topic Re: Smart Wifi pro wired backhaul issues in Broadband & Landline

Smart Wifi pro wired backhaul issues

wenklaw — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 17:52:02 GMT

I have my EE smart Wifi pro connected to my EE smart hub pro router via Cat6 but i am seeing the following issue, after a day or 2 speeds via the smart wifi pro drops to around 350-400 (I have 1000mb) from around 900-1000mb which suggests to me maybe the wifi pro device is losing its wired backhaul connection and falls back to a wifi backhaul connection. If i power cycle the wifi pro it will be back to 900-1000mb again but within a dew days back down to 400 etc, i am using CAT6 cabling.

Unfortunately due to using the EE smart hub and wifi pro on my BT fibre connection it seems i cant see how the wifi pro is connecting, wifi backhaul of wired.

Anyone else had this issue? I can only guess that the cause is the cabling maybe however i have changed out the patch cables and never had an issue with my Deco XE75, always connected via wired at 2.5gb.

Re: Smart Wifi pro wired backhaul issues

JimM11 — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 18:47:56 GMT

@wenklaw More so what are you doing and the setting off the EE Smart hub you have connected and where!

Re: Smart Wifi pro wired backhaul issues

wenklaw — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 18:57:52 GMT

Sorry mate I don’t understand what you’re saying?
My set up is as follows, I have a wired LAN at home, the EE WiFi pro is connected to my wired LAN in my office/study which then connects via CAT6 back to the EE smart hub pro router.

My question I suppose is this, has anyone else who connects the WiFi pro via a wired backhaul back to the EE smart hub pro seen a degradation in speed they see on devices connected to the WiFi pro? I see 1000meg for a week then it degrades to 400meg, which as I said suggests the backhaul is switching back to wifi as that’s the speed I see if I disconnect the LAN

Re: Smart Wifi pro wired backhaul issues

JimM11 — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 19:08:17 GMT

@wenklaw Do you mean a EE Smart wireless Pro is wired to the EE Smart Pro Router. Speed issue's and backhaul issues with regards to i think the pro where in a topic couple weeks ago very similar Bob Pullen was involved so you may be able to see it somewhere.

https://ee.co.uk/help/broadband/getting-started/compare-our-range-of-broadband-hubs

https://ee.co.uk/help/broadband/getting-started/setting-up-smart-wifi

Set up your EE Home Broadband hub | Broadband help | EE

Re: Smart Wifi pro wired backhaul issues

Colesey — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 20:48:53 GMT

I have a similar issue with mine.
Cannot achieve over 500mbps on 5ghz when connected to a backhauled node but when on 6ghz I get full speed. If I connect to the router on 5ghz I get full speed but not on the wired backhaul node. Used to get full speeds on both 5ghz/6ghz.

think they need to release a firmware update.

Re: Smart Wifi pro wired backhaul issues

JimM11 — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 20:57:09 GMT

@Colesey Was trying to remember was a bit off (too and fro) with speed test's etc and Bob Pullen was on the ball with it and the OP discussing it all, do you remember if you or what posting it was on!

Re: Smart Wifi pro wired backhaul issues

Colesey — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 21:00:02 GMT

I can’t remember Jim unfortunately 🥲 I think Bob was going to do some tests on his system but don’t recall him ever coming back with the results.

Re: Smart Wifi pro wired backhaul issues

JimM11 — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 21:12:56 GMT

@Colesey Same for me had a search but you know how that goes, gave up trying to find it!

Re: Smart Wifi pro wired backhaul issues

Ewan15 — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 06:56:03 GMT

@JimM11 If I remember correctly Bob and another person Identified an issue with wired backhaul on Pro devices, whereby it would give full speed in one direction and a greatly degraded speed in the other.

Re: Smart Wifi pro wired backhaul issues

wenklaw — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 07:48:05 GMT

I’ve completed a bit of testing as follows:

When the wired LAN is connected the WiFi pros light is a stable light blue, when I remove the LAN the light goes orange/yellow. However when I see the speed drops the light is solid blue and only goes orange/yellow if I remove the LAN cable, this suggests to me the backhaul is still wired when I experience a drop from 1000mb to around 350mb.

I had moved things about the other day and in doing so ‘may’ have swapped the backhaul from port 2 to port 1 on the WiFi pro, it’s a possibility though not a certainty. I swapped the backhaul wired LAN to port 2 and so far haven’t seen any speed drops, possible port 1 faulty? Time will tell as I expect if it’s going to degrade it will do in the 24 hours. It makes sense as have had it running fine for a couple of weeks prior to this happening. Although is it possible for a faulty LAN port to behave in this manner?

Re: Smart Wifi pro wired backhaul issues

JimM11 — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 07:48:56 GMT

@wenklaw Have tried a few searches to try and locate the post but not been able to find, but yes the symptoms of the reduced Ethernet Backhaul has been as far as my memory goes outed before, and think that it was kind off maybe the next FW update may include or address, know it's not much help and only way to test would be to attach a 2.5Gb/s switch at the smart wireless and see if the Pro backhaul on the port was indeed up and working, not sure if you can plug into the spare port on the smart wireless but would be worth a try to see if Extender/Pro backhaul but you would need a note of good/bad to compare against!

Re: Smart Wifi pro wired backhaul issues

JimM11 — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 08:00:36 GMT

@wenklaw Must have been crossing over paths, the ports don't generally go off but they can up and renegotiate the sync speeds especially up in the higher 2.5Gb/s speed's but really would not expect to get down below the 1Gb/s, so the 300/400Mb/s push you had explained earlier was looking like the Backhaul Ethernet was gone all together, there are a few weird mesh smart wireless going on at present and the EE does not have the tools to look at that!

Re: Smart Wifi pro wired backhaul issues

wenklaw — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 17:51:37 GMT

Well it’s dropped back down to 350-410ish. I’ve got a 2.5gig unmanaged switch but also a 1gig managed switch (the WiFi pro is plugged into the 2.5gig one but it’s in the attic so I can’t see the status lights without going up there and the 1gig switch isn’t actually connected into my network at all) so I’m going to plug the managed switch in instead of the unmanaged one first to try and see what’s going on with the port. My guess at this stage is maybe the WiFi pro and unmanaged switch aren’t negotiating port speed correctly but that still doesn’t answer why it’s basically half speed as it would be 10/100/1000/2500? Maybe not between 350 and 410ish? If I’m still seeing problems I can use one cable to connect directly via a coupler unfortunately from the WiFi pro to the EE smart wifi pro router which does remove the switch from the equation though.

Not very happy I have to say

Re: Smart Wifi pro wired backhaul issues

wenklaw — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 06:40:29 GMT

So I swapped out my 2.5 gbps tp link unmanaged switch for my older 1gbps tp link managed switch on the 01/08 and I haven’t seen speeds on the ee wifi pro degrade since then.
Usually I would see WiFi speeds basically half in 24-48 hours tops. Will see how it holds up over the next week, if it does I will then remove the managed switch from the backhaul and cable directly from the WiFi pro to the EE router to see if that suffers the same degrade in speeds, unfortunately I do have to use a coupler to link the 2 cat6 cables together in my attic so not ideal.

Re: Smart Wifi pro wired backhaul issues

JimM11 — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 07:14:38 GMT

@wenklaw You got to do what you need to do, couplers are fine in general, soon as you start pushing the speed limits that is when the stress on the system start's to show the main issue's, did the similar for the son, but he could not hold the 10Gb/s nic steady on the VM Router, so ran a new cable point to point and sorted that out, was no need to do it, but just got fed up with the constant DAD why do i keep getting sync problems on my HIGH speed gaming rig, you DONT need it you have only a 2Gb/s on the VM connection does not matter, just gave up and run the new cable get's the monkey off the back!

Re: Smart Wifi pro wired backhaul issues

Bazzamanhk — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 21:08:31 GMT

I've got a few 2.5/10gbe managed and unmanaged switches and found a brilliant cheap 4x 2.5gbe and 2 10gbe fsp one from Aliexpress for under £30. You could give it a go.

Re: Smart Wifi pro wired backhaul issues

wenklaw — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 04:02:16 GMT

Are you using them for the backhaul though? If so which one?

Re: Smart Wifi pro wired backhaul issues

JimM11 — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 06:01:10 GMT

@wenklaw With the backhaul the ideal is direct Point to Point cable between the Router and the Extender. Switch is fine for everything else that you need.

Re: Smart Wifi pro wired backhaul issues

wenklaw — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 06:27:17 GMT

Ideally maybe a direct cable would be better but using a switch shouldn’t be causing this issue. I’ve used managed and unmanaged switches to connect WiFi MESH access points for many many years using various manufacturers kit, tp link decos, 1st gen BT WiFi discs to name a few not once have I experienced an issue UNTIL now with the EE WiFi pro connected to a 2.5gig unmanaged switch.

It really shouldn’t be causing the issue it is and clearly is being caused by the EE WiFi pro device as my old deco worked fine connected at 2.5gig via the unmanaged switch, never a glitch.

The EE WiFi pro has now been stable connected to my 1gig managed switch since last Friday so pretty sure it’s something to do with the 2.5gig port on the EE WiFi pro as several people have mentioned issues with it being fussy/problematic when using as a wired backhaul.

if this was a bit of kit you had purchased you would send it back as faulty as far as I’m concerned.

Re: Smart Wifi pro wired backhaul issues

Bazzamanhk — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 11:05:22 GMT

I only have 500m fiber but have a few 10GbE and 2.5GbE nics on our pcs. The models i've tested are hisource (£23)and vimin(£10 used but has a problem if you use sfp+ dac cables, fine with sfp+ om3/4)

The link from SH to the vimin is 1GbE cat7

vimin to pc1 - 2.5GbE cat7

vimin to hisource 2.5GbE cat7

Hisource to tplink router 1GbE

Hisource to pc2 10GbE sfp+ om3 fiber

Hisource to Nas 10GbE sfp+ DAC

Nas and switches been on 24x7 for few years

Before these cheap switches came out I used a microtik 5 port sfp with sfp dac cables and a sfp 10gbaset transceiver which costs more than the new switches lol.