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Typical Speedtest Result Expectations for CBK40 Kit

GWild
Guide

Typical Speedtest Result Expectations for CBK40 Kit

Anyone have FIRSTHAND knowlege of the actual throughput for a CBR40 - RBS20 via wifi?

 

CPU - 1GbT (wired) - RBS20 ~~~ BACKHAUL ~~~ CBR40 - 1Gb CABLE

 

It's essentially using the RBS20 as a bridge to the CBR40. All the specs indicate the wireless cap should be 2.2Gbps (or 866Mbps if you assume single channel) ... I am looking for anyone who has actually tested the set. 

 

I'm not seeing anywhere near that level of performance...

 

Model: CBR40|Orbi AC2200 Tri-band WiFi Cable Modem Router
Message 1 of 10

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FURRYe38
Guru

Re: Typical Speedtest Result Expectations for CBK40 Kit

Heres what I get with my wired PC connected to a ASUS GT-AX11000 in wireless bridge mode connected to my Orbi 850 series connected to a CM1200 modem:

ASUSGTBridged2RBR850RouterModeSpeedTest.png

This is about max speed I generally see with most any of my 1Gb LAN devices. 

 

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Message 10 of 10

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FURRYe38
Guru

Re: Typical Speedtest Result Expectations for CBK40 Kit

You not see anything near 900mpbs on 5Ghz wifi. Max speeds maybe around 300-400Mpbs, depending upon devices design and support. Nature of the beast. 

 

Wired you should seen near 700-800mbps or over on wired LAN PC tests. The CBR40 is DOCSIS 3.0. Most ISPs now days require DOCSIS 3.1. The CBR40 is capable of near 900Mpbs however depends on what your ISPs requires as well. I had the CBR40 when it first came out and had it on a 1Gb connection for a trial period with my ISP and I was about to see 800 to higher 800mbps speed range most of the time. 

 

My ISP now requires DOCSIS 3.1 modems so I have move to that platform. 

 

 

Message 2 of 10
GWild
Guide

Re: Typical Speedtest Result Expectations for CBK40 Kit

Wow Furry -- I nearly always get 1Gbps on 1Gbps wired networks. It is why they spec them as 1Gb networks. Sorry to hear you have had such poor luck with wired connection quality. The CBR40/RBS40 pair is spec'd 866 on 5G channels, seeing ~500 line of sight means it is not meeting spec. You were seeing even less; ouch. But I am also seeing only 500M over a wired connection on the CBR40 -- half of what it is spec'd to do. So I see a trend here.  It makes upgrading to the same brand less than warranted -- if the Orbi can't even meet its own spec, why would I want to spend money on another Orbi?  Sigh.

 

ps: I'm on a 10Gb network - my hardware keeps up, lol, mostly. Hard to keep a 10G pipe full in a small network.

 


@FURRYe38 wrote:

You not see anything near 900mpbs on 5Ghz wifi. Max speeds maybe around 300-400Mpbs, depending upon devices design and support. Nature of the beast. 

 

Wired you should seen near 700-800mbps or over on wired LAN PC tests. The CBR40 is DOCSIS 3.0. Most ISPs now days require DOCSIS 3.1. The CBR40 is capable of near 900Mpbs however depends on what your ISPs requires as well. I had the CBR40 when it first came out and had it on a 1Gb connection for a trial period with my ISP and I was about to see 800 to higher 800mbps speed range most of the time. 

 

My ISP now requires DOCSIS 3.1 modems so I have move to that platform. 

 

 


 

 

Message 3 of 10
FURRYe38
Guru

Re: Typical Speedtest Result Expectations for CBK40 Kit

If your seeing 500Mbps on wireless then this would be with in the spec. Again, wireless will not ever see anything near 900mpbs on 5Ghz AC. The connection rate of 866Mbps is only a connection rate between the wirless devices, if it supports that rate and the RBR/RBS. This differs from actual speed thru put. Don't confuse them. Connection rate differs from actual bandwidth:

https://kb.netgear.com/19668/Link-Rate-and-Transfer-Speed

 

Also antenna support on wirless devices will impact and limit how wireless speed performances work. 2x2 will cap out at around 400-500Mpbs. 4x4 and higher allows for higher speeds. My iphone 12 max is 2x2 supporting, though AX mode supporting, it's stil only max's out around 700mpbs on my Orbi AX system. 

 

Make no mistake, the CBR40 when I had it was working well at the time. This was back in 2017. Speeds were wired and on a 1Gb network, worked just fine. 

 

10Gb, well thats fine but thats only on the LAN side. If you have that then cool. but your bottle neck will be any router or modem with 1000Mpbs WAN and LAN ports which the CBR was only designed for. NG has a few 2.5Gb WAN port supporting devices. 10Gb hasn't been seen much yet on a consumer level and isn't quite fully appeared yet. Seems like some mfrs are slowly graduating getting pasted 1Gb and just breaking into 2.5Gb rates. Not alot of consumer class devices can handle 10Gb bandwdith. There is HW considerations to take in when dealing with 10Gb. Thats a spendy speed to put in when you can't fully take advantage of it. Hope you can. 

 

Message 4 of 10
GWild
Guide

Re: Typical Speedtest Result Expectations for CBK40 Kit

Furry 

 

Beyond the fact the article was relating more about MB/s and Mb/s, it does little to discuss encoding and transport losses, but even with transport and encoding losses good hardware still acheives a significant portion of the link speed. On unidirectional connections (even in half duplex systems), an 866Mbps connection should yield 866Mbps throughput minus any protocol, encoding and packet loss. With WiFi, this will also be dependnent on many factors, SNR, walls, adjacent channel interference, etc. Rule of thumb is tossing 50% for overhead. Great.  But the reason it is called AC2200 is because that is the combined established connection rate, and, when you consider the AC2200 spec actually calls for sharing a 2.4GHz and dual 5GHz channels to acheive higher throughput, dual 5GHz 866Mb/s are supposed to provide 1733Mb/s, add the 433Mb/s at 2.4GHz, the CBR40 issue is even worse. I'm simplifying, but you get the point, I hope. One of the hidden gotchas with the Orbi CBK40 is it dedicates one of the 866Mb/s channels for backhaul. Which makes it function as only AC1300, not the specified AC2200. It's like selling a 20 core processor but not telling customers 8 of the cores are dedicated for internal use and not available for customer applications.

 

As an aside, if what you are saying about 5GHz maxing out at 500Mb were true, there'd be no point having an AX4200 or AX6000 specs for 5GHz access points.

 

As for the wired end: direct connection to the cable modem via wired ethernet, there is zero excuse for the internal CBR40 (with internal modem, router, and switch) to provide less than the established cable speed. So some factor inside the CBR40 is throttling traffic: while the CBR40 can train and establish a 1Gb cable connection, it seems it can't support the traffic throughput (at least based on your experience and mine). As a further example: when run with a 200Mb/s trained connection, the device provides 200Mb/s. Yet, trained at 1000Mb/s, it provides a typical 500Mb/s (again, talking wired). 

 

I guess I am done with this topic, too. Another example of Netgear marketing outperforming the actual product being sold. 

 

ps: I can keep a 10Gb pipe full for a while. Intraserver data traffic moving terabytes around. RAIDs and such. Looking at 40GbE now...

 


@FURRYe38 wrote:

If your seeing 500Mbps on wireless then this would be with in the spec. Again, wireless will not ever see anything near 900mpbs on 5Ghz AC. The connection rate of 866Mbps is only a connection rate between the wirless devices, if it supports that rate and the RBR/RBS. This differs from actual speed thru put. Don't confuse them. Connection rate differs from actual bandwidth:

https://kb.netgear.com/19668/Link-Rate-and-Transfer-Speed

 

Also antenna support on wirless devices will impact and limit how wireless speed performances work. 2x2 will cap out at around 400-500Mpbs. 4x4 and higher allows for higher speeds. My iphone 12 max is 2x2 supporting, though AX mode supporting, it's stil only max's out around 700mpbs on my Orbi AX system. 

 

Make no mistake, the CBR40 when I had it was working well at the time. This was back in 2017. Speeds were wired and on a 1Gb network, worked just fine. 

 

10Gb, well thats fine but thats only on the LAN side. If you have that then cool. but your bottle neck will be any router or modem with 1000Mpbs WAN and LAN ports which the CBR was only designed for. NG has a few 2.5Gb WAN port supporting devices. 10Gb hasn't been seen much yet on a consumer level and isn't quite fully appeared yet. Seems like some mfrs are slowly graduating getting pasted 1Gb and just breaking into 2.5Gb rates. Not alot of consumer class devices can handle 10Gb bandwdith. There is HW considerations to take in when dealing with 10Gb. Thats a spendy speed to put in when you can't fully take advantage of it. Hope you can. 

 


 

Message 5 of 10
FURRYe38
Guru

Re: Typical Speedtest Result Expectations for CBK40 Kit

You need to look at the specs sheet for the CBK40 and understand the supported wifi connection rates:

Technical Specifications • Orbi AC2200 Cable Modem Router & Satellite (866 + 866 + 400Mbps)†

https://www.netgear.com/images/datasheet/orbi/CBK40.pdf

Again you not see anything near 900Mpbs or over on 5ghz AC. 

 

And also for 1Gb connections, most ISPs now require DOCSIS 3.1 supported modems. The CBK40 is only 3.0 and IF, IF the ISP supports 1Gb on 3.0 AND IF all 32 channels are locked in on the down, you may need near 900Mpbs on a wired PC. 

This was one test I did when I had my CBK40 online with my ISP back then:

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi-with-Built-in-Cable-Modem/CBR40-Speed-Test-Results/m-p/1663025...

So it is capable. Again, ISP support, signal quality up to the modem and quality of coax to the modem will be factors. 

 

Good Luck though.

Message 6 of 10
GWild
Guide

Re: Typical Speedtest Result Expectations for CBK40 Kit

That's curious. You have a 11/2018 Speedtest showing Sparklight Boise as the test point. But Sparkllight Boise idn't exist until later in 2019. Since I live here in Boise, I can confirm CableOne's press release is accurate. On the otherhand, all of my Speedtest logs show Sparklight, all the way back to early 2017 - even though Cable One was my ISP and I definitely remember seeing Cable One in those tests. 

 

Featured snippet from the web

(NYSE: CABO) today announced that it will be rebranding as Sparklight beginning in the summer of 2019. “We are very excited for this evolution to our new brand and the next chapter in our story,” Cable ONE President and CEO Julie Laulis said.Dec 11, 2018
 

In any case, Sparklight over provisions, and a 1Gb link should see 1.1 to 1.2Gb throughput. It is how cable works. Sure, contracts say you might get less on occasion (that "up to" part), but generally the connection is fully capable of the higher speeds. Sparklight level two techs out chasing a cold weather issue I reported in one of their amplifiers also stated that I should be getting the full bandwith when running hard wired - but also said that they were tracking a service degradation to several customers in the area. So there's a chance the slower speeds I am seeing are the cable - but it isn't always below freezing and the problem they (Sparklight) are tracking is upload outgoing traffic, not incoming downstream speeds. And it is the HARD WIRED download speed the CBR40 modem is not providing. 


 
Message 7 of 10
FURRYe38
Guru

Re: Typical Speedtest Result Expectations for CBK40 Kit

I had to take a quick look as well. I hadn't noticed that Ookla reported sparklight back then. I to remember seeing cable one back then. 

I see that SL has the CBK40 on there 1Gb plan. Interesting it's at the bottom of the list:

https://support.sparklight.com/hc/en-us/articles/115010347988-GigaONE-Supported-Modems-Residential-O...

 

Well if SL is seeing some issues. I'd keep on them. Other than this, you'll need to contact NG support and let them know what your seeing. I have long since moved from the CBK40 to now CM1200 and Orbi AX. Mostly over 900Mpbs when testing. 

 

Waving a had accross the valley. 

Message 8 of 10
GWild
Guide

Re: Typical Speedtest Result Expectations for CBK40 Kit

Considering the AX4200 solution: CBK752.  If I read the specs right it says back haul is 2.4Gb, leaving 1.2Gb and 600Mb for other devices. Should be adequate to allow 1Gb wireless down traffic. But, have a doubt based on the CBK40 experience - will the modem really do that 6Gb/s they claim. The application would be replacing the CBK40, the RBS connects to a 10G engineering network and bridges to the CBR a room away. Wire wasn't really an option - but - it might be worth it at this point, $600 is steep for a few extra Mb/s I don't really need). 

 

@FURRYe38 wrote:

I had to take a quick look as well. I hadn't noticed that Ookla reported sparklight back then. I to remember seeing cable one back then. 

I see that SL has the CBK40 on there 1Gb plan. Interesting it's at the bottom of the list:

https://support.sparklight.com/hc/en-us/articles/115010347988-GigaONE-Supported-Modems-Residential-O...

 

Well if SL is seeing some issues. I'd keep on them. Other than this, you'll need to contact NG support and let them know what your seeing. I have long since moved from the CBK40 to now CM1200 and Orbi AX. Mostly over 900Mpbs when testing. 

 

Waving a had accross the valley. 


 

Message 9 of 10
FURRYe38
Guru

Re: Typical Speedtest Result Expectations for CBK40 Kit

Heres what I get with my wired PC connected to a ASUS GT-AX11000 in wireless bridge mode connected to my Orbi 850 series connected to a CM1200 modem:

ASUSGTBridged2RBR850RouterModeSpeedTest.png

This is about max speed I generally see with most any of my 1Gb LAN devices. 

 

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