Status:

May 2025 - Initial Post of Results

Australia's nbn co announced that it would be accelerating the provision of multi-gigabit speed tiers in September of 2024, while maintaining current pricing. So I did some performance testing using current nbn based services to see where bottlenecks sit within my network and if I can utilise the improved performance.

Testing Setup

To conduct testing I used the following setup:

This allowed for:

• Multiple User Agents (devices) - including iPhone, iPad, Notebook (with WiFi & 1GbE Adaptor) and Desktop (with 10GbE Connection)
• Multiiple WiFi LANs - including older Apple Airport Express (100Mbps) and Airport Extreme (1GBps) with a/b/g/n capabilities and 2 x Ubiquity Uni Pro 7 with WiFi 7 (2.5Gbps) capabilties connected to different VLANs
• Multiple Wired LAN - including 1GbE and 10GbE connected devices
• Router - Cisco 4331 Branch Router with license and ability to control total LAN to WAN routed throughput (upload + download) levels of: 100 Mbps, 300 Mbps throttled or up to 2.5 Gbps unthrottled
• 2 x nbn FTTP Services - via Aussie Broadband (500/200) as primary service and Telstra (50/17) as seperate VRF (VPN Routing and Forwarding) based independent service connected to alternate VLANs each with their own WiFi 7 LANs

This allowed testing to shift bottleneck from WiFi to Router to nbn service.

Testing was done using Ookla "SpeedTest" on Notebook & Desktop and "SpeedSmart" on Phone & iPad and included:

• Using single device test 3 times and getting average results
• doing simultaneous runs of all 4 devices at once to try to see impact of all devices on individual device throughput

The result reported from each of the apps were much the same and doing simultaneous runs does not really add any value as Apps do good job of establishing multiple connections and ensuring network bandwidth is fully consumed.

Testing Results

For the testing results I has interested in see when customer network or nbn service was bottleneck point.

The results show the shift of the throughput bootleneck from:

• nbn - (lowest cost Telstra nbn (50/17) service to
• WiFi Device - old Apple Airport Express a/b/g/n device with 100Mbps Ethernet to
• Cisco Router - throttled to 100 Mbps and then 300 Mbps to
• WiFi/nbn - WiFi (a/b/g/n) download, nbn 200 Mbps upload
• User Agent - with iPad showing lower upload speeds than iPhone and
• nbn - with Aussie Broadband (500/200) service and WiFi 7 and 10 GbE LAN

Also in the result set is Multiple Device test (average across devices), 4G & 5G tests.

The result show Upload vs Download with bubble Size is Bandwidth (Upload + Download) / Cost ($) ratio, so bigger is more bang for buck.

The result show some potential points where device and/or nbn service asymmetry can result in different bottlenecks (high easy to hit Upload limit Telatra & Aussie services.

Rule of thumb observation:

• lowest speed nbn connections (ie 100Mbps) likely not to be limited by router / WiFi and at this price point maybe use a Mobile service and forget about nbn Wired Services
• WiFi LAN with a/b/g/n capabilities should be able to service nbn connection with higher speed tiers up to 300Mbps, but you need to also have router than can sustain this (for my Cisco 4331 this requires at least a "throughput" license)
• For nbn service of 400 Mbps and greater, you will need to have WiFi 6/7 and likely a higer performing router (or in base of my Cisco 4331 a "booster" license for unthrottled throughput).

For home use looking at that JB HiFi, Telstra and Optus offers...

Links & References:

NBN Co Higher Speed Tiers - nbn announement (September 2024) on Multi-Gigabit (up to 2 Gbps from maximum of 1 Gbps), with Home Fast (100/20) moving to 500/50 (Mbps down/up), Home Superfast (250/25) moving 750/50 and Home Ultrafast (500/50) to 1000/100 and for business services its 500/200 Mbps plus Pro and 1000/400 Mbps plus Pro services will have reduced price and business wanting 2 Gbps services will get new 4  x 2.5 Gbps port NTD. New higher speed services and rates are targeted for September 2025 delivery.

Install Ubiquity Unfi on Ubuntu (Raspberry Pi) - there are lots of links on installing unifi on Ubuntu and Pi, but this Reddit discussion thread is what I followed as it provides sound rational and wors with Ubuntu 24.04 as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/1bvf1t8/unifi_controller_v81x_on_mongodb_v70_ubuntu_lts/