This topic

Is BT Complete Wifi any good - for me ;) ?

philip42h — Tue, 26 Dec 2023 16:41:00 GMT

We live in a barn conversion - so a rather long, mostly single storey, building with some very thick brick walls. The Smart Hub covers most of one end but manages to cover only part way down on the other side. I've partially overcome the 'challenge' with Ethernet over Powerline but that has the 'obvious' issues with roaming between access points and still doesn't reach the garage at the far end (modern cars seem to need wifi too apparently!) because the property is wired on multiple distribution boards and Ethernet over Powerline doesn't cross between distribution boards too well.

The Complete Wifi solution sounds ideal and I've been tempted for a while but it's hard to know whether it is a significantly better solution:

I find it hard to believe that with just one Disc the coverage will be any greater that with the SH2 alone. Do folk find single disc coverage significantly better than with the SH2 alone?
I am assuming here that the first Disc simply replaces the wifi from the SH2 - is this correct?
What is the mechanism for getting the second and third Discs? Is it relatively simple?
Could I buy and add a fourth Disc if necessary? I note that the 'guarantee' doesn't cover wifi in the garage and that's one of the things I would like to achieve.

And any other advise, hints or matters that I should be considering would be welcome ...

Thanks

Re: Is BT Complete Wifi any good - for me ;) ?

chrisjp — Tue, 26 Dec 2023 18:32:03 GMT

BT's Complete WiFi (black discs) just repeats the WiFi SSID from the SH2, so doesn't replace it. The first disc comes free from BT but I think to get extra ones you have to prove somehow to BT that your whole house is not covered - and as you say they won't guarantee garage coverage.
An alternative is Wholehome Wifi which are BT white discs, readily available from Amazon. You get 3 discs in the box, the first disc must be connected to the SH2 by ethernet cable and the other discs can be placed as you wish - guided by the BT app. In my fairly rambling house I found I needed a 4th disc to get good WiFi in my garage - but this too was readily purchaseable via Amazon. This system does give you a new WiFi network and SSID, so you can turn off the WiFi from the SH2.
Operation is seamless with devices switching from one disc to another as I move them around the house. I would recommend it.

Re: Is BT Complete Wifi any good - for me ;) ?

Les-Gibson — Tue, 26 Dec 2023 18:36:38 GMT

I think you are confusing Complete Wi-fi and Wholehome WI-fi.

The Wi-Fi from the hub is a required component for complete Wi-Fi to work, not so with Wholehome Wi-Fi where you can turn it off

Re: Is BT Complete Wifi any good - for me ;) ?

philip42h — Tue, 26 Dec 2023 19:09:27 GMT

@Les-Gibson No, Les, I'm not confusing Complete and Wholehome - I simply didn't have a clue that they were different things in the first place! 😉 Now I do, so thanks for that ... BT don't seems to do a great job of 'explaining' the products that they sell.

So, I could consider Wholehome Wifi, or indeed any of the competing third-party products, but that wasn't quite the 'thrust' of my question ...

As I now understand, the first Complete Wifi disc would effectively extend the range of existing wifi coverage of the SH2 - which would be a good next step.

Thanks both ...

Re: Is BT Complete Wifi any good - for me ;) ?

Anonymous — Tue, 26 Dec 2023 19:38:33 GMT

What service do you have? If it's FTTP & not the max speed then it may be possible to relocate the SH2 more centrally using the existing powerline adapters to connect to the ONT. That might be enough to reach each end.

If that's not an option then I'd look to a third party mesh system for a one-off purchase, rather than paying ongoing rent for a BT's Complete WiFi. That also opens up WiFi 6, but ideally you want to link each node by ethernet for backhaul.

Re: Is BT Complete Wifi any good - for me ;) ?

philip42h — Tue, 26 Dec 2023 20:02:37 GMT

I have Full Fibre 500 (so fttp). The upgrade offer would be to Full Fibre 900 Halo 3+ for an extra £1 pcm - so really not much more, and hence the temptation to go that way.

That would give me a full 900Mb broadband (that I really don't need but hey!), together with Hybrid Connect (which I suspect won't work for us since we have next to zero EE mobile signal here need to use WiFi Calling to get the mobiles to work - but it's the thought that counts), and up to three Complete Wifi discs (maybe) which should do the job provided that they are not defeated by the thickness of some of the walls.

I don't think that relocating the SH2 is an option. I could position it to the other side of a particularly thick wall but that would simply move the problem to the other end of the house (I suspect).

Ethernet 'everywhere' would be sensible, but routing that the full length of the barn would be a bit of a challenge ...

I'm still attracted to the Complete WiFi offering, but am getting the impression that "the forum" is leaning toward an add-on mesh wifi solution instead?

Re: Is BT Complete Wifi any good - for me ;) ?

Anonymous — Tue, 26 Dec 2023 20:16:38 GMT

I guess for that little extra there's no harm in trying the BT disks. No idea how the £100 guarantee works but worst case it could be a nice contribution towards a third party solution!

You may be able to get some signal from the Hybrid box if you fit external aerials & can mount up high

Re: Is BT Complete Wifi any good - for me ;) ?

c64z86 — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 03:14:08 GMT

I don't have much advice to give sorry but I want to give a heads up. The max wifi speed you are likely to see from a disc is 200-250mbps, and that is when you are near it, because it is taking the hub's signal and rebroadcasting it, so that cuts it's wifi speed down. The hub gives much faster wifi speed if you are closer to it.

You will get better speeds if you connect your devices via ethernet to the discs though! I have my PS5 connected via ethernet to a disc that is diagonally upstairs and through one thin and one thick wall from the hub, and I get 400-500. When I use wifi instead the max speed i get from the disc is usually 200-250. (Yep sorry guys I was weak and caved in and upgraded to 500mbps very recently so my games and patches will download faster :P)

I just wanted to give a heads up, so you don't get a shock when you are not getting anywhere near 500mpbs to your laptop or wifi devices in other parts of the house where the discs will be.

250mpbs still good for 4k videos and gaming though! 😊

Re: Is BT Complete Wifi any good - for me ;) ?

ptrduffy — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 10:48:01 GMT

I live in a single-storey property built around 1900, so with solid brick walls everywhere. I have the SH2 is a cupboard at one end of the flat (where FTTP comes in, and where I have ethernet cables coming in from most rooms). All of the room are off a hall that is T-shaped, roughly 20m on the longer dimension, and 9m on the shorter.

The furthest distance from the hub to opposite corners of the flat is about 25m, and passing through 2 or 3 brick walls.

With one disc, I found that I could extend the WiFi signal fully along one of the hall dimensions, but not both - so I could get it fully along the 20m hall, and into the rooms off one side of that, but not into the rooms off the other 'branch' of the T, or vice versa. With 2 discs, one placed in each 'branch' of the T, I get a good signal everywhere - by which I mean around 200 Mbps in each room.

Getting the extra disc was simple - I thought I would have to jump through hoops to prove that I needed it, but I just phoned CS and they sent one out straight away.

Re: Is BT Complete Wifi any good - for me ;) ?

c64z86 — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 12:57:15 GMT

If you do go for fibre 900, just be aware that's a lot of mbps that you will lose in a part of the house where the hub will not be. 200-250 vs 900? That's a big drop.

I know we hardly utilise more than 200mbps for everyday things, but I still would would suggest try and make the best of what you paid for by putting the devices that need the most speed near the hub. Like gaming PCs and consoles. Then you can really enjoy it 😄

But if you can't do this, having 900 will still for sure ensure that each member of the household in a different part of the house will not cause slowdowns for others that are using the internet. For example it can handle multiple 4K streaming devices at once, while a couple of devices are downloading big updates\games, with ease.

So what you will lose for in raw speed, you would still gain in bandwidth.

Re: Is BT Complete Wifi any good - for me ;) ?

philip42h — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 12:53:26 GMT

@ptrduffy Thanks. I now know of someone who has done this successfully, and I guess we need a disc every 8-10 metres to get good coverage. 200Mbps in each room would be sublime - I'd be very happy with around 50Mbps reliably.

Re: Is BT Complete Wifi any good - for me ;) ?

philip42h — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 13:09:53 GMT

@Anonymous does the Complete Wifi disc support use of an Ethernet connection for the backhaul? The 'instructions' show the use of Ethernet for set-up but 'imply' that you switch to wireless in use.

I'm assuming that it does since you suggested that approach, and, presumably this would allow the Discs to be placed slightly further apart without excessive loss of speed ...

This would give me another option in respect of the rather thick and impenetrable walls - namely to use the existing Ethernet over Powerline stuff to provide an Ethernet backhaul. It manages speeds between 500 Mbps and 1 Gbps which if stable might help considerably ...

Re: Is BT Complete Wifi any good - for me ;) ?

philip42h — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 13:21:16 GMT

@c64z86 I am very well aware that having 900 Mbps is pretty laughable, and ironic, since when I truly needed speed I was limited to 1 Mbps at best! FTTP arrive after I retired ...

My desktop is directly connected to the SH2 so I currently benefit from 75 Mbps upload and 500 Mbps download from that box which is handy for back-ups to the cloud and such like, I doubt that having 900 Mbps will make things much faster since I am probably already limited by the bandwidth available at the far end rather than what is available to me.

TBH 50Mbps everywhere would be fine - I just 'need' to stretch coverage a little further than it goes today, and ensure that the wife can roam between access points without dropping the connection ... 😉

Re: Is BT Complete Wifi any good - for me ;) ?

c64z86 — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 13:31:28 GMT

Oh yeah it's really awesome to have that speed, and just think that one day in the far future 900mbps will probably be the minimum needed for holographic virtual reality interfaces or something like 32k video 😆

I know it might sound silly, but I often wonder how fast the network connections are aboard starships like Voyager on Star Trek? I mean it takes place at least 300 years in future, so their speeds will probably be insane compared to anything we can dream of today! Heck the home internet connections back on Earth alone would probably be something like 1tbps or even 1pbps per second.

So I'm more than ready for 900mpbs to become the norm, then I can upgrade to it for cheap! 😄

Yeah the discs are great at handling roaming, my phone and laptop changes seamlessly from the hub to a wifi disc and back as I move through the house. I even tested it out while watching 1080p youtube and it didn't even hiccup when connecting to the disc and back. If you have an older device, it might not be so seamless though, and by older I mean something like a Windows 7-XP laptop.

Re: Is BT Complete Wifi any good - for me ;) ?

Anonymous — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 14:01:05 GMT

@philip42hwrote:
does the Complete Wifi disc support use of an Ethernet connection for the backhaul?

My suggestion of daisy-chaining was really in terms of a third party option, as they usually have at least two LAN ports. So one in & one out to the next disc. The BT discs only have a single LAN port so this wouldn't be possible. Assuming they support it (I know very little about them), you would have to run ethernet from each disc back to the SH2 or an intermediate switch. That may be possible with powerline or you may run into similar issues as you have now.

But having said all that your expectations/requirements are quite modest, so WiFi only may well suffice.

Re: Is BT Complete Wifi any good - for me ;) ?

philip42h — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 15:53:26 GMT

... and searching through other threads it would appear that the answer is 'yes' - I can use an Ethernet backhaul to get through an extra thick wall!

https://community.bt.com/t5/Archive-Staging/Connect-black-disc-to-hub-via-8port-switch/m-p/2176630#M190276

and others ...

I'm definitely running out of excuses not to try this out ... 🙂

Re: Is BT Complete Wifi any good - for me ;) ?

philip42h — Sun, 21 Jan 2024 10:09:07 GMT

A quick post to complete this thread ...

I waited 'til Christmas was over and upgraded to Full Fibre 900 with BT Halo 3+ so I now have 900 Mbps down, 110 Mbps up measurably delivered to the SH2.

With the SH2 and a pair of Complete WiFi black discs I have reliable WiFi throughout the property - which is exactly what BT promise:

At the extremities it is no more than 20 Mbps; at best - i.e. over WiFi a few centimetres from a disc - I'll get around 100 Mbps which is good enough for me for now at least. To do better with Complete WiFi I'd need 5 or 6 discs so that I could put one in each room.
I get a faster connection using the existing Ethernet over Powerline kit so I now have a hybrid set-up using Complete WiFi connections for mobile devices and EoP for TVs and the like that are static.

The upgrade also provided me with Hybrid Connect and, as expected, the 4G connection is rubbish - officially designated as 'poor', shown as one bar and reported at around -112dBm. I finally got around to testing it this morning when no one else was about by pulling the WAN cable from the SH2:

It took a little while longer than I expected to fail over - but it did in the end.
Download speed was around 30 Mbps; upload closer to 1 Mbps which is surprisingly acceptable for an emergency backup over 'unusable' 4G!
It didn't fail back when I reconnected the WAN cable. Or, to be precise, after several minutes of it not doing so, I restarted the SH2 to recover normal service.

So, all in all, for an extra £1 pcm it seems pretty good value this time around ... 😁

Re: Is BT Complete Wifi any good - for me ;) ?

c64z86 — Sun, 21 Jan 2024 10:43:01 GMT

Cool!

One benefit of multiple discs is that they also have a dedicated channel where they communicate to one another and shuffle data around. So your speed may indeed improve on that disc by having another one in between it and the router. Not a whole lot, but it will improve.

Re: Is BT Complete Wifi any good - for me ;) ?

philip42h — Sun, 21 Jan 2024 12:58:31 GMT

Reading your reply @c64z86 reminded me of another couple of things that I meant to check:

I tried without any success at all to extend the network using the Ethernet port on the back of the Complete WiFi disc - though the device that I was attempting to extend to proved to be rather suspect so the test wasn't conclusive!
As others have said elsewhere, you can use the Ethernet port on the back of the Complete WiFi disc for backhaul - just as you do when setting up the disc in the first place - and that does work ... just plug-in an Ethernet cable and the device will use that for backhaul, but ...

My powerline network gives between 500 Mbps and 1000 Mbps between nodes and a gigabit connection back to the SH2. So I assumed that connecting the Complete WiFi disc to a powerline node should give me a better than 500 Mbps connection for backhaul ... using my 'phone a few centimetres away from the disk and SpeedTest I managed a download speed of 150 Mbps with the Ethernet connection in place and 200 Mbps with the Ethernet cable removed - which wasn't quite what I expected and I don't know where the 'bottleneck' might be.

Using an Ethernet backhaul is certainly an option if you need to place a Complete WiFi disc 'further away' than the wireless will travel.

I probably should get around to adding the third disk at some point, in the interests of science, but ... 😉