Toob 900Mbps Full Fibre on my router – Linksys MX4200

The day has come when my £25pm Toob Fibre 900/900Mbps, via CityFibre infrastructure, was finally installed.

After all the wiring was done, the new Toob router was connected, and I started testing.

To my surprise, Toob switched to a different Linksys Velop model than I initially expected. I have been supplied with Linksys SPNMX56 (SPNMX56TB to be exact), which, by default, comes with a 2.5 Gbps WAN port.

From my previous post, where I chose £40 Linksys MX4200 as my next router, I did an analysis of my needs, and I concluded that I am fine with a 1Gbps WAN port. Toob’s approach to go with 2.5Gbit is more future-proof thinking. If they want to offer higher plans, they will not need to replace hardware. For my needs and 900Mbps connection, the 1Gbps (1000Mbps) port is more value for money.

Going back to the initial Toob setup.

Their device is equipped with the following:

Processor: Quad‑core CPU running at 1 GHz
Flash memory: 128MB (not officially disclosed)
RAM: 256 or 512MB (not officially disclosed)
WAN: 1 × 2.5 Gbps WAN port
LAN: 3 × 1 Gbps Ethernet ports
No USB ports
Dimensions: Size: 3.385× 3.385× 7.3 in (86 × 86 × 185 mm)

I knew that I would not be using their router, hence quickly, after the installers finished and the service went live, I hooked up an Ethernet cable from the CityFibre box into my (currently used with VirginMedia) Askey RT4230W REV6 (RAC2V1K) WAN port and the network started working like it was before.

I have used Toob One Touch Switch service to move away from Virgin Media. Straight after my Toob fibre went live, I received an email from Toob stating that it’s live, and my Virgin router stopped providing internet.

To my surprise, there was no configuration needed; all was resolved by the CityFibre box, which provided, over DHCP, all that’s needed. There was no need to contact Toob Customer Service to get this done (they are officially advising on their website that you can use your own router, but you need to speak with them first), not even the need to clone the MAC:ID of the Toob router to the new one to get service. That’s great!

I hooked up quickly the Linksys MX4200v2, which I will be using as my new device, to see that this one also worked just after plugging in an Ethernet cable going from the CityFibre box to the WAN port on the router. I didn’t even need to reboot the CityFibre box. Super!

Toob is provided by default, over CityFibre service, IPv6 along with IPv4. However, you are placed behind Toob CG-NAT, so you will not be provided with a public IP.

If you take the Toob 18-month product, you can buy a static IPv4 address, which isn’t part of CG-NAT.

It is great to be able to finally reach the internet over IPv6 without the need to use tunnels!

Because of the lack of an external IPv4 address, I need to forget about using WireGuard to connect to my network over VPN, but I can still do this using an alternative approach with CloudFlare Zero Trust, VPN alternative.

This, and other things, I will be testing intensively over the following days.

I quickly noticed that the maximum download speeds, connecting through Wi-Fi provided by the Access Point set with TP-Link RE700x, were in the range of 500Mbps on download and slightly over 600Mbps on upload. I started thinking, is it because of this one difference that it is a 2.5Gbit WAN?

I hooked up to the router over an Ethernet cable. I could reach the maximum without a problem; hence, that’s not the issue.

I connected the Toob router to do some measurements, and over Ethernet and Wi-Fi provided through the router itself, I could reach maximum speeds as advertised.

After further investigation, I connected back to the router and checked, once again, speeds over Wi-Fi.

I noticed that Wi-Fi on it was working at 160MHz on 5GHz, which will produce a maximum speed of 2400Mbps.

I am using a handy app called WiFi Signal: Strength Analyzer to show statistics for nerds like me.

Checked speeds on the speedtest website and managed to get what was advertised, 900/900, easily.

Leaving the Toob router plugged in, I hooked up MX4200v2 to the LAN port and my laptop also over the LAN port to it (MX4200v2) to see if I can get full speeds even when I put router behind the router.

The answer was Yes!

The MX4200v2 produced, over the LAN port, maximum speeds, the same as when connected to the LAN port directly with the Toob router.

That’s great!

Then I noticed that over my WiFi with TP-Link RE700X I got a problem.

Despite it working as an Access Point and being hacked by a Cat.6 Ethernet cable directly to the router, the WiFi speeds on 5GHz are limited to 80MHz, and the true speeds that I can get are around 500Mbps download and a bit more on upload.

The RE700X is advertised as supporting 160MHz but why is it not working?

I headed to the RE700X configuration panel to change – force 160MHz for the 5GHz network, in settings, as this was not possible through the Tether app.

Finally, that pushed speeds a bit more.

And the speed tests improved as well.

Considering that I already have multiple other devices connected over 5GHz and using this frequency, the results are acceptable. It’s a shame that 160MHz is not enabled by default.

It was time to remove the Toob router from the equation and hook up the MX4200v2 directly again and repeat some testing.

Now, using the Linksys MX4200v2 directly with a Fibre connection, I get what I want, 900Mbps on download and 900Mbps on upload, both reached!

Linksys MX4200v2 – Tweaks

Earlier on my website, when I was using Linksys MR8300, I wrote down how to enable the usage of all CPUs for packet steering on a router that had more than two processor cores.

The MX4200v2 is another router where this would benefit, but there are a few changes in the recent OpenWRT 24.10 series, which make these things easier and available over a web browser.

If you go to Network > Interfaces, in the Global network options tab, there is an option, enabled by default, for Packet Steering.

However, there is an additional option there that can be changed, so let’s do this, let’s set this to Enabled (all CPUs).

I also changed Steering flows (RPS) from Standard: none to Suggested: 128.

But that’s not all.

I headed to Network > Firewall and in the section Routing/NAT Offloading I set Flow offloading type to Hardware flow offloading, as this device (MX4200v2) has some extra features behind the scenes, and if the option is available there, it’s worth trying, instead of just relying on Software flow offloading.

Bufferbloat test

It’s time for wider tests, as requested in comments on my other post.

With just a few tweaks applied, which I think are a must, I followed up with Bufferbloat and Internet Speed Test.

I did that by hooking myself up with an Ethernet cable directly to the Linksys MX4200v2 router using an ANKER 1Gbps Network adapter with my Mac. The test was done when other household members were not using the connection, or using it in a very minimal capacity. The test was run in Google Chrome Canary and Incognito window.

The speeds have been fluctuating a bit, but overall all peak speeds were achieved and the result was A.

The results were good, so I don’t even need to bother with looking, what I described in my post Optimising the Internet connection on a router with OpenWrt, but I may pick this up later when needed.

My connection is sorted for now.

I definitely will be looking forward to some inexpensive OpenWrt router, that is much more powerful than Linksys MX4200v2, but for now, for a £40 router, I cannot complain.

My next investment will be the replacement of TP-Link RE700X with something that can offer WiFi 7. Currently, the only decent device that is compact enough yet powerful is RE655BE (BE11000 Tri-Band Wi-Fi 7 Range Extender), but somehow it’s not yet available in Europe/UK, hence I need to keep looking or wait.