Intermittent connection issues loading/changing site- secure connection failed/site can't be reached

[EDIflyer]

Is anyone else occasionally getting a 'connection down' error from Chrome (or 'Secure Connection Failed' from Firefox) when changing page - if I hit refresh it works fine. At first I wondered if it was the site I was using but have noticed it on multiple different major websites over the past couple of months and not noticed it from other locations where I don't use Three Broadband so does seem to be related to the router/connection (this is via wired Ethernet too, so not a WiFi problem).  I've tried changing DNS server in case that helps but no difference.

It mainly seems to happen when trying to first load a site or (annoyingly) at checkout when a different site is being loaded as part of the checkout process.  It certainly doesn't happen everytime but does happen with reasonable frequency.  I've also noticed I often get it when trying to pull/push from/to Github too and have to do so a number of times for it to work (browsing the Github website works fine).

I'm using a NR5103E with Firmware Version V1.00(ACBJ.0)b14 - I tried rebooting it but to no effect.

[bytespider]

I maybe wrong, but WARP uses a VPN connection to their servers then the WARP magic from there.

Custom DNS can absolutely be set, but perhaps not with the hardware they supply. It used to be the case that you couldn't change it at all but I see now that you can, Whether it honours that setting is another question.

I have a machine with AdGuard Home set up which I have the NR5103E point to for DHCP, then that provides clients with its IP for DNS, which is then done via DoH.

[Nameless]

It is a bit more than a standard VPN under the hood but essentially yes - From the surface it works like a VPN for free

I have tried several options for setting up a custom DNS however, each time I did so, the DNS leak test would show that I was still using the DNS provided by Three therefore I will treat that as non-configurable

Hopefully a proper fix will be done by Three although, after 28 pages for this issue and several related topics floating around, it seems unlikely........

[bytespider]

I was a bit harsh about WARP before, seems they moved from Wireguard to HTTP3 proxies which is much lower latency. Whilst it's not an ideal solution, it has come in clutch several times this past week, where the speed reduction and latency of a traditional VPN wouldn't have been acceptable.

[Nameless]

It's great to hear that WARP has worked for you as much as it's been working for myself although I'm curious to know how much WARP affects your speeds and latency compared to a traditional VPN since I currently don't use one

[bytespider]

Baseline 480Mbps Ping 18ms

VPN (Europe sever) 270Mbps Ping 96ms

WARP 400Mbps Ping 20ms

[Nameless]

Thank you for sharing this information - That's quite a drop in speeds when using a traditional VPN compared to WARP!

Unfortunately I have not been able to test WARP+ but is is supposed to be even faster than standard WARP although it does cost...

With that being said, if WARP can do everything needed for free then it might even replace VPNs for some that would consider using them under Three

[Nameless]

Thank you for sharing the information - That is quite the significant difference! I was not expecting the VPN to reduce your speeds by that much

I can only imagine what WARP+ would be like in comparison but standard WARP is good enough for my needs at this time

[Midnight54]

Dont partically want to be slowing my speeds by using effectively a VPN,worsening pc performance, increasing my power consumption by using additional apps, on top of vpns add risk to me losing certain accounts if seen in use in more than 1 location at the same time, which would happen risk with my nvidia Shield and PC usage in that case

Does this suggest that putting the modem into bridge mode instead could work and adding a seperate router with DNS being set on that?  as I have an AX3000T that yet to get around to plugging in

[Nameless]

Speeds will not be significantly slowed below ~200Mbps but that may also depend upon your CPU more than anything:

• My main testing computer uses an AMD Ryzen 7 5700G that is software optimised for power savings rather than running at stock and had no issues when reaching ~400+Mbps despite significant multitasking that had all cores running at ~100%
   - Clock speed range is 0.4GHz-4.673GHz, speeding up by 0.2GHz every 0.2 seconds when CPU usage is >30%
   - It is undervolted slightly but that is the motherboard maximum
  
  
• On that same computer, WARP did touch above single core saturation (6.25%) but not dual core saturation (12.50%) in its usual optimised mode however I am unable to test for speeds higher than 1000Mbps which is where WARP's overhead would be more significant
   - These percentages vary dependent on the CPU clock speed:
      - Lower percent reported at higher CPU clock speeds at the same download/upload speeds
   - The protocol overhead seems to be around 10%
  
  

Unless your usual internet needs require minimum speeds far beyond 150Mbps then you should be fine although any random large download, such as a multi-gigabyte game download, will take longer on your WARP enabled devices... But ideally we should not have any speed restrictions that are not caused by hardware limits

Overall computer performance wise, yes it is yet another program running but it can be negligible compared to other applications, most notably your web browser of choice, and background running tasks in some individual application cases (Manually adjusting many Windows background services can work really well but changing operating systems was still a better for my uses)

In regards to power consumption, if you have a dedicated GPU then that alone is likely to use far more energy than when running WARP but more processing does require more power nonetheless and is always a valid concern - It is also the reason for my main testing computer being software optimised for power savings

Unfortunately I do not use other VPNs at this time, traditional or WARP-like equivalents, and can not help there although using WARP still uses a regional IP address that should be a close match for your current region - This did result in the ISP being mentioned as Cloudflare when testing

Multiple routers may be less problematic on maximum internet speeds but would probably require more power than running WARP - If it works then finding an extremely low-powered router that does the job would be really useful

[Midnight54]

My speeds are typically 600-950mbps so much more likely to affect me, but the IP risk of vpn is a big no no.  Its not about using a regional account.  Using the account in any 2 IP addresses at the same time as an immediate ban, and with 2 devices often using it at same time, something like WARP far too risky