Openreach Lan Light Flashing & Intermittent Wifi Connection

[bomfunkands]

I will keep this short and sweet!

Wifi is poor to the point my partners phone has ran out of data, and even my Instagram on my phone cannot finish videos throughout the day. 

We have a TV and two Echo dots connected, and that is all. Normally Netflix is ok on the TV, but it has disconnected a few times as of late. 

I have done all of the restarting, changing channels, but nothing seems to improve it.

Does the flashing green light on my Openreach box mean anything?

Cheers!

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Thanks for your help @KeithFrench  🙂

Michelle

[KeithFrench]

Glad that you have come up with a workable solution.

[bomfunkands]

It is literally the simple issue of moving my transmitter - the signal is so weak upstairs and regularly breaks. I am just going to move it to the bottom of the stairs, and annoyingly run cables under the floorboards! I can't believe than in such a small house there would be such a block in signal.

Thanks for the advice Keith, and the Netspot and instructions are going to be really useful moving forward. Really appreciate all of your time. This one is solved! 😎

[KeithFrench]

There appears to be a 2 min 30 second gap at the start of these, is there any obvious reason for this? I can't tell if there is any extra interference upstairs, as you have not included a complete set of screenshots.

[bomfunkands]

[KeithFrench]

Can you get me another set of traces on your laptop where the iPhones are used upstairs? Maybe the signal strength would be bad there?

[bomfunkands]

Hi Keith,

As ever, thanks for getting back to me.

The hub is located in our front room with no real obstacles in place. I may move it to the bottom of the stairs to see if it is more central to the home. Only problem is, when we first had it installed, it was always so strong.

The laptop is used almost sat next to it, and I don't remember it disconnecting, but the IPhones and computers upstairs seem to disconnect quite regularly, but the TV which is within the same room also seems to do it a lot. The phones are the ones that drop out the most, which is why my partners data has been used up.

[KeithFrench]

Thanks for the screenshots that you PM'd me. Alas, changing channels will not solve this problem, because WiFi Optimisation which manages channel allocation will only revert them to what they were. This feature could always be disabled on the router by the TalkTalk support staff on this forum. However, they have now been told that they must not disable it anymore.

Having said that, your problem does not appear to be related to WiFi interference as such.

The only problem that I can see is that at about 11:15.45 you lost all network signals briefly. With it being all of them, this points to your PC & is probably a USB Power Management issue within Windows (I can tell you how to sort this out). Are the problematic services just running on your PC, I am guessing not. Do the problems only happen on certain WiFi bands? Where in your property is the router located & what is around this in respect of electrical equipment, large metal objects or water tanks of any description?

[KeithFrench]

Hi @bomfunkands 

I will PM you a link for a guide of mine on Wi-Fi interference. It is quite long (about 30 pages), but you will probably only need to look at three or four pages in total. Initially look at the section called "Are you suffering from interference – prove it first". This is the first link in the table of contents. This section includes full details of free Wi-Fi analysers that I recommend for Windows, Windows phone, Android and Apple operating systems. However, I have no way of testing the Apple product. Select the analyser of your choice & my guide explains how to use it. Collect the screenshots that I require and include them in your reply. Do not worry about interpreting the results, I will do that for you.

Please post the screenshots to me in a PM (to protect your privacy), which I have requested in my guide. No photos please as they can be difficult to read, because the text can get out of focus when zoomed in. Please ensure that the analyser window is maximised (if Windows) before taking the screenshots & upload them via the "Insert Photos" button (in a mobile browser it's the picture icon) on the post editor's toolbar with the Size parameter set to Large.

[bomfunkands]

Hi Keith!

My router: Sagemcom-FAST5364

[KeithFrench]

That, if it is the Ethernet/LAN ONT light signifies data transfer, nothing else.

Slow speed, intermittent dropouts, breaks in the signal, 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. If you would like me to help you, please can you specify the make/model of TalkTalk router that you are using?