Full Fibre 900

[1000Mb]

After noon all,

I have recently had BT Full Fibre 900 installed / activated at home but am having issues.

Specifically the WiFi speeds are not what I was expecting.

Stats are as follows:

BT Smart Hub 2 (newest one) Over Wifi:

Download @ 400 Mbs on average / Upload 112 Mbs on average (over 5g signal)

If using an Ethernet cable then:

on average the speed is 1 to 1.2 gig (which is great).

I know there are a range of factors that can effect Wifi signal / strength etc, however to test my suspicions I hooked up my old Netgear Night Hawk router. This instantly boosted speed over Wifi to 600 Mbs + over 5 g signal. 

Do I have to accept that the BT hub is just rubbish? or is there something wrong with it?

I have used both fast.com & speed test (ookla) to test speeds, there is not much between the two. However when using these speed tests over google chrome compared to MS edge, google is always slower?

Any help / advice / guidance would be greatly appreciated as i do not look forward to having to re-do the setup or even having to worry about the digital BT phone line that needs the home hub to work.

Thanks in advance      

[kennysaint]

hi there im on the 330 download and 50 up, i get full 310 when using earthnet.but on wifi if i stand next to router i get 180megs at most,  i have the standard router, witch i have read on these forums and have the same issue do you have standard router or complete wifi ?,i seen this you tube video makes me wonder why we get differnt routers, if you dont take complete wifi.

[SimonN]

Hi  - I can't offer a solution but am in a similar boat.

I have a netgear r7000 which started to drop out connection about 6 months ago. Not sure why, it would work fine for a few weeks and then bomb. I switched to the last gen ultrafast smarthub and it's been OK. I received the new smart hub 2 on upgrading to 910mbps and it lasted 3 days before I switched back. It's not great. I wish my netgear r7000 was OK and I could just stay away from BT hardware altogether. I have an ORBI mesh set up as bridge only. The problem is, with everyone at home I don't have down time to fiddle.

Another incredibly frustrating issue is BT's speed test. Literally the day before the upgrade it would show me 'speed to my hub' and additionally 'speed to my device' - now it only shows me speed to the device. Even emailing the report will not tell me speed to the hub. Only fast.com is able.

Anyway - sorry for background ramble.

If I ethernet into the smarthub I'm showing as 890-1gig it's not as consistent as it used to be.

Fast.com and BT test shows me 400-450 to my iphone/ipad. Reading online it seems the theoretical real world maximum for apple wireless connections.

I will try setting the ORBI up in router mode one day and see if it's better (as opposed to a mesh bridge just to the BT Smart hub)

I want to change MTU/DNS etc etc and I'm locked out of the smart hub and it drives me crazy.

Also - the cookie/customer management of MyBT is ridiculous. I'm sorry we can't see your hub online, or, we're unable to send you your actual speeds but this is what you should be getting... -

[smithjones]

Yes your nighthawk might be better, but equally unless you have the ability to know what the channel usage is in your area and possibly run a RF environment scan and know what each of your devices were using at the time you cant really make any call as to why one is better than the other.

To be honest 400-450 is actually not that bad, I'd go as far to say its actually very good, in my heavily congested area im lucky to get 200+.

[1000Mb]

Hi,

Thanks for the response.

I get what you are saying, 400 Mb isn't bad at all, especially over wifi, however I just find it hard to understand why it is so much worse.

The only thing that has changed in the environment is my router and broadband provider?

I have done a few more very basic router tests to see if I could make any difference.

BT Smart Hub 2:

1)  Only had 1 device connected to the BT hub and manged a regular wifi speed of 340 Mb over 5ghz (which was even less than last week).

2) Had immediate next door neighbours turn off their routers to minimise additional wifi signal congestion still only managed a regular wifi speed of 340 Mb over 5ghz

Netgear Night Hawk:

1)  Only had 1 device connected and manged a regular wifi speed of 675 Mb over 5ghz .

2) Had immediate next door neighbours turn off their routers to minimise additional wifi signal congestion and also got 675 Mb + over 5 ghz

To me it seems that the BT hub is not doing the job.

Speeds over Ethernet connection on both routers achieved between 900 - 1.2 Gbps

There has to be something not quite right here? Again the the wifi speeds are good, but surely the home hub must be able to do better?

We live on a relatively new housing estate were every property has FTTP, although i'm not sure where the cabinet is or where else it services.

Thanks for advice thus far!

[kennysaint]

Update on my slow wifi, I just got complete wifi I seen a difference on PC browser pages loading rapid. thought looks good did a speed test on my phone same, 180 megs ended up doing a hard reset on my note 9. low and behold 260  now phone is faster even upstairs great download speed.to be honest standard router is not up to scratch.

[DazaMcc]

I think you'd have to go WiFi 6 to get anywhere near 1gbs over WiFi and you phone and laptop would need to have it built in too. I'm not surprised that the Netgear is giving you better speeds, I assume you spent £150 - £200 on the nighthawk. The BT homehub is probably worth about £50.