BT Home Network

[NetworkNinja]

Hi All,

 

Warning - Long Post

 

I have a customer who lives in a village with average internet speeds of about 60Mbps. They run a business from the house and need a decent connection. There ISP is BT and they have had the same problem for a few years and I would like to try and help them without getting them to spend loads of money in case it doesn't work. They seem to drop wireless connection throughout property every so often. (This is a big house which has 3 Floors). Before I started doing work with them they have some Wireless Extenders in the house - Speed test of these shown about 6Mbps. I have replaced all these with a Unify system and they are now getting about 60Mpbs on the Second and Third Floor. (Great). They don't want to spend any more money on access points until we can stop the connection dropping. On the ground floor they still need some access points but I have to wait but they have just received a new BT Hub with Wi-Fi disks. Set these up and again speeds seems ok. The customer keeps running speed tests and one minute its 60 the next it down to 0.5 or less. I have seen this happen and couldn't browse to google until the speeds picked back up a few moments later.

 

BT are unable to help them because everything on the Hub seems find and ethernet connections don't drop. Has anyone seen anything like this before.

[jmak]

I have BT whole house (BT home hub and 3 disks). I find that my speed tests are consistent (about 70Mbps), but performance is inconsistent. Obviously because the speed tests are always fine, BT aren't interested.

Mine seems to struggle most when you have multiple clients connected to a single AP. Three people can stream HD video as long as they're connected to different APs, but if you have 2 people on their phone watching YouTube, I often find that iPlayer or Netflix freezes on the TV.

The disks (APs) have colour coded LEDs - ideally they should be blue. Mine are mostly orange and occasionally blue.

 

My suspicion is that the mesh wifi setup is flawed. My contract is up in August and I'm currently running cat 6 through the house and planning to put my own APs back in.

[mikeprice]

Just to check

 

Are the speeds on wired connection - i.e. direct to the BT Hub - consistent??

 

If so then it must be the wifi in some way

 

I would start by looking at possible interference - electrical stuff

there was a bloke who used to wipe out a whole village when he switched his TV on

 

Also - I am presuming that the Unifi is wired into the Hub??

[NetworkNinja]

Just to check

 

Are the speeds on wired connection - i.e. direct to the BT Hub - consistent??

 

If so then it must be the wifi in some way

 

I would start by looking at possible interference - electrical stuff

there was a bloke who used to wipe out a whole village when he switched his TV on

 

Also - I am presuming that the Unifi is wired into the Hub??

 

Hi,

 

Yes I ran a cable from the Main Office (Hub Location) up to the third floor loft space and Installed a Network Cab with a POE Switch in. the 3 Wireless access Points I have installed are all running from the POE Switch.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

I have BT whole house (BT home hub and 3 disks). I find that my speed tests are consistent (about 70Mbps), but performance is inconsistent. Obviously because the speed tests are always fine, BT aren't interested.

Mine seems to struggle most when you have multiple clients connected to a single AP. Three people can stream HD video as long as they're connected to different APs, but if you have 2 people on their phone watching YouTube, I often find that iPlayer or Netflix freezes on the TV.

The disks (APs) have colour coded LEDs - ideally they should be blue. Mine are mostly orange and occasionally blue.

 

My suspicion is that the mesh wifi setup is flawed. My contract is up in August and I'm currently running cat 6 through the house and planning to put my own APs back in.

 

Problem is they have no other option that BT due to the location of the house.

[Steve21]

Hi,

 

Yes I ran a cable from the Main Office (Hub Location) up to the third floor loft space and Installed a Network Cab with a POE Switch in. the 3 Wireless access Points I have installed are all running from the POE Switch.

 

Did you set them up as a mesh (from an earlier comment) though, as surely you're going to cause yourself a loop if you've done it like that. Or are they just standalone APs?

 

Steve

[NetworkNinja]

Did you set them up as a mesh (from an earlier comment) though, as surely you're going to cause yourself a loop if you've done it like that. Or are they just standalone APs?

 

Steve

 

Yeah they are all setup as one system. Setup completed with the Unify Controller and setup on the same network. I believe the First Floor and Second Floor are fine with these new ones. I think the Main problem is wireless connection keeps dropping. This is happening from the Main BT Hub in the office.

[jmak]

Have you got a spare router you could use/loan them? It won't work with the BT disks, but you could put one of the Unifi points in the study to cover that.

 

I don't think there's a massive issue with broadband I've got from BT (if I change, it will be down to price) but I'm not convinced by their WiFi products. That's what I'm planning to get rid of. Before I was using the BT disks I was using a Drayek router which was much more stable.

[Cache]

Is it the wifi connection from the hub that's dropping then rather than the unifi?

 

I switched the 5G to a seperate wifi network on my hub and mainly just use the 2G connection (probably should just turn it off), not had any issues since doing that.

[MatthewL]

You say no option other than BT, there are plenty of providers who will provide a connection on a BT line, I think its Zen or A&A will deal with line faults to get you over to them.

 

Firstly does the connection drop if on a wired connection, can you run a constant monitor on a machine plugged in?

 

If its dropped so be it sounds like a line fault, has the router been plugged into the test socket and other extension wiring disconnected to see if any improvement. Is there any noise on the line when you pick the phone up, when the internet drops does it coincide with anything i.e. phone call, electric device been used, any particular time of the day.

 

Also is this a home package they are using or a business one, if so what does the SLA say? If a home connection and internet is critical to business maybe they need to look at installing a dedicated line for the business.