Devolo Powerline comms causing VDSL dropout - help?!
Discussion
Hi all,
Hoping for some advice from the hive mind if possible... Situation is that in my flat the living room walls are very thick, despite only being 2 bedrooms, the wifi drops off completely by the time you're in the back bedroom.
To get around this I've been using a Devolo Mesh Wifi 2 - 2400 powerline kit, this was flawless with Virgin and gave great speeds and decent reliability.
I moved to Plusnet after a falling out with Virgin, and all seemed well for a while, but lately it's been disconnecting itself quite regularly.
I've had 4 visits from Openreach who have rewired everything in the cabinet, and finally figured out that they think the Devolo is the culprit due to crosstalk. When turned on, the error rate was huge, when turned off, they disappeared. I had the automatic VDSL crosstalk detection turned on, but to no avail.
It's been off since the weekend and my connection is stable.
I'm now trying them on again, but have deactivated automatic crosstalk detection, and locked them on MIMO with VDSL 17a (albeit this already selected when the automatic mode was enabled)
I'm waiting now to see whether the manual mode with profile 17a stops the problems, but I'm doubtful.
If this fails, is the SISO with profile 17a worth a go? Although that seems to slow things down vs MIMO. Has anyone else had this sort of problem and were you able to resolve it?
Hoping for some advice from the hive mind if possible... Situation is that in my flat the living room walls are very thick, despite only being 2 bedrooms, the wifi drops off completely by the time you're in the back bedroom.
To get around this I've been using a Devolo Mesh Wifi 2 - 2400 powerline kit, this was flawless with Virgin and gave great speeds and decent reliability.
I moved to Plusnet after a falling out with Virgin, and all seemed well for a while, but lately it's been disconnecting itself quite regularly.
I've had 4 visits from Openreach who have rewired everything in the cabinet, and finally figured out that they think the Devolo is the culprit due to crosstalk. When turned on, the error rate was huge, when turned off, they disappeared. I had the automatic VDSL crosstalk detection turned on, but to no avail.
It's been off since the weekend and my connection is stable.
I'm now trying them on again, but have deactivated automatic crosstalk detection, and locked them on MIMO with VDSL 17a (albeit this already selected when the automatic mode was enabled)
I'm waiting now to see whether the manual mode with profile 17a stops the problems, but I'm doubtful.
If this fails, is the SISO with profile 17a worth a go? Although that seems to slow things down vs MIMO. Has anyone else had this sort of problem and were you able to resolve it?
I can’t help with the specifics but it’s an unusual issue.
A assume you have the wifi disabled on the plusnet “hub”?
Have you tried increasing the distance between the devolo and plusnet devices?
Are they plugged into different power sockets?
If that’s been tried and not changed the performance then I’d try ordering a replacement router for the plusnet “hub” and another set of devolo’s from Amazon to check if either system was faulty & return if necessary.
A assume you have the wifi disabled on the plusnet “hub”?
Have you tried increasing the distance between the devolo and plusnet devices?
Are they plugged into different power sockets?
If that’s been tried and not changed the performance then I’d try ordering a replacement router for the plusnet “hub” and another set of devolo’s from Amazon to check if either system was faulty & return if necessary.
Thanks for the reply.
Yes, wifi on the hub is off so there's no interference there.
I've already had a new hub, that was the second thing they tried, so I'm running the Hub Two now, no difference at all.
The Devolo is plugged directly into a wall socket, and the Hub into an extension, but separating them would be hard as they need to be next to each other to pick up the Cat5 connection (or I have to run wires across the room).
The Openreach engineer is adamatnt that the issue is the noise on the powerline at the same frequency as the VDSL.
Shortly after turning the Devolo back on with MIMO 17a, the connection dropped again, so I've now switched to SISO 17a. Although I'm not holding my breath!
I'll try calling Devolo when they open tomorrow and see what they say.
If only my FTTP service was enabled this wouldn't be an issue apparently.
Yes, wifi on the hub is off so there's no interference there.
I've already had a new hub, that was the second thing they tried, so I'm running the Hub Two now, no difference at all.
The Devolo is plugged directly into a wall socket, and the Hub into an extension, but separating them would be hard as they need to be next to each other to pick up the Cat5 connection (or I have to run wires across the room).
The Openreach engineer is adamatnt that the issue is the noise on the powerline at the same frequency as the VDSL.
Shortly after turning the Devolo back on with MIMO 17a, the connection dropped again, so I've now switched to SISO 17a. Although I'm not holding my breath!
I'll try calling Devolo when they open tomorrow and see what they say.
If only my FTTP service was enabled this wouldn't be an issue apparently.
Sadly it's just a 2 bed flat so all of them are on the same one.
I'm currently forcing it into the 17a profile and will see how things go on that, but if this doesn't work I see a hardwired access point as probably the only viable solution. I had just really hoped to avoid running more wires along my living room wall and drilling through walls
I'm currently forcing it into the 17a profile and will see how things go on that, but if this doesn't work I see a hardwired access point as probably the only viable solution. I had just really hoped to avoid running more wires along my living room wall and drilling through walls
That 17a was a disaster as well - worked fine on personal laptop and phone - but the works laptop just kept crapping itself and saying a network change had been detected. Restarting everyting would get it going briefly but then it would pack in again.
I don't even know how changing the PLC backhaul could impact the laptiop (and only one of them at that) but sure enough as soon as I unpliugged the Devolo and reinstated regular wifi on the Hub Two all was well with the world on all of my kit (well - the kit in the room with the Hub - nothing else works outside this room)
I don't even know how changing the PLC backhaul could impact the laptiop (and only one of them at that) but sure enough as soon as I unpliugged the Devolo and reinstated regular wifi on the Hub Two all was well with the world on all of my kit (well - the kit in the room with the Hub - nothing else works outside this room)
Sadly even just the other side of the wall the speed drops from 50 down to 16, then as you say once sharing the bandwidth it will be even lower in the room where I need the signal bouncing to.
Still no joy, and now it seems to be working even worse than it did before, the signal even on the powerline has dropped through the floor despite setting it all back to automatic. Utterly fed up with it now.
Still no joy, and now it seems to be working even worse than it did before, the signal even on the powerline has dropped through the floor despite setting it all back to automatic. Utterly fed up with it now.
Can you run just one cable out the room, put the router in the centre of the flat and then get reasonable signal throughout? I get that you have thick walls but I'm surprised you can't get a 2.4GHz signal through a 2 bedroom flat.
PS what are you doing that requires a > 16Mbit connection on an individual endpoint?
PS what are you doing that requires a > 16Mbit connection on an individual endpoint?
That's actually what I'm thinking, single cable to central point and try to distribute from there, currently that's where one of the Devolo units is, I would just prefer to do without running more cables across the living room wall and drilling holes etc. (also, I can promise you that 2.4ghz doesn't reach the other side of my flat, I know this as my blinds stopped working remotely when I turned off the Devolo - the perils of a fully connected home 
The hallway endpoint runs two chromecast audios on multi-room, two google homes, a smart TV, and needs to keep up with additional browsing on phone and laptop, 16mbps would probably just about do but I'm not 100% sure.
As a wired point, with Power over Ethernet (there's no power on the side of the hallway that the cable will come out on) what do we think to-
https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01LRQW0GM/ref=sspa_...
It doesn't look like it will be quite as fast on wifi as the Devolo, but so long as it's reliable that doesn't matter too much!
The hallway endpoint runs two chromecast audios on multi-room, two google homes, a smart TV, and needs to keep up with additional browsing on phone and laptop, 16mbps would probably just about do but I'm not 100% sure.
As a wired point, with Power over Ethernet (there's no power on the side of the hallway that the cable will come out on) what do we think to-
https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01LRQW0GM/ref=sspa_...
It doesn't look like it will be quite as fast on wifi as the Devolo, but so long as it's reliable that doesn't matter too much!
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