BT Infinity & FTTx Discussion

Local Openreach sub contractor has been laying new ducting along the footpath outside my home for over a week , in bed last night I could hear a vans reverse beep looked out and @ 23:30 they were push cable up the ducting looked to be about 25mm thickness.

Hoping full fibre will follow soon, not holding my breath tho
 
Kind of pointless though isn't it?

Almost every BT socket I have seen is either installed the corner of a house, or a hallway or study pretty much rendering the 6ghz function useless as it only works in the room its installed in. Anything that's going to want the speed is either in another room or could be plugged in with a wire. That's before the issue of most people hiding their access points behind things because they are ugly.

6E is one of those technologies that is really cool but to be useful you need to go all in (e.g. an access point in every room, ideally on the ceiling to get good line of sight and a wired backhaul) or don't bother.
 
For a while now I've been having a bit of a nightmare with my BT SH2 Wifi.
  • Some of my devices only work on 2.4Ghz (Solar inverter and Aircon wifi dongles). I can't split the bands with the hub so I have to disable 5Ghz, once they connect I can re-enable 5Ghz but it seems that being re-enabled it doesn't use it fully.
  • This means if I ever restart the router or if BT push out an update, I have to repeat this fix, and it's sort of temperamental.
  • My general Wifi performance is awful. I have 900Mbps downstream on my connection when wired in, but my Wifi devices like my phone and my work laptop seem to get very poor Wifi performance, if the internet is even working at all. I've seen speed test results on wifi at less than 1Mbps.
  • The house is an L-shape and the router is located in the understairs cupboard, so it's central to the house but it's also not ideally positioned for signal, although not much I can do about it.
  • If I ignore the "fix" for the 2.4Ghz devices and just boot it up with 5Ghz enabled, then it generally seems to work a lot better, but if the devices auto-switch to 2.4Ghz they slow down again, and because I can't split the bands I can't force it to work on 5Ghz or 2.4Ghz for different things.
I think the best fix might be an aftermarket router or something like those wifi discs (you can't split the bands on the BT ones either apparently), but I'm not sure how well the aftermarket ones work across different ISPs as I may be moving to Toob when they finally roll out the 1Gbs synchronous service.

Any other ideas welcome :)
 
Last edited:
What's the best mesh system is like asking what's the best ISP/phone/watch/TV/console etc. People will have varying opinions and also some systems are much more expensive than others, some worth it, some not.

It's topic that gets covered in the network forum almost daily now, there is vast amounts of existing information.

Mesh or different router

I need help trying to figure out the best solution for my problem, we have fiber broadband coming in house and is located in downstairs hallway, modem placed there then connects to ISP router which is there is well, recently had house electrics rewire so allowed me to run some network cables...
forums.overclockers.co.uk forums.overclockers.co.uk

asus RT 86u mesh 1gbsp

Hi I have got 1gbps from Virgin media and have tested in directly from the superhub 5 and the speed is over 1gbps all the time wired. I have two asus rt 86u on ai mesh and I kind of know what I am doing but since I upgraded to 1gbps, the wireless speed on 802.11ac is maxing out around...
forums.overclockers.co.uk forums.overclockers.co.uk

Wireless Access Points for new house.

Sorry if a similar question has been asked before but here goes. We have just bought our own place here in New Zealand and one of the first things I want to do is get decent wireless internet in the place. The house is a 2 storey property. My thoughts are to get 2 x Ubiquiti UniFi U6-LR...
forums.overclockers.co.uk forums.overclockers.co.uk

That's the first page alone.

Typically a single, hardwired, decent access point mounted centrally upstairs on the ceiling will cover the entire of a normal sized house, and offers splitting of 2g and 5g, and won't lock you in to any ISP.

Or just buy a ghastly Netgear million antenna travesty because it's marketed well and has a fancy name and realise it still gives terrible coverage because it's still in the corner of the house where the majority of ISP lines terminate.
 
Last edited:
Right, apart from a lot of friends where I've done it for them and they've been forever thankful. Even in rented houses where they've had permission to drill a hole or two. As long as it's put back straight it's fine.

If you're not prepared to do it then realise that mesh systems without a cable backhaul aren't all that great.
 
Also, Eero is a good product. If you're having range issues then it's likely due to where you are positioning them, or the construction of the walls. Simply changing to another product that also sets legally compliant radio power levels won't fix range issues.
 
Caged said:
Also, Eero is a good product. If you're having range issues then it's likely due to where you are positioning them, or the construction of the walls. Simply changing to another product that also sets legally compliant radio power levels won't fix range issues.
Click to expand...

I put a Plume Pod in the same position as an Eero, same device, the Eero is literally 10dBm worse.
 
HungryHippos said:
For a while now I've been having a bit of a nightmare with my BT SH2 Wifi.
  • Some of my devices only work on 2.4Ghz (Solar inverter and Aircon wifi dongles). I can't split the bands with the hub so I have to disable 5Ghz, once they connect I can re-enable 5Ghz but it seems that being re-enabled it doesn't use it fully.
  • This means if I ever restart the router or if BT push out an update, I have to repeat this fix, and it's sort of temperamental.
  • My general Wifi performance is awful. I have 900Mbps downstream on my connection when wired in, but my Wifi devices like my phone and my work laptop seem to get very poor Wifi performance, if the internet is even working at all. I've seen speed test results on wifi at less than 1Mbps.
  • The house is an L-shape and the router is located in the understairs cupboard, so it's central to the house but it's also not ideally positioned for signal, although not much I can do about it.
  • If I ignore the "fix" for the 2.4Ghz devices and just boot it up with 5Ghz enabled, then it generally seems to work a lot better, but if the devices auto-switch to 2.4Ghz they slow down again, and because I can't split the bands I can't force it to work on 5Ghz or 2.4Ghz for different things.
I think the best fix might be an aftermarket router or something like those wifi discs (you can't split the bands on the BT ones either apparently), but I'm not sure how well the aftermarket ones work across different ISPs as I may be moving to Toob when they finally roll out the 1Gbs synchronous service.

Any other ideas welcome :)
Click to expand...
You need to run some wires out of that cupboard and plug in some access points to them.

That is the only real solution, particularly in an L shape house. You really need one access point in each side of the house.

If you have access to an external wall and power in the loft it’s pretty simple.

Tac an outdoor rated Ethernet cable up the outside wall (better still, hide it behind a gutter down pipe), plug it into a POE switch in the loft. From there connect that to 2 U6 lites from Ubiquiti (or the TP-link equivalent) and mount them on the ceilings in each side of the “L”.

If you don’t have power in the loft, you may have to run 2 cables and run the POE switch in the under stairs cupboard.

If you don’t have access to an external wall you could try doing similar inside and use something like two U6 Mesh but hiding the cable runs can be difficult.
 
V F said:
Funny reading this in a strange way then reading the article then the comments, then came across this one.

"Every time speed increases are on the horizon you get the same people saying people don’t need it, we’d still be on dialup if it was up to them.

Do not impose your lack of ability to utilise things on to others please."
Click to expand...
Doesn't really add up though.
You can't compare dial up with what we have now.
Dial made gaming very difficult, you couldn't stream music and downloads needed managers it took that long.
Around 30mb means you can stream pretty much anything that's available, you can have, you can download huge files fast enough.
Were in the position now that increase in speeds is a nice to have not a necessity anymore.
150mb is plenty right now, any faster doesn't add anything other than expense and more nice to have speed. Hope that makes sense.
If not I'd love to know what you can't do with a 150mb that you can only do with 900mb.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
You need to run some wires out of that cupboard and plug in some access points to them.

That is the only real solution, particularly in an L shape house. You really need one access point in each side of the house.

If you have access to an external wall and power in the loft it’s pretty simple.

Tac an outdoor rated Ethernet cable up the outside wall (better still, hide it behind a gutter down pipe), plug it into a POE switch in the loft. From there connect that to 2 U6 lites from Ubiquiti (or the TP-link equivalent) and mount them on the ceilings in each side of the “L”.

If you don’t have power in the loft, you may have to run 2 cables and run the POE switch in the under stairs cupboard.

If you don’t have access to an external wall you could try doing similar inside and use something like two U6 Mesh but hiding the cable runs can be difficult.
Click to expand...

I have at least 1 regular power socket and ethernet in my loft-space, so in theory I could use that, and some tactical drilling into my upstairs ceiling.

I guess my choices are:
  • Add an access point just for the 2.4Ghz devices, only have 5Ghz enabled on the BT hub.
  • Do the opposite, 5Ghz on access point, 2.4Ghz only on BT hub.
  • Entirely disable Wifi on the BT hub and add an access point that does both.
  • Add a new router that can do band splitting but will potentially suffer the same issues, poor signal/connectivity. May work if the signal it puts out is much better than the default BT hub one though, house isn't that big, I don't need super-fast wifi everywhere, getting 50-100mbps would be fine.
 
Last edited:
HungryHippos said:
I have at least 1 regular power socket and ethernet in my loft-space, so in theory I could use that, and some tactical drilling into my upstairs ceiling.

I guess my choices are:
  • Add an access point just for the 2.4Ghz devices, only have 5Ghz enabled on the BT hub.
  • Do the opposite, 5Ghz on access point, 2.4Ghz only on BT hub.
  • Entirely disable Wifi on the BT hub and add an access point that does both.
  • Add a new router that can do band splitting but will potentially suffer the same issues, poor signal/connectivity. May work if the signal it puts out is much better than the default BT hub one though, house isn't that big, I don't need super-fast wifi everywhere, getting 50-100mbps would be fine.
Click to expand...
Disable WiFi on the BT hub and put in place some proper access points. As you already have the Ethernet in place it’s really quite easy to install them.

Two Ubiquiti U6 lites and a Netgear POE switch should be under £300.

The Ubiquiti access points are highly configurable but also good out the box.

By having one seamless network across the APs, your devices can roam from one to the other depending on which had the best signal.

Edit: I should add that I have 1 older Ubiquiti AP mounted on my landing ceiling and it cover a 4 bed house no problem. Although it’s square and not L shaped.
 
Last edited:
b0rn2sk8 said:
Disable WiFi on the BT hub and put in place some proper access points. As you already have the Ethernet in place it’s really quite easy to install them.

Two Ubiquiti U6 lites and a Netgear POE switch should be under £300.

The Ubiquiti access points are highly configurable but also good out the box.

By having one seamless network across the APs, your devices can roam from one to the other depending on which had the best signal.

Edit: I should add that I have 1 older Ubiquiti AP mounted on my landing ceiling and it cover a 4 bed house no problem. Although it’s square and not L shaped.
Click to expand...

I may struggle with power/cable runs for one downstairs. If 1 on upstairs ceiling covers it well that might be a better fit. It can't really be worse than the current BT hub performance to be fair.

Most of my devices are hard-wired in, including all of the AV kit in the lounge downstairs, so it's mainly to get better signal to my phone when around the house, and my work laptop (upstairs office room).

That U6 Lite doesn't allow a regular power feed it appears to only operate over POE, maybe something similar to this but using a regular power socket option instead?

Alternatively some sort of mesh network thing? I do have some spare power sockets in the central bits upstairs and downstairs, it doesn't need to be amazing as a solution but repeating the current network from more than one place would go a fair way.
 
Last edited:
HungryHippos said:
I may struggle with power/cable runs for one downstairs. If 1 on upstairs ceiling covers it well that might be a better fit. It can't really be worse than the current BT hub performance to be fair.

Most of my devices are hard-wired in, including all of the AV kit in the lounge downstairs, so it's mainly to get better signal to my phone when around the house, and my work laptop (upstairs office room).

That U6 Lite doesn't allow a regular power feed it appears to only operate over POE, maybe something similar to this but using a regular power socket option instead?

Alternatively some sort of mesh network thing? I do have some spare power sockets in the central bits upstairs and downstairs, it doesn't need to be amazing as a solution but repeating the current network from more than one place would go a fair way.
Click to expand...

You shouldn’t need one upstairs and one downstairs. Those ceiling mounted APs are directional, they throw their signal out in a doughnut shape (little goes backwards behind it) so you should get good coverage downstairs.

One of the benefits to using these kind of APs is that you don’t need to get power to them as well, they work off the single cable. You only need a tiny hole in the ceiling then to run the cable on top of the mounting bracket.

If you only want to get one and therefore not really cost effective to use a POE switch, use a PoE injector. It’s a little device that sits in line and adds power to the Ethernet cable.

A ‘mesh’ network is what people normally describe has using WiFi as your backhaul connection between access points. It’s a last resort IMO.

That said, if you have spare Ethernet sockets around the house you can just plug in matching APs into them instead going to the ceiling mounted options. The main issue with furniture level access points is that people don’t want to look at them so put them in cupboards, that kills the signal.

In all honesty, there are a wide range of solutions you can use, as long as they can work together as one network, you’ll get good seamless coverage. I just recommend the Ubiquiti access points because they are about as good as it gets.

I wouldn’t bother buying anything to replace the BT SH under the stairs as what ever signal it gives out will be hampered. You might as well just turn off WiFi and let it continue to do the routing duties. Then spend your money on dedicated WiFi access points out in the house.
 
I would definitely agree with not bothering with the BT SH2 and the mesh discs - I found them unreliable and didn’t make much difference to signal. Although BT normally give them away free via chat if you complain.

I’m starting to looking Ubiquiti UDR and some 6 Lite’s - not so much for better signal but for more control of the traffic including visibility of what is actually happening. However, it’ll be replacing a Mesh which has worked flawlessly for a couple of years; 3x Deco M4’s. Easily pulls 400/110 if you’re close to the main unit and even the satellite units allow clients to pull ~150. Plus total cost was £95. Downside is limited configuration and basic monitoring. Would still recommend though depending on your needs as like I say; have been solid in terms of set and forget. They also offer backhaul if you had Ethernet available.

I’ve got 2x Eero Pro 6’s (TalkTalk messed up and sent me two by mistake) so will be able to compare after Tuesday once the switch completes from BT. Assume all goes to plan!
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
snip

I wouldn’t bother buying anything to replace the BT SH under the stairs as what ever signal it gives out will be hampered. You might as well just turn off WiFi and let it continue to do the routing duties. Then spend your money on dedicated WiFi access points out in the house.
Click to expand...

I'm testing out something else currently, I have turned my 2nd BT SH router into a wifi AP by disabling DHCP and giving it a different IP address on the network.

Now I have two SH's I can give each one a different wifi band role, one for 2.4Ghz with one SSID, and the other for 5Ghz on another. I'm going to see how this works for a bit :)

Main downside is that this is still a bit basic, but it does mean I can position the 2nd hub a little better for general usage on the 5Ghz one. Also the router chomps at 10W of power, so I'm just adding that for not a whole lot of gain here to my baseload of about 400W already in place.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom