This topic

Hub Horrors, Disc Dilemmas, Speed Shocks - BT H/W - Bin it?

originalracingsnake — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 15:28:39 GMT

I'm on FTTP, and the 500 speed package with whole home, I have 3 black discs in a 3 story 90's brick built house.

The hub is located on the ground floor, I have a disc on the Ground, 1st and 2nd floor.

I'm on my 3rd hub as the others were sooooooo slllloooooooooowwwwwwwwww I thought maybe the air had turned to treacle, or I had fallen back into a parallel dimension where I was on dial up and hearing the meeeeep-meep-brrrr-bip-mi-merrr-screeeeeeee of a modem downloading some ASCII images that look like boobs from 10 ft away. The latest Hub has been better, but recent days have seen the WiFi from the top floor drop to 2MBps, and those ASCII images are taking an age to form on my CRT. Teams calls have to be done audio only.

Now, I have run a WiFi analyser, and can see the channels in use by the hub. I can't configure the hub onto a less congested channel as you can't manually select from ALL of the channels, only about 5 or so. Tried "smart" settings again which short term worked, then it all went slow again. Essentially the further you are from the hub, the worse it gets. Though you don't have to go far. Wife works in a room right next to the hub, it's on her desk. 470MBps.

Leave that room and go to the one next door, which has a disc in it, 60.. Kitchen? No disc but is running 40. All other discs refuse to serve up anything over 40, and certainly NEVER 100.

Yes I've used the BT app to site the discs but that doesn't always meet with SWMBO idea of a Feng Shui utopian, clutterless set up of the discs and associated perches for those discs. They ought not to be SO sensitive to placement in any case, it is like they are Hollywood A listers demanding the finest views, wines, and tofu. I'm sick of them and their fussiness. So my question is:

Do I spend on a completely new set-up, put the BT equipment in the cupboard with the Breville toasted sarnie maker, George Foreman Grill, Bread maker and electric tin opener, or do I keep on bothering BT for yet another engineer to come round in his blue overshoes, shrug whilst scrolling Facebook, recommend I ask for a new router, and remain this stupid situation all whilst paying top dollar for it?

My concern would be finding that some new fangled mesh set-up is just as slow as the BT stuff is.

Thanks for getting this far. Anyone for a beer?

Re: Hub Horrors, Disc Dilemmas, Speed Shocks - BT H/W - Bin it?

Keith_Beddoe — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 15:51:16 GMT

As the second and third discs are only repeating the signal from the first one, the speed will drop on each hop, as each disc has to receive data, and then re-transmit it. This has the effect of reducing the throughput.

As they are all competing for connection timeslots on the same channel, performance is going to be poor.

Ideally you would be better running an Ethernet cable to each floor, and connecting the discs to that, or better still, separate wireless access points running on different channels.

Powerline adapters may also give better results.

https://www.tp-link.com/uk/home-networking/powerline/tl-wpa4220-tkit/

A third party mesh may work better, however it may also operate in daisy-chaining mode, if other discs cannot connect to the master disc.

Re: Hub Horrors, Disc Dilemmas, Speed Shocks - BT H/W - Bin it?

originalracingsnake — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 17:18:49 GMT

Keith,

Thanks for the quick reply. I hadn't realised the are daisy chained, explains why the 3rd floor is the worst... Oddly enough I did try my old TP-LINK powerlines today but the office circuit is not the same as the router one, so it won't work.

Cabling not an option either as the house is so complex and it would be impossible to conceal it all, cables on the outside would be a no-no too.

I'm leaning towards the Deco X55 AX3000 mesh AP's for now. Reports and reviews are good.

Thanks for the input.

Re: Hub Horrors, Disc Dilemmas, Speed Shocks - BT H/W - Bin it?

Keith_Beddoe — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 17:33:13 GMT

I use the Deco E4, originally with three nodes, but added a fourth to reach the garage at the bottom of the garden. You would need a Deco with a faster Ethernet port.

I have a 9Mb BT ADSL connection, and a Three Mobile 4G connection which are interchangeable. The mobile broadband is quite a bit faster, but has a limited data allowance.

The TP Decos seem to work very well, and the information provided by the app, is excellent.

My Deco nodes all link back to the master one connected to my internal network, so there is no daisy chaining.

I used to have a Tenda Nova MW3 mesh, but it always used channel 6 on the 2.4GHz band, and it was not possible to change it.

The Deco however, finds the best channel out of the 12 ones normally available. Its sitting on channel 5 at the moment, which works well with lots of external devices around the garden and house.

Re: Hub Horrors, Disc Dilemmas, Speed Shocks - BT H/W - Bin it?

dave44 — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 20:32:15 GMT

I'm using a mix of Decos and think they're great

2 x XE75 in the house (one downstairs and one upstairs) using the 6GHz bandwidth as dedicated backhaul between them, and I can get around 700mbps WiFi from both nodes.

And I also have an M5 in an outbuilding which is daisy chained off the second XE75. I can usually still get between 100 and 150 mbps from this node.

Re: Hub Horrors, Disc Dilemmas, Speed Shocks - BT H/W - Bin it?

originalracingsnake — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 09:18:47 GMT

Popular opinion seems to be in favour of the Deco system.

Last question, has anyone here replaced the hub/discs with the Deco, and seen a massive uplift in performance? I know it depends on a lot of environmental factors and my mileage may vary, but it'd be interesting to hear.

Re: Hub Horrors, Disc Dilemmas, Speed Shocks - BT H/W - Bin it?

originalracingsnake — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 09:20:40 GMT

Are you guys that use Decos, retaining the BT Hub, or are you going solo on the Decos?

I have FTTP, so could in theory, plug the ethernet cable from the Openreach socket directly into the Deco, enter the username and password, and be rid of the Hub.

I've heard BT don't like this? Is that anecdotal, or proven?

Re: Hub Horrors, Disc Dilemmas, Speed Shocks - BT H/W - Bin it?

licquorice — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 11:32:46 GMT

@originalracingsnake wrote:

I've heard BT don't like this? Is that anecdotal, or proven?

Total nonsense, BT don't care a jot what router you use.

Re: Hub Horrors, Disc Dilemmas, Speed Shocks - BT H/W - Bin it?

naylor2006 — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 11:49:18 GMT

I use an ER-X connected directly to the ONT and I have BT Wholehome AC2600 Mesh covering WIFI for my house. The walls are all so thick any ISP provided WIFI AP or Router barely makes it to the next room.

My property isnt even that big but I picked up addon disks off ebay for half the retail price and I have 8 now, which if you want full speed in every room, at least in my house this is required.

The BT Wholehome Mesh disks do not use a separate backend WIFI network to talk to each other which some other 'better' solutions do, this removes some of the weight on the daisy chaining. I can expect in the best case scenario for the WIFI speed to drop around half each hop. Over time I have just found ways to get ethernet to each Mesh point, 7 of the 8 now are connected to the backend router, just need to figure out the kitchen WH disk....

Sometimes Powerline Adapters connected to the WIFI mesh disks can improve things, not from my experience though, can depend on wiring and interference, I never got over 40Mbps from Powerline in my house, ethernet is the way unless you have some old Coax already in the wall and then you can use MOCA adapters, I used these for one hook up and its amazing, 2.5 Gbit wired!

Re: Hub Horrors, Disc Dilemmas, Speed Shocks - BT H/W - Bin it?

originalracingsnake — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 12:17:11 GMT

Good news, many thanks.

Re: Hub Horrors, Disc Dilemmas, Speed Shocks - BT H/W - Bin it?

dave44 — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 19:37:25 GMT

I don't use the BT Hub. I also have FTTP and have my Deco in router mode. It's basic as far as routers go, but then so is the BT Hub and at least the Deco allows you to change DNS servers.

It's not that BT don't like you doing it., they don't care. It's just that it is unsupported. Don't call them and ask for help setting it up, and if you ever have a fault they will ask you to test it with their provided equipment, which is reasonable I suppose.

Re: Hub Horrors, Disc Dilemmas, Speed Shocks - BT H/W - Bin it?

naylor2006 — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 19:44:18 GMT

Yeah it’s totally reasonable for BT not to support you with a 3rd party router.

Having said that they are one of the easier ISP’s to get going with 3rd party, everyone has the same PPPOE username and password and the chap authentication method is widely supported. Most PPPOE wizards on a factory reset 3rd party will work perfectly.

Sky for example use DHCPv6 PD on their FTTP, which isn’t as straight forward.

I use an ER-X with my FTTP 900 and it’s bang on.

Re: Hub Horrors, Disc Dilemmas, Speed Shocks - BT H/W - Bin it?

originalracingsnake — Mon, 11 Mar 2024 09:43:07 GMT

Thank you all for the encouragement and advice here. I'm going to be buying a Deco setup today. Once that is done, I'll let you know what I bought, and when it is setup, how it is performing in comparison to my BT equipment.

Re: Hub Horrors, Disc Dilemmas, Speed Shocks - BT H/W - Bin it?

naylor2006 — Mon, 11 Mar 2024 10:13:35 GMT

If you know what youre doing its always best to use your own gear, just keep the BT Hub in a cupboard somewhere incase there is ever an issue and you need support.

The faster internet gets the more the issue of WIFI comes up, alot of customers are like, "I pay for 900Mbps and yet I only get 150Mbps what the hell is going on?" Without the knowhow of going on your own you are kind of stuck.

Its almost pointless going for the top wack connection if devices are relying on WIFI. If say you wanted at least 500Mbps of WIFI in every room you are going to need alot of WIFI AP's. I dont need it but I have a Wholehome disc in every room with them all connected to the ethernet back end, the AC2600 WH discs will give me about 400-500Mbps in each room to WIFI devices whilst I have 900 at my direct ethernet. Home networking is a bit of a hobby so overkill is fun.

Hope you enjoy the Deco!

Re: Hub Horrors, Disc Dilemmas, Speed Shocks - BT H/W - Bin it?

originalracingsnake — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 09:46:59 GMT

*** UPDATE ***

I ordered a pair of TP-Link Deco XE75's. Ordered from Amazon at 10am, arrived the SAME day at 7pm...

This is how I got on....

Opened the box, pulled the units out. I downloaded the app by scanning the QR code in the "Quick Start" guide, fired it up and went through the procedure.

Ensure you have data coverage for the mobile you are running the TP Link app on.

Unplug the BT router and plug in the ethernet cable from the Openreach box into the Deco RJ45 port.

The app will find the Deco, run a "wizard" to get you connected to your ISP, all I needed was the BT username and password (Googled it) and after 5 minutes, we were in business. Configured the SSID, password, and did a speed test. All good so far.

I went up to the 3rd floor of the house, plugged in the second Deco, waited for 2 minutes, done.

I'm getting 490Mbps next to the Deco downstairs. 150 in the room next to it which used to be 20! 250 in the kitchen which was 50.

Upstairs, I'm seeing 160-200MBps, it was, wait for it......... <=20Mbps.

Am I happy I spent the money? No. Am I pleased with the performance, ease of set-up and stability? YES!

Moral of the story here? If you want whole home coverage, and have a house that is not made from straw and sticks, and your current BT kit isn't cutting it, buy some Decos. I allowed BT 3 chances to fix the issues and they either wouldn't, couldn't or just hoped I'd go away and fix it at my own expense/time. Which I have.

Re: Hub Horrors, Disc Dilemmas, Speed Shocks - BT H/W - Bin it?

naylor2006 — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 10:01:50 GMT

Total win for you and also so satisfying solving something yourself, and now you can enjoy the freedom of your own gear.

Like I said, I actually use BT Wholehome but the kit you buy yourself which you can use for any ISP, I used to use it with my Virgin Cable, there are no stud style partitions in my house so every wall is a problem, I have alot of AP's to cover the house.

Hey over time you may find ways of getting ethernet to those other DECO's....and once they are all hooked up your going to be getting huge speed in every room!

They are WIFI 6E arent there those ones so you should be able to get well over 500Mbps if the client device supports it, of course that will only be achievable from ones that are connected via ethernet to the router, as you can see the daisy chain hops do dramatically decrease performance.

Chuffed for you, just dont end up like I did, obsessed and end up with 8 AP's all hooked back to ethernet because you want a pointless 500Mbps WIFI in every room 🤣