BT Smart Hub2 Erratic WiFi with Full Fibre 900 Hardwired

[HarrysDad2009]

Have just upgraded to Full Fibre 900 and have the full speed confirmed at the router hardwired.

However, the WiFi connection is erratic and at best 350Mb over WiFi on 5GHz stood next to the router. When I go to my PC which is situated 9.5m direct line away (upstairs in a modern house with no solid internal walls) the speed drops to around half that. Have noticed that the connection on just normal web browsing seems slower than the old 50Mb broadband connection I had. I've even tried with no hardwired connections to give the full bandwidth to WiFi.

Has anybody else seen similar issues since upgrading and using the smart hub2?

I'm using Fast.com for the speed check and comparing the connection over WiFi with a 5G Galaxy S21 phone and laptop in the same room and my PC upstairs using an intel dual band wireless-ac 7265 WiFi card which is rated upto 867Mbs.

Currently waiting on my 3rd BT engineer to arrive after Openreach came to confirm the FO line to the house is good.

Thanks.

[Monir]

You should get a better WiFi card that can take advantage of your routers mimo capabilities. The sh2 is 4x4 mimo capable, and to get best performance over WiFi , a 4x4 WiFi card is required. A WiFi card that has this spec is the Asus pce ac88. It has max throughput of 1.1gbps when next to the router but about 800mbps with some distance and a solid brick wall in-between.

[Keith_Beddoe]

@HarrysDad2009 

You are unlikely to get anything like the full speed over wireless, on a single device.

It was never intended that people get full speed on all devices, especially on a wireless connection. The intention is to allow that bandwidth to be shared among family members and multiple devices, without each user noticing any slowdown.

Here is a quote from old post by @SeanD 

"I think for the first time ever we are in a situation whereby the speed you can now get through Full Fibre outperforms the capabilities of many devices.  

The Smart hub 2 does not come with Wi-Fi 6 but this is something we are looking to include in our next generation of Hub.  I don't have any info as to when we will launch a new router by Wi-Fi 6 will bring some improvement.

As an example of what I mean in terms of devices not being able to support the full breadth of speed available on Full Fibre , take a look at the table below.  This is just for a couple of Apple Smart Phones and Tablets along with  popular Samsung models,

Apple (Smartphones)	Dualband (2.4 & 5Ghz)	Theoretical Max speed on 2.4Ghz connection	Theoretical Max speed on 5Ghz connection
IPHONE SE	Yes	60mbps	300mbps
IPHONE SE 2020	Yes	135mbps	600mbps

Samsung (Smartphones)	Dualband (2.4 & 5Ghz)	Theoretical Max speed on 2.4Ghz connection	Theoretical Max speed on 5Ghz connection
galaxy-s10e	Yes	135mbps	600mbps
galaxy-s10-5g	Yes	135mbps	600mbps

Apple (Tablets)	Dualband (2.4 & 5Ghz)	Theoretical Max speed on 2.4Ghz connection	Theoretical Max speed on 5Ghz connection
IPAD pro 3rd gen (Nov 2018)	Yes	135mbps	600mbps
IPAD pro 4th gen (March 2020)	Yes	135mbps	600mbps

Samsung (Tablet)	Dualband (2.4 & 5Ghz)	Theoretical Max speed on 2.4Ghz connection	Theoretical Max speed on 5Ghz connection
galaxy-tab-s5e	Yes	100mbps	300mbps
galaxy-tab-s6	Yes	60mbps	600mbps

[Monir]

Yes most of these devices only can do 2x2 or 3x3 mimo, so speed is limited