BT Whole Home Wifi disk slower upstairs

[ShaunyC]

Hi

I have Gigaclear Ultrafast Full Fibre (BT don't have FF in my area yet).  I get a native speed into the router around 900Mbps.  When I connect a BT Whole Home Wi-Fi disc to the router, it works at around the same speed - I call the disc network "mesh" and the router network "gigaclear" so it's pretty easy to get the right one.  🙂

I have a second and third disc upstairs, where I run a cable into the attic and then via a tp-link Gigabit Switch LS105GP. (I have tried other switches too), and from there I run cable to each of the upstairs discs.

The second and third discs only ever get me around 350Mbps wifi connection - if I take either disc downstairs and connect directly to the router, I get 900 again, so I know the discs aren't at fault.

Apologies for my ignorance, but is the switch the contention here, if so why, and what can I do.  There is nothing else connected to the switch, other than these 2 discs and all cables are Cat6, none longer than 20M.

All suggestions gratefully accepted!

[Keith_Beddoe]

@ShaunyC 

Welcome to this user forum for BT Retail phone and broadband customers.

Gigaclear do have their own forum https://www.ispreview.co.uk/talk/forums/gigaclear.625/

It would be best to give the WHW product helpdesk a call on 0808 100 6116 ( Mon to Fri 9am to 5.30pm and Sat 9am to 2pm) or drop them an email to: btconnectedhome@bt.com and they'll be happy to help.

[ShaunyC]

Hi

Thanks - I did that yesterday, and they said that if the discs worked fine downstairs then it wasn't an issue with the discs, but the setup outside of the BT discs, so they couldn't help.

Hence posting here, to ask the wider community what they thought.

Shaun

[ShaunyC]

Oh, and Gigaclear say I should use their linksys repeaters and try that, but I thought I'd check here before I spent hundreds of pounds swapping the BT discs for another vendors identical piece of equipment.

[Keith_Beddoe]

I suspect that most people here are using the BT Complete Wi-Fi discs, as they are designed to work with the BT Smart Hub 2, and are actively promoted.

There have been a few posts here about the Whole Home system, but most have been resolved via the helpdesk, who are the product support.

You could ask on the Gigaclear forum to see if anyone is using the Whole Home system.

[c64z86]

Have you tried swapping out the Ethernet cables that connect your switch to your 3rd and second disc? Maybe they are damaged. Is the switch itself connecting to the router and to the discs at 1000mbps?

[ShaunyC]

Hi

Thanks - yes, I've tried Cat5e and Cat6 cables for each bit, and connected my laptop directly to the switch over ethernet and got the full 900, which confuses me 😞

Shaun

[c64z86]

What does it say in the advanced page of the SH2 itself, for the speed of the connected discs? Does it say 1000mbps and Ethernet?

[c64z86]

Oh damn sorry, I didn't read that you had gigaclear as your ISP so you do not have the SH2 xD

What does it say on your router anyway for the connected discs?

[naylor2006]

Hey hello to a fellow Wholehome User, I have 8 disks, 5 of which are on Ethernet, yes I know only 4 are supported but you can do it so long as you are using ethernet, otherwise the mesh will crash. The app even shows me two pages of disks and a network map showing how they all operate.

Interestingly my master disk which is connected directly to the router will only give me 500Mbps max from an internet speed test, this is to an iPhone 13 Mini which can do more on its 5Ghz band, I have the 900Mbps Openreach package and I can easily achieve this on any ethernet device but not on the disks. Even doing a local speed test, IE downloading something direct from my NAS via the master disk will only give me 500Mbps, which is kinda odd, these disks are AC2600 so could technically support over 2000Mbps but real world never works that well. Having said that I would expect 900Mbps to my phone.

In your case whats interesting is those two disks upstairs are both connected to ethernet so you should at least see the same results as you do with the one on the ground floor. Unless something else is hammering that switch in the loft theres no reason why the disks wouldnt allow the same speed unless its a proximity thing.

You may want to go into the BT Wholehome app and check that the device you are speed testing is actually indeed connecting to one of the disks, because thats how it works, the WIFI 'MESH' indeed provides coverage but you are always pulling off one disk, I hate to insult you but just to be clear.....I wonder if by walking upstairs your device is still actually connected to the downstairs disk and proximity will be a factor in the speed you are getting. If I want to test a disk directly from my phone I go stand right next to it, then turn off wifi on my phone then switch it back on again, I check the BT Wholehome iOS app and make sure it shows my device connected to the disk I am going to test.

With all that said however, when I say that my Master disk is plugged directly into the router, it is via a switch but this really shouldnt be a problem unless the disks themselves are kinda dumb, it also used to be connected directly to my router but I wanted to free a port there for a new subnet so I shifted it to the switch.

What I will say is that it is a solution on the cheaper side, its worked great for me but I have been thinking about a proper Ubiquity setup or similar lately because I have so many devices, there is alot connected to WIFI at my place and I wonder if this load, even though the actual bandwidth requirement is small, overwhelms the BT disks as they are a more budget option, which is fine but it doenst leave much monitor capability, on a more expensive device you'd be able to see whats going on more.

Another interesting test would be to create different WIFI networks on the upstairs disks and see if the 3 disks communicating is having an effect.