WiFi

[Guitarslingingmick]

My home WiFi network is awful. Standard 1910 brick built house, Home Hub2 with Halo, and three discs. Every single day the WiFi drops out rendering all devices in the house without internet, laptops, mobile, games consoles, TV, and Sonos speaker network.  I have had issues for years, we have been sent 4 different Home Hub 2s and have had one tech visit where the tech person recalibrated the priorities on the hub. This meant that the last new hub I was sent served only to demonstrate that this recalibration must have helped, even I'd it didn't actually help provide a stable network. I also find that one the WiFi comes back and I try to use the MyBT app, I am asked for mu username and password instead of the pin I have chosen, or even the biometrics login method that I have selected, it's almost as if my entire account is being reset! Just wondered if anyone else has experienced anything similar.

• Thanks.

[naylor2006]

If the question is how to improve WIFI in an old brick house and the WIFI discs arent working satisfactory then you really need to install ethernet around the property and connect the WIFI discs to it, so they dont rely on their wireless connection to each other the hub to broadcast the overall network.

You could try more discs with better placement, I used that method for years and its all about positioning. WIFI is severely diminished by concrete, thick old walls with fireplaces are a complete killer, you'll find 5Ghz WIFI will pass through one wall to some extent but anything much further will struggle and devices will usually fall back to 2.4Ghz which has a better range, but lower speed. What WIFI passes through much more easily is ceilings and floors, assuming your 1st floor doesnt have a solid concrete floor.

In my house all my walls are conrete, thick 1930's stuff that if you drill into black dusts pours out spoiling the carpet and paint....but the 1st floor is floorboard and the ceiling is lath and plaster, WIFI found it very easy to path through there. This meant that any wifi disc above the router on the floor above will get strong signal and therefore that disc has best chance of providing further coverage upstairs, or the need for one in the floor above is less therefore more discs can be placed to focus efforts elsewhere. For me it was possible to bounce from the room where the router was to the floor above then have two discs upstairs facing each other through two door ways, the the adjacent room across the landing had a disc in it too. Doors being made of wood (normally) will allow WIFI through so even with the doors closed it should still be getting a nice signal. Then below that adjacent room which was normally blocked by the walls downstairs could get a better signal through the floor from above, and so on and I dont think there's any need to keep boring you with the arrangement of my house, but hopefully you see what im saying.

Problems arose when the discs sometimes werent intelligent enough to stay connected to their strongest partner in the daisy chain as there is no way to force this, so sometimes when power went off or on or for no apparent reason discs would be trying to connect to sources much further away. I got fed up in the end and just installed ethernet everywhere so that every WIFI access point had a hard wire back to the router, ultimately this solves everything but is not easy in these older houses to do discreetly, it took months to get it all done, actually maybe half a year to plan it all and figure out where I could hide cables and get them into the floors. (all my stuff is ceiling mounted now)

Now, another option which could work is powerlines, you could get yourself powerline adapters, connect up the parent powerline to the router then place the other one in the room with the disc and connect the disc to the powerline via ethernet, then the wifi disc is getting a direct hard feed from the router, powerlines can be more reliable than wifi but depends on home wiring. Speaking from experience, I have a 1930's home with various ring mains and it was possible to take connectivity from my lounge to the upstairs room in the complete other corner of the house (on a different ring main), about 90Mbps was passed to that point, which is fine for browsing and steaming, you cant game on the latency you'll get but for general use its great. That could certainly be an option.

You can run multiple pairs of powerline adapters so you could in theory hook up all your discs back to the router so they wouldnt be using WIFI to connect.

Some food for thought I hope.

EDIT: - Ive just read that the BT Complete WIFI (Black Discs) may no daisy chaing with each other, so the entire waffle I started with, unless you have the White Wholehome discs, might now be a waste of your time unless you get a different multi AP MESH setup that does daisy chain. So powerlines are probably worth a shot rather than position, if all the black discs need to connect back to the router via their own WIFI then this will be quite limiting with the furthest points. I had BT Wholehome WIFI for years which is what my post was based on.

[Guitarslingingmick]

Thanks for that, really informative, and useful. I think I may have a bash atbthe powerline extenders. Though the issues I am having are a bit weirder - I can do a WiFi test through the MyBT app, with my mobile Sat next to my Home Hub 2 and still get a "poor" result!?!?

Thanks again.

[naylor2006]

You may wish to switch off WIFI on the device you are testing with then switch it back on again whilst near the hub incase you have a radio overlap and you are still connected to one further away, might be a red herring though anyway that test, the issue could also be caused by interference, WIFI interference caused by other WIFI networks and even the BT Complete Discs themselves can spoil the signal.

But yeah, I think ultimately to solve the wider issue here you need to connect up your remote access points to ethernet, either by running ethernet everywhere which is the best belt and braces approach....or using powerlines to try and piggy back ethernet through the existing home electrical wiring.

[chrisjp]

"In my house all my walls are concrete, thick 1930's stuff that if you drill into black dusts pours out spoiling the carpet and paint"

If black dust pours out when you are drilling your walls, that sounds more like breeze blocks than concrete. Years ago breeze blocks were made from a mixture of cement and pulverised coal power station ash - hence the black dust. Solid concrete would give greyish or whitish dust.
Breeze blocks are more permeable to WiFi than solid concrete - or bricks - but can still block it.

[naylor2006]

Oh thanks, thats super interesting to know, I'll take your word for it, yep its sooty, I'd not really thought about it like that, of course im aware the walls arent solid concrete literally, i'd just been wrongly using the phrasing to describe solid walls which severely diminish wifi. 

Problem I have is all internal walls are breeze blocks, WIFI will diminish roughly by half through one wall and then will not make it through the next, In addition is the central fireplaces which add another few blocks depth either side.

Still, im taking that knowledge and putting it in my pocket.