[Help] BT Fibre - rubbish router

[jcdenton08]

I wrote to their CEO and copied in the executive board, they not only reacted quickly but sent an engineer round (similar issue).

Any chance to DM me with the gist - or ideally a copy of the letter/email? I’m shit at this stuff

 

[South Stand Bonfire]

Regardless of their crap service and the morals of receiving what you have paid for, I have never looked back after buying a Deco mesh system in my house about 4 years ago. Don’t pay the monthly fee, although unpalatable, pay the one of cost for a mesh if it comes to it.

 

[Silverhatch]

I have 6 x Deco P9s (bought as 2 sets of 3) which cover my whole (quite large) property and also the detached garage:

https://cpc.farnell.com/deco-from-tp-link

They use a combination of WiFi and your home's power cables to distribute the service. You can also plug an ethernet cable into them (2 ports per P9).

my set up too

 

[Johnny RoastBeef]

Any chance to DM me with the gist - or ideally a copy of the letter/email? I’m shit at this stuff

You can use chatgpt for this kind of stuff, start your prompt by telling the AI that it is a world class consumer champion fighting on behalf of the little guy against big business.

Copy your opening post into the prompt and ask it to create a letter of complaint that you can send to the Chairman of BT. Ask it to include what you want as a solution.

 

[Since1982]

My experience of the BT discs is that they are utterly useless, always dropping out, crashing and generally hopeless. BT tech support couldn't sort it out so they refunded me. Bought a set of Decos and they have been flawless - great bits of kit, expandable, useful app. Recommended.

 

[One Teddy Maybank]

Any chance to DM me with the gist - or ideally a copy of the letter/email? I’m shit at this stuff

Done

 

[clapham_gull]

run cables

Blunt answer but that's what I always do.

 

[Billy the Fish]

The BT disks are shit, the mesh network doesn't work properly.

I ditched them and invested in TP-link Omada. I'm really happy with it, it's easy to setup and you get a proper mesh network with a hardware controller.

*edit* I should add that my APs are all connected by cat6

 

[Green Cross Code Man]

The OP is similar to the position I am in as I had BT Fibre 500 installed pretty much exactly when he did. Running tests on the router speed from the BT app shows that speed to the router is 525 MB/s which is great. I can, wirelessly get between 350 and 510 in my lounge but it's very variable. I suspect some of that is due to the band they are broadcasting on as if they are slower, I can often see improvement instantly when changing to the next frequency. Speed drops off upstairs and in the back room and verandah. I use the black disks and have found them, contrary to most comments here, great, although they seem to be limited to just over 210 MB/s for some reason. The only problem I have with them is that I tried running an Ethernet cable directly into a PC with no wireless adapter and it doesn't work (even tried another cable in case that was the problem). I think wireless speeds are always going to be a bit flakey but I am happy enough with my setup now.

 

[jcdenton08]

Done

Thanks mate!

 

[happypig]

You *shouldn't* need repeaters in a flat.

What you're problem may be, as others have said, is the channel. For example, your router is in the front of the house, does a channel scan and picks ch10 as there's little or nothing on it. In the bedroom, there is interference on channel 10 from a nearby router in another flat. The problem is that the router doesn't know about the interference because his scan is clean.
Best way of attacking it is to download a wifi scanner (Airport Utility is good for iPhone) and do a survey in every room. Alternatively you could change the channel and check by trial and error.

It's also worth buying a better router, many ISP supplied routers are, to be blunt, shit.

 

[Shropshire Seagull]

Understanding 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz WiFi is essential and also channel conflict with other WiFi.

Install Net Spot on your phone (ideally a duel band phone) and do some speed tests in different places around your home. It's worth investing the time to get the best WiFi setup for your home.

This will identify any slow areas where a wireless access point may benefit. Mesh is likely overkill for small properties, tuning the router you have for optimal wifi performance is the way to go.

 

[Audax]

They're a bit pricey, but they're so simple to use: Amazon Eero.

Last year I switched over to Vodafone's version of the Openreach full fibre (500mb speed), and the router they send out is a) a little bit rubbish, and b) Voda have decided to lock down the settings (eg cannot manually change the wifi channel). A pair of Eero devices has sorted it right out, and the Eero app makes it all so very simple to set up and get the positioning of the second device right.

 

[amexer]

Am not tech minded but have never understood when I have complained to BT about service they say I should upgrade. In other words pay x pounds and we will give a crap service or pay more and we will do better.
It is just like having to pay a mobile phone provider more per month so reception is better.

 

[Audax]

Am not tech minded but have never understood when I have complained to BT about service they say I should upgrade. In other words pay x pounds and we will give a crap service or pay more and we will do better.
It is just like having to pay a mobile phone provider more per month so reception is better.

A lot of the traditional ISPs (such as BT) apply a policy of "our responsibility ends at the wall socket". Essentially, they take no responsibility for the quality of the wifi. But they do that knowingly providing a rubbish router and only providing a good quality one if you pay extra. I've got a bunch of old routers stashed away at home from a variety of ISPs (BT, NOW, PlusNet, Vodafone, Shell). The variety of wifi capability from those routers is all over the place. For the record, the PlusNet one was the only one that managed to provide reasonable quality throughout my house. The Shell one was the worst, but I don't have it anymore (the only ISP that ever made me return it. Dunno why, it was cheap pile of steaming...).

The Eero mesh wifi is fantastic. Will never go back to using ISP-supplied kit.

Also: saw a lot of you mentioning that you're doing the simplest setup for mesh wifi (plugging the master unit into your ISP-supplied router). In many cases, the master unit can actually replace the ISP-supplied router. Certainly the Eero can. You have to go through some hoops getting your ISP to give you the correct credentials and settings, but they should provide them (from memory they're not allowed to refuse).