Wi-Fi constantly drops

[lippy]

Hi, having a problem with my wifi constantly dropping on multiple devices. 
I’m still on copper.
Bt sent Smart Hub 2  & it’s no better.

The hub stays blue throughout but all devices disconnect and then reconnect. Makes things like Teams calls impossible.

Lived here 8 yrs without a problem. No new devices added.

I’m not very techy so finding this a bit frustrating.
 
Have followed some suggestions from other forums like turning off 5ghz and Mac randomisation on devices but nothing has helped.

Had 2 engineers round - external one who confirmed nothing wrong with line and internal one who said I shouldn’t have turned off 5ghz so turned it back on and put it on a less congested channel.

WiFi drops not as frequent but still happening far too often (ranges between every 10mins to every 30mins - previously was every two mins).

Event log shows DHCP disconnects and LAN ipv6 neighbour discovery and ARP[add] and [del] a lot.

i feel this is something to do with my hub settings but I don’t know enough to know what to change. Any advice welcome!

[Christopher_G]

Hi @lippy 

Welcome to the community.

We have some fantastic, knowledgeable community users who may see this thread and be able to help you with the technical aspect. However, the only thing I can recommend in this situation is to continue speaking with our technical support team so they can continue with troubleshooting.

Chris

[Paul608085]

@lippy 

I'm wondering if you are suffering from interference from your neighbours WiFi, which is causing these problems?

How far away from you are your neighbour's homes?

Try this:

Install an app on your phone or tablet to check the relative signal levels of the WiFi signals in your home. I use "WiFi Analyzer" on my Android phone, but there are other similar apps for Apple devices.

Switch off your BT Hub and use this app to check for the signal levels on each of the channels in the 2.4GHz band. Out of channels 1, 6 and 11 see which one shows the lowest signal level. Repeat for the 5GHz band but on channels 36 to 48.

Restart your Home Hub and log in to it from a web browser: http://192.168.1.254 and go to the WiFi page. Turn off "Smart" selection of the WiFi channels and for each of the 2.4 and 5GHz bands, select the channels that you found to have the lowest signal levels on the app.

In my experience, "Smart" selection of the WiFi channels was anything but smart!

.

[lippy]

Hi Chris, would love for the technical team to help but so far found them utterly unhelpful! 

The last person I spoke to (and I have placed many calls over many weeks) hadn’t even heard of DHCP and the engineer that came out had to keep calling someone to find out what various event logs meant. My experience of BT support has been anything but helpful technically.

if there’s someone else at BT with some actual technical knowledge that could help, I would be very grateful!

[Paul608085]

@lippy 

"the engineer that came out had to keep calling someone to find out what various event logs meant. My experience of BT support has been anything but helpful technically."

Bear in mind that the engineer that visited you was probably from Openreach, not BT (Retail).

Openreach provide network services to many Internet Service Providers, (ISPs), such as Sky, Zen, Vodaphone....and BT Retail... amongst many others.

Openreach engineer's expertise will be in installing and repairing their own network: the copper and fibre cables, the equipment in the street cabinets etc.

To expect them to be experts in reading the logs of multiple ISPs supplied routers is unreasonable, (in my opinion), and actually, probably outside their job description: if they can prove that the service is good to your Master Socket, that is all that they need to do.

.

[lippy]

Possibly but I already had one external engineer come out to confirm the line was okay. BT assured me the second engineer was an internal engineer who could help with the hub problem so hence my frustration. 
i have been called away to work for a few days but will try your solution when i get back. I live in a semi detached house and my neighbour has been there longer than I have and says nothing has changed with her connection so I’m not sure why there would suddenly be an issue.  

[pddco]

Do you still get dropped connections when using Ethernet? If so, it could be the hub or something related to the broadband line itself. No need to be chasing WiFi specific problems if Ethernet is also affected. 

Looking around the forum it seems that others are reporting similar issues with equally perplexed BT/Openreach engineers.