Poor performance from Hub One

[#1]

76mb service, Hub One router, current setup:

• 5 devices on 2.4ghz
• 2 devices on 5ghz
• 2 devices wired

I'm sat about 5 metres away from the router, with line of sight to it. The connection intermittently drops but not enough for Windows to pick up that it's gone. I'll get various page timeouts, or DNS resolutions will fail, or requests will generally take longer than they should. On my mobile, the signal strength indicator will go from saying full strength to the equivalent of one dot.

Have tried restarting the router, and the devices (although it's happening across all of them) but no changes. Not sure at this stage whether it's a connection issue or a router issue. From the wired network, continuously pinging a known good IP address (208.67.220.220) shows that approximately every 15 seconds the response times go from 13ms to 1300+ms. It doesn't always happen but it happens a lot more frequently than it should.

This has been happening for a few days now. Was hoping that it would resolve itself but it doesn't appear to be doing so. If anyone from Plusnet can have a look at the connection and see if something's up that would be appreciated. Please note that the account isn't mine, so use the IP address I'm posting from as opposed to my username.

[#2]

First thing to try is to change the name of one of the 2 SSIID (WiFi names). Add a number 5 to the 5GHz one so you can distinguish between the 2 names.

See this page and the section "How to check or change WIFi Settings". I believe you clear the section "Sync with 2.4Ghz" so that you can then change the SSID's.

[#3]

Happy to give that a try, but a) the WiFi has already been configured on a channel so it doesn't interfere with the neighbours ones, b) The primary device I'm using only supports 2.4Ghz anyway so isn't trying to connect to 5Ghz and c) The problem also occurs on the devices connected to the router by wire

[#4]

The issue on the wired links, maybe down to the WiFi code hogging the router's CPU so slowing down the whole unit, irrespective of access technique. 

It may also be worthwhile disabling IPv6 on the router and any devices too, as this can cause connectivity issues.

Just trying to stop the obvious areas of concern.  Your issue maybe more complex.

[#5]

Rather worryingly, disabling IPv6 and 5Ghz WiFi seems to have resolved the problem. Does this basically mean that the router is incapable of running 9 devices (only 2 of which are actually making any serious use of the internet)

[#6]

As to the merits of the Plusnet Hub One (and its twin BT Home Hub 5 Type A), I cannot comment as I have never used either. I always use my own kit although I do take the ISP's kit for diagnostic purposes only.

At least its working for now.

[#7]

Yeah, I run my own at home too. The depressing things is that the Sky router could handle all of these devices. Might be time to invest in a real router...!

Thanks for your help @SpendLessTime

[#8]

Spoke too soon. Problem re-occurs now with both 5Ghz and IPv6 disabled (and only 6 devices connected). Back to the drawing board

[#9]

Time to explore the router logs, and the help desk page, to see if you are losing connection to the cabinet/exchange.

[#10]

Rather interestingly (did network maintenance in a past life) it seems to definitely be a router issue. I've got a continuous ping going from a WiFi device to a) an external IP, b) a device on the wired network and c) the router. I've then got the wired network device doing the same thing. It would appear what's happening is that the router is "freezing" for a few seconds. No packets are getting lost, but they're getting massively delayed:

64 bytes from 192.168.1.254: seq=3 ttl=64 time=1.047 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.254: seq=4 ttl=64 time=1.052 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.254: seq=5 ttl=64 time=3767.641 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.254: seq=6 ttl=64 time=2767.434 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.254: seq=7 ttl=64 time=1767.191 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.254: seq=8 ttl=64 time=766.937 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.254: seq=9 ttl=64 time=1.079 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.254: seq=10 ttl=64 time=1.092 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.254: seq=11 ttl=64 time=1.052 ms

The ping packets are sent 1 second apart so you can see that the responses for 5, 6, 7 and 8 all came back at pretty much the same time. The wired device is plugged directly into the router. Similar results for the external IP too:

64 bytes from 80.229.xxx.xxx: seq=12703 ttl=58 time=22.596 ms
64 bytes from 80.229.xxx.xxx: seq=12704 ttl=58 time=22.443 ms
64 bytes from 80.229.xxx.xxx: seq=12705 ttl=58 time=22.662 ms
64 bytes from 80.229.xxx.xxx: seq=12706 ttl=58 time=3599.975 ms
64 bytes from 80.229.xxx.xxx: seq=12707 ttl=58 time=2600.296 ms
64 bytes from 80.229.xxx.xxx: seq=12708 ttl=58 time=1600.772 ms
64 bytes from 80.229.xxx.xxx: seq=12709 ttl=58 time=601.223 ms
64 bytes from 80.229.xxx.xxx: seq=12710 ttl=58 time=22.247 ms
64 bytes from 80.229.xxx.xxx: seq=12711 ttl=58 time=21.797 ms
64 bytes from 80.229.xxx.xxx: seq=12712 ttl=58 time=21.999 ms

Will sift through the logs tomorrow when my brain is a bit more with it!

[#11]

I would not waste too much time, I use my HH5 as a modem only, I have a net gear cable modem for all my other devices. 

[#12]

Raised a fault for this (#125798719) if someone wouldn't mind picking it up? It's been in the queue since Sunday.

[#13 · Accepted solution]

It would appear that uPNP was the issue on the router. Having disabled that my response times are a lot more tolerable, with latency only spiking to about 800ms every 20-30 seconds or so