Full Fibre 900 Speeds

[steephill]

Does the speed distribution have any real effect though? Realistically how often are you likely to be downloading games at 600Mbps and for how long? A few minutes at a time once a day? If you are still getting 20Mbps on your other devices then that is more than enough for most tasks e.g. HD streaming or video calling.

I don't know how the SmartHub2 balances loads as it doesn't have QoS but if you want more control you need to spend money on a different router.

[imjolly]

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@imacken wrote:
I don't want to restrict bandwidth to devices, what I would like to see is a better sharing between devices. I thought that would be normal.
Not good that one device can hog almost it all!

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that's why as @licquorice posted you need a router which allows  you to restrict the bandwidth to devices and that way your 900mb can be shared between devices as you decide

[imacken]

Thanks for that. 
I don’t want to restrict bandwidth to devices as I would like the full amount to be used by a device if no other devices were particularly active. 
For example, say I’m doing a big download on my PC at 900, then if 4 iPhones/iPads become active, then I would like to see them receive about 100 (random figure) and the PC would throttle to 500. At the moment, the PC keeps its speed - more or less - and other devices get very little. 
Random numbers and simplistic scenario, but hopefully it explains things. 
Would another router be able to do that?

[Keith_Beddoe]

You could use a different router with priority settings, but if you have Digital Voice, then you have no choice but to use the Smart Hub 2.

[Keith_Beddoe]

Another option, provided your PC is connected using Ethernet, is a managed Ethernet switch which can restrict speed to a specific port.

There may also be PC based tools to restrict download speed.

Most routers that support priority and bandwidth, allow you to reserve bandwidth to specific IP addresses.

[licquorice]

@imacken have a read of this https://www.howtogeek.com/75660/the-beginners-guide-to-qos-on-your-router/

[rbz5416]

I'm not sure that you're comparing apples with apples. I would expect that if you were to commence the download of the same large file, from the same source, on two different devices connected by ethernet, that they would indeed share the bandwidth. Comparing a large download on ethernet with a brief speed test on WiFi isn't really the same thing. There shouldn't really be any need for QoS on a 900Mb connection.

As previously mentioned, one of the major disadvantages of the SH2 is it's inability to separate the SSIDs for the 2.4 & 5GHz bands. So you have no control over whether a device  connects to the faster 5GHz band or not. You haven't said if you're using DV or not. If you are then a mesh system in access point mode should give you that control. If not then you could try another router.

But having said that, I suspect you're also falling into the trap of obsessing over numbers rather than performance. In your example, what could you do on a mobile device with a 100Mb connection that you can't currently do with 20Mb?

[imacken]

Obsessing over numbers? Not sure about that.  I was simply giving the above as a random example.

In practice, it does cause an issue, as when a large download is going on, I can see nly 1-2Mbs on my TV streaming services.

Even though my contract for this only started on Friday, I have been moved to EE and their hub is arriving tomorrow.  Will that make a difference?

No, I don't have Digital Voice.

Thanks again guys.

[Keith_Beddoe]

@imacken 

You may be best to ask on the EE forum, as you are their customer now, and will be using their service and equipment.

https://community.ee.co.uk/

[rbz5416]

There are two versions of EE Hub. One is a new, WiFi 6 Hub & one is a BT SH2 is a new dress, so until it arrives you connect it, you won't know which one or whether it's an improvement.

This post shows the different models. Note the smooth base of the WiFi6 Smart Hub Plus.

It seems very odd that a download would lock out streaming services, not least because it's rare that a server would support the full 900Mb bandwidth available, so there should be plenty to spare for streaming. If this were a common issue I'd expect to see plenty of similar complaints.