Issues After Upgrading to Full Fibre 900

[Lizzy-Loo]

@rbz5416 

That is a good question.

No, I didn't swap the AC adaptor over when I changed the Hub over - mainly because it is pinned to the skirting board with cable clips (to stop the dogs chewing it!) and a bit of a pain to change.

But certainly worth trying!

Back to testing the speeds again this morning as the WiFi has been struggling again (I didn't unplug the ONT last night - one to try tonight) and they are lower than yesterday. 270mbps on the one you recommended and similar on the Oopla browser Speedtest. I've also tried both USB ports with the same speed results, so no difference between the two.

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[rbz5416]

It's beginning to sound like two separate issues. Speed through the ONT isn't correct or stable & possible issues with the SH2. Although the chances of two issues arisng at the exact same time that you regraded would be very small. The SH2 PSU is worth a try, just to rule it out. No need to unclip the other one unless it does solve the WiFi issue.

Again going back to the OP, it's concerning that BT couldn't see your Hub. When you try the other PSU it would be worth a call to the FTTP team to ask if they can see it now. Have the serial number of the ONT to hand & verify that it matches what they have on record. Although if you have Digital Voice working that should rule that out.

[Lizzy-Loo]

@rbz5416 

Evening!

So, I had a switch around with the power adaptor earlier on and it's not made any difference.

The WiFi drop out has been constant all day today, only improving briefly after powering the Hub and the ONT off/on. It's worse on the 5GHz so I've switched that off for now. Just running on the 2.4GHz has improved the connection stability a bit but not completely, especially when connected to the discs.

My daughter has been running my laptop this evening, using the ethernet adaptor and wired into the Hub. The connection has been remarkably stable and also running at close to the 900mbps mark most of the time. However, I've just connected the same laptop to the ONT and it's still showing a much lower speed on the speed tests. Is it possible for the ONT to register a lower speed than that achieved using the Hub? 🤔

[rbz5416]

That's odd. It's not unheard of for certain combinations of hardware to simply not get on, so it's possible that's the case between the ONT & the ethernet adapter. Is there any chance of getting the Thinkpad back to life to check, or even borrowing another laptop?

If we accept that the adapter is the issue for now then that only really leaves the WiFi environment. As the same issue occurs with two Hubs that only leaves what's connected to it & competing signals/interference. Did you run inSSIDer to see what else is showing up? If not I'd suggest doing that using just the SH2 without disks or anything else connected by ethernet. You can then manually set both 2.4 & 5GHz channels for the least congested. It's best to stick to the primary channels of 1, 6 or 11 for 2.4GHz.

5GHz tend to be far less congested anyway, so it should be easy to pick a free channel. Even if nothing else shows up it would be worth moving away from the default of 36 if that's selected.

What it can't do is show interference from other equipment. Microwaves for example are notorious for wrecking WiFi, but won't show up on inSSIDer.

Just to recap, something seems to have changed around the time you upgraded. You've ruled out the Hub, PSU & ethernet cable. I'm assuming that you didn't get a new 4G box & are still using the original? So the only other new thing is BT TV. Hos is that connected to the network? Either way, let's leave it off for the purposes of these tests.

[Lizzy-Loo]

@rbz5416 

Morning!

Thanks for getting back to me again, with more food for thought.

I did run the inSSIDer program at the weekend, yes.
It showed up both neighbours' routers and their WiFi channel connections, and also confirmed what I'd inadvertently stumbled across while playing with the Hub manager earlier in the day - that being that channel 40 for the 5GHz was the least congested. So, channel 40 was the one I'd chosen, and it seemed to work well for 12hrs or so, after my fit of pique 😄 But then yesterday... not so much and switching back to the Smart option (which generally seems to plump for channel 36) didn't work either, which was when I turned the 5GHz option off.
Just looking at it again now reveals the same thing, that no one locally is using channel 40 (0% WiFi utilisation).
For the 2.4GHz, there's usage on all the channels. Channel 6 is currently the least used, hovering around 20% utilisation but I suspect that if I change our channel to 6, it'll bump up the utilisation to the same amount as the current channel we're on (which is hovering around 60%)

Re microwaves - do they have the capacity to interfere with WiFi signal, even when they're not being used?
You've got me wondering now, as I did get a new microwave mid-November (2-3 weeks after the move to the FF900). It's about as far away from the hub as you can probably get, diagonally opposite side of the house - in fact next door's microwave is closer to my Hub than mine is! - but still. I don't use it often and the connection issues are still there when it's not in use. But it is left plugged in as I use the clock on it. Could be worth experimenting with this too, I guess.

To be honest, I've not had the Hybrid Connect plugged in since I set it up when we first moved over to FTTP! I did try it yesterday, after all the WiFi connection issues, but it wouldn't connect either. A call to BT revealed that I was supposed to receive a new one when the SH2 was switched over, but that hadn't happened. A new one is due to arrive today/tomorrow but for the cause of interference, I think we can safely rule that out.
The BT TV box was initially connected using an ethernet WiFi adaptor. The previous set top box we were using was an old (10+ years old...) thing that could only be connected by ethernet and rather than have a massively long cable trailing across the lounge, this was the next best thing.
After the SH2 was replaced, I needed to reprogram the ethernet WiFi adaptor, so rather than faff with that, I just swapped the BT TV box connection settings over to direct WiFi - probably something I could have done from the outset but hey-ho! I could potentially try using an ethernet cable to connect it to the SH2 instead - if I can find one long enough! - to rule out the BT TV box but it does seem a bit random that the box would be the cause of the interference, given it's supposed to work alongside the hub!
Also, re the BT TV box, it is switched off at the mains socket most of the time. I've got a power-board set up with all the TV stuff plugged into it (TV, sound bar, BT TV box and the Fire TV box) so that when it's not in use, I don't have everything on standby. So, most of the time it is off-off and the WiFi dropping issues have still been happening.

Right then, off to do my next round of tests!

[rbz5416]

I'm stumped but I would put the 2.4GHz on channel 6.

Microwaves are only an issue when in operation but they are just an example of what can cause interference. Anything from cordless phones, doorbells, baby monitors, etc can cause issues. There was even a case a while back where an elderly couple's ancient CRT TV was knocking out most of a small village! So not impossible that it could be something next door. But to identify that requires a spectrum analyser.

One last thing that may be worth trying is to switch off the 2.4GHz & try with only 5GHz. You may well have devices that can't connect to 5GHz but see if you can live with it long enough to see if it helps.

I think we've pretty much exhausted all avenues that I can think of. If your Halo package gives you unlimited tech visits you may have to resort to that. If they can't resolve it then maybe the Mods can get involved.

One other thought is to buy a long ethernet cable so you can temporality relocate the Hub.

[Lizzy-Loo]

@rbz5416 

Ok, I think we might finally be getting somewhere.
I managed to get the BT Tech appointment that I had booked for Thursday pulled forward to this lunchtime (mainly due to the Hybrid Connect also not working).
I went through all the things that I've tried thus far - with your fabulous advice - and also asked if he could test the ONT speed on his laptop while he was here, as his did have an inbuilt ethernet port.
He confirmed that the ONT does indeed appear to be limited to 500mbps (the tariff I was on before) so while the SH2 has been upgraded to run at 900mbps, the ONT hasn't, which will cause issues. Apparently, it's OK for the ONT to be running higher mbps wise that the Hub, but not the other way round.
I guess this potentially also makes sense as to why the 5GHz hasn't been working as well, as the speeds are generally higher than the 2.4GHz.
Anyway, I'm now pending a visit from OpenReach. My tech guy today wasn't sure whether the ONT can be regraded remotely, so watch this space...

In the meantime, I've switched over to channel 6 for my 2.4GHz and it does seem to be running more smoothly than before so fingers crossed it continues until the ONT gets sorted.

Honestly, I feel like I'm halfway to being trained up as a BT Tech person after all this, lol!

[rbz5416]

That doesn't really stack up. If there was/is only 500Mb going to the ONT, then there's no way your daughter could have got higher than that through the Hub. Unless this was internally device to device  or just the reported connection speed rather than a speed test? Although it does go some way to explaining what you were seeing when directly connected to it.

There's also nothing in the ONT to limit the speed (unless it's faulty), so it's far more likely that your line profile was never changed to reflect the upgrade. This is reasonably common & shouldn't need Openreach to attend as it's just a config change.

[stevebrass]

Pretty sure nothing to physically do to the ONT. There have been issues of profiles for speed not being amended post upgrades but this is managed remotely. 
You did mention getting 900 device to hub. Since the hub gets its feed from the ONT difficult to see how the ONT is the culprit. 

[Lizzy-Loo]

So, if the ONT is only reaching speeds of 500mbps and the SH2 gets the connection (and presumably the speed limitations) from the ONT, how can the Hub supply 900mbps when directly connected (ethernet)?

Or have missed something, somewhere?🤔

Is there any team in particular that deals with speed profile updates, do you know?

Thanks again!