Router Advice

Jackabamba said:
Looking to change my BT Smart Hub 2 out for a better routed around the £100 mark, What do you guys recommend? Im on full fibre

TIA
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What ‘full fibre’ do you have? Is it plugged into a phone socket or do you have something with a network socket on the wall?
 
Thanks for moving this, Apologies for the wrong section.
Ok so I have 900mb Full Fibre. I can be in the same room as the HH and im getting like 90mb on wifi. Ethernet is up to 300 as suspect thats the limitations of the port on the PC. Just wanted to get a more stable speed to be honest.

Thank you all so far for the replies
 
It's unlikely that the 300Mbps cap you're seeing on the PC is down to the ethernet port. If you were saying it was hard capped at 100Mbps then that'd be possible as it could be a 100Mbps network card. Is the PC connected directly to the BT router or is it going via something like a powerline adapter?

The BT SH2 is a decent enough router, I'd suggest keeping it and looking at using a separate wireless access point (I like the UniFi kit a lot, but TP-Link Omada is well worth a look too) for your Wi-Fi needs and disabling the Wi-Fi on the BT SH2.
 
Thanks Soldato! It's using a powerline, To be exact TPLink TL-6PA4010P which I think caps out at 600. How does the Omada work, Would that produce the wifi for the house and not the HH?
 
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Plug the PC directly into a LAN port on the router, even if only for a quick test - that should get you the full speeds and show you that Powerline adapters are a bit crap. They might claim throughout of 600Mbps but they will never achieve it.

Are you actually getting 300Mbps through them? Having looked at the specs I don't see how you can be as they've only got 100Mbps ethernet ports on them. Are you seeing a link speed of 300Mbps reported in the TP-Link software? Take that with a huge pinch of salt.

Omada (or UniFi) would be a replacement for the wireless aspect of the the BT SH2. So you'd disable Wi-Fi on the SH2 and once you've setup your new Access Point use that instead. I can't say if it'll cover the whole house - I don't know the materials your house is made of, where the AP will be placed, what the local radio environment is like for noise. There's too many variables. I would expect a dedicated AP that's located sensibly (so ideally somewhere central in the house and NOT behind a TV) to perform very well.

TBH, if you're using a PC connected via Powerline and wireless clients only then I'd save a few £ and see if you can move down to the 500Mbps FTTP connection. You're paying for bandwidth that you can't use.
 
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Wow what an insight this is, So the powerline adapter ports will only support 100 with that port! How mad is that!
My PC is upstairs and the Hub is below it, what would you suggest would be the best way other than hardwiring?
 
As I said, Powerlines are a bit crap :) You can get ones with gigabit ethernet ports but you're never going to be able to make full use of your 900Mbps FTTP connection if you're using Powerlines.

Running an ethernet cable would give the best performance but if that's not an option then I'd take a good WiFi connection over a Powerline connection any day.

It's definitely worth looking at downgrading your FTTP connection, there's no paying for a 900Mbps connection if you can't make full use of it. The only potential downside I see is the reduced upstream with the 500Mbps package (70Mbps, I think vs 110Mbps) but chances are you'll never notice a difference.
 
Hahaha! Sorry to bother you again, would you recommend USB Wifi Dongle or PCI. I have a MATX case so it would mean me recasing to access the PCI Lane, I dont mind obviously if its a lot better that way
 
PCI would probably be my preference but USB should be fine. Getting an adapter that's as external as possible so you can place it better. I recently bought a TP-Link Archer T9UH for a colleague who had a failed internal WiFi card in her laptop. Performance with that has been fine.
 
Something no one has mentioned that might be a possibility, if you have some coax/aerial cables built into the wall that aren't in use, I can recommend MoCA adapters. They don't seem to be pushed much in the UK but they can work wonders for situations like this where you don't have ethernet cables in the walls of the house but you had existing coax. We had coax drilled through that used to be used for Sky "multiroom", back in the old days where you had the aerial cable going into the Sky box and then another one going out with normal TV channels + sky passing onto other rooms, the newer boxes don't allow this anymore so the line hadn't been in use. I repurposed the line for MoCA so I could hardwire another box upstairs to get better wifi coverage, and also ethernet to my PC. It worked wonders, I get my full 900MB package from it, much better than powerline. I used to use powerline before my net got upgraded to FTTP, and after the upgrade I was only getting 90mbits out of the 900mbits connection.
 
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