Bahnhof’s 10 Gbit/s router for home use – the fastest on the market | Hacker News Reader

Bahnhof’s 10 Gbit/s router for home use – the fastest on the market

bahnhof.se

56 pointscodeaken57 comments

It's a rebranded Huawei

https://support.huawei.com/enterprise/en/access-network/echo...

Oh - you must mean a re-branded extension of the Chinese government's spying apparatus? https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-huaweis-partne...

vs. AT&T?

AT&T is not a company that's effectively a government arm. They may have a cozy relationship, but it's a major difference. Also, you have some expectation that a company such as AT&T will respect intellectual property. US offers strong protections there.

They say that in the article: "In close collaboration with Huawei we have customized Bahnhof’s powerful 10 Gbit/s router HN8255WS, and it’s finally ready to put up for sale."

ISP perspective: a shitload of people are using Huawei and/or ZTE for GPON networks now. I am at lot less scared of that for last mile access stuff, than I am of people who think it's actually a good idea to use Huawei or ZTE as core routers for major ASes (in the same places you would see a twin $250,000 pair of Cisco or Juniper modular chassis based routers).

Salt[1] in Switzerland has been offering 10Gbps FTTH for half a year. Maybe Bahnhof's router is better, but it's certainly not the first.

[1] https://fiber.salt.ch/en/

This is ridiculous. And in Vienna the max you can get over fiber is 300/30 for twice the price of that.

Behold Canada, I pay about twice as much for 120/20 Internet only.

Beanfield in Toronto: 1000/1000 for 100 cad / month.

Just looked, UPC wants 45€/m for 300/30 over coax. Fiber would be so nice though.

Yeah, coax is also what most people use I think because it's that much cheaper.

Wellington, New Zealand, 1 Gbit / sec, unlimited, 65 USD / month

Australia: where the govt spends $40bn on broadband infrastructure and we still only get 100/40 unlimited for $79 (with an ISP with decent peering; you can get it cheaper but nooooo)

(you can get 250/100 but that caps you at 3TB and costs $250/mo)

EDIT: scratch that, it’s up to $51bn

Be grateful, I'm sitting in metropolitan Melbourne and am stuck with ADSL until 2020, when we will be "upgraded" to decades-old HFC.

Should probably note that most people cant get 100/40, are on ADSL3.5 (VDSL2) and the NBN Co only guarantee 25/5... for $51 bn. The network was already antiquated before they even began building it and will need to spend another $51bn right away to install labours FTTH. Their pipe dreams about 5G saving the day are rubbish. Its so bad some politician thought it reasonable to charge the AU ppl $35k/yr for his internet bill at home(4G + over data). /sigh

It's not true 10Gbit. It's only 10Gbit to some pole and then it is shared.

Besides their customer service is horrendous.

> It's not true 10Gbit. It's only 10Gbit to some pole and then it is shared.

As opposed to a dedicated direct 10 gigabit line to every other internet device? Everything is always shared unless you request a dedicated circuit between a given set of points. Sometimes the over subscription ratio is just shit, which is a real thing to complain about.

In Switzerland other fiber providers (such as Init7) have a dedicated physical fiber strand to your premises and a dedicated 1Gbit port on the other side.

Salt uses 10G-PON, which as I understand it splits a single 10Gbit port. Salt's configured to split it 64 ways.

It's possible other providers are oversubscribed upstream but I haven't personally experienced any congestion issues with Init7, even over long distances (e.g. Zurich to Fremont, CA).

All ISPs are at the edge of being oversubscribed. If not they're either commercially incompetent or in the hype stage of a marketing cycle (omg check this ISP I can download 24/7 at full speed)

The true "TH" Of FTTH is usually not shared. At least in my country it isn't.

The thing about this 10Gbps Salt Fiber Deal is that it's only available in very few places. I have 1Gbps Fiber Internet via Swisscom[0] at my Residence, but Salt Fiber is apparently not availible to me, even though the Fiber Infrastructure is shared between all Internet Providers.

[0] 80.- per Month

The horizontal fiber deployment is shared (afaik, to be precise, in the same pipes there's Swisscom fibers plus the ones that belong to your local utilities) but ISPs still have to set up their own access points.

I do recommend Init7, but in the meantime Wingo would be a bit cheaper for you, and I believe that Sunrise is available everywhere (they use Swisscom's network where they don't have their own access points). Yallo is currently offering a deal for 35.-/month.

https://www.yallo.ch/en/giga

The last mile infrastructure is shared but the ISP still needs equipment nearby. Have a look at Init7's map for an example of how many you need to cover a good chunk of Switzerland: https://www.init7.net/de/infrastruktur/fiber7-pops/

Huh; why did they build things this way, instead of doing the overland equivalent of a cellular https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_virtual_network_operato..., where the "ISP equipment" is shared too?

USI in Minnesota (US) has been doing it for over a year. They launched 2.5gbit and 5gbit options back at the start of 2016. Granted, their coverage map is a tiny fraction of Minneapolis.

https://fiber.usinternet.com/

That being said, I think Banhoff was claiming to be the first in Sweden, not worldwide.

The difference is the prices In the US it is $300 per month While in Sweden it is $55 per month

I have Bahnhof 100/100 at the moment. Effectivly (through wi-fi/AirPort) on a lucky day I get like 50% out of it on average.

This offer is 1000% increase in capacity for a 20% price increase and changing router? Seems too good to be true and stupid if not upgrading. But I suspect it’s only full capacity at like one place in Stockholm.

Bit strange that they choose to partner with Huawei. Doesnt feel Bahnhof especially after resent hardware stories. But I guess its a long process...

*edit: better phrasing

I have 100/100 and always get 120% of that over wired and wifi (two unifi ap ac lr).

Also, i can't get the 10gbit where i live, so probably only the big cities connected to "Northern Light".

edit: remark about availability

>so we assigned Huawei with producing a totally unique router for our superbroadband-service that we could place on the market.

no thank you

I have absolutely zero trust in Huawei as a company.

First of all, they're in bed with the Chinese government. Second, they have a track record of lying, shoddy marketing and just absolute abhorrent mentality towards IP.

I would never ever think about buying a Huawei product, especially for something critical as a router. I don't know about their privacy stance but I have no expectations.

I have AT&T gigabit fiber, and two problems arise getting the theoretical 1000Mbps speeds.

First is the AT&T provided router performance is terrible, swap it out. I went with a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X. However unless you enable hardware offloading[1], the EdgeRouter maxes out at around 300Mbps. I can't speak to this new router, but typically devices that can truly push 10Gbit/s are very expensive and enterprise.

Second, and more of a problem in residential are WiFi limits. I have a Apple Time Capsule running AC on 5Ghz (80Mhz channel), and max out at 400Mbps using iperf[2] to a machine hard wired in the LAN.

  [1] https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/115006567467-EdgeRouter-Hardware-Offloading
  [2] https://www.linode.com/docs/networking/diagnostics/install-iperf-to-diagnose-network-speed-in-linux/

You should be able to route 10gbps with a whitebox PC containing a recent intel Core CPU (say, 5th gen or later) and a decent NIC such as Intel X540 or similar.

Sure, but that NIC is $274, so not cheap for casual home users.

[1] https://m.newegg.com/products/9SIA4A04ZV6491

Mellanox adapters are generally pretty cheap on Ebay:

* https://www.ebay.com/itm/163291199329

* https://www.ebay.com/itm/322683902048

* there are plenty more

Anything from the ConnectX (series 1) model onwards works decently in Linux (CentOS) & FreeBSD.

Casual home users don't need 10 Gbps to the home.

I was under the impression a customer cannot replace AT&T routers. Do you mean you use a different router behind the box AT&T provides, or that there are viable replacements for the boxes AT&T provides customers to connect service?

I hope so. My EdgeRouter X is scheduled to come tomorrow. I have a fiber connection box coming in, which outputs RJ45. I am assuming the AT&T router can be replaced as it is just doing DHCP to get my public IP.

It probably also does authentication to the upstream network, so it knows who's connecting and can provide usage metrics.

The auth protocols are generally standardised though, so you shouldn't have too much trouble. :)

Would the auth information showup in the AT&T modem admin page? They doesn't use PPPOE, just standard DHCP. Just hoping they don't filter by Mac address upstream.

On (V)DSL, they use 802.1X, not sure about their fiber service. That's what forces me to use their "home gateway" (since it auths using the certificate in the device).

As a curiosity thing, have you ever cracked open the device to see what's inside? Maybe JTAG ports on the main board, or even having the cert stored (say) on microSD card? :D

Interesting. If they do use the device MAC address, that could turn out to be really easy. :)

Mac address spoofing is super easy (basic admin task almost) on most *nix's, though (from hazy memory) it does depend on the network card capabilities and driver.

Looking at the general info page for the EdgeRouter X, it seems to run something called "EdgeOS":

https://www.ubnt.com/edgemax/edgerouter-x/

That has a user guide available:

https://dl.ubnt.com/guides/edgemax/EdgeOS_UG.pdf

Page 4 of the user guide says:

  CLI
  Advanced users can make configuration changes using 
  Linux commands.

If EdgeOS really is Linux based, you might be in luck. :)

I'm really interested in knowing if you get this to work with AT&T without their gateway being in front of your router. I've been working on a project and have so far found AT&T gateways to be necessary for a working connection, due to certificates on the device (as mentioned by another comment in this thread). Care to share if you got it working?

If I did live in Sweden and did have Bahnhof, could I hypothetically use my own router by a SFP+ or other connection to the "handoff interface" or whatever people call it these days?

Yes. In general fiber connections here use the "Stadsnät" system (municipality/city network). The municipality owns the cables and provides you with a dumb fiber/RJ45 converter. You hook up your own router (if you want to use one) to that. The only thing your ISP provides is, well, the connection. If you're unhappy with your ISP then you can switch from the stadsnät's website in ~5 minutes.

Or at least that's the happy case. Cable (Comhem) and ADSL (usually Telia) are the same shitshows as everywhere else, and there are a few fiber providers (such as Ownit, which my HOA is stuck with) that opt out of the stadsnät system and instead trick HOAs into signing multi-year exclusivity contracts that somehow manage to make Comhem look good.

I'm not 100% sure but I think so. There's a fiber coming into a wall-mounted non-wireless router. I think I could replace it with any fiber-to-ethernet converter and then hook up my wireless router to the ethernet port.

Interesting thought. If the "router" in this case uses standardised protocols and authentication (ATM?/PPPoE?) you could likely hook up a computer or PC directly, install OpenBSD (etc) on it and have a proper firewall directly in place. :)

Meanwhile in SV I have to keep calling Comcast every year to renegotiate the price for my Blast!(r) 250Mbps cable.

I've a 150mbps plan but I get only 40mbps most mornings. There are remote locations in India that have fiber and get 80mbps throughout the day.

Looks like 10GPON - a last mile standard for ftth.

Coax needs to die.

Coax is a fuck-ton better than telephone cables. Optics for the win, but as long as old cabling is all we got, I'd sure as hell prefer coax over telephone wiring.

UTP is fine for 10gig, and in fact it has much longer reach, 55m-100m depending on cable quality, compared to twinaxial which is only defined by the standards to 15m. Twinax is also bulkier and costs more.

Coax isn't defined for 10g, so it's basically worthless. Certainly not "a fuckton better" since there are literally no coax physical modules for 10g.

UTP != ‘telephone cables’. Comparing in ground neighborhood wiring to spec’d Ethernet cabling is like comparing apples to steak.

We need to add something to the analogy to indicate how the ethernet cable (the steak) is shit at residential cabling.

Maybe directly eating (internal networking) vs. making cider (residential uplinks)? I do know that I do not wish to try steak cider.

Wow, what a mixup of terminology.

We're on a thread about residential internet modems. In this context, "coax" means "DOCSIS" (i.e. internet over cable TV), as opposed to fiber and telephone (DSL). UTP is absolutely useless as a residential uplink, as 100 meter gets you nowhere. Telephone cables are shit, so DOCSIS and fiber is where its at.

However, you seem to be talking about direct attach cable ("DAC"), which absolutely no one mentioned. As someone who worked at a network equipment manufacturer, absolutely no one calls direct attach cables "coax". They're often called "twinax" (which is a type of coax), although this terminology is misleading and entirely irrelevant. Also, they're kind of pointless these days.

And no, while 10GBase-T is a thing, the pluggables are too expensive to make the activity worthwhile. Run fiber—it's not really more expensive, and it's future proof for when you need to setup 25G or 40G soon.

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