Cisco RV320 and Netgear R8000 with Xfinity DOCSIS 3.1

[sdorn]

Xfinity upgraded my service to their DOCSIS 3.1 product which offers 1Gbps download speeds. They bring you a Technicolor model TC4400 cable modem and a Netgear R8000 router. As far as I can tell there is nothing special about the R8000 or its configuration. It appears to be a standard, off the shelf model.

When they connect that modem to that router, you get speeds approaching 1Gbps downstream over a gigabit ethernet connection. However, when I connect that same modem directly to my Cisco RV320 router instead of the R8000, speeds drop to around 350Mbps.

I played around with several configurations, and at the moment I have the TC4400 connected to the wan port on the R8000 and one of the wan ports on the Rv320 connected to a lan port on the R8000. In that configuration, I get speeds around 600Mbps - 650Mbps.

The RV320 is supposed to get around 900Mbps of wan > lan throughput. I read the review on SNB of the RV32o and made the same bandwidth management adjustments noted in the article for getting maximum throughput, but the highest speed I have seen is about 650Mbps.

I am trying to figure out two things. The first is why would the RV320 be so much slower than the R8000 when connected directly to the TC4400 modem? Any ideas or suggestions of settings or other things to check would be greatly appreciated. This would be the ideal configuration for me and is how my network was configured previously.

The second thing I am trying to figure out is why the RV320 is only getting ~ 600Mbps of wan > lan throughput in the configuration I have now with the R8000 feeding the RV320 when it should be getting closer to 900Mbps.

 

[netwrks]

Xfinity upgraded my service to their DOCSIS 3.1 product which offers 1Gbps download speeds. They bring you a Technicolor model TC4400 cable modem and a Netgear R8000 router. As far as I can tell there is nothing special about the R8000 or its configuration. It appears to be a standard, off the shelf model.

When they connect that modem to that router, you get speeds approaching 1Gbps downstream over a gigabit ethernet connection. However, when I connect that same modem directly to my Cisco RV320 router instead of the R8000, speeds drop to around 350Mbps.

I played around with several configurations, and at the moment I have the TC4400 connected to the wan port on the R8000 and one of the wan ports on the Rv320 connected to a lan port on the R8000. In that configuration, I get speeds around 600Mbps - 650Mbps.

The RV320 is supposed to get around 900Mbps of wan > lan throughput. I read the review on SNB of the RV32o and made the same bandwidth management adjustments noted in the article for getting maximum throughput, but the highest speed I have seen is about 650Mbps.

I am trying to figure out two things. The first is why would the RV320 be so much slower than the R8000 when connected directly to the TC4400 modem? Any ideas or suggestions of settings or other things to check would be greatly appreciated. This would be the ideal configuration for me and is how my network was configured previously.

The second thing I am trying to figure out is why the RV320 is only getting ~ 600Mbps of wan > lan throughput in the configuration I have now with the R8000 feeding the RV320 when it should be getting closer to 900Mbps.

It may have something to do with the slower CPU on the Cisco and possibly, it's current configuration. Wikidevi Cisco - Wikidevi 8000

 

[degrub]

It may have something to do with the slower CPU on the Cisco and possibly, it's current configuration. Wikidevi Cisco - Wikidevi 8000

Do you have any services turned on in the CISCO ?

 

[sdorn]

Do you have any services turned on in the CISCO ?

I have all of the services under the "Firewall" tab disabled other than Firewall, Block WAN Request and HTTPS.

SPI, DoS, Remote Management, Multicast Pass Through, SSL VPN, SIP ALG, UPnP, SSH and Remote SSH are all disabled.

Note that I also tried plugging the modem directly in the ethernet port of a Windows computer and it only got speeds of around 350Mbps, just like when I plug the modem directly into the Cisco. Is there some protocol that the R8000 is using to communicate with the modem that unlocks the additional speed?

 

[System Error Message]

not another guy with a vpn router, those things suck, their CPUs are horribly slow (even slower than the ERL). If you want those cool features that you think the vpn router has get a configurable router and learn it a bit, the performance will be a lot better and you'll have more options for security. The cisco rv doesnt live up to cisco quality and it should never have been introduced as a cisco product (linksys probably ok if it was linksys rv) but having the name cisco people tend to think it is good.

Also a number of them have bad firmware in them. They are outdated platforms with slow CPUs. Even the ERL when it was released had faster CPU than these vpn routers that are still being sold today. Even consumer routers support more vpn types than these routers.

 

[degrub]

I have all of the services under the "Firewall" tab disabled other than Firewall, Block WAN Request and HTTPS.

SPI, DoS, Remote Management, Multicast Pass Through, SSL VPN, SIP ALG, UPnP, SSH and Remote SSH are all disabled.

Note that I also tried plugging the modem directly in the ethernet port of a Windows computer and it only got speeds of around 350Mbps, just like when I plug the modem directly into the Cisco. Is there some protocol that the R8000 is using to communicate with the modem that unlocks the additional speed?

What is the MTU setting in the PC and the Router ?
Are you running jumbo frames (9k) ?

 

[sfx2000]

Look on the bandwidth control page for Min-Max - might still have your old settings...

Realistically though, 600-650 Mbps is probably where this device runs... and you'll probably be just fine with that, outside of running speed tests, it'll be hard to tell the difference...

If you're happy with the feature set and stability on the RV320, I would stick with it.