Full fibre 500 with third party router?

[Owen777]

I've read various conflicting things on this topic via these forums, amazon router reviews/questions, live chat with BT... so just wanted to see if anyone had a concrete answer.

So here goes:

Had Full Fibre 500 installed a few weeks ago, with smart hub 2 and digital voice.  I must add right away, that I dont care what so ever about digital voice or any calls. We have mobile phones after all. This is purely concerning broadband/wifi.

So im not sure if its a common problem with full fibre in general or the smart hub 2 but the wifi signal throughout the house is shocking. Unless im standing right next to the router i dont get 500mb, it drops to 50mb when i walk 6 metres away, same floor. So needless to say I've been looking at third party routers, mainly TP Link and Netgear.

I've never needed a third party router previously when I had 60mb copper halo it was always 60 and never dropped throughout the house. So before spending 150 quid on a router i was doing some research on how it works, hoping it would be a straight plug and play. Some guys are saying that is the case and some are saying it's not so simple.

Some say the digital voice is an issue but i can't figure out if they mean digital will not work along side wifi on third party router, or if digital actually prevents wifi from working all together on a third party router. 

Others are saying you can plug the tp link in to your smart hub 2 with ethernet. Some are then saying you need some kinda open connection.

Some are saying its solves the same issues I'm describing and some say it doesn't help at all. 

So I don't know if it's possible and if it is possible if it's even effective. 

I'm at a loss. But I feel like there must be a better way to utilise the 500mb that's coming in to the house. Feels like the smart hub 2 is not capable of relaying it.

Any help or wisdom would be appreciated 

Owen

[licquorice · Accepted solution]

 I have no idea what you have been reading but it is extremely simple. Any third party router with a WAN port that supports PPPoE (virtually all of them) can simply be connected to the ONT. You don't need to use the BT hub at all.

[Owen777]

Okay this is reassuring!

Is it true that the digital voice won't work? But it doesn't prevent anything from working with wifi and the router? 

[licquorice]

Digital Voice only works with the BT hub, but you said you didn't require it

[imjolly]

You need to use the SH2 if you want digital voice but if as you say you are not going to use DV then you just connect 3rd party router direct to ONT as posted by @licquorice 

[Owen777]

Okay great thanks guys, really appreciate the answers 

[c64z86]

I've not seen it mentioned here, and it can be easily found online too, but the PPPoE username you will need for your 3rd party router is bthomehub@btbroadband.com and password can be either left blank, or alternatively just put BT.

Also a bit of advice:

If you don't live near any aipots or radar stations the best thing you might be able to do to stretch that 500mbps further around your home, is to invest in a WiFi 6 router, that also has support for DFS channels and 160mhz!

The DFS channels can transmit at higher speeds than the usual 5ghz channels can because they aren't as congested and they also transmit at a higher power, but the catch is that you have to make sure that there are no radar stations, bases or airports nearby as DFS uses the same frequencies as radar. Also your devices have to support DFS and/or 160mhz, as not all of them do.

I used to get 150-220mbps on my WiFi 6 laptop that is one thick wall and 2 thin walls away from my router, now I get something like 430-480 having just switched over to the DFS channels. What helps is that my router (Acting as an access point to the Smart Hub that handles all the other stuff like DHCP) is also 4x4 Mu-Mimo with 8 antennas. Even though nothing I have uses 4x4, let alone 3x3, the extra antennas and streams available from the router help immensely.

[Owen777]

Very interesting, thank you for the information. Yes i did read the bit about the username somewhere online.