Connection cutting out

[VINC3]

Hello

We have FTTC and are due to be switched to FTTP as of next week.  However, we have been experiencing regular connection issues over the past month and, with our family of five being off on holiday this week, next week feels like a long way away.  The two affected devices are:

Living room - Firestick is connected to BT router via ugreen ethernet adaptor.

10-year-old son's room - PS4 is connected to router via WiFi.

I have not noticed any change in the colour on the router when the connections are lost.  I am now restarting the router and Firestick at least ten times per day and have also gone through the check/restart router process via BT app.  I can tolerate the inconvenience for another week, but keeping the 10-year-old gamer calm when he has just lost whatever progress he has just achieved is not a task I would wish on anyone.

Any suggestions would be welcome.  Many thanks in advance.

Vince 

[Keith_Beddoe]

@VINC3 

These issues are more likely to be down to you own home network, as the home hub is not showing any issues.

Gaming devices will perform poorly if connected using wireless, and really need to be connected using an Ethernet cable, direct to the home hub.

As for the Firestick, I assume that the adapter is connected directly to the home hub using a short Ethernet cable.

I would not guarantee you would see any changes when connected to FTTP.

[naylor2006]

What are the two devices in question doing, just timing out of qame server with the PS4 reporting connection lost for example? Also what is the firestick reporting?

Supporting @Keith_Beddoe for any gaming (online) connect via ethernet, latency is a big deal which will always suffer over WIFI.

As a side point, those ethernet adapters for Firesticks are usually worse than using the WIFI, they can be beneficial if your firestick is miles away from the router but if you are using ethernet for yours Ill take a stab and say its near by? If so use wireless. The firestick ethernet adapters are misleading. The 4K Amazon Fire Stick indeed has a USB 2.0 micro USB port capable of 480Mbps but the ethernet adapters are often 100Mbps, the first UGREEN one I found on Amazon is. I think you can get Gigabit ones then use an OTG connector and squeeze more out of the USB 2.0 port but if its near to the WIFI access then just use WIFI. I had the official Amazon ethernet adapter for a while which would just top out at 100Mbps whilst WIFI, I forget exactly would be at least double that, latency will be better on the Ethernet adapter but its not a concern on Firesticks like it is gaming.

Now with that said, you have FTTC at the moment which is likely to be less than 100Mbps anyway but your new FTTP connection hopefully will be more so WIFI will open the taps on the firestick depending on its model.

Point is, the Firestick if it is close to the BT Hub will see no real benefit from using the adapter, if it is miles away you can ignore everything I said.

[VINC3]

Thank you (and @Keith_Beddoe)

My 10-year-old says when playing FIFA on PS4 a message comes up saying "you have lost connection, please reconnect" - which is via wifi via a Deco mesh satellite unit upstairs in the property, around 12ft from his PS4.  The Firestick randomly starts buffering (circle of death) at least once per hour and it is connected to the router via the ugreen ethernet adaptor on a short lead, with router being only around a foot away from the Firestick.  The reason I installed the ugreen adaptor in the first place, instead of using WiFi, was because I read that a wired connection for the Firestick would take priority when many devices are battling for the same connection.  Is this not the case?  Please note, the issues we are experiencing on both the PS4 and the Firestick have only started to increase in frequency over the past few weeks - especially with the Firestick, which we now know will buffer with an hour of viewing anything.

With regards to speed, the Firestick (via ethernet) scores around 67mbps - testing on Analiti.  The PS4 was hitting around 35mbps when my son checked it yesterday.  We are on the Essentials 2, so these speeds are what I would expect.  The Firestick is a Firestick 4k.

Many thanks

Vince

[naylor2006]

If you have DECO Mesh unit near his PS4 do you have another one connected to the Hub yeah?

Doesnt matter how close the Mesh unit is to his PS4 is, that connection could be rock solid but it will be the backhaul from the Mesh device to its nearest Mesh friend and then in addition the actual internet itself. Fact that the PS4 gets around half is what I would expect as each Mesh hop generally kills half the bandwidth.

Your 10 year olds FIFA is probably timing out due to latency issues, FIFA will do this or FC24 if he has that now. It doesnt require much bandwidth to play that game, just good latency which will be effected over WIFI particularly if someone is using more of your upload bandwidth lately which is around 10Mbps or similar? The games ability to be able to send traffic to the remote peer is really important.

I'm not sure you have enough devices to worry about devices battling for connectivity even if that theory is true.

Given the firestick is wired and buffering this would relate to throughput, potentially something is using more than usual, you could probably test this by switching off WIFI for a bit and just running the firestick only and see if it is okay, in addition the next time it buffers quickly then run a speed test. I assume you BT WIFI is switched off right if you are using DECO's? You dont want the two wifi networks running together otherwise youre going to get interference which could cause more issues or even the issues you already have, at least for gaming for your 10YO.

[VINC3]

This is very, very interesting!!!  No, the BT WiFi is NOT switched off.  Can you tell me how to do this and it I will give it a try?

Thank you

Vince 

[VINC3]

And yes, the main Deco unit is connected to the router via ethernet - cable is approximately 6ft.

[Keith_Beddoe]

@VINC3 

Have you run the network optimisation option on the Deco app?

Can you connect the PS4 to an Ethernet port on the nearby Deco?

[naylor2006]

Yes, if you are running DECO and using DECO WIFI definitely turn off the WIFI on the BT Hub. I used my own Router and WIFI so actually dont know but I found this:

How do I turn wi-fi on and off on the BT Hub? | BT Help

[VINC3]

Thank you (and @naylor2006)

I have just run the optimisation, following your post.