I’ve only ever experienced dodgy broadband. The wife has been working from home throughout Covid and battling this dodgy connection which appeared to be getting worse.
A call to BT led to the installation of Full Fibre 500 yesterday. The 500Mbps package seemed a little OTT but for some reason was cheaper than the 100Mbps.
(The 500Mbps package guarantees 250Mbps.)
This was installed yesterday, but as is my luck of late is not without issue.
Using my mobile in the room where the hub is I’m getting 220Mbps. In the room next door where the hifi is situated I’m getting 12Mbps and upstairs I’m getting 19Mbps.
I’ve contacted BT and there’s an engineer coming tomorrow so hopefully it will be fixed.
Anyone else had such erratic results and how was it resolved?
Do you have really thick walls? Are you hiding Kryptonite?
Haha, no. Walls are single brick internal walls and I sold the Kryptonite …
As soon as I leave the house I have no connection.
What’s an Orbi?
I also have an Netgear Orbi Mesh, and it works great across my whole house. Although must add that it doesn’t explain why it is so bad in the room with the router.
I went for the BT due the the positive reviews of the Home Hub 2. Is the WiFi extender disc BT offer any good?
From the phone conversation today I’m expecting that’s the probable solution.
I have used BT for 3 years with few issues. Mine is fibre to the ‘box’ and then copper to the house with a promise of 50 Mbps. The signal is strong throughout the house (old, with solid walls throughout) and even 20 or so metres outside into the garden. After I had been using this service for a year BT phoned to tell me I wasn’t getting the promised download speed. They sent an engineer out who sorted it out quickly at no charge to me! Amazing service for a major British company. I hope you have an equally satisfactory experience.
BT fttp with the Smart Hub 2 is pretty good tbh, and a mesh disc improves the coverage. If you get one make sure you get the Mesh Black that’s designed for the SH2.
The pressing issue of poor wifi might be as simple as a channel clash. Try this… on the back of the router find the slide-out panel with the admin password. Go to the admin page at http://192.168.1.254 then Advanced Settings then Wireless (prompt to log in here) then on the wifi page hit Rescan for 2.4 & 5GHz.
Also be sure of the obvious, that the router isn’t in a cupboard or hidden in an electrically noisy area etc. As routers go though it’s s ok, better with a Mesh disc.
Coincidently I have a BT engineer coming tomorrow as well!
I have a contract with EE for ‘Fibre Plus Broadband’ which is basically still using the BT phone lines up to the door so is limited to 78Mbps . I do at least have the fortune to live within 200 metres of the BT exchange so I was initially getting quite close to that even though the guaranteed minimum is only 56Mbps.
The other day, actually during an email exchange with Qobuz support regarding long-standing problems with their Android app on an Astell & Kern DAP where it is mostly a crock of sh1t, they asked me to do a speed test (which in fact had nothing to do with my query but still), I discovered that the speed had dropped to 39Mbps.
I believe this probably goes back to a few weeks ago when some contractors were working in the street and managed to cut the line completely and an engineer had to come out and fix it.
Anyhow, to be fair, I phoned EE today and they answered promptly and were very friendly and helpful and ran a number of tests on my router while I was on the phone. They admitted the speed was not only way below what it should be but was very intermittent and variable. I had noticed this on my work laptops but thought this was just work network problems. Kudos to my ND5XS2 though which is still coping admirably with streaming 24/192 FLAC from Qobuz. Neither have I had any problems streaming HD films from Mubi and Apple TV.
Anyhow, not sure what happened but the BT Engineer cometh…we will see what they say.
Good luck with your engineer!
Whatever line ‘speed’ you get in the room with your wireless hub it will always be less over distance & through walls, the number of walls & the walls construction types.
This applies to all wireless hubs, no matter what brand, wireless effectiveness is not brand dependant.
Yes a BT Smarthub2 extender (the black discs) may well be the answer, it is in my house.
You too!
I expected less, but not 200Mbps less!
I’m not getting the promised minimum speed anyway so something is amiss.
Have you established a baseline speed over Ethernet? It’ll establish if it’s the line speed or the wifi.
Can you explain how & with what you are measuring this ?
When I contacted BT they had me connect my laptop via ethernet and use fast.com to get a speed reading. That gave a reading of 180Mbps and then BT arranged for the engineer visit tomorrow. The later readings from my phone used this app too.
OK, thanks, sorry to ask but you can get very different results with different apps. Understanding this element is important.
Yes it looks like you have a problem, I’m interested in what the engineer finds & the suggested solution.
I also use the ‘My BT’ app on my tablet, it shows the line sync speed to the house & also the wireless performance to the tablet, I found that useful for walking around the house & garden to find any dodgy areas & optimising the black disc extender position.
There is a wider issue here in that the move to full fibre is often accompanied by a move to dual band and a poor quality router which is often poorer than it’s predecessor in terms of wi-fi distribution.
We had 20Mbps for years which really delivered only 4 to 6 on a wired connection. However, the wi-if was flawless in every room on both floors (unlike 4G). Moved to fibre to the box just before the pandemic. A wise decision given three of us regularly working from home. Had a solid 80Mbps and again wi-fi flawless and faster I every room. Moved to fibre to the premises. Have a rock solid 145Mbps but the wi-fi is all over the place.
Worked through it device by device and noted that several devices in regular use wanted to log on to the 5Khz network rather than the 2.4 or would keep flicking between. All devices now set to use 2.4 bar the Sky Q and all is well once again.
I am also on the BT 500 FTTP deal. The speed is great and the reliability much appreciated. The Smarthub 2 is rather basic and lacking especially when it comes to Wi-Fi. Eg no split channels. That said I Ethernet hardwire everything when I can so it’s not an issue for me. I repurposed old routers as Wi-Fi points as they have better performance. The SH2 is a requirement for Digital Voice as well.
The SH2 does have the ability to split channels, it’s set up to do this very easily with just a ‘switch’ change in the GUI & without any need to rename.
Don’t confuse the apparent basic control functions with the purpose designed safeguards against enduser mistakes.
Works very well in our house. We have an internal wall that is nearly 4ft thick so getting full WiFi is challenge.
Since we got fibre to the hub our BT system has been faultless.
Bruce