EE Full Fibre Gigabit – Ongoing Speed Issue

[Ann-C]

The Issue:
My full fibre Gigabit connection consistently drops to around 70–90 Mbps (roughly 10% of the advertised speed) at irregular intervals—sometimes after a day, a week, or even a month. This reduced speed persists until I manually restart the router, sometimes requiring multiple restarts to restore full performance.

Timeline of Support So Far:

1. First Engineer Visit:
   The engineer arrived while the connection was operating at full speed. Line tests showed no issues.

2. Second Engineer (Openreach):
   During this visit, the speed was degraded (10%), and the engineer identified a potential problem. His proposed solution was to remove my existing home network setup—including a small switch I use to bypass a separate issue with the EE router: devices connected via Ethernet take 30–120 seconds to resolve the port and establish a connection when powered on.

   His “correct” setup involved using the official red Ethernet cable from the fibre box to the router. As expected, this reset the router, which temporarily resolved the speed issue—as it normally does. After that, I was told any further problems are the provider’s responsibility.

Key Points:

• I’ve kept the engineer’s recommended setup in place —with the port delay to eliminate variables. Despite that, the speed has again dropped to 10% proving the issue is not with my switch, router, or cables.

• This problem existed even before switching to EE, when using the BT Hub 5—without the switch in place. I’ve also tested with multiple Ethernet cables.

• Sending a new router will not fix the 10% speed issue. It may help with the Ethernet port delay problem (30–120 seconds), assuming the replacement is different hardware from the current EE router.

For reference, the port delay is a known issue in the community:
EE Router Ethernet Port Delay Issue

Has anyone else seen similar issues with EE full fibre — where speeds drop drastically and stay low until a router reboot? Especially if you've ruled out internal hardware like switches, cables, or routers?

Any ideas, insights, or potential fixes would be appreciated. At this point, I’m just trying to get a clear answer or at least compare notes with others dealing with the same thing.

[JimM11]

@Ann-C What EE Router do you have, take a look at the link below.

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

[Ann-C]

Smart Hub Plus SH32B

[JimM11]

@Ann-C If you do not mind can you give me a blow by blow what you have for Ethernet connected devices, Never had a problem with anything, but HERE is what i think may be going on, And it is so easy to clear, if this makes sense and you have seen it.

1. Everything is down hard speed wise, you do NOTHING to the EE Smarthub+ version that you have, JUST remove the wan cable that plugs into Either the back off the router or into the ONT, 30 seconds or so would be enough ideally the Router displays by coming off the Aqua, plug it back in after the time period, the hub reconnects, and pretty sure you will go up to max speed. Going to stop at this point until you read, confirm or reply. Jim

[Ann-C]

I’ll need to wait until the connection drops again before I can test removing the WAN cable for 30 seconds—and there's no telling when that will happen. When it’s working properly, I’m happy with both the speed and stability. But having to manually intervene to restore full performance is becoming a real frustration. I'll give it a try when it slows again. Appreciate the help Jim, you already solved my port delay issue, I just noticed! So thank you!

All Ethernet cables are Cat 5e or higher (multiple cables tested and verified).

Regular Wired Setup:

  Fibre ONT → EE Router (WAN port)

    EE Router Port #1 → 5-Port TP-Link Switch #1

      Switch Port #1 → PC 1

      Switch Port #2 →Printer

    EE Router Port #2 → 5-Port TP-Link Switch #2

      Switch Port #1 → PC 2

      Switch Port #2 → PC 3

After Open Reach Engineer Wired Setup:

  Fibre ONT → EE Router (WAN port)

    EE Router Port #1 → PC 1

    EE Router Port #2 → PC 2

    EE Router Port #3 → PC 3

[JimM11]

@Ann-C This is the only thing that confuses me from your original posting.

• This problem existed even before switching to EE, when using the BT Hub 5—without the switch in place. I’ve also tested with multiple Ethernet cables.
  That i do not get, have you always had Fibre Direct with the OLD Hub 5. With the symptom and the drop in speed to the  Range you mention an it is going to be very hard to prove that is why the cable in/out is important, think that the wan of the hub or the ONT may be dropping sync between each other and going to a 100/100 sync instead off the 1000/1000 this would force everything down and NO matter what you will only ever see the max around the 90mb/s down the pipe, that is why i asked what you had connected to the EE Router just incase you had an older Ethernet device that was a Fast Ethernet as those are only ever 100Mb/s speeds, your printer for sure is a candidate for that.

As i do not know where you have the switch no matter what take a look at it closely you will see 4 ports together and the last one as a single very right as you view from the front, make sure that connection the single is the one that goes to the EE Router, will keep that port up at the 1000/1000 Gb/s sync speed.

[Ann-C]

Yes, I’ve always had a direct fibre connection — even with the old BT Hub 5, which was set up the same way as the current EE router. The only reason I introduced the switches was to work around the port delay issue on the new EE router.

At the moment, I’ve connected PC1, PC2, and PC3 directly to the router, and I’ve left the printer disconnected for now. I’ll monitor the connection to see if the issue returns.

[JimM11]

@Ann-C If you get a chance if/when you get the issue, but also before web manager to the hub http://192.168.1.254 take a look at i think you will see it in the Status page, Marked as Wan link speed, you should see this as per the picture.

Wan link speed, if wrong may show 100 Mbps

[JimM11]

@Ann-C It's this part """This problem existed even before switching to EE"""

Someone from EE also posted that the latest FW has fixed the EE Smarthub+ port delay so it is now i would assume fairly instant! No longer a user so cannot check or confirm!