Hi @Steveowen1000
To answer this requires both a long & complex reply, so no apologies for this.
The Full Fibre 500 or 900 packages often mean that customers do not achieve the speeds they expect (obviously around 500 or 900Mbps). Firstly, you typically do not need the fastest speed possible on just one device, but rather enough speed to accomplish your tasks without compromising performance across all devices. As an example:-
- Up to 15Mbps – basic online activities such as web browsing, emails and watching low-resolution videos.
- 15-50Mbps – HD video streaming and managing a small number of smart devices in the home.
- 50-100Mbps – 4K video streaming on one or two devices, online gaming, and supporting a limited number of smart devices in the home.
- 100Mbps or more – 4K video streaming on multiple devices and supporting a good number of smart devices around the home.
However, I can help you achieve the fastest speeds possible on your devices. This is often not an issue with the design of these services, but rather the connection between these devices and the router. Your device must not be connected to the 2.4GHz Wi-Fi band; otherwise, it will never deliver such speeds. No other devices must be in use at the time of any speed tests, because Wi-Fi is a shared medium. This means that it works half-duplex (one direction at a time), device A transmits and receives its data separately. Then it is the turn of device B, followed by C, etc.
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, which might work at speeds up to 433Mbps only if 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 1000Mbps (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 faster Wi-Fi adapter. This would be a higher specification Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) or Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) adapter.
While Wi-Fi 6 is not designed to boost download speeds significantly, the new features will allow more connected devices. That said, faster speeds (up to 2.4Gbps) will be available if the environmental conditions in your property allow the use of a 160MHz channel bandwidth. Using 160MHz requires a very clean RF spectrum — a wide contiguous block without DFS radar activity or interference. To fully understand this requires detailed knowledge of channel allocation for it to work; otherwise, the router will fall back to an 80MHz channel bandwidth. Simply enabling 160MHz in the AP configuration is nowhere near enough. Currently, this means that it is very unlikely to work in the 5GHz Wi-Fi band, as all 160MHz channels cross into the DFS channel range (52 - 140); only the 6GHz band with Wi-Fi 6E or Wi-Fi 7 can be used.
I would not recommend using multiple eero 6 units on the FF500 or 900 services. TalkTalk, before supplying the Wi-Fi Hub 3 for these packages, used to provide the eero Pro 6 for them. One reason is that the eero Pro 6 is tri-band (1 x 2.4GHz and 2 x 5GHz Wi-Fi bands), allowing the backhaul network (connection between eeros) to maintain a faster speed. The eero 6 would therefore probably need an Ethernet-connected backhaul rather than using wireless, if it is required to use these slower, dual-band eeros. It may also not switch data fast enough for the increased speed of these packages.
There are some basic checks that you can do to ensure that your devices have the best chance of achieving these higher speeds:-
- Check that these devices are connected to the 5GHz Wi-Fi band, not the 2.4GHz band. If you have the eero Pro 6, then as many devices as possible should be using the 5GHz (High) band.
- Which eero Pro 6 (if applicable) 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. Additionally, with the eero Pro 6, any device capable of a 2402Mbps link speed must be connected to the 5GHz (High) Wi-Fi band and use a 160MHz channel bandwidth, which is very unlikely to work due to environmental conditions. The 5GHz (Low) band is not as high a specification as the 5GHz (High) one.
- To aid with step 2 (again for eeros), is "Client Steering" enabled within the eero app, as well as "Local DNS Caching"?
- Have you checked for Wi-Fi interference, a topic that I can provide a lot of help with?
