HH6 Signal Drop

[#1]

Just started having problems with FTTC & BT HH6 Issue seems to be with speed rather than signal strength,

Upstairs desktop & laptop full strength (5 bars) but speed is crawling so slow ookla couldn't even do a speed test

reporting high latency problems, even hard wired laptop to router speed test throwing up some randomly wild figures

at worst 3Mps & Best 38Mps  Sometimes test couldn't finish due to upload speed error.

Nothing has changed with hardware & <6 months ago virtually all wiring from pole to phone socket was replaced and service was as good as you like until recently, this has been an occasional problem rearing its head every now & again only fault finding ive done is to swap out router with identical HH6 which cures problem for a while before it pops back again really annoying not least because its sporadic.

Im toying with the idea of splashing out on a shop router as I "think" that's the issue, any help greatly appreciated as its driving me nuts...

[#2]

If it happens with two routers then this suggests that the fauly is elsewhere. Out of interest does the fauly also go away if you reboot the router?

[#3]

Hi Baldrick 

Thx for your reply, yes & no is the answer when router "settles down" after reboot sometimes  problem appears to have been fixed only to re appear later, or problem occurs immediately again.

FWIW almost identical problem ended in no internet at all about six months ago and after the legend that is openreach's engineer showed up and stayed virtually  all day changing just about everything that could be changed including 3 different  routers. He called in the techno wizard who did something (still not sure what) and service was up & running perfectly until now. Also worth noting I'm 300 yards from cabinet and normally get 38/10 all day long.

[#4]

Mr feeling is that it's not the router. Hopefully a Plusnet staffer will come along and show us a radius chart.

I would plug into the BT Test socket, no doubt if you have had previous problems you know how to do this, then if it still does it report a fault.

[#5]

Hi there,

I have tested the line and I could not find any issues with your connection. As shown below your connection has been stable for 13 days and the GEA service test is not detecting any errors.

Test Outcome	Pass
Test Outcome Code	GTC_FTTC_SERVICE_0000
Description	GEA service test completed and no fault found .
Main Fault Location	OK
Sync Status	In Sync
Downstream Speed	40.0 Mbps
Upstream Speed	10.0 Mbps
Appointment Required	N
Fault Report Advised	N
NTE Power Status	PowerOn
Voice Line Test Result	Pass
Bridge Tap	Not Detected
Repetitive Electrical Impulse Noise	Not Detected
Estimated Line Length In Metres	210.1
Upstream Rate Assessment	Very Good
Downstream Rate Assessment	Very Good
Interference Pattern	Not Detected
Service Impact	No Impact Observed
Home Wiring Problem	Not Detected
Technology	VDSL
Profile Name	0.128M-40M Downstream, Retransmission Low - 0.128M-10M Upstream, Error Protection Off
Time Stamp	2019-05-04T11:45:00

Parameters	MIN	MAX	AVG
Down Stream Line Rate	39.9 Mbps	39.9 Mbps	39.9 Mbps
Up Stream Line Rate	9.9 Mbps	9.9 Mbps	9.9 Mbps
Up Time	899.0 Sec	900.0 Sec	899.9 Sec
Retrains	0.0	0.0	0.0

Current and Last 15 Minute Bin Performance
Parameters	Last Traffic Count(Upto 15 mins)	Current Traffic Count(Upto 15 mins)
Start Time Stamp	2019-05-17T10:21:45Z	2019-05-17T10:36:45Z
Ingress Code Violation	0	0
Egress Code Violation	0	0
Errored Seconds	0	0
Severely Errored Seconds	0	0
Unavailable Seconds	0	0

This is likely to be a wireless interference issue, but just to make that this is the case, If you could please run the BT Speedtester service on here using a wired connection from your PC/Laptop to the router.

Once the initial result is completed please click Further Diagnostics, please type in your phone number and click run diagnostic test.  This will run a test and send the results to the server for investigation.

Please let us know how it goes.

[#6]

@astonman 

Have you tried separating the 2.4 and 5GHz bands? See here for the Hub One instructions, the Smarthub 6 process is the same. https://community.plus.net/t5/My-Router/2-4ghz-and-or-5ghz-best-practice/m-p/1351966#M840. Try each band to find the best.

Another thing to try is to use a wifi sniffer app, I use Wifi Analyser on an Android phone. With this you can view your neighbours' transmissions. Check at both your router location and where you use your devices. If necessary go back in to the advanced wireless settings and manually select the quietest channel. 

[#7]

Thanks guys for help, true to form everything  today back to normal I'm getting 38/10 all over.

Away over the weekend will run the BT speedtest on my return and report.

Wi Fi analyser shows a lot of congestion on 5g less so on 2.4, was thinking of splitting the frequencies before

May give that a go as well, will that enable me to select broadcast channel as well ?

Will report back

Thx

[#8]

No problem. Let us know how it goes.

I'm not 100% sure what you mean by broadcast channel, if you're referring to broadcasting the wireless network/SSID this should already be enabled by default if you're able to see the WiFi on your devices.

Hope this helps.

[#9]

@astonman 

You have full manual control over which frequency channel you wish to use on both the 2.4 and 5GHz bands. You need to go into the wireless network setting on your devices and select either the 2.4 or 5 GHz band. 

Router auto freqency selection only monitors neighbours' transmissions at the router location. Hence the need to check at device locations before manually selecting the best channel. I get totally different results at the front and rear of my property.

The problem with having the two bands synchronised is that some devices spend their time flip flopping between the two bands, which kills wifi performance. I can't get my head around why BT and Plusnet ship their routers with this as the default configuration. The third party routers I have come across (only a few I confess) have come with the bands unsynchronised.