Do I need Whole Home Wifi?

[Doddy92]

I'm trying to determine whether whole home wifi discs would fix issues I've been having with wifi performance on the smart hub 2.

I was sent a new router last week after complaining of persistent wifi issues on the previous one, but this new hub appears to be no improvement. My devices (Macs/iPads/iPhones) will maintain a connection to the hub but will far too frequently lose internet connectivity. Occasionally switching wifi off and then back on on these devices will temporarily fix the lack of internet connection, but when the wifi issues were occurring last night this trick was only working for a matter of minutes.

I've rebooted the hub, reset to factory, turned off smart setup (which BT recommended I turn back on) and these appear to be temporary fixes again, although I'm not sure disabling smart setup made much impact.

Seems to only be an issue with wifi performance as all my ethernet connected devices work without issue and receive the full 300mb speed I pay for.

So my question is would investing in whole home wifi likely solve the issues I've been having? 

I did take BT's online questionnaire and that told me the base version whole home system would be best for my property (3 bed semi detached new build) and uses. I am however a bit sceptical given that I don't seem to have dead spots and that the I've never seen signal strength drop below 2 bars on iPads/iPhones.

Any guidance would be appreciated.

[Keith_Beddoe]

@Doddy92 

Are you sure you do not mean the BT Complete Wi-Fi, as that works with the Smart Hub 2?

https://www.bt.com/help/bt-halo/what-is-complete-wi-fi-

The Whole Home (retail) discs are not the same, and are intended for all broadband providers and do not link to the Smart Hub 2.

[licquorice]

Whatever you do, DO NOT turn Smart Setup back on despite BT telling you to. It is the biggest cause of problems with the hub and gives absolutely no benefits whatsoever.

[stevebrass]

Try using Wi-Fi mode 2 - you’ll see it on hubs Wi-Fi settings page. 

[Doddy92]

I meant whole home Wi-Fi but had no idea that it wasn’t compatible with the Smart Hub 2. So I suppose I do mean the complete Wi-Fi package. Thank you for the correction 😊.

Would complete Wi-Fi help the issues I’ve been having?

[Doddy92]

I don’t intend to 👍🏻

[Doddy92]

I’ll certainly give this a try. What is the difference between the modes? I know you can switch channels on the frequencies too but didn’t want to tinker too much.

[licquorice]

Whole home WiFi is compatible with the SH2, but it doesn't form a mesh with it as it can also be used with third party routers and other ISPs. Complete WiFi discs only work with the SH2 and do form a a complete mesh system with it.

Difficult to say whether either will solve your problems. Have you tried changing to a different WiFi channel to see if that improves things? What sort of distance and wall construction are involved in trying to connect to the hub?

[licquorice]

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@Doddy92 wrote:
I’ll certainly give this a try. What is the difference between the modes? I know you can switch channels on the frequencies too but didn’t want to tinker too much.

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Changing modes just drops the Wifi back to the slower 811.b/g/n standard rather than 811.ac

[Doddy92]

I haven’t as of yet. Difficulty is that it’s an intermittent problem. Last night at 10.30pm I couldn’t get a stable connection to any of my Wi-Fi devices for more than a few minutes before it dropped out. Today my work from home partner says there has been no issues.