Full Fibre 900 WiFi speeds

[jedpause]

Actually, think ykubwull/should get much more than 200..

I have the old Home Hub v1 and get 310 on my 330/50 service... I have a SH2 now also as I upgrade to 900 tomorrow, will let you know how it goes, cheers

[smithjones]

Yes maybe he should, but everyones circumstances are going to be different. All depends on whats going on locally.

[Walthamcity]

I get speeds of up to 300 close to the router, in the rest of the house (with BT Complete Wifi) I get around 200.

I suspect that a faster wifi-router and mesh network might speed things up. It is very hard to find reviews online with a clear limit to the speed as most reviewers seem to have 50mbps internet connections at best!

[smithjones]

Wifi 6 really is for these new 900Mb speeds.

Anyone that upgrades with only wireless devices really, I hate to say it, wasted their money.  Unless you have an distributed mesh AP system with each AP hardwired to a central switch, maybe then you could have multiple wireless devices pulling 200-300Mb each.

Even wired LAN speeds are just in the realms of 900Mb, very little overhead left there.

[Walthamcity]

My Wi-Fi download speeds have more than doubled since upgrading my broadband from my previous “ultrafast” package, so I’m not unhappy, but glad I went for 500 and not 900!

I also find it quite exciting that it is the Wi-Fi that is now the limiting factor for my internet speed. A few years ago that would have seemed crazy. I think I was on a 15Mbps package in 2016!

[smithjones]

Which is why I invested in a router that has 10Gbe LAN as I currently have BT FTTP and im just waiting for go live on Cityfibre 900Mb service, so I'll have 1800Mbps to feed to my network.
Not because I need it, its because I can.

[Catune]

I had this same issue, though, for the 500 Mbps package. In my case, I hardly get 70 Mbps Wi-Fi speed but works okay when wired (approximately 450 Mbps speed). I'm not an expert in this field, however, I think the problem is with the hub not allowing users to have 2 SSIDs. That is, the hub does not allow users to have two Wi-Fi networks where one will be for the 2.4 GHz band and the other for the 5 GHz band. The hub adopts what it calls Smart hub. Smart hub automatically selects the frequency band of your Wi-Fi connection and in most cases, it uses the 2.4 GHz band which in turn determines the Wi-Fi speed. The 2.4 GHz band has a longer range but slower speed while the 5 GHz band has a shorter range but faster speed. The range of the 5 GHz band is short because higher frequency bands are easily inhibited by obstacles such as walls and floors, thus the reason why the Hub 2 mostly uses the 2.4 GHz band. The only way to use the 5 GHz band on the Hub 2 router is to turn off the 2.4 GHz band but that comes with a cost.  One of which is that you may experience intermittent network as you move away from the router or no network at all. Another is that equipment that works with just the 2.4 GHz band (such as wireless printers, Sky Q multi-screen box, smart home devices) might not work. However, if you manage to turn off the 2.4 GHz band and use only the 5 GHz band near the router, you may be able to get appreciable speed.

I contacted BT with this issue, and they confirmed that the SSID of the Hub 2 router cannot be split and the where happy to cancel my contract instead. However, since I'm in a new build property where only BT can supply the broadband, I had no other option than to stick with them but reduce the package to the 150 Mbps package. With Virgin broadband (which is the only network I have used before now), once you connect to the two SSIDs, your device automatically connects to the 5 GHz band whenever possible. This makes their Wi-Fi speed a lot faster and reliable than BT or any other network for that matter. Also, the speed advertised matches or at least close to the Wi-Fi speed you get. Though, they still have their issues.

[ThinkPadUser]

Splitting SSIDs is unlikely to change anything since your devices should be smart enough to connect to the faster 5GHz band if they're compatible. Most devices are smart enough to switch between 2.4 and 5GHz when it's available. 

More likely, you have an older 802.11n (Wi-Fi 4) device on your network/is the device that you're testing with. Splitting SSIDs in that case may help by forcing devices with slower speeds onto the slower 2.4GHz band. 

2.4GHz is mostly there for compatibility with devices with 802.11b/g/n chips since these can only see 2.4GHz WiFi and the WiFi spec requires backwards compatibility to all older specs. If a device with an older standard connects to a WiFi AP with a faster standard, it will most likely slow the network down to meet the requirements of that older device.

For people who seem to have issues with BT Home/Smart Hubs, I would highly recommend ditching them in favour of a third party gear from the likes of TP-Link or ASUS. Though note that support for BT's implementation of IPv6 may be a bit flaky and may require third party firmware like OpenWRT or DD-WRT.

[Catune]

@ThinkPadUser  I use Samsung Galaxy S10 and S8 and both works well with a split SSID when I was still with Virgin however, that's not the case now. Maybe you can help me with some pointers on how to resolve this issue.

[ThinkPadUser]

On some Android devices, you can check if you're connected to 2.4 or 5GHz (this applies to devices running Stock Android and therefore may not apply to your device). Go to settings >> Wi-Fi and select the connected network. On some devices this will let you know if you're connected to 2.4 or 5.

If you're finding devices either confused or not connecting to 5GHz even though it can detect and use it, then I would recommend using a third party router. Though as I mentioned above, IPv6 support can be flaky on them.

BT makes it quite easy to use third party gear on their network. When setting up, use these credentials to logon to the BT network:

Username: bthomehub@btbroadband.com

Password: none or BT