response from Mikrotik. I am willing to provide whatever diagnostic info it takes to solve the issue. As an IT consultancy we have a lot of FTTC customers coming online and if Mikrotik can't solve the issue we might as well stop using them. This is disappointing because I invested a lot of time learning about them and placed my trust in these devices. Now the boss is skeptical about my suggestion of using Mikrotik and their reliability. It looks bad on me and Mikrotik... I guess now is the time to prove you listen and respond to people's concerns within a reasonable time frame. I have email support regarding this issue. The boss doesn't wait around.

Awaiting your response with glee.

You wont normally get an official responce from Mikrotik in these forums as they are user forums - may be work emailing support@mikrotik.com if you beleive the error is with the Mikrotik (highly probable!)

We have seen this issue with several customers. It is an issue related to Gigabit autonegotiation on the 2011.

We solved it in the short term, by using port 10, and it connects at 100 Mbps full duplex

We have raised a ticket with mikrotik in conjunction with one of our customers, and have supplied supout etc in different configurations, and using both common BT supplied FTTC VDSL modems.

In the short term we recommend using port 10 for the FTTC connection
(you wouldn't really want to tie up a gigabit socket for an 80 Mbps connection anyway...)

Hope that helps

Nick.

The auto-neg on the 1 Gb ports is handled by the Atheros 8327 which is also used in some other products including some TP-Link units. It would be interesting to know if a given VDSL device works OK with a non-Mikrotik 8327 port but ends up at 10Mb on the 2011.

I'm having the same problem here with a 951G 2HnD. It only has Gigabit ports so no chance of swapping the a 100 port. Disable auto-negotiate and forcing a 100 connection downs the port.

Which modem device is it connected to?

It's whatever the latest BT Infinity VDSL modem is. I attempted to get it off the wall last night to get the model number but the BT engineer has done a proper job of attaching it.

It is probably one the two items pictured here:

http://huaweihg612hacking.wordpress.com ... -from-eci/

It appears I have the ECI variant. I'm not looking to hijack this thread and am quite happy to open another. Although I suspect we are probably all suffering from the same issue.

Mikrotik responded today and said they are aware of the issue and will keep me informed. I'll update my thread if I hear any more...

Excellent, thanks mikrohenry.

Doesnt ether1 on some Mikrotik's have some sort of PoE feature? Perhaps that is causing negotiation problems?

Look down the spec list here: http://routerboard.com/RB2011UAS-RM

# "PoE: 8-28V DC on Ether1"

Does it work ok if you use port 5, commonly used as WAN2 on Mikrotiks?

I think the OP tried different ports with no joy.

I have BT Infinity and connect the open reach modem directly to a RB450G on port 1. then have a PPPOE client enabled with the BT username/pass

The link speed to the VDSL modem is 100mb. I get betweeen 70 - 100mb download and 10-20mb upload and find it works very reliably.

I was only quoted 60mb down and 15mb up from BT and never bothered with the supplied home hub.

I'm having the same problem here with a 951G 2HnD. It only has Gigabit ports so no chance of swapping the a 100 port. Disable auto-negotiate and forcing a 100 connection downs the port.

I too have the same issue with a 951G 2HnD. Trying to connect to a VDSL modem (ECI variety) results in 10Mb only.

I had the same problems with another provider with PPPoE. The fix for me was in the PPP profile ensuring the Change TCP MSS was set to yes as the MTU had to be changed dynamically with a value given from the PPP remote end.

Maybe that will help?

I have a customer who has just had an ECI Modem installed, I have used a RouterBoard 951G-2HnD and eth1 is only running 10mb, trying to force 100mb it just connects then disconnects.
but another customer with a Huawei and a RouterBoard 951G-2HnD works just fine and runs at 100mb auto.

Any Ideas?

Paul

I have a customer who has just had an ECI Modem installed, I have used a RouterBoard 951G-2HnD and eth1 is only running 10mb, trying to force 100mb it just connects then disconnects.
but another customer with a Huawei and a RouterBoard 951G-2HnD works just fine and runs at 100mb auto.

Any Ideas?

Paul

its a known issue. Three options
1. wait for Mikrotik fix
2. put a switch in between the two devices
3. swap out ECI for Huawei.

I went with 3. Luckily a friend had an HG612 going spare.

I've seen auto neg fail on the gig ports of the 2011 for *both* the ECI and the Huawei so your option 3 is a tad hit n miss

Have just encountered this same problem (on a RB2011).

Have Mikrotik found a solution yet?
My new 74Meg FTTC service is currently running at 9Meg

Any further update on this? Same issue on v6.2 on 951G-2HnD. Can anyone confirm placing a switch between the modem and RB temporarily fixes the issue?

I've tried v6.2 on my 951G and the problem appears to be resolved. What firmware level are you running?

I've tried v6.2 on my 951G and the problem appears to be resolved. What firmware level are you running?

6.2! Thats strange. Definitely still auto negotiating at 10Mb

No the firmware which is under System > Routerboard I think. I'm running 3.08.

Oh no false alarm, my switch was still inline.

Oh no false alarm, my switch was still inline.

Oh well, never mind

Could anyone tell me what PPPoE settings they have used as im trying to connect a mikrotik upto one of the BT VDSL modems but it never seems to authenticate almost like i should have put something in the service name etc

any help greatly appreciated
Manners

Have you input the required username and password?

Just wire the patch cable between the router and the modem with 4 wires (1,2,3 and 6). This will force the Mikrotik to auto-negociate at 100 Mbit.

has this problem been fixed yet? if mikrotik need a ECI Modem I have one here they can have.

Paul

This seems loosely related to this:
http://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=82529

I'm still seeing this on a RB2011IL-IN latest firmware (6.20) Seems routerboard fault, Will happily auto negotiate at 100mbit to my laptop.

Yes the hardware is at fault. This blog post explains it somewhat http://blog.linitx.com/mikrotik-fttc-eci-modems/

Was that fixed in the end?

Or ECI still gives problems for default Eth1 port on RB2011 devices?

sebus

Anyboidy?

sebus

I haven't tested it recently (switched to cloud core routers which are higher performance). The rb2011 showing this fault is a few years old now so I hope the latest hardware doesnt have the issue. It doesnt boot reliably anymore anyway so I can't test for you. If you're having problems, the workaround is to use one of the 100Mb ports to connect to the modem (change the firewall rules and PPPoE to use eth10) as the issue was with the 1Gb ports.
Pete

It does correctly auto negotiate to 100Mb FD on Gig ports

sebus