Hi all,

We are with talk talk fibre and our router is starting to have issues and not very good, as ever talk talk have said nothing wrong!

Was thinking if I bought a new router is it just a case of plugging it in and connecting everything up again or do I need to do anything else?

Would like a powerful one to cover the whole house. 
What do you recommend?

Thanks. 

I'm not sure if TalkTalk make it easy to the login details to enable you to 'migrate' to a different router or not?

Why not initially start with the basics of turning it off/on to see if things speed up. Have you split the router in to 2.4ghz & 5ghz networks and try the 5ghz one which should be faster. Whether TT can keep up is another matter though.

To actually test the WWW speed use something like Speedtest which is available as a mobile and desktop app and see if my 5ghz v 2.4ghz suggestion works.

It is possible to add an extra router (which you may already have got) as a booster system to cover the bad areas or Powerline Adaptors work well too.

I prefer Testmy.net to speedtest. Do a download test and also a latency test, make sure server is set to London (top right) or you'll get odd results.

 

You should try using a WiFi analyser, I use Wifi Analyser by Farproc (other developers are available) an app on android, to see how congested the local wifi channels are, we are swamped with overlapping neighbours since everyone started to working from home simply because everyone is at home and online. I changed my router onto a fixed channel that had the least conflicting neighbours (the app suggests better channels, but do check several times of day) and it did improve things slightly, but because everyone is fighting for the 'net (called contention) it is still relatively poor. Most routers are set to auto and cope with busy times, and will swap to better channels sadly mine doesn't, or at least not very well.

 

2.4Ghz WiFi is slower than 5Ghz, but 5Ghz has about half the range, and doesn't do walls and ceilings as well as 2.4. As frequency doubles the range halves (ish).

.

Before Covid19 we had line speed at a solid 11Mbps, once C19 kicked off we dropped down to 4-6Mbps but even tweaking the channel we only got 5-8Mbps, and these figures are 'best case' around 10pm (now between 7-8Mbps at 22:45), when using the 'net between daytime say 9-5 is a lot worse and sometimes crawls at 2-3Mbps.

 

We've decided to go Fibre to Cabinet so the base line speed jumps from a theoretical 17Mbps (was 11 actual pre C19) to 31Mbps guaranteed (but could be 36).

However I suspect it will still be slower daytime due to the contention ratio because everyone is sucking the internet dry. (It's a cheaper deal so nothing to lose really).

 

A new router that does whole house is called a 'Mesh' router and as long as you have the set up codes for your existing router you can install one in place of the TT one - BUT they won't provide any support for your kit and will delight in telling you 'it must be your new equipment' (even if you saw the JCB cut your incoming line) and most broadband suppliers are the same in this regard.

 

If internet is fine at 10pm but carp at 10am it's just busy...

I heard Talktalk was doing a new super speedy router? But I would still consider the way I did things

 

I'm with SKY and my SKY router is fine, fibre to cabinet speeds as expected, but it struggles with all the equipment I have connected to it via WiFi as like many bog standard routers, they have a limit to how much they can cope with and I have now a lot of Wifi gear in the house, so....

 

I bought a Netgear AC1900 router that simply plugs into the original SKY one (so the SKY router still handles the modem/connection to SKY side of things) and away you go. Many routers these days don't have a modem and they expect you to connect them to your existing 'ISP provided' router. The AC1900 is much more powerful, it has intelligent channel selection that seems to work, beam forming to a degree and can connect loads of stuff. That worked fine of a couple of years, but I kept adding more stuff to it, so....

 

I bought a tri-band TP-Link AC4000. It's got all the advantages of the AC1900 (ie it easily handles lots and lots of wifi things connected to it) except it can handle as much as I can throw at it and more, plus has the lovely benefit of not only 1 x 2.4 GHz channel but 2 x 5GHz channels as well. This way I can set my TV to one of the 5GHz channels for seamless 4K streaming and keep the other 5GHz channel for laptops, PCs and other things that need good speeds. The 2.4 GHz channel has things that like a very strong signal no matter where they are in the house and speed is not so much of an issue-things like WeMo switches etc. it's a great MU-MIMO router.  It’s RF power and sensitivity avoids having to use mesh and repeater systems too.

 

As a router for moving files about from device to device it is incredibly fast. It also means I can rename my SKY wifi channels that I no longer use to things like "will you shut your chuffing dog up" and such like, just for my neighbours benefit. 

Edited 29 May, 20206 yr by Lady Elanore
Spullink missstakes

Take a look in your router settings to see if 5ghz WiFi is enabled; if not this will have a big effect on your speed.

The reason I say this is, I had lots of issues on my iPad but wife didn’t.

We were both on the 2.4ghz WiFi, along with all the other devices on the home WiFi network, which was causing lots of lag and slow connections for me.

 

I went into my (Plusnet) router and found 5ghz isn’t enabled by default; so I enabled 5ghz and gave it a slightly different name but same password as the 2.4 WiFi, this allows my iPad/phone etc to look for the 5g primarily; bearing in mind 5g WiFi range is much shorter, it automatically connects to the slower 2.4 as I get out of range of the 5g.

 

My connections through 5ghz are impressive now, and had no speed issues since 👍

Thanks for all you replies, I can't say that I understand half of what has been said, but when a mate of mine comes round after lockdown I will show him and get him to explain in basic!!

 

I have rebooted most days and I works for a while, it's just not as good at it used to be.

 

we have fibre to cabinet as the exchange is about 3.5 miles away, and the cabinet to house is about 200yrds and normal cable.

We only get at best 10meg which is about the best our village gets.

Speed test just done.

Edited 30 May, 20206 yr by mdk1

There's something wrong here as uploads aren't normally twice downloads!

Try setting up a new BT connection and that will tell you what you really should be able to download. The repeated re-booting is actually counter productive as the system will stabilise after about a week.

Might be a local problem rather than your router. As you say, it's the fastest download in your village and your upload looks good. That's where I would put my money anyhoo 

We're about three miles away from the local exchange, so I thought I'd check mine: 73 down and 18 up, so I presume that's pretty reasonable.

 

 

 

Gaz

Edited 30 May, 20206 yr by IamGaz

Have you tried Uswitch to see what the probable speeds are? Just whack in your postcode and it should give you an indication of possible speeds

 

https://www.uswitch.com/broadband/guides/broadband-download-times/

 

As has been said that upload being faster than download is just wrong, was anything else using the net so your speedtest is only half(whatever) of what your connection is using? Is a big update downloading, a queue of films downloading or something like this 😟  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52834378

that is serious amount of upload speed...

id definitely be running some scans on stuff,

up is normally (roughly, in my experience, and from a microwave data transfer engineer friend) 1/5th of download

My upload is around 18mbps and download around 64mbps. When the lockdown first came into force the download speed dropped to around 42-44mbps and unsurprisingly the upload was unchanged. After all people are watching streaming channels and super surfing as opposed to suddenly uploading huge chunks of data. That's why it doesn't sound likely that the router is at fault to me. it just seems unlikely that one direction would drop off and the other remain perfect if it was an internal router fault. I wouldn't start a 'fault find' diagnoses there anyway. There might be just one relatively small pipe going to the village and if everyone is chewing through download data on it eg streaming, then that would make sense that the downlaod speed was appearing to be throttled.

 

My download speed has slowly returned to normal as I guess people have now reached the end of the internet and have seen every show available to watch on the planet 

"will you shut your chuffing dog up" 

 

I like that. I'm off to get my router settings password. 

Our wifi is called "F.U.B.B"

 

3 hours ago, StickyMicky said:

Our wifi is called "F.U.B.B"

 

Not a Wishbone Ash fan by any chance?

 

6 minutes ago, ashfan said:

Not a Wishbone Ash fan by any chance?

 

 

There is something rather interesting about your username I see. 

7 minutes ago, ashfan said:

Not a Wishbone Ash fan by any chance?

 

 

Dyed in the wool!

 

 

4 minutes ago, Lady Elanore said:

 

There is something rather interesting about your username I see. 

 

Yes well spotted. I thought creedenceclearwaterrevivalfan was a bit too long.

Edited 31 May, 20206 yr by ashfan

6 minutes ago, StickyMicky said:

 

Dyed in the wool!

 

 

 

Excellent. Don't know about you but I think I'm showing my age now

22 minutes ago, ashfan said:

 

Excellent. Don't know about you but I think I'm showing my age now

 

Holy Thread Drift, Batman

 

If you consider my music likes include earlier Ash, Floyd, Yes, Tull. Supertramp, Dire Straits, Knopfler, Queen, some Free you will probably get the picture

 

in my latter years I've also started to listen to a lot more classical music - mainly Baroque period - and I love organ music ...

 

BTW just listening to a Floyd concert on youtube:

 

 

Edited 31 May, 20206 yr by StickyMicky
OMG! Nearly forgot Jethro Tull <shock horror>

Not really into classical yet but yes I get the picture.

 

Better end it here before we get our wrists slapped

 

On 29/05/2020 at 19:26, john999boy said:

I'm not sure if TalkTalk make it easy to the login details to enable you to 'migrate' to a different router or not?

Why not initially start with the basics of turning it off/on to see if things speed up. Have you split the router in to 2.4ghz & 5ghz networks and try the 5ghz one which should be faster. Whether TT can keep up is another matter though.

To actually test the WWW speed use something like Speedtest which is available as a mobile and desktop app and see if my 5ghz v 2.4ghz suggestion works.

It is possible to add an extra router (which you may already have got) as a booster system to cover the bad areas or Powerline Adaptors work well too.

https://speedtest.btwholesale.com/PerformanceTesterWS/home.jsp

Is possibly more reliable as it's a BT/OR test.

I don't recommend switching your router off and on more than once. The exchange can pick this up as a line fault and cut your bandwith to try to compensate, it can take a couple of weeks to come back up.

 

If you're going to run a speed test make sure you are connected to the router by a cat 5 cable or you're testing two things at once.

Run the test connected by the cable THEN run it over wifi (make sure nothing else is connected to the router during your tests wifi or wired).

 

If you get a big drop when you switch to wifi that's where you're problem is (small/moderate drop to be expected).

 

A new router is unlikely to make much difference tbh it helps if you have a lot of devices connecting to a fast line but not in many other circumstances. As mentioned above a  lot of companies don't like you using your own equipment and don't make it easy. As well as helping their support guys by standardising equipment it helps them track your activity so they can monitise you.

 

Other advice would be to avoid Talk Talk, lots of telephone companies are crap, but they do seem to be the worst of a bad lot.

Thanks for all the advice, I will monitor it over the next few weeks and then phone TalkTalk again and see if there is anything they can do.

oh love the Pink Floyd Vid and don't mind a bit of CCR myself.

VDSL used by talktalk fibre (usually on an BT Openreach owned line) is extraordinarily sensitive to the way the copper line is terminated at the consumer end (your home)

 

Extensions wired directly to the incoming line cause reflections which create havoc with the sub carrier frequency slots, this is what can cause upload speed to be faster the download speed.

 

If you have any extensions or other wiring connected to the incoming master socket, disconnect them physically from the master socket. Connect the router directly to the master socket using a microfilter if necessary to connect any phone. If you have the modern BT NTE5 faceplate that makes it easy, just remove the bottom half and connect the router directly.

 

If you must have extensions, they must be isolated via a microfilter at the master socket end.

 

Resist the temptation to reset or power down the router repeatedly. This is often seen as data errors by the DLM in the street cabinet. The DLM will then progressively reduce the speeds until it sees no data errors. Unfortunately the speed will remain stuck low for iirc 15 days before it attempts to up the speed a bit at a time. The DLM process works by monitoring errors in 15 min time slots. So if you must turn off your router, its best to wait 20-30 minutes so its definitely not seen as line errors.

 

There is usually no way that Talktalk can reset your line monitoring, iirc it requires an Openreach engineer to physically visit the cabinet and do it, and is only done on initial connection or under exceptional circumstances. Someone has to pay to do it I expect.

 

When talktalk initially connected your fibre, they were, iirc, obliged by Ofcom to give you a guarantee of minimum speed. Check your emails to see what that figure was. You can use this figure to hit talktalk over the head.

 

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/latest/media/media-releases/2019/clear-information-before-buy-broadband

 

Try the speedtest.net app using various servers, very often the server chosen can be slowing down your test results.

 

Fast.com from Netflix does a good fast test that I find consistent.

 

To check your wireless performance, strength and potential interference from neighbours download a wifi analyser app on your device and use it.

 

You can access and program your router to use alternative channel settings, they usually come set to auto and default to Ch1 (2.4ghz) and Ch36 (5ghz) along with many of your neighbours sharing the same channels.

 

Do some reading up before you go changing the channels as there are certain optimum configurations. E.g. 2.4ghz only use Ch1, 6 or 11 whichever is least occupied.

 

Use 5ghz channels in preference to 2.4ghz if you can and if your signal strength is sufficient, much more bandwidth is available and less likely to get neighbouring interference. You will need to change the 2.4/5ghz setting on your device too e.g. the ipad, I expect you know that....

 

Finally place your wireless router somewhere centrally to where your devices will be used. Keep it high, say on a cupboard, away from brick walls or large metal objects. The number of times I see routers placed on a reinforced concrete floor and people moaning how crap talktalk/bt/sky etc are.....

 

Positioning your router correctly can make a tremendous difference.

 

 

Hope this diatribe helps.

Edited 3 June, 20206 yr by xman