Fibre Broadband Activation - Contact Issues

[JamesyD1]

What is the best way to contact Talk Talk about a new Fibre installation that has not been fully completed?

The issue I have is that although a BT Openreach engineer completed all his tasks at my house, he was unable to get the service working - because some connection at the fibre network exchange/splitter has not been done correctly on their end. I was told that it would be sorted out first thing today but it has not.

Contacting Talk Talk on anything specific such as this is completely frustrating for many of the 'usual' reasons: call centre staff with poor English, too much focus on verifying my account etc, sitting holding for far too long whilst staff try to contact Openreach and find out what is going on. There really must be a more efficient and effective, rapid means of contacting TalkTalk/BT Openreach about these issues - and especially when it is a new installation.

In general, TalkTalk customer service is woeful on all the basic things that should be simple to get right:  a telephone number with a real human that speaks English natively. A much quicker account verifiaction procedure that does not ask all the same questions that you already answered when first dialling-in ... etc etc.

Above all, specific contact points/phone numbers for specific types of issues so that we don't have to suffer the ridiculously long and painful process of being funnelled through the same Customer Service contact centre every time for every issue.

[ferguson]

You can change your network name and password on the router to whatever you wish, I have been using the same one across different routers for years, it means all devices should simply carry on connecting. 

[JamesyD1]

OK thanks Keith

I will go with 2. and use the 5364 as the primary router with the 266 as an extender.

I see its simple to just plug it into the ONT via the WAN port.

But the bit which is still unclear is whether this means all my devices will have to log into the wifi now using old network name and password (which was on the old Fibre65 service - not the new FullFibre500 service that the eero was sent with).

I had set-up a new network name and password with the eero and in some cases (cameras, wifi plugs etc) had to reinstall my devices for this new network.

Thanks

[KeithFrench]

Hi @JamesyD1 

No problem, here are my answers:-

1. You can use the 5364 as an extender, but it depends on your knowledge of IP addresses & subnet masks. If I said 10.1.2.3/24, would that mean anything to you? The main problem is that by default the eero uses something called supernetting, not subnetting. I have only ever come across supernetting once in the commercial arena, never in domestic routers until the eero. I doubt if the 5364 would support this, as it serves no real purpose in a domestic environment, so you will need to configure the eero to something like 192.168.1.1/24, which you can do, but it is a bit involved (I can tell you how to do it).
2. Using the 5364 as the primary router connected to the ONT, you just connect it with an Ethernet cable & job done.

When using either router as an extender to the other, their WiFi channel allocation is automatically controlled by their own, different systems. The eero uses its own method and the 5364 uses WiFi optimisation & neither can be disabled. This is likely to give rise to more WiFi interference. You are better with a mesh system (multiple eeros or 5364 & as many F266 as required), because one system maintains the channel allocation & crucially, it will manage signal output levels to prevent/reduce the chance of co-channel interference.

So from another post, if you already have a 266, I would use that with the 5364. I can provide my unofficial guides to both if you want.

[JamesyD1]

Hi Keith

Once again thanks so much for your help. Couple of questions:

1. Can I use the 5364 as an extender to the eero? How do I set that up?
2. If I use the 5364 as the primary router, plugged directly into the ONT, how do I set that up - including what network name and password etc (does it stay as it was on the old Fibre65 service?)

Thanks again

[KeithFrench]

Yes that will be much better with the 5364 connected via its WAN port direct to the ONT. I don't think you'll be able to use the eero as an extender.

By far the best option then will be the 266, but see my sticky at the top of this board. You'll probably be able to buy one for a cheapish price via the loyalty dept.

[JamesyD1]

Hi Keith

Yes I still have the old router the TalkTalk Hub - its the Sagemcom 5364-3 T8

It would be very handy to use this as either the router connected to the ONT -  but maybe first I should try using it as an extender or repeater.

Is there a guide on how to do this?

If/when set-up, I won't be able to connect it to the eero with an ethernet cable in its location, so has to be a wifi pairing. But if using an ethernet cable during set-up helps, then that can be done.

If this works, I could then consider using the 266 as a further repeater...

Thanks

[KeithFrench]

Do you still have your old router @JamesyD1, you should be able to use it instead.

My preference is the Sagemcom Hub 2 & 266, brilliant. There is now a new version 2 of the 266. Anything you want to know about this combination, I have done loads of work with them. I have even produced some in-depth, unofficial guides to the Hub 1/2 (5364/5464), the 266 and the eero app, plus quite a few others.

[JamesyD1]

Hi Keith

I am still experimenting with the eero and trying to get better wifi coverage and speeds.

Finding the whole thing pretty inconsistent and coming to the conclusion that the eero just is not a very good piece of kit for my relative normal situation (small house etc).

The most important comparison is with the TalkTalk Hub router that we've had for the past 3-4 years on the Fibre65 service. It gave much better and more stable coverage through the house than the eero does. But Fibre65 was suffering too many drop-outs and cuts in service (lasting 1 min to as long as 1 hour) during the past 2 years. That was the main reason for upgrading to FullFibre.

I still have issues with my new laptop which seems to jump between the 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz bands all the time (although I note your point about 'prefer' being the key word in settings). Not necessarily your/TalkTalk's problem perhaps, but strange that the most current technology is the kit struggling to work with eero's wifi the most....

If this is caused by wifi interference though, then my only conclusion is that with the eero, interference is much more of an issue than it was with the old TalkTalk Hub router which my new laptop was completely happy with.

So, overall I am starting to think that TalkTalk should either:

1. make multiple eeros standard to make a fit-for-purpose installation. Or

2. allow set-up with the existing TalkTalk Hub router (which would presumably save costs for TalkTalk) but might not provide up-to-date tech. Or..

3. supply a better and more flexible new router. Or...

4. give easy access to instructions on how to add a wifi repeater (that is not an eero)  to help with coverage. I have one of these which is the Sagemcom F@st 266.

5. give instructions for how to use the TalkTalk Hub router as a repeater... (is that possible?)

I attempted 4. above by contacting TalkTalk support which drives you down the chat bot and then human live chat route. After 50 mins of repeatedly telling the representative that this is a query about 'wifi in the home -  not about the incoming fibre connection' I had hardly got anywhere. He wasted most of that time checking the fibre  broadband service.  I was sent a set of generic set-up instructions to set-up my wifi repeater with the eero.....that are useless.

Anyway, I am starting to even consider just backing out of this FullFibre service as its been a pretty rotten experience.  The only positive, decent support provided is by yourself and those at TalkTalk who operate on this Community forum (eg Chris, Michelle, Debbie etc...) - because as per my very first posting, the other channels such as phone support are absolutely woeful and utterly useless. 

Sorry, I DO mean that as a compliment!

[Chris-TalkTalk]

Thanks. Yes the provisioning team sorted the order out, I can't see any indication that the digital voice adapter has been sent so I'll order one now

Chris

[JamesyD1]

Hi Chris -  thanks for chasing. Just to confirm what you mean on the 'order',  you do mean the adaptor for VOI phone to plug into the eero?

The actual FullFibre service order is now showing as complete, as I had tect and emails stating that this morning. So, I hope they haven't neglected the phone adaptor...

[Chris-TalkTalk]

Hi JamesyD1,

I'm just checking the order with our provisioning team, I'll let you know when I have an update

Chris 

[JamesyD1]

Hi Debbie - or Michelle

Just need to add another update to this. We have had issues today concerned with my wife's work and her IT support team being able to access her desktop (for support reasons using the TeamViewer platform) - covered in another post on the Community.

But one further issue related to this whole installation and switchover from Fibre65 to FullFibre500 is that the Fibre65 has been switched off - it seems, yesterday afternoon.

This is really, really silly. Especially as your colleagues are saying the order (for FullFibre500) is showing as incomplete and they can't view what they need to for solving the TeamViewer issue. We could have been using the existing Fibre65 service today and my wife would have had no problem switching back to the the wifi via the other router.

Why on earth switch off the exisiting service before the new one is completed, let alone the issues we have with the new Fibre500 Service? Or maybe it wasn't switched off but has just dropped for other technical reasons (which has happened before and part of why we wanted to go to FullFibre)

We still don't know what's going on with the VOI phone service and having the necessary kit to plug our ohone into the eero. It seems this may have been lost in translation when the order was recorded -  but I very absolutely stated we need to keep our landline number for when we might add voice package, if needed, in future.

[KeithFrench]

Any metal surface can reflect WiFi signals, that is pure physics in the way radio waves propagate & cannot be changed.

Setting an adapter to prefer 5GHz is not what I am talking about, it is what band are they already connected to that is important. Prefer is the important word here, they will try & connect to the 5GHz, but the 2.4GHz might be used or the 5GHz (Low) band.

The easiest way to find this out is via the eero app. Tap on a device & look at the Connection section. Apparently (I only have the eero 6 so I can't prove it) if connected to the 5GHz band, it does not differentiate between the 5GHz (Low) & 5GHz (High) bands. On a Windows PC my preferred method is to use this command having already opened the Command Prompt:-

netsh wlan show interface

I can always interpret the results for you if you want.

[JamesyD1]

Thanks Keith

I should add that the eero is near the boiler -  but this is in a corner of the house with the eero pointing 'inwards' towards the rest of the house. In that sense, the eero's wifi output only gets impeded by the boiler into the corner - where the wifi signal would be only spreading into our neighbour's house anyway. Unless reflections are an issue....

But again, I say these technologies really are supposed to be applicable in real home environments where virtually no household has a router sitting in open space in the very middle of the house with no hard surfaces anywhere nearby. And our previous router worked fine.

I have set the laptops to prefer the 5GHz band now.

But I will also try extending the ethernet cable from ONT to eero - but will have to hang the eero on a wall or something as there is no surface to put it on.

Thanks

[KeithFrench]

We can investigate WiFi interference as well if you want.

Slow speed, intermittent dropouts, breaks in the signal or no signal on some or all devices or no internet access might be caused by Wi-Fi interference from other local networks, which can also lead to a permanent reduction in speed. No ISP can be responsible for your local environment, this is mainly a byproduct of the popularity of Wi-Fi.

Generally speaking, the 2.4GHz band suffers a lot more from interference than the much faster 5GHz band, but the 2.4GHz one can sometimes have a better range, but this all depends on your local area.

In other words, I try to help you optimise your Wi-Fi connection. The next stage involves sending out a guide to you to help you get me some important diagnostic results so that I can analyse them for you and recommend changes to your router configuration to solve them.

I only send this out to people who request it.

Whilst the eero is supposed to manage Wi-Fi interference, if this is very bad, particularly in the 2.4GHz band, then it cannot do anything about it, no router can. The same goes for any router at that point. Other things that may then need to be investigated are its location within your property and the WiFi bands that you use. It is possible that you may also need to purchase additional eero nodes as it is supposed to operate as part of a mesh system. I can help with any of this. However, I would suggest that you follow my help to find out what the root cause of the problem is, before throwing money at it.

[KeithFrench]

The eero being by a boiler is not ideal, both metal & water will reduce WiFi coverage. From what you say the ONT has to be there, fair enough. However, if possible try moving the eero Pro 6 away from there using a longer Cat 6 Ethernet cable. I have done this in my home & hide the cable in white plastic self-adhesive trunking.

When I said about the 2.4 & 5GHz bands, the WiFi adapter decides which one to connect to, what I meant was check to see in the app which band each one is connected to. The best should always be the 5GHz (High) band, which your new laptop should have no problem connecting to, particularly after moving the eero Pro 6.

Your comments about only being supplied with one eero Pro 6, that is the standard with this package, but let me discuss this with TalkTalk in a few minutes.

Your comments about microwave ovens only affects the 2.4GHz band.

[JamesyD1]

Hi Keith - many thanks for jumping into this.

I will go through your advice/pointers here.

This is the eero Pro 6 router but I only received one unit. I don't know if TalkTalk have considered properly whether a single unit from mesh type system is really suitable for coverage. Our house is not very large and no corner of any room is more than 20ft distance from the router. Our previous TalkTalk router on the Fibre65 always covered the house fine.

The location of the eero is in a large walk-in press where the combi boiler is also located.  This boiler has a Wiser smart app (radio not wifi) for controlling thermostat etc. I did consider if this would cause any interference but it shouldn't. And besides, we are supposed to be accommodating more wireless technology in the modern home, as should ISPs for sure too and should not have to be worried about interactions between different wireless technologies. The location needs to be here for the reasons of connection to the street fibre cables (which are on poles) and it being very troublesome to locate the ONT anywhere else without having route fibre cables all over the place. The installer and BT Openreach saw no issues with the location and potential wifi coverage.

My iphone 12 works fine with the eero from everywhere in the house, although I do notice the speeds are inconsistent when furthest away from its location (only about 20-25ft in a straight line) but always above  250Mbps.

The laptop is a new Asus Vivobook that has an Intel WiFi 6E AX211 160MHz adapter. The drivers are the latest and just updated after it was purchased on 14th Sept. So, it really should be latest wifi spec.

On your 1) -  I cannot see how to select between the 2.4 and 5.0 GHz bands. But I am just not getting speeds any higher than 60Mbps and the upload speed is always higher than this download speed -  something I've never experienced before on any connection with any device.

The speed improves a little when standing right next to the eero -  but this really shouldn't be on the agenda.

I have an older Dell laptop which has older Wifi adapter but it actually connects better and achieves speeds above 100Mbps now in the same location as the new laptop. It is showing the same behaviour whether on 2.4GHz or 5.0GHz.

On your 2) - there is only the one eero - so I guess this is academic?

3) Both the Client Steering and Local DNS Caching are now set to Enabled (the default was Enabled for Client Steering but I had to make the change for the DNS Caching)

4) on Wifi Interference -   some of my points above re. the smart bolier control app -   as well the fact we have a smart meter for both electricity and gas might be relevant. But these were all there before with our Fibre65 service (not FTTH but on old copper) and never interfered. The only activity which ever did interfere with some wifi-enabled activities was the microwave oven - which would usually cut the Apple Airplay connection!

As mentioned above, the signal strength and coverage seems to be worse with the eero than the old router - which makes me question why TalkTalk are sending out a single eero unit when its clearly designed to work as a mesh system with a single unit seemingly not able to cover more than a 10ft radius very well  -  and it doesn't seem to have a signal strong enough to pass through standard wooden doors and floors unaffected.

Just as a slight aside -  we have a 500Mbps FTTH service at our other house which is in Ireland. This service is very stable in terms of speed and only drops when there has been a power outage and it can take a day or so to get stable again. The wifi signal is strong enough to reach about 50ft and only gets affected by the fact it has to pass through concrete floor for upstairs. Our smart heating system does not interfere with the wifi at all. I use a wired ethernet connection there alot anyway. But the eero and our house here make it very impractical to start running ethernet cables. But I would definitely be using wired if it was straightforward.

Thanks for your help.

[KeithFrench]

Hi @JamesyD1 

I assume that you have the eero Pro 6 with your package, how many of these do you have? 

The Full Fibre 500 or 900 packages often mean that customers do not achieve the speeds they think they should (obviously, around 500 or 900Mbps). This is often not an issue or design of these services, but the connection between their devices and the router. The Wi-Fi network adapters in these devices often cannot deliver speeds as fast as the fibre service can.

Take the example of some older Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) adapters that might work at speeds up to 433Mbps, when used in a perfect wireless environment, which most homes are not. When an internet speed test is performed, the speed achieved is down to the slowest link in the chain, namely the 433Mbps Wi-Fi adapter. Speed tests in this case might achieve somewhere around 400Mbps or less.

Older Ethernet connections can suffer as well. If a device only supports the 10/100Mbps standard, not the normal 1000M (1Gbps) or even the newer 2.5Gbps available on some desktop PCs, they are likely to only record 100Mbps on a speed test.

To get close to the 500/900Mbps on a speed test, that device must either have a minimum of a 1Gbps Ethernet connection or if wireless, a much faster WiFi adapter. This would be a higher specification Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) or Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) adapter. Even so, at these wireless speeds, signal quality must be near perfect (signal strength with very little Wi-Fi interference).

There are some basic checks that you can do to ensure that your devices have the best chance of achieving these higher speeds:-

1) Check that these devices are connected to the 5GHz WiFi band, not the 2.4GHz band and with the eero Pro 6, then as many devices as possible should be using the 5GHz (High) band.

2) Which eero Pro 6 is each device connected to, it should always be the gateway or closest/fastest extender node. The more extender nodes that you go through to get to the gateway, the slower the speed will always be. In fact, you will probably need to be connected to the gateway to have any chance of these speeds. In addition to this, with the eero Pro 6, any device capable of a 2402Mbps link speed must be connected to the 5GHz (High) wi-fi band. The 5GHz (Low) band is not as high a specification as the high one.

3) To aid with step 2, is "Client Steering" enabled within the eero app, as well as "Local DNS Caching"?

4) Have you checked for WiFi interference, a topic that I can provide a lot of help with?

What are the WiFi specifications of this new laptop?

[KeithFrench]

Yes of course I will @Michelle-TalkTalk. I will read through this thread after lunch.

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Hello again,

I'm glad to hear this and thanks for the update. Can I just confirm, what speeds do you see on the laptops if you move closer to the eero please? Is there any improvement?

@KeithFrench - would you also be offer any additional advice on the wireless speeds please?

Thanks

Michelle