Atrocious WiFi stability

[lh4827]

I have recently upgraded my EE broadband and have been sent a new white Smart Router and also pay £10 a month for the whole home WiFi. Since the day it was set up, I have been experiencing regular drop outs in most of my wifi devices and the WiFi disc needs restarting daily. All of my ethernet connected devices are performing perfectly fine. 

My partner's Samsung phone regularly drops to a link speed of 2mbps whilst sat in the same room (within 10feet) of the router with a direct line of sight to it. The WiFi becomes totally unusable for her and she is forced to disconnect and reconnect. My phone and laptop are also experiencing this same behaviour. I have multiple Amazon echos and smart switches which are now requiring daily restarts to reconnect to the WiFi. 

Devices connected to the WiFi disc seem to fare much better. But the disc requires a reboot everyday as it fails to connect to the router. When it is connected, the signal status is "Excellent" 

My old EE smart hub has been re-puposed as an AP in my detached office and experiences no issues of this nature. My partner's phone also performs excellently on this router. 

Why are we getting such a poor service from the new router and why can I not split the 2.4ghz and 5ghz bands out like I can on the old smart hub? 

[Christopher_G]

Hi @lh4827

Welcome to the community.

Have you spoken to our technical support team about this? They're in the best position to help you.

Chris

[Northerner]

Hi @lh4827 

I have found over these years that the free router provided by the ISP is practically useless, especially the more tech you have in your home. As a result I use my free router (Sky) as a modem only. I use powerline adaptors to the more demanding devices, off a switch. For example my TV, PS5, Shield, old network drive and this run off a switch in my lounge to a powerline adaptor.

For my wifi devices I have one of these wireless access points, again off my switch although you can plug this directly into your router. As it is dual band and I can I can have more than one channel then I have separate networks. 1, for phones and tablets and 2^nd for Echo x4, security camera bedroom tv, or anything else. The third network I don’t use at the moment but can be expanded.

However if you don’t want to go down this route then consider the following:

• Check how busy the wifi networks are in your area. You can download a number of free apps to check the congestion
• Changing your wifi channel this will help with the above point
• Picking the correct band for your property/device. Not all devices work best on both the 5ghz or 2ghz band. Both of these have different qualities.

Thanks,

[lh4827]

I previously used to have a Netgear Nighthawk in place of the EE smart hub to improve performance throughout the house and still found areas of the house lacking in coverage, hence my switch to the EE smart WiFi package to acquire a mesh disc without having to spring for that myself, or running Cat6 all over the joint to put AP's around the house. 

We have noticed that any devices connected to the disc perform considerably better and consistently achieve high link speeds, so the issues are not with the devices, its the Router. Couple that with the fact that the disc disconnects from the router everyday despite it being physically located within 10 feet of the router and only passing through a wooden floor is further indicating issues with the Router. 

I have yet to contact technical support as previous experience has found it to be lacking in technical ability, and lacking any understanding of what a VPN was or why i might need a consistent connection to the internet for the stability of the VPN....

[IT-4BusyPeople]

>I previously used to have a Netgear Nighthawk in place of the EE smart hub to improve performance throughout the house and still found areas of the house lacking in coverage

A WiFi based coverage solution will only have limited impact. Personally I would turn off the Mesh discs, and using a tools such as WiFi Analyzer (Farproc) or Wi-Fi SweetSpots (Assia) to better understand the WiFi coverage and and so locate the discs appropriately or in some cases replacement them entirely with WiFi access points on powerline adaptors. Remeber £10 pcm is £240 over 2 years, and there is a lot you can do for that and still have change...

[lh4827]

Power line adapters were my go-to previously, but for some reason their performance is atrocious in this house. I went through Zyxel, Tp-link and devolo sets to see whether any brand was better and the best performing were the 300mbps zyxels but they were flaky to say the least. The house is old and the wiring probably made out of cheese, which isn't particularly conducive to quality networking. 

I spoke to tech support again and got through to someone who listened to what I was saying and has concluded that the issue is likely that the router is faulty. I'm running a final test after factory resetting the router before getting it replaced. 

[IT-4BusyPeople]

From the little I've come across the BT discs, if you are doing a factory reset of the router, don't forget to turn off the router's WiFi and reset and re-pair the discs with the router.

 >The house is old and the wiring probably made out of cheese

Looks like some rewiring might be the order of the day. However, as you've already invested in some powerline adaptors it might be worth exploring whether they can assist in getting connectivity into your not-spots so linking adjacent rooms rather than directly back to your router.