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New Router Recommendation - Plusnet Homehub One is awful for 2 bedroom flat!

kingblah
Newbie
Posts: 2
Registered: ‎11-01-2019

New Router Recommendation - Plusnet Homehub One is awful for 2 bedroom flat!

Could anyone provide a recommendation for a good router to purchase to replace our dreadful Plusnet Homehub One? We've had our one for a year now and I'm tired of putting up with dropped connections, slow wifi when more than about 5 meters away from it, etc. We really can't take advantage of our 78mbit connection when our wifi is so awful. We only have a small London two bedroom flat - perhaps this router is just faulty, but this just isn't right.

Does the new router need to have a fibre modem built in?

Thanks

4 REPLIES 4
Baldrick1
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Re: New Router Recommendation - Plusnet Homehub One is awful for 2 bedroom flat!

A Hub One should be fine in a small flat. First try separating the wireless bands see https://community.plus.net/t5/My-Router/2-4ghz-and-or-5ghz-best-practice/m-p/1351966#M840 try each band in turn and use the best.

The other thing to try is changing the channel in use. Ideally use a wifi sniffer app. I use Wifi Analyser on an android phone to see which channel is less affected by neighbours. Check both at the router location and where you use your devices. You can manually set the channels in the same advanced wifi page on the router.

 

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kingblah
Newbie
Posts: 2
Registered: ‎11-01-2019

Re: New Router Recommendation - Plusnet Homehub One is awful for 2 bedroom flat!

Thanks for the reply! Great suggestion but over the last year we've tried changing channels, separating bands is currently also on, and to no avail. Poor connectivity is still there, dropped connections almost constantly. The signal is also showing as fairly strong (4/5 bars) on the device but the connectivity is intermittent (router is on ground floor of flat, devices on first floor).

maranello
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Re: New Router Recommendation - Plusnet Homehub One is awful for 2 bedroom flat!

What devices do you use? The reason I ask is that if you have devices capable of connection via either the 2.4 or 5GHz bands, they will automatically connect to the strongest, initially. Some devices can be set up to change to the strongest signal automatically, otherwise they remain connected to the initial connection until the signal is so weak that the connection is lost.

Also the range of the 5GHz is less than the 2.4GHz. 

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Baldrick1
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Re: New Router Recommendation - Plusnet Homehub One is awful for 2 bedroom flat!

OK. My next suggestion is to spend £20-30 on Ebay and buy a BT Smarthub 6. Many of us use these. Setting up instructions can be found here https://community.plus.net/t5/My-Router/Using-the-BT-Smarthub-6-on-a-Plusnet-Account/m-p/1587673#M85...

 You need the FTTC version (the vast majority are). These are identified by seeing that they have four yellow LAN sockets. There is a FTTP version that has a red WAN sticker over one of the LAN sockets which shpuld be avoided.

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