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Possible Upgrade to Full Fibre

icesteelman
Conversation Starter
Private Message TalkTalk
Message 44 of 44

Looking to upgrade from Fibre 65 to (Full) Fibre 150 before having some landscaping work done on our front garden (including widening the driveway) but have a few questions / concerns:-

 

1. Price - in my account the upgrade offer is 18 months at £36 / month but I see that new customers can get this for £32 / month (all be it with a £9.95 one off charge). Will have to call them to haggle I guess......

2. I know that Open Reach will need to extend the trunking / cabling along our road from next door since they had FF installed recently and the existing trunking under the pavement needed upgrading. How long will this likely take from ordering?

3. Do you get a site visit before installation for a survey to ensure that the new full fibre cable / trunking can be installed through your garden, paths, etc. to the house entry point required?

4. I also use three or four of the ethernet ports on my existing router for printers, Hive Hub, Home Plugs, etc. and so I am guessing I'll need a Switch as the Eero 6 Router only has 2 ethernet ports?

 

I'll likely have other questions at some point but acceptable answers to these might tip me to placing an order !

 

Any advice or comments would be appreciated.

 

Thanks

 

Simon

 

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43 REPLIES 43

Message 1 of 44

Hi icesteelman

 

That's great, thanks for letting us know 🙂

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icesteelman
Conversation Starter
Private Message TalkTalk
Message 2 of 44

We have now watched several live streamed ice hockey games since installing the Mesh, with the TV connected using wifi rather than ethernet/homeplugs. Everything went smoothly with no buffering or glitches so that is working nicely.

 

Our Sky Q box kept losing its wifi connection (think this is a known issue if you don't have Sky internet?) and so I have plugged this in via ethernet cable to the Eero router I have near the TV which I am just using as an extender. This seems to have solved the problem as I have had no further drop outs. Whilst I was looking at this I decided to disable the Sky Q "wifi network" that is used for multi-room as we don't have that - I wondered if this could also be causing interference.

 

Very happy with things as they stand so hopefully that's all I need to do for a good while !

 

Thank you everyone for being supportive.

Message 3 of 44

Good morning,

 

Thanks for keeping us updated 🙂

 

Michelle

 

icesteelman
Conversation Starter
Private Message TalkTalk
Message 4 of 44

Setup three more Eero 6 devices yesterday so I now have a fully working Mesh network. Have to say Amazon have made it very simple to add nodes, simply switch on, add via the App and away you go. All the locations I picked (limited as you need a power socket near by) reported as being suitable. 

 

Taking any device (phone / laptop) to different rooms is seamless with network connection maintained, just moving to a different node for the strongest signal. You can't force a device to connect to a specific Eero node as far as I can tell, and whilst this may be a problem for some I have no issues with it at present.

 

Wi-fi speed before the upgrade to full fibre was generally around 50-55Mbps on my laptop in when in the lounge, but only when connected to the hotspot router in the kitchen and not the gateway router in our study.

 

With the mesh network the speed does seem to vary quite considerably depending on time of day/devices connected etc, but the minimum I am seeing in the lounge is 70Mbps whilst early this morning came in consistently at 130+Mbps (no one else was up that early 😊 ).

 

Haven't noticed any dropped connections so far which we often had with the previous non-Eero setup so thats a great plus point too.

 

I have now removed the home plugs I used for the TV and simply connected it to the Wi-Fi. Will be testing this out this evening watching an ice-hockey livestream game to see if its stable (we occasionally had dropped connections with the home plugs which is annoying when watching live sport!).

 

Whilst not cheap, this mesh system is also not hugely expensive (I paid £170 for a three Eero 6 device bundle and smaller properties might not require more than 2 or 3) and I am pretty pleased at present and as long as the performance is stable it is well worth it for us !

 

 

 

Message 5 of 44

Morning,

 

I'm glad to hear this and thanks for keeping us updated.

 

Michelle 🙂

 

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ferguson
Community Star
Private Message TalkTalk
Message 6 of 44

Great news that you are finally up and running. 🙂

 

I will be interested to see how you get on once you have set up your addition eero units. It is very much designed to be used as part of a mesh system. A single unit, in my experience, is pants. 

icesteelman
Conversation Starter
Private Message TalkTalk
Message 7 of 44

The good news is that the engineer turned up on Wednesday and completed the installation, including helping me configure the Eero 6 router with my existing SSID 😁.

 

Hadn't realised how short the ethernet cable supplied with the Eero 6 wass and so had to quickly order a 2m CAT6 cable to get the router off the floor and onto the nearby cabinet that the old router resided on - something worth noting for anyone upgrading.

 

The Eero app is simple to use (although I would prefer some authentication mind you as once you have set up your account it just loads up with no password / biometric check) and is easy to navigate. Just need to go into the settings when I have a moment and configure the fixed IP for my printer/scanner.

 

At present I have simply used a 5 port bridge to add ports so that I can hard wire my printer and Hive home hub in a similar fashion to previously. Also connected the homeplug that I use to get the internet to the rear of the bungalow with a spare router acting as a hotspot.

 

A very un-scientific test on my laptop shows the wi-fi speed when connected to the kitchen hotspot has increased from around 55Mbps to 90Mbps so thats fairly impressive.

 

Downside is that the Eero wi-fi does not appear to be as strong as the old Super Router, however I have got a deal on a 3 Eero pack direct from amazon and this weekend intend trying out removing the home plugs / hot spot router and setting up a mesh to see what that gives me.

 

Will post an update on how I get on with setting up the Eero mesh next week.

 

Happy days 

icesteelman
Conversation Starter
Private Message TalkTalk
Message 9 of 44

So another Openreach engineer turned up this lunchtime (on a Sunday, luckily we were at home) and proceeded to complete the external installation by placing the appropriate box on the outside wall. He told me that the lack of the external box meant our order was marked as not ready for the internal work, hence the repeated cancelled/postponed appointments 🙄.  He said he would update our order and see if the current appointment scheduled for Feb 28th could be brought forward (I doubt they will do that). He was actually from Middlesbrough - apparently they send out teams of 3-4 engineers for weeks at a time to help catchup in areas where there are backlogs of orders (we're in Dronfield, between Sheffield and Chesterfield so quite a distance from his home) 

 

Anyhow, I am now more confident that we will get our Full fibre installed on Feb 28th (if not earlier) - fingers fully crossed !!!

Message 10 of 44

Hi icesteelman

 

When your contract ends they service  doesn't cancel it will continue on until the install finally happens

 

Sorry its taking so long. 
 

icesteelman
Conversation Starter
Private Message TalkTalk
Message 11 of 44

So, Openreach are messing me about now !

 

Received a text at 10am today as a final reminder that they were coming on Friday Feb 9th, then at 11:30am a text to state my appointment has been changed to Wednesday 28th Feb, no reason given just an automated message.....

 

In one sense the delay doesn't really matter as we have a decent enough internet connection, but my current TalkTalk contract also ends on Feb 28th so not sure what will happen if they change it past that date 🤔

 

Whilst accepting that it required general infrastructure work to connect us (this was completed by end Jan), it will be three months from order date if they do manage to complete this on 28th Feb.

 

Will update in a few weeks unless they change it again.

Message 12 of 44

Good morning,

 

Thanks for the update and we'll check back in with you on this date to see how you're getting on.

 

Thanks

 

Michelle 🙂

 

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icesteelman
Conversation Starter
Private Message TalkTalk
Message 13 of 44

The good news is that the new TalkTalk Eero router arrived this morning, however Openreach also texted me that my installation date had been delayed until Friday 9th February. So just a little longer to wait and we'll be there. 

Message 14 of 44

Thanks for the additional info ferguson, sounds like you have had experience of this !

 

I'm quite tech savy and so it should be easy enough to download the app and get the Eero configured with the existing wi-fi SSID and check out what else I may need to do. I already have a 4 port bridge and patch cables to get everything else I need connected. Will probably wait a while and see how well everything works before I decide to go down the full mesh route / expense 🤔

 

Thanks again

 

Simon

Message 16 of 44

I await with bated breath! The engineer won't "install" the eero as such, they just need a router to connect and check that all is working from the ONT. 

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icesteelman
Conversation Starter
Private Message TalkTalk
Message 17 of 44

Fibre now reaches the property (but no external box yet - they are returning tomorrow to fit that). Also received an email from TalkTalk this evening confirming the 1st February installation date and that the new Eero 6 router will be sent out for the engineer to install.

 

Gone pretty smoothly really, just my OCD kicking in and wanting to be in control 😂.

 

Will confirm when its all done and working next week 👍

 

Thank you everyone for your support and help.

 

Simon

Message 19 of 44

Hi Arne

Thank you for the information, I'm sure it will all be ok once Openreach have finished the external works this week.

Cheers

Simon

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Message 20 of 44

Hi icesteelman

 

The notes state "civil work is being carried out over the next few days, there is an internal appointment set for 1st Feb but until the civil work is completed the 1st cant be 100% guaranteed "

 

So we cant be sure at this point we can check again at the end of the week. 

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