Are the Plusnet One routers naturally poor for Wifi?

[#1]

I joined PN midweek and i am pretty happy with the service so far, speeds overall are a lttle better than Sky (although I am still going through DLM...) but i do find the wireless pretty poor - although the signals show as being strong I am getting frequent dropouts and devices often struggle to reconnect.

I do have a pretty solidly built house and the router is in one corner but it even has problems with the room directly above, and if i plug my Apple Airport Extreme into the Pnet router via ethernet and use that as an access point the signal is much better.

So, are these routers just a bit pants for wifi or am i missing something - i did try seperating the 2.4 and 5ghz signals but that seemed even worse regarding devices dropping one and not being able to find it or the other so have gone back to the combined SSID setup.

[#2]

Moderators Note
This topic has been moved from Fibre Broadband to My Router.

[#3]

PlusNet are the "value" based arm of BT and their equipment reflects this - the HubOne is a re-badged BT HH5. BT themselves have since moved on to the HH and now the SmartHub2.

You can use your own equipment with PlusNet if you want to get better WiFi. Many people have bought a HH6 or the SmartHub2 off eBay quite cheaply. Instructions for setting up can be foundare elsewhere on this forum.

Brian

[#4 · Accepted solution]

@chubsta 

To put it into your words, yes, Plusnet routers Wifi is pants. If you look on this router board you will read about problems people are having.

I use a BT Smarthub 6.

[#5]

Thanks guys, the Airport is doing a good job so may just stick with that but at least i know i am not missing something i could adjust on the PN one...

[#6]

Interesting reading.  We moved to fibre and took the PN hub as SWMBO was concerned that moving from copper might cause issues.  The wifi when it reaches is fine but is generally poor except for her Samsung phone.  Our previous router had both 5GHz and 2.4GHz wifi which were variable at different times of the day, the PN router is poor for certain devices at all times.  I had hoped that the wifi synching might help spread the load across both wifi networks but whenever I look the Samsung is the only one on 5GHz despite all the other devices being dual band.  

I'll dig out our old router (which can handle VDL) and see how that gets on.

[#7]

@Phantom_cyclist 

This is an interesting variation. The general consensus is that performance is best when the bands aren't synchronised.

See here for separating them  https://community.plus.net/t5/My-Router/2-4ghz-and-or-5ghz-best-practice/m-p/1351966#M840

By the way you haven't really moved away from copper. Fibre only goes as far as the street cabinet located somewhere in the vicinity of your property. It's still copper the rest of the way.

[#8]

@Baldrick1 

Thanks for the pointer to separating the two wifi networks.  I had wondered whether to try that before switching to my older router.  The old router needed a reboot this morning as the wifi was fine but the internet connection dropped out..  We have found over the many years with PlusNet that a regular reboot of the router (of whatever technology) is required as the internet connection drops more often than we would like and a reboot seems to cure it.

I may give desynchronising the wifi a go as it doesn't take long to switch routers as all devices now know about all the possible wifi networks on my routers