Smart Wifi pro wired backhaul issues

[wenklaw]

Hi

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.

[TraderTravel]

@wenklaw Whilst you are right that this is perhaps a niche issue for a lot of people, the fact of the matter is that the hardware is more than capable of delivering this. The issue that you and I are experiencing is purely down to poor firmware. EE do have the ability to resolve this with a firmware release.

[ben_flugel]

@TraderTravel  Agreed. If it can't handle those speeds then there's little point in the 1.6gbps service.

[bobpullen]

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@bobpullen wrote:

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@Colesey wrote:

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.

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Life got in the way 😉

I'll try and keep an eye on things over the coming week. My Pro extender is using wired backhaul via 2 x unamanged 2.5GbE switches so assume I should encounter the problem if it's a global thing.

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I took a quick look at my setup this morning.

For context, my Pro extender is using wired backhaul via 2 x 2.5GbE unmanaged switches, linked below. The extender connects to the Zyxel, and the Zyxel connects back to the Tenda, which is in turn connected to a LAN port on the Pro hub.

Zyxel 5-Port 2.5G Multi-Gigabit Unmanaged Switch for Home Entertainment or SOHO Network [MG-105]
Tenda TEM2010F 10 Ports 2.5G Multi-Gigabit Unmanaged Switch

Cat-7 cables throughout.

Looks like my extender has been up for > 8 days without a reboot and wireless speedtests don't seem to be indicative of an issue for me at the moment. All of these are from the extender: -

• Google Pixel 9 Pro XL (Wi-Fi 7/6GHz) = ~1.6Gbps
• Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra (Wi-Fi 7/6GHz) = ~1.4Gbps
• MS Surface 7 laptop (Wi-Fi 7/6GHz) = ~1.4Gbps
• iPad A16 (Wi-Fi 6/5GHz) = ~750Mbps (only supports 80MHz so around what I'd expect)
• iPhone 7 (Wi-Fi 5/5GHz) = ~500Mbps (as above, plus only Wi-Fi 5)

I don't normally have any clients wired to my extender but whilst I was fiddling, I thought I'd try the Surface laptop wired using a 2.5GbE Ethernet <> USB-C dongle - this is giving some questionable results so I might dig into it further when I get some time. Speedtest results seem variable, around ~600mbps at time of writing, whereas I'd expect close to full speed from a wired device 🤔

TL:DR - Not seeing what @wenklaw is with wireless devices, but I am potentially seeing a throughput issue affecting a device that's wired to the second port of a wired backhaul extender.

[wenklaw]

Interesting Bob that you’re not seeing the same issues as me when routing the backhaul via switches, although I have gone direct too and it degraded even more!

one thing I haven’t done is unplug the device from from port 2 on the ee WiFi pro. It’s now unplugged and I’ve reset the WiFi pro so back up to full speed at the moment.  It shouldn’t make a difference but then this shouldn’t be happening so who knows!!

[wenklaw]

An update

I may be jumping the gun but since I unplugged the device that was in port 2 on the ee WiFi pro my speed has remained stable and not degraded that’s 3 days.  The device that was plugged into port 2 was a 100meg HD home run so wondering if that was causing an issue across both ports possibly?  Will give it another few days testing, fingers crossed.

[TraderTravel]

@bobpullen Like you, my issue is with devices that are connected via ethernet (wired) to that second port on the back of the extender. Specifically Apple devices. 🙂

To further clarify, all my extenders are connected back into the hub via Cat 6a cables directly. None of them go via switches - all my 2.5gbps switches hang off either the hub, or off the second port of the extender. Hopefully that is clear.

Backhaul via 2.5gbps seems to work well otherwise. Also non-Apple devices have zero issues getting the full expected bandwidth.

[JimM11]

@wenklaw It indeed may be the cause, if it is so although a little costly to do, 2.5Gb/s switch on port 2 and the 100Mb/s slower device into the switch, at least your switch will keep the hub ports way up at the sync speed. Not the cheapest way of doing it but if you do have a few lower and even 1Gb/s you can put them all through the switch!

[wenklaw]

Another update:

Since unplugging the device that was connected into port 2 on the ee WiFi pro which was a HD home run with a 100meg NIC the problems have gone away.  
I’ve now purchased a fair few ugreen cat8 cables and am replacing all the older ones I was using and will reconnect the HD home run to port 2 and see what happens, if it degrades again I am going to plug my monitors LAN 1000NIC into it and see if that has the same issue.  

at least I seem to have identified the issue and have a workaround ie don’t plug anything into port 2 of using a wired backhaul. 

[bobpullen]

Had a bit more time to play around with my setup using the second LAN port on the Pro Extender. Reminder that my extender is using wired backhaul via a couple of unmanaged 2.5GbE switches (using the lower of the two ports on the extender).

• Ran a speedtest (using Ookla) over 6GHz Wi-Fi using a Google Pixel connected to the extender - full speed (~1.6Gbps)
• Connected a 1GbE laptop to the second (top) port on the extender and repeated speedtest - speed dropped to ~1Gbps
• Connected a 10/100 Raspberry Pi to the second (top) port on the extender and repeated speedtest - speed remains at ~1Gbps
• Unseated/reseated backhaul Ethernet cable - speed back to ~1.6Gbps
• Unseated/reseated the Raspberry Pi (10/100) Ethernet cable - speed dropped to ~1Gbps
• Unplugged the Raspberry Pi (10/100) Ethernet cable - speed remains at ~1Gbps
• Unseated/reseated backhaul Ethernet cable - speed remains at ~1Gbps
• Retested 5 mins later - speed back to ~1.6Gbps
• Re-connected the Raspberry Pi (10/100) Ethernet cable  - speed remains at ~1.6Gbps

So, not particularly conclusive/consistent; the speeds are consistently 'high' for me over Wi-Fi and I wouldn't rule out the variance being down to the sensitivity/nuances of Wi-Fi 🤷

I'm going to leave the 10/100 device connected for now and see if I can get anywhere close to the deterioration @wenklaw has reported...

[TraderTravel]

@wenklaw 

You definitely don't need Cat8. I can't think of anything in the home environment, even someone doing huge video shoots needing to put in that sort of cabling. Remember even Cat5e is more than capable for 10gbps over short distances. 🙂

Also if you ever need to terminate a more than Cat6 cable, it can be very finnicky...