Move BT HomeHub to another floor with cables

[garybrett37]

Hello, Openreach unhelpfully installed my fibre optical network terminal on our middle floor (front of house) in my daughters bedroom, despite the fact she keeps turning it off, it also provides a bad wifi signal to where I work which is downstairs at the back of the house.

Rather than extenders I think it best to just move the router out of her room but cant install CAT5 or move the ONT. Do BT still sell the powerline adapters, and would they enable me to do this?

So basically, I want to keep the ONT in the bedroom on the middle floor but have the router downstairs. I have had a brief look at TP link but couldn't work out if they just extend or allow me to move the router/hub.

I do have a BT engineer visit tomorrow as the tests they ran showed an issue which has been occurring since they tried to 'encourage' me to migrate to EE (I refused). I am on the 500mb package but yesterday their tests showed 43Mpbs download 😞

Thank you.

[iniltous]

AFAIK, you can connect the hub via powerline to the ONT but it’s not IMHO a good idea , the connection between the ONT and router ( normally an Ethernet cable and unless changed out to the 2.5Gb model ) runs at  1Gb , so adequate for the normal ‘speeds’ sold , if you introduce a  powerline link between the ONT and router and this powerline works at a suboptimal speed ( they rarely perform at the advertised speed ) if it ( for arguments sake ) bottlenecks throughput to 300Mb ( or potentially much less  ) your 500Mb is somewhat redundant, 

As far as the ONT position, if it’s a ‘new build’  , so not replacing copper service , the building FTTP from the outset , then the ONT  was installed at the time of construction , the developer chose the location for the ONT , and pre installed  the OR optical cable from the external wall to an electrical pattress box , OR obviously can’t deviate from this location, it’s been fixed by the developer, if it were retro fitted ( so there was a copper service pre-existing and the FTTP replaced it ) then the ONT location is agreed with the person who ordered the FTTP service , if this is the case presumably you moved onto the address that had already been upgraded to FTTP and although the ONT position isn’t suitable for you , ot was agreed by a previous owner/occupant .
You can get an ONT repositioned, it’s a job that’s around £100+vat ( that’s the Openreach to ISP price what the ISP charges is upto them ) but if a new-build  the cabling is currently hidden as it was installed at first fix ( so behind walls etc ) , a relocation will be surface wired , so the cable will be visible, in which case getting wired Ethernet link , one socket near the ONT and one near your work station wouldn’t be much different in price ( and you have a say in who does the work ) and visually would be much the same .

FWIW , if your daughter is switching the ONT off , obviously the Ethernet cable is still susceptible to this , and if your speed isn’t as it should be , if the optical cable was disconnected from the ONT and picked up a bit if dirt , when reconnected the speed may well suffer , so may be worth asking for the tech to clean the fibre end and the ONT ‘female’ socket before doing anything else .

[garybrett37]

Thank you for your detailed reply. I was here when Openreach installed the Fibre (ONT), I did ask them to put it in a more central location like the hallway at the front but they said time was tight. I didn't foresee the issues so left them to it.

I've just run a check, 1 meter away from the hub I get 324Mbps download on wifi, when I go downstairs to to where I work its 98Mbps. As the crow files its about 20 feet but on a different floor. Would TP link powerline be the better solution here to offer similar speeds?

I'm not entirely sure what the engineer is coming for, that speed looks ok to me but they can obviously see something I cant.

[iniltous]

WiFi speeds are a bit if a lottery, that’s why WiFi speed isn’t guaranteed, as far as where you work , powerline adapters are usually for wired devices, so you connect an one of the routers Ethernet sockets to one of the pair of adapters , and in another room , connect the other adapter to the wired device and basically use the house mains electricity to transport the Ethernet connection from one room to the other …that’s not WiFi , there may be some adapters that also incorporate WiFi , so basically in your ‘work’ room you connect to the adapter wirelessly rather than via an Ethernet cable , using this either wired or WiFi method method will be limited by how well the pair of adapters work over your mains wiring you won’t know if it betters the 98Mb ‘direct’ WiFi until you try  …..there are various ways to improve WiFi coverage, BT have ‘whole home’ option , in effect wireless ( WiFi ) repeaters, as well as solutions you can buy rather than rent from BT .
If using a powerline adapter from  a Ethernet socket ( rather than the connection from the ONT to the router ) then any bottle neck introduced by the adapters  only affects the device connected to the Ethernet socket rather than the router itself being  limited by the adapters , where obviously everything using the router is affected .

Although 98Mb is a huge reduction from the potential 500Mb your service can deliver, it’s still a pretty good speed , so difficult to see what real world issues you would encounter , what do you do that ‘only’ having 98Mb download is a an issue .