BT Homehub losing wifi performance?

Hi

I think we have the Hub5, maybe 18 months old. Wired, the connection is all fine and the wifi has been pretty much spot on until recently.

We’re struggling to get good signal in the house now and this is across a number of devices so not laptop / tablet issue. The thing keeps dropping signal and tries to punt us on to BT with FON option.

Are there common causes of this or is the thing on the way out? Nothing has materially changed in the house or where we try and access the wifi.

Any ideas?

I had the same problem…the world according to google suggested it was down to a neighbour or someone close getting a bit of wifi kit that was interfering with the band I was on. Changed bands but didn’t really help.

Oh and BT solution was to take out a new broadband contract with a fancy new hub….(which after a lot of questioning they admitted that it might not sort the problem and they do not guarantee wifi signal strength and I would not be able to cancel the contract should it not resolve the problem)

got fed up arguing with my HH5

Bought one of these mofos.
http://www.netgear.co.uk/home/products/networking/dsl-modems-routers/D7000.aspx

ace. I own all the base now.

uhmmm, can’t see it being neighbours as all sides are single OAPs without a great deal of need for wifi.

Are Sky equivalent hubs liekly to perform any better as considering getting rid of BT anyway? To be fair – the BT hub has performed well until now, perhaps its just knackered.

I have same and you have probably tried this, but if I come back from being away I just unplug the whole thing for 10 mins it then runs fine.

caher – I did try that and you are correct, things do improve. But it now needs this several times a day! Something else going on…

If its got a 5GHz wifi, make sure it has a different wifi name. I had an issue that i thought i had poor wifi but my phone was using the 5GHz which is way worse for coverage and I couldn’t tell.

Rename or turn it off.

Yeah that’s what I thought with mine until I considered smart meters, cctv, security systems, t’internet, wireless doorbells, emergency call buttons, speakers, landline wireless handsets, microwaves, satellite systems etc etc the list goes on and on (according to google) with regard things that may adversely affect the wifi signal not suggesting that is what’s causing your problem.

Without fail, every ISP provided hub/router i’ve had has been uniformly terrible, crap when new, then starts to play up after a year or so. Then become unusable at, or shortly before 2 years.

They are also (sometimes) running custom software, or are impossible to patch/reflash/upgrade without masses of hassle.

So i bought my own about 8 or 9 years ago. Then replaced that about 18 months ago (with a much faster one).

In all that time i’ve had one issue, which took me about 30 minutes to actually fix, on my own and was on a 7 year old router that owed me nothing.

I probably saved the cost of the first router in about two months, through not having WiFi available, and not having to be on the phone to the ISP on a (semi) regular basis. The second one cost three times as much. In comparison the current “advanced” router from my ISP is available to buy for about £30 and no one has anything good to say about it. So i’m guessing i’ve probably saved the £150 already. And i’m still using my old router as a very competent Access point.

In summary, just buy your own.

Go into the hub settings, and unlink the 2g and 5g bands. Add 2g and 5g to their SSID names.

Now try only connecting your devices to the 2g wifi. Make sure you don’t connect to the 5g, suggest changing the password.

Mine was broken from brand new

We have a dual band 2G / 5G Virgin modem:

The 2G is very slow as all the IOTs use that band and they’re normally low performance chipsets with bugger all antennas (Smoke alarms, thermostats etc).

The 5G band is just used for laptops / phones etc and is always pretty fast.

When BT say “The most powerful wifi signal” that is a) a complete lie because transmit power is limited by law so its the same for all devices, and b) they really meant “the cheapest shite we could buy from china”.

Its almost certainly the HUB or interference.

I would leave 5ghz on personally. It gives better speed and suffers less from interference than 2.5ghz but will not extend the range as far.

I have read that HH5 suffers when too many devices are connected at once, it cannot handle the troughput.

Try a new channel first. If that doenst sort it, then buy a new router, either off the shelf or with a new contract from BT.

When BT say “The most powerful wifi signal” that is a) a complete lie because transmit power is limited by law so its the same for all devices,

Yes, I’ve always wondered why no one has complained to the ASA about that…

have similar problems, convinced interference (not BT) but neighbours all have wifi also I believe some other devices use the same spectrum? – anyone used a download app or program to look for interference free bands? I tried one a couple of times that an article recommended (forgotten name) but it didn’t seem to like my PC and kept giving an incorrect lack of memory message

as to turning off dual band capability surely a backward step?

It’s only worth leaving 5GHz on if you have devices that make use of it.

Get a free WiFi analyzer app (InSSDer/Wifi analyzer) – this will let you see what 2.4gHz & 5gHz channels are in use.

2.4gHz attenuates far less through walls or other materials (humans are great attenuators), but can suffer from more inteference (leaky microwaves, bluetooth). Remember only to use channels 1, 6, or 11 (don’t try and be smart like an old neighbour of mine who chose 9…_)

5gHz is far less likely to suffer interference, has more channel options, and if you have devices that support 5G I would always use it in preference.

That netgear router picture earlier in the thread will likely knock spots off the BT hub, if only because of external antennae (and if you want to get really technical and don’t might bending some laws you can swap to antennae with greater gain).

None of the above really helps if your broadband is poor tho.

scotroutes – Member
It’s only worth leaving 5GHz on if you have devices that make use of it.

kids have iphones running stuff whilst watching netflix/sometimes uploading homework on airbooks which I believe are exclusively 5GHz
range doesn’t seem to be an issue just having to reboot several times a day

range – we do have a repeater

sargey2003 – Member
Get a free WiFi analyzer app (InSSDer/Wifi analyzer) – this will let you see what 2.4gHz & 5gHz channels are in use

cheers – return thread to OP

Our sky router is pretty ropey too. The things connected directly to it with wires (sky box, TV etc) all seem to work fine with no interruption but the things connected by wifi constantly lose the signal, sometimes for minutes at a time.
I’ve heard that you are locked into using sky routers with their internet, is this true or can I go buy a better one and hope the problem resolves itself?

A router like the Netgear one above, with an ethernet connection to the broadband side would connect into the Sky (or BT) router (which you are pretty much tied into using) – you may then be able to disable the Sky/BT wireless, or simply set up a different SSID(s) on different channels.

As suggested earlier, try unsyncing the 2.4GHz and 5GHz wireless options and name them so you know which is which.

Go into the hub settings, and unlink the 2g and 5g bands. Add 2g and 5g to their SSID names.

Now try only connecting your devices to the 2g wifi. Make sure you don’t connect to the 5g, suggest changing the password.

Yup do that but ultimately they’re rubbish as is the HH6 in the end I bought a TPLink it works far better.

To be honest had a similar problem with HH5 and BT. Looked around and have been with TalkTalk for 18 months now no problem unlimited Fibre for £27.00 per month.
It has been good as gold fed up of paying BT extortionate fees.I have been with BT over 40 years and always paid the highest rate for the service but they could not resolve the problem with the Router without paying again.Also wanted to charge for a callout to check.I have saved a few bob by moving and will move again when I have to if price or service is poor.BT have lost it to big and not customer orientated.

Related note – does everyone else have to reboot their routers semi-frequently? Has been true of every wireless router I’ve ever had, some more so than others. Seems a bit of a crap system.

sometimes I have to give an extender a kick in the nuts to get it to behave. My router linked above seems to be pretty stable as it is.

Not had to do it with the TPLink but again did with the HHs

My HH (4 I think) works just fine. Has done for over three years and never needs rebooted.

For about 5 or 6 years now i’ve had my single band BT hub wifi turned off and used an Apple Airport Extreme set to 5Ghz and had zero problem in all that time. I had to do this as the BT WiFI was dropping out due to interference form neighbours WiFi. I’ve never had an issue with any device i’ve connected to it so pretty much any wifi device that was made int he last 6 or so years will be able to use 5Ghz. Range isn’t an issue inside the house, but signal strength does drop off quite quickly as soon as I go outside and start walking away from the house. But that’s not so much of a problem – only on the very odd occasion the weather is good and I get a chance to sit in the back garden with a beer and want to stream some tunes from Spotify and use the Flight Radar app on overflying aircraft.

Is anybody using the BT Smarthub? PC advisor gave it the highest ranking even over the external antenane models? Would be free if we re-contracted. Does it offer any more than HH5, this reviews suggests its better but no detail as to why?

Yup me still has issues which was the final straw fo rme it’s pretty unstable and the range isn’t actuall that good. It was the final straw for me to bin HHs and get an alternative.

ok, faffage coming to an end, Stoner’s suggestion wins!

Thanks all

Sorry – follow up question!

Now that the Netgear router has arrived – is this all we need to replace the BT Homehub? Or do we need an additional modem? The BT hub had a separate socket to attach the cable to the BT master switch but that doesn’t seem to exist on the Netgear?

Did you buy a cable router rather than an xDSL router?

Link to what you bought?

I did what stoner did, he gives good advice (albeit a bit spendy) couldn’t give away my shiny new HH on eBay either which says something.

Problem is WiFi at 2.4Ghz is a ISM band, roughly its unlicensed and any fecker can put together some gear and pollute the airwaves in that band. As well as WiFi you have bluetooth and all the internet of things crap.

Right in the middle of the 2.4Gig band is the microwave oven, yup the optimal freq to excite a pile of water molecules is in the same band you want to stream Youtube and browse STW (Noting that the human body is mostly water) then throw in various Plasma lamps and such that again use a 2.4Gig magnetron to do their thing.

Its a crappy part of the spectrum made worse by the shite thats being thrown out there nowadays.

So step 1: What are your clients capable of using WiFi wise? Your clients are all the devices that you want to use the WiFi

They will state 802.11(something)

So your WiFi should cope with the lowest out of the lot.

Ideally you want them all to be 802.11n or 802.11ac as then you could use a wireless access point that use the 5Ghz bands.

Said 5Ghz bands haven’t got the crap shite devices on them, lamps, ovens etc.. and the coverage is less so less chance of other peoples WiFi AP’s interfering with them.

As people have already said you can do a scan of your area using an app on your phone and tweak the channel or location of your hub for optimal results, or you can escalate the arms race by installing a repeater WiFi unit to improve the signal in marginal areas.

Always happy to have a chat with someone out of forum (email in profile) sad to say I do networking for a living including Wifi designs and have been a radio amateur for over 30 years so used to dealing with lots of radio challenges.

Does it look like this?

Or this

Sorry I might not have been clear in my post, you can get the two versions shown by Drac above. (although I specifically linked to the DSL router with Modem)

One with (D7000) and one without (R7000) the modem function.

I have the one with modem.

If you bought the router model be aware you cannot use the HH5 as a standalone router, and although you can use the netgear as a WiFi access point, I bought my netgear so that I could get away from the HH shitty DHCP addressing.

OK, seems that I have the second of the two that Drac has shown on the images above.

Does this mean that I still need the HH?

If I send it back and exchange it for the first picture, will that act as a single solution? That is to say a direct replacement for the BT HH?

What is the point of the one that I have bought?