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When Will WiFi 6 be with BT ?

Azorees — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 14:38:08 GMT

I have the BT 900 FTTP Package but as my hub is in the hallway and my PC in the dining room ( Wi-Fi 6 AX card installed ) to get the full speed of what i pay for i have to run an ethernet cable from my hub to my PC.

If i use my Wi-Fi on my PC and connect direct to the hub the most i see is 200mb/s, This make no difference to the speed if i put a Wi-Fi disc only feet away from my PC and connect to the disc or connect direct to the Hub in the hallway ( Wi-Fi disc turned off ).

So i know that my WIFI card is connecting at full speeds to either direct to the hub which is approx. 30ft away or to the disc which is 6ft away, so connection is not the issue.

The issue is that the BT Hub 2 is only Wi-Fi 5 enabled which hampers your connection speeds because Wi-Fi 5 rarely gets over 200mp/s over Wi-Fi.

Wi-Fi 6 has been out for a while now and other ISP's give you Wi-Fi 6 enabled Hubs so why has BT not released one yet and upgraded customers that are still stuck with dated technology.

the speed guarantee with the 900 package is 700mb/s , that's all well and good because i get just a tad over 1 gb/s coming into my house, so the connection from the cabinet to my hub is spot on.

The speed limiter is the Hub itself , so unless you can connect via ethernet cable to all your Wi-Fi 6 enabled devices there is no point paying for a package over 200 mb/s.

I have seen rumours of Wi-Fi 6 routers to be rolled out and some saying some testing is being done, i saw these last year but yet we are still stuck with Wi-Fi 5 Hubs.

Is BT going to release Wi-Fi 6 enabled hubs or do i have to look for another ISP at the end of my contract so i can get rid of the unsightly and trip hazard of an Ethernet cable, or just downgrade my package to the smallest because all i can get over Wi-Fi is 200mb/s .

I know i can buy a 3rd party WiFi 6 router but as a BT customer i should not have to shell out £100+ for a Wi-Fi 6 router because BT won't provide one with their faster than 200 mb/s packages.

Re: When Will WiFi 6 be with BT ?

pippincp — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 15:03:03 GMT

Why did you have the ONT fitted in the hallway? Did you not ask if it was possible to have it installed elsewhere? Most Openreach engineers are more than willing to facillitate customer pereferences where physically possible.

Re: When Will WiFi 6 be with BT ?

Azorees — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 15:16:42 GMT

The engineer told me there was too many right angled corners so there would be a possibility of the fibre cable breaking , but when i mentioned this to the support team they said he could have put it to where you wanted. now to have it moved which annother engineer told me it was possible i would have to pay for it.

Re: When Will WiFi 6 be with BT ?

licquorice — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 15:20:06 GMT

Fibre cable is nothing like as fragile as the so called 'engineers' would have you believe. As long as a bend radius of about a £2 coin is adhered to, there will be no problems.

Re: When Will WiFi 6 be with BT ?

brookheather — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 15:28:45 GMT

Here is a recent article about the upcoming SmartHub 3 with Wifi 6 though it may only be available initially on the higher 1.6Gbps tier so if you need higher wifi speeds you are going to have to buy your own router or at least a Wifi 6 access point.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2023/06/isp-ee-uk-launch-1-6gbps-full-fibre-broadband-plan-and-wifi-6-router.html

Re: When Will WiFi 6 be with BT ?

Cliffycliff — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 22:35:58 GMT

@Azorees Assuming your disc is WiFi 6? If so you will need to connect your disc to your hub via ethernet then the disc will connect to your PC with WiFi 6. If teh Disc is 30ft away i would expect to see speeds of 500Mbs at 80Hz or maybe 700 at 160hz. You need WiFi 6E to max out your 900Mbs connection but that would depend on alot of variables (direct lkine of site for one) put even a thin wall or door in between disc and PC and speeds will drastically drop

Re: When Will WiFi 6 be with BT ?

Azorees — Wed, 09 Aug 2023 08:10:47 GMT

I read that one earlier but i also read one a long while back saying more or less the same thing, so i guess i will just have to wait and see.

If not i might have to swap to Virgin or go back to Sky as Sky Max hubs are WiFi 6.

Re: When Will WiFi 6 be with BT ?

Azorees — Wed, 09 Aug 2023 08:20:36 GMT

Not sure if the Disc is wifi 6 or not but if i connect the Disc to the Hub via ethernet i get around 3 - 400mb/s.

If i connect the Disc to the PC via Ethernet i get the same result.

Connecting via Ethernet to the Hub i get max speeds.

I'm guessing the Discs are Wifi 5 Discs simply because the Hub is Wifi 5 and i can't see BT making the Discs Wifi 6 when the Hubs are Wifi 5 , but i could be wrong.

I can't see why BT is so far behind the competitors if we don't get Wifi 6 soon i might go back to Sky, I left Sky ( which i had 0 problems with ) for Vodafone ( which was horrible ) and then went to BT and tbh i have had 0 problems with BT too and so far happy with the stability, But if no Wifi 6 soon i might leave and go back to an ISP that already has it.

As it stands at the moment i have to have an Ethernet cable running from my hub to my PC to get the full speeds i pay for.

Re: When Will WiFi 6 be with BT ?

Ewan1 — Wed, 09 Aug 2023 15:54:51 GMT

The latest WIFI disks from BT support WIFI 6 however I do not think that they support WIFI 6E

Re: When Will WiFi 6 be with BT ?

Azorees — Thu, 10 Aug 2023 22:13:44 GMT

That's good to know but i got mine about 12 month ago so i'm guessing they are wifi 5 discs

Re: When Will WiFi 6 be with BT ?

Ewan1 — Fri, 11 Aug 2023 11:26:39 GMT

Actually I made a mistake BT do two very similar products.

BT whole home (now discontinued which was WIFI 6)

BT Complete Home which is what you have which is WIFI 5

Apologies

Re: When Will WiFi 6 be with BT ?

Monir — Wed, 16 Aug 2023 21:52:54 GMT

If you're trying to max your connection via WiFi then it's not just all about whether it's WiFi 5 or 6. MiMo streams also matter quite a bit. You'd want to get a WiFi card that's 4x4 mimo capable, currently there are no WiFi 6 4x4 mimo cards but there is a WiFi 5 one. It's the Asus pce ac88. Although it's WiFi 5 it can reach about max throughout speeds of about 1.1Gbps download when right next to the router and about 700-800mbps when there is a solid brick wall and some distance in between them. Getting a good WiFi 5 card that takes advantage of your routers mimo capabilities may be more important than getting a normal WiFi 6 card that can't fully take advantage of mimo capabilities(there aren't currently any 4x4 mimo WiFi 6 cards available, and I don't think there will be for a while). May I ask what WiFi 6 card are you using?

Re: When Will WiFi 6 be with BT ?

Azorees — Thu, 17 Aug 2023 06:37:24 GMT

all it comes up with is Intel (R) Wi-Fi 6 AX200 160mhz , Says its capable of 866mb/s .

even hard wired to a disc it only gets 200 - 300 mb/s and there's only 1 wall in-between the connection.

i can put the laptop right next to the hub and it will only hit 300 mbps but that could be just a Wi-Fi 5 card not sure.

but i did put the disc right next to the hub and hard wire the laptop to the disc and it reached the same speeds, so i'm not sure if its the Wi-Fi card and buying a new 4x4 MiMo card would make a difference.

Re: When Will WiFi 6 be with BT ?

Monir — Thu, 17 Aug 2023 12:23:55 GMT

Is it a laptop or desktop pc that your using that's in the dining room? If it's a laptop I do t think you'll be able to get a 4x4 mimo card as it has to be connected via pcie. Anyway this might sound complicated, but try turning your 2.4ghz off on the hub and leave only 5ghz on and reconnect the WiFi disc to the hub using wps.(I'd recommend WPS instead of ethernet). You should reset your WiFi disc before doing this as it should connect wirelessly to the hub at 5ghz. After its connected leave the disc very close to the hub and plug an ethernet cable from your laptop into the disc. Also it would be better to disconnect any devices while your doing this just so the disc can try and utilise all 4x4mimo 5ghz streams. I'm not sure what difference it might make to have some devices connected while doing this, but I think it might mean that the disc won't be able to use all 4 mimo streams which could result in lower speeds. Because the bt smart hub2 doesn't have MU-MIMO, you can only have a max of 4 streams going to one device. If MU-MIMO is introduced into the SH3 then you could have 4x4 mimo speeds on all of your 5ghz devices but unfortunately there is no MU-MIMO just yet. Also the 160mhz WiFi card won't be able to use the 160mhz channel since the hub can only transmit 5ghz signals of 80mhz. All of our issues would mostly be fixed if BT released a hub that has mu mimo and can sperate the bands.

Re: When Will WiFi 6 be with BT ?

Ewan1 — Thu, 17 Aug 2023 14:40:05 GMT

Which would give better performance running an ethernet cable from the hub to the disk or just relying on the MIMO via wifi between the hub and disk

Re: When Will WiFi 6 be with BT ?

Monir — Thu, 17 Aug 2023 14:43:37 GMT

Better performance for your pc?

Re: When Will WiFi 6 be with BT ?

Ewan1 — Thu, 17 Aug 2023 14:52:41 GMT

I got the disk today and it does increase the strength of the WIFI signal, however the speed to my mobile for example is about half of what it is when it is connecting directly to the hub (at the same equivalent distance from both). I was thinking that if I connected the Disk and Hub together using an ethernet cable whether the speed would likely be the same as I have removed the hub to Disk hop, however would the Disk still extend the WIFI properly?

Re: When Will WiFi 6 be with BT ?

Cliffycliff — Thu, 17 Aug 2023 14:56:52 GMT

Always best when possible to connect the disc to the hub via Ethernet. WiFi still a long way off comparing to a wired connection especially if BT ever get around to giving us 2.5Gbps LAN ports.

At least with a Ethernet cable to Disc your disc will have access to a full 1Gbps of bandwidth

Re: When Will WiFi 6 be with BT ?

Monir — Thu, 17 Aug 2023 15:02:06 GMT

If you keep the disc a fair distance away from the hub with an ethernet cable connected to it from the hub then yes, it would extend the signal. I think the wireless speed would be he same but you should try it out and see. I dont have a disc so I'm not sure. I can help guide you though. The problem with this is what wireless band you'd be connecting to. You'd get higher range but speed may vary depending on which band your on when connecting wirelessly. Would you want higher range or higher speed? Have you left only 5ghz on on hub and tested speed without the disc, compare It when you're using the disc together with the hub.

Re: When Will WiFi 6 be with BT ?

Monir — Thu, 17 Aug 2023 15:05:09 GMT

Yes, you're definitely right there, but remember speed from the disc will also depend on how many devices are connected to it, even though they may not be actively downloading or uploading data. They will still impact speed.