Fullfibre: Fast, but not good

[Bakertribe]

Been on full fibre since 8Jan25 and, while it meets the speed stated, the service is far from acceptable and considerably below the experience I had with the slower copper line. Niggly faults, like Google searches from Firefox just timing out (especially on the first tab) (wired connection). poor video quality over firestick (wireless connection). Signal strength from EERO6 is low (-46dbm typical) and an old netgear router achieves +20dbm more than this when connected as an AP.

[Bakertribe]

Hi Keith,

I know the firestick has its issues, but it worked fine before full fibre, now its reception has developed issues. unless changes were made in the last month (they weren't) thats not it. I don't use it for TV much (youtube, Plex, but some iplayer), but I suppose it uses the same transmission mode for all content. I'm looking in to your suggestion of signal strength vs. speed of transmission, albeit that was with the tablet.

[KeithFrench]

Alas @Bakertribe the foil-backed plasterboard will cause you lots of problems. The Firestick can have unique issues. However, without one myself I cannot verify what someone has told me. To give you free TV apparently, they use a service called Wow TV and this works by constantly starting new sessions all over the place leading to a lot of buffering. That is what I have been told, but I have no way of knowing if it is true or not.

[Bakertribe]

My bugbear is that the eero6, and so far the HUB2, are not giving me the same capability I had with the old router and partial copper line, with the new routers and other equipment placed in the same locations in my house. Its the signal to the firestick I need to solve now. Since I can't hardwire it I shall have to experiment with a TP link signal booster I use for the areas of my house with foil backed plasterboard.

[KeithFrench]

Checking for RF problems will normally need a spectrum analyser or similar, which are very expensive. This cannot be monitored with a WiFi analyser, which can only deal with WiFi interference & signal strength.

[Bakertribe]

Hi Keith. That's what I expected. I had already monitored the wifi with an app on my Android phone (not in the detail of the wifi analyser you recommended) and thought I had detected problems on 5GHz. Talktalk have just sent me a "Hub 2" router and in trying the talktalk speed app with that I got a 0Mbps download speed over the WIRED connection - twice! which clearly wasn't right as I was seeing the webpages OK. Running their connection test from the website also reported problems (it's not very specific). The tablet is largely used for Arduino programming and some bluetooth work, so a good 5GHz connection to it is not critical, I just let windows update its drivers. The important thing is the ruling out of RF noise interference and signal strength issues at this stage.

[KeithFrench]

In that case then there is something very wrong with the link speeds between the tablet & the router when on the 5GHz band. You get an 80% signal strength but

Receive rate (Mbps) : 192 Mbps
Transmit rate (Mbps) : 325 Mbs

When you should be much closer to 867 Mbps or higher. As a comparison, for an 86% signal strength my PC returns:-

Receive rate (Mbps) : 780 Mbps
Transmit rate (Mbps) : 866.7 Mbps

Is this WiFi adapter running the latest drivers?

Do you have any other device on which you can run analyser software?

[Bakertribe]

Hi Keith, Sorry about that. Let me clarify: ALL of the netsh command results were run on the tablet. We must assume (because netsch shows it) that the tablet has Broadcom 802.11ac WDI SDIO Adapter capabilities (although that's not what the datasheet says, its a publicity blurb and I suspect mine is from a late manufacturing batch which must have been upgraded).

[KeithFrench]

Hi @Bakertribe 

I am getting more confused, this latest netsh is supposed to be from your tablet, but it still shows it as the same 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5) card, as when you ran the command from your desktop.

[KeithFrench]

Sorry, from what you had said about running the netsh on your desktop, that clearly showed a WiFi card.

[Bakertribe]

Hi Keith, would be a bit pointless running it on the desktop - since it has no wifi card and is running over TP link powerline adaptors. I'd have liked to have run it on the firestick, but I don't think I could download the results.

[KeithFrench]

OK I'll have a look at that, there does look like problems with your desktop though. I would have thought that would have been the better device to run it on than the tablet. My guide never said to use a tablet in preference to a PC. It just lists the possible devices that they can run on.

I will download your attachment a little bit later this morning and then delete it.

[Bakertribe]

Hi Keith, Both wifi analyser and netsh were run on the tablet. I've run the command line instruction on the tablet again, sitting next to the eero 6 (wifi analyser wasn't running this time, incase that makes any difference).

I can only assume that the tablet I have was built after the datasheet was published and a more capable radio card was fitted.

[KeithFrench]

Hi @Bakertribe 

That does not match up at all, the netsh command clearly shows that it is a Broadcom 802.11ac WDI SDIO Adapter which is connected to the 5GHz band using 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5), the datasheet for that Windows tablet shows that it can only work up to 802.11n (Wi-Fi 4) and only in the 2.4GHz band, not the 5GHz band.

Please can you confirm then that you used WiFi Scanner as well as doing the netsh command on that tablet?

[KeithFrench]

Thanks, I will read through this and have another look at the info you sent me & hopefully have an answer by this afternoon.

[Bakertribe]

I have no idea. The readings were taken on a Linx 12V64 windows tablet, so its all built in.

[Bakertribe]

its in the front room, on a small table about 1 foot tall, in the room directly below where I took the readings. Its 3 feet from a radiator, with only its power supply, a telephone VOIP adaptor and a switch and their power supplies on the floor beside it. Exactly where the previous router was, only I didn't have the VOIP adaptor and switch (because that one had several network sockets).

[KeithFrench]

Hi @Bakertribe 

I am struggling to find out the specifications of your Broadcom 802.11ac WDI SDIO Adapter, is it also known as a BCM43460?

[KeithFrench]

Hi @Bakertribe 

I have just started looking at the info now. I am currently trying to find out the specifications of your Broadcom WiFi adapter.

Where is the eero located (you may have mentioned this before, I have been dealing with lots of TalkTalk stuff recently & I do not remember). What is around it in terms of electronic equipment, large metal objects, mirrors, glass & water tanks? Where is this PC and what is around that or reasonably in between the PC & eero?

A good signal strength is less than -50dBm, modern WiFi adapters with decent gain antennae can easily handle this.

[Bakertribe]

Thanks Keith. I expected that's what the "hidden" transmissions were, but I had never seen them before, and I would only have expected one. From the files I attached I couldn't see anything with enough power to interfere (I judged signal/noise ratio proportional to other signal powers in relation to the channel I'm using). I suppose the idea is coverage with multiple eero's, so each one can be a 'lower' power. I'd always considered less than -30dbm to be 'good', sliding away below that, but I suppose new ways of extracting information means that lower powers and distributed channels (making interference on any 1 channel less critical) can be used.

[KeithFrench]

Hi @Bakertribe 

Yes, all mesh networks of whatever manufacturer use what is called a backhaul network between the various nodes within the mesh (e.g. multiple eeros). When there is no Ethernet connection between the eeros, this is done over wireless with hidden SSIDs (WiFi network names), except those hidden ones have no names allocated to them. They carry the traffic from a device connected to an extender eero onto the gateway eero and out to the internet. They also carry inter-eero management traffic to maintain the mesh network, like nodes going offline or changing their topology etc.

If you only have one eero, you will still see these, because the eero is always looking to see if you add another eero to your mesh.

I'll have a look at your zip a little bit later today & get back to you.