Fibre 900 slower than Fibre 500

[MFMars]

I’m losing the will to live here. I upgraded from fibre 500 to 900 which went live a few days ago. On fibre 500 I ALWAYS had download speeds of just above or below 500mbps on WIFI everywhere in my house, for years. As soon as my fibre 900 went live the download speeds took a tumble. I now get less than 500mbps unless I’m very close to the router. In the master bedroom I’m now lucky to get 300mbps. 

In the Eero app it says my d/l speed is 900mbps+ and u/l 100mbps+ so if that really is true then the transmit power of the router has been turned down since the activation. Or it’s mysteriously developed a problem at this exact moment. 

Talktalk support tells me there’s nothing wrong and that I cannot use any speed checker apart from what it says in the Eero app. What a load of BS. I’ve used Ookla or fast.com for years with consistent results so I know what speeds I was getting. And don’t even talk about adding the second mesh router. I get even worse speeds than with the main router alone. 

I have now decided to go with Vodafone and cancel my Talktalk subscription as this whole upgrade process has been infuriating. Unless of course it magically starts working very soon. 

[Chris-TalkTalk]

The main point of the 900Mbps service is that you have enough bandwidth to use multiple devices within the same household at the same time without any drop-off in performance, this is really where it comes into it's own. 

Chris

[MFMars]

My tablet will always connect to 2.4GHz first with download speeds of around 40mbps. If I disconnect WIFI and reconnect it will usually connect to 5GHz with download speeds of over 200mbps. None of this explains why I’m seeing no improvement in my WIFI speeds since going over to Fibre 900. It’s as if I’m still on my old Fibre 500 service unless I’m in the same room as the router so what’s the point in having upgraded? In fact, my speeds are slower in some parts of the house than they were before. 

Something in the setup of the router has changed since the upgrade, and with the Eero being locked down the way it is it’s impossible to know what. Meanwhile Talktalk support tells me not to believe any of the speed test services and just go by the download speeds in the Eero app. Really helpful. 🙄

[KeithFrench]

Hi @MFMars 

Whilst there is no way to turn off the 2.4GHz band, that should not matter unless Band Steering has been disabled (if you can). A dual-band WiFi device should initially connect to the band having the best quality (this is a mixture of good signal strength & least WiFi interference) unless properties with the device's WiFi adapter have been set to either prefer one band over the other, or to restrict WiFi modes to those that are only supported on one band.

If connected to the 2.4GHz band, then Band Steering comes into play. This will try to move that device to the 5GHz band automatically if it supports that band. There are several reasons why this might fail, including if the 5GHz band has too low a signal strength, or it is using too high a WiFi channel, above what the device's WiFi adapter can support. When Band Steering kicks in, will depend on certain thresholds associated with this facility. I have not seen any TalkTalk router that tells you what these thresholds are set to or allows you to change them. One of these is how much data is being transmitted or received. If the device is currently connected to the 2.4GHz band & you cannot see any obvious reason for it not to be moved over to the 5GHz band, then do a speed test, or similar, then recheck the band it is connected to. More often than not, it would then be connected to the 5GHz band.

[MFMars]

I’m only using one Eero. I tried using both but quickly switched it off as it was making speeds slower all round. 

It is broadcasting on 2.4GHz, I just forgot to take a screenshot. Will do so later. To be fair I would have preferred if there was a way to turn the 2.4GHz band off altogether as it’s far slower on some devices than 5GHz. 

[KeithFrench]

Hi @MFMars 

Thanks for the screenshots, there are two obvious problems here. One of your Eeros is using channel 149, not all 5GHz compatible devices support this channel or higher. This probably accounts for slow speeds unless close to the main Eero, if that is the one using channel 36.

The second issue is that there is no 2.4GHz band, while this suffers much more from interference than the 5GHz band, the 2.4GHz one can sometimes have a better range, but this all depends on your local area. I suspect that you have not enabled legacy mode in the Eero app, or did you keep it disabled by design?

[Gliwmaeden2]

Please start a new thread in the billing section of the forum for this query, @MFMars. It's a completely separate issue from any technical  / speed issues with your service. 

Go via the forum menu; help with your service; billing. Click on start a topic. 

[MFMars]

I was promised 3 months free when I upgraded but I still received a bill this month. Can you look into it please because I’m sick of spending hours on chats/calls with absolutely clueless support staff. 

[MFMars]

Only my Talktalk SSID’s show in the WIFI analyser. See screenshots attached. 

[KeithFrench]

Hi @MFMars 

Please can you answer my question in post #6?

[MFMars]

As I’ve tried to explain, I don’t have a loss of service or buffering, but my overall speeds have decreased since upgrading to fibre 900.  That is unless I’m very close to the router. 

[Chris-TalkTalk]

Hi MFMars,

Line test is passing and I've checked the speedtest results from the eero, they are all above 900Mbps since the 3rd January. Are you experiencing any problems with your quality of service such as buffering or pixelation when streaming 

Chris

[MFMars]

Yes nothing has changed. 

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Morning,

How are you getting on? Are your wireless speeds still slow at the moment?

Thanks

Michelle

[KeithFrench]

As I said, signal strength is not the same as signal quality, as it does not take into account the impact that WiFi interference has. Do you have any other WiFi-connected devices apart from your iPhone? To take this further I need to see some results from a WiFi analyser, but there aren't any for iPhones, only MACoS, Android & Windows.

[MFMars]

I have two Eero 6 Pro’s. I’m only running the main router as speeds are affected negatively when I add the second router. 

I’m using my iPhone 14 Pro Max to test speeds on WIFI and I’m using speedtest.net and fast.com. 

All the devices I care about are connected to 5Ghz. Signal strength right next to the router is -43dbm, in my home office it’s -65dbm and in the master bedroom it’s -61dbm. Connected to channel 36. I had a look at the signals present and found that my Sky Q box blasted out its own SSID’s on 2.4 and 5GHz on the same channel as the Eero, which probably wasn’t helping so I’ve disabled it. It hasn’t done a great deal to be honest. 

[KeithFrench]

Which router do you have?

What device are you measuring the WiFi speed on & if a PC, what is the WiFi network adapter are you using?

So much depends with WiFi, first which band are you connected to and what sort of signal quality are you getting. This is not necessarily the same as signal strength, which is just part of it.

When I know the answers to all of these, then I can move on to checking out the signal quality.

[MFMars]

I’ve powered off the router and ONT for at least half an hour and switched it back on. It seems a little better but apart from being in line of sight of the router, my speeds are still slower than they were before everywhere else. Surely this can’t be right?

Granted, in the same room as the router I do get download speeds of around 700mbps and if I test over ethernet it’s around the advertised 900mbps, but what was the point of upgrading if my WIFI speeds are worse than on my old plan?

[KeithFrench]

Just to be on the safe side, power down the ONT and router for at least 30 mins, to ensure that everything from the old service has cleared.

Then check your speed in the Eero app. If you still have a problem, we should be able to help you, but may need a few more answers depending on those speeds.