Full fibre Internet and wifi
Discussion
Hi, up until last week I was on BT's old school broadband via telephone line getting 50mb downloaded, it wasn't fast but it was reliable and could reach all areas of house. Now I'm on BT full fibre the 500mbps one with the Smart Hub 2, if I'm within a few meter of Smart Hub speeds are good, however pretty erratic 70mbps one minute 496mbps, the upload is consistent sometimes faster than downloaded. My main issue is how the performance massively degrades over distance, in my home office I could get 45mbps with old style Internet which was max 50mbps now I'm lucky to get 20/25mbps in the same room on my 500mbps deal. I've not moved the new Smart hub was from where old one was, does full fibre not work as well with WiFi over distance ? I bought a WiFi extender helps a bit bit not alot. I got a week left on my cooling down period on contract so can cancel but is it same issue with all full fibre particularly loss of speed over distance? I read I should use a cable rather than WiFi but getting cable to home office woukd be big job.
Thanks
The type of connection to your house has no impact on WiFi performance. The only thing being with really fast fibre services WiFi might not be able to achieve such high speeds.
Is the router in the same place as the old one? If not then your issues are probably a combination of distance and walls between you and the router that weren’t in the way with the old location.
If running network cables isn’t an option but the office is in the same fuse board/consumer unit you may have success with powerline networking, like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-G-hn2400-Passthro...
Is the router in the same place as the old one? If not then your issues are probably a combination of distance and walls between you and the router that weren’t in the way with the old location.
If running network cables isn’t an option but the office is in the same fuse board/consumer unit you may have success with powerline networking, like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-G-hn2400-Passthro...
Edited by colin79666 on Sunday 15th June 22:15
PostHeads123 said:
Hi, up until last week I was on BT's old school broadband via telephone line getting 50mb downloaded, it wasn't fast but it was reliable and could reach all areas of house. Now I'm on BT full fibre the 500mbps one with the Smart Hub 2, if I'm within a few meter of Smart Hub speeds are good, however pretty erratic 70mbps one minute 496mbps, the upload is consistent sometimes faster than downloaded. My main issue is how the performance massively degrades over distance, in my home office I could get 45mbps with old style Internet which was max 50mbps now I'm lucky to get 20/25mbps in the same room on my 500mbps deal. I've not moved the new Smart hub was from where old one was, does full fibre not work as well with WiFi over distance ? I bought a WiFi extender helps a bit bit not alot. I got a week left on my cooling down period on contract so can cancel but is it same issue with all full fibre particularly loss of speed over distance? I read I should use a cable rather than WiFi but getting cable to home office woukd be big job.
Thanks
Wifi performance is down to the quality of the transciever inside your hub. It's possible that you have an issue with the hardware or maybe just that new model has worse wifi performance.Thanks
Some of the BT hubs have had extremely variable Wifi ... I ended up getting a mesh system to fix the constantly freezing wifi on my previous BT hub. The current Superhub 2 is decent enough that I didn't need to use the old 3-disc mesh, but the new hub did come with a second disc that meshes directly with the hub to create a 2-point mesh. In any case, it's more than good enough in my house, which isn't huge.
colin79666 said:
The type of connection to your house has no impact on WiFi performance.
Isn't OP saying they've got a new router as part of the service, with new Wifi onboard? Possible it's got worse range or maybe it's changed to 5ghz where they were on 2.4 previously?A dedicated wireless access point will likely have better performance than the wifi built into a basic router.
At a guess your new router uses 5Ghz for wifi and you were prev on 2.4Ghz. The lower frequencies travel trhough onjects much easier than higher frequencies, so this is probably why you are seeing a much greater speed difference around the house on 5Ghz.
Say: 40Mb bandwidth, on 2.4Ghz, didn't lose much through a few walls - maybe you got 35Mb at a distance.
Now say 500Mb at 5Gh, you WILL lose more on 5Ghz through the same walls, plus you have a lot more to lose, so hence you are seeing significantly bigger drops.
2 Things 1) go into your router admin and see if it has a 2.4Ghz wifi option, disable 5Ghz, and test it, just for fun. 2) wifi performance has nothing to do with the speed of your internet , other than the fact that at 500Mb you are starting to push the limits of some versions of wifi.
I bet if you enable 2.4Ghz, disable 5Ghz (or name the 2.4 network differently so you can test it in isolation) you'll find you get 40Mb in the room you got 40Mb in before, because, 40Mb was the bandwidth limit at that range, on 24HGhz wifi.
To get big speeds on 5Ghz, through walls, you are likely going to need a mesh network. Simple wifi repeaters are slower by their design as they have to dedicate half their capacity to passing the data to and fro between themselves and the router, before passing the rest onto you.
Say: 40Mb bandwidth, on 2.4Ghz, didn't lose much through a few walls - maybe you got 35Mb at a distance.
Now say 500Mb at 5Gh, you WILL lose more on 5Ghz through the same walls, plus you have a lot more to lose, so hence you are seeing significantly bigger drops.
2 Things 1) go into your router admin and see if it has a 2.4Ghz wifi option, disable 5Ghz, and test it, just for fun. 2) wifi performance has nothing to do with the speed of your internet , other than the fact that at 500Mb you are starting to push the limits of some versions of wifi.
I bet if you enable 2.4Ghz, disable 5Ghz (or name the 2.4 network differently so you can test it in isolation) you'll find you get 40Mb in the room you got 40Mb in before, because, 40Mb was the bandwidth limit at that range, on 24HGhz wifi.
To get big speeds on 5Ghz, through walls, you are likely going to need a mesh network. Simple wifi repeaters are slower by their design as they have to dedicate half their capacity to passing the data to and fro between themselves and the router, before passing the rest onto you.
Edited by Griffith4ever on Monday 16th June 07:30
What practical difference are the lower speeds making?
I made same move a couple of years ago. All seems fine. I use my laptop on Wi-Fi now whereas it was hard wired before. Router is in the front corner of the house upstairs. I do have a BT disc downstairs to give coverage into the rear extension.
I made same move a couple of years ago. All seems fine. I use my laptop on Wi-Fi now whereas it was hard wired before. Router is in the front corner of the house upstairs. I do have a BT disc downstairs to give coverage into the rear extension.
Edited by Sheepshanks on Monday 16th June 08:27
You need to log into you smart hub and see what speeds it reports for the fibre/broadband connection itself. If that's consistent and within the range specified in your contract then it sounds like you need a better hub/wifi.
When you say you moved your smart hub ...... do you have fibre to your house or is it connected to some crappy old outlet and what quality of cable did you use when you moved it?
FWIW I'm on a 900 deal - smart hub gets that but unless you are sat on top of it there is no way you get that over wifi unless you pay hundreds for a new hub.
When you say you moved your smart hub ...... do you have fibre to your house or is it connected to some crappy old outlet and what quality of cable did you use when you moved it?
FWIW I'm on a 900 deal - smart hub gets that but unless you are sat on top of it there is no way you get that over wifi unless you pay hundreds for a new hub.
Also due to the size and nature of the openreach network, you don't have a dedicated fibre to your home, all through way through from the 'exchange'. You're essentially sharing bandwidth.
The rural independents like Gigalclear give you your own dedicated fibre, end to end and much more stable speed from which to distribute through the house... that said of course walls, materials and thickness of obstruction are gonna have an impact.
The rural independents like Gigalclear give you your own dedicated fibre, end to end and much more stable speed from which to distribute through the house... that said of course walls, materials and thickness of obstruction are gonna have an impact.
Quickmoose said:
Also due to the size and nature of the openreach network, you don't have a dedicated fibre to your home, all through way through from the 'exchange'. You're essentially sharing bandwidth.
The rural independents like Gigalclear give you your own dedicated fibre, end to end and much more stable speed from which to distribute through the house... that said of course walls, materials and thickness of obstruction are gonna have an impact.
Hmmmm not convinced about that.The rural independents like Gigalclear give you your own dedicated fibre, end to end and much more stable speed from which to distribute through the house... that said of course walls, materials and thickness of obstruction are gonna have an impact.
Mainly because it could cost a bloody fortune!
Quickmoose said:
There are still residential altnets that provide 1:1...or there were when I was designing them...
I'm thinking Gigaclear primarily, but they aren't/weren't alone.
Ah fair enough.I'm thinking Gigaclear primarily, but they aren't/weren't alone.
As i said earlier, that must cost them a bloody fortune!?
We were contended on a 25:1 (i believe) and i have to say it was great, but at the end of the day, i guess it's down to the equipment and running of the system.
When we have ours installed a few years ago it was fantastic but when our contract was up I gave them a call and they gave us faster speed for the same money.
Was told to reboot everything on the specific date and it was bloody crap!
Strangely, when i called them and mentioned it, they basically deleted the 'package' from account, re-applied it and has been faultless ever since.
God knows why that should make any difference at all!
Anyway, soz for the thread hijack op.
sgrimshaw said:
Might be worth looking at the EE offering, I "upgraded" when my BT contract ran out, at the time everyhting was moving to EE.
The EE hub is MUCH better than the BT SmartHub2 which I had before, and I saved £40 per month too.
Worked for me too.The EE hub is MUCH better than the BT SmartHub2 which I had before, and I saved £40 per month too.
I replaced a great BT router with Vodafone when I changed to them, it was miserable. Swapped to EE recently and all good again.
It’s the hardware that lets some of the providers down.
Quickmoose said:
Also due to the size and nature of the openreach network, you don't have a dedicated fibre to your home, all through way through from the 'exchange'. You're essentially sharing bandwidth.
The rural independents like Gigalclear give you your own dedicated fibre, end to end and much more stable speed from which to distribute through the house... that said of course walls, materials and thickness of obstruction are gonna have an impact.
Your own dedicated fibre?The rural independents like Gigalclear give you your own dedicated fibre, end to end and much more stable speed from which to distribute through the house... that said of course walls, materials and thickness of obstruction are gonna have an impact.
It sounds like you are saying they literally have single strands from their kit to each customer’s house?
Quickmoose said:
Also due to the size and nature of the openreach network, you don't have a dedicated fibre to your home, all through way through from the 'exchange'. You're essentially sharing bandwidth.
The rural independents like Gigalclear give you your own dedicated fibre, end to end and much more stable speed from which to distribute through the house... that said of course walls, materials and thickness of obstruction are gonna have an impact.
Your own dedicated fibre?The rural independents like Gigalclear give you your own dedicated fibre, end to end and much more stable speed from which to distribute through the house... that said of course walls, materials and thickness of obstruction are gonna have an impact.
It sounds like you are saying they literally have single strands from their kit to each customer’s house?
noyb said:
Quickmoose said:
Also due to the size and nature of the openreach network, you don't have a dedicated fibre to your home, all through way through from the 'exchange'. You're essentially sharing bandwidth.
The rural independents like Gigalclear give you your own dedicated fibre, end to end and much more stable speed from which to distribute through the house... that said of course walls, materials and thickness of obstruction are gonna have an impact.
Your own dedicated fibre?The rural independents like Gigalclear give you your own dedicated fibre, end to end and much more stable speed from which to distribute through the house... that said of course walls, materials and thickness of obstruction are gonna have an impact.
It sounds like you are saying they literally have single strands from their kit to each customer s house?
Of course there will be other parts of the network which are overcommitted, they are not guaranteeing uncontended backhaul for each customer of course, but the bandwidth of the local link to the property is not shared.
Openreach's network is based on passive (GPON) technology in which the traffic from a bunch of neighbouring customers is all contained on the same fibre. If you are using an ISP service based on Openreach FTTP the traffic sent to/from your neighbour is reaching your equipment albeit uniquely encrypted. This does mean that there's bandwidth contention at the local level as well as anywhere else. It's also assymetric which is why the vast majority of Openreach-derived FTTP offerings are e.g. 900Mbps download but 100Mbps upload.
There are higher capacity variants of the same technology, some (Cityfibre for example) are using a 10Gbps symmetric version and Openreach I believe are trialling 25Gbps, so passive isn't inherently 'bad'. It's cheaper to deploy and also inherently flexible as higher bandwidth variants can be multiplexed on the same physical fibre, so upgrades can be rolled out with minimal disruption.
If you want a truly dedicated service without contention locally or anywhere else you're paying leased line prices.
I have pulled 40TB of data from my brother's 1Gbps symmetric Gigaclear connection and its sat at wire speed for the whole transfer, given he's paying a fraction of the price I am for a leased line, I would say that's a pretty good indicator their network isn't too congested. But obviously that can't account for all areas and/or times of day.
noyb said:
Quickmoose said:
Also due to the size and nature of the openreach network, you don't have a dedicated fibre to your home, all through way through from the 'exchange'. You're essentially sharing bandwidth.
The rural independents like Gigalclear give you your own dedicated fibre, end to end and much more stable speed from which to distribute through the house... that said of course walls, materials and thickness of obstruction are gonna have an impact.
Your own dedicated fibre?The rural independents like Gigalclear give you your own dedicated fibre, end to end and much more stable speed from which to distribute through the house... that said of course walls, materials and thickness of obstruction are gonna have an impact.
It sounds like you are saying they literally have single strands from their kit to each customer s house?
There are a few other altnets that offer it.
I've designed networks for CityFibre too and whilst streets ahead of Openreach they consolidate and share bandwidth "closer tot he home", meaning they can advertise as full fibre but they occupy the middle ground between the likes of Openreach and Gigaclear.
So with Openreach currently at the back of the grid tecjh wise
ten Virgin Media
then CityFibre
then the smaller, all fibre altnets
Largely the smaller companies that use Openreach networks above and below ground to reduce build costs have networks that split and share bandwidth to your detriment.
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