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.

[JimM11]

@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!

[JimM11]

@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!  

[wenklaw]

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

[wenklaw]

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. 

[JimM11]

@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!

[Bazzamanhk]

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. 

[wenklaw]

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

[JimM11]

@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.

[wenklaw]

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.  

[Bazzamanhk]

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.