Upgrade from Landline to Fibre 500 w/Eero coverage issues

[glide98]

Hi,

2 days ago the openreach engineer installed fibre ONT to our property (3 bed detached) and I set up the gateway Eero. This connection worked fine but the range was about 2m so couldn't get wifi in the rest of the house. I contacted TalkTalk and they told me they still had to do some stuff their end and the stabilisation period is 7-10 days, so i have to be patient.

However, I replied on this thread that appears to be a similar issue (https://community.talktalk.co.uk/t5/Full-Fibre/New-Eero-6-pro-wifi-coverage-is-bad/m-p/3026347#M2511...) to see if there was anything else I could do. Today, having restarted everything I have set up my second Eero in the bedroom directly above the router. I couldn't get wifi on my laptop in the bedroom yesterday, but today The second Eero is extending range and I can use my laptop in that room although the speed test shows one tenth of the download speeds (about 50MB) available. However, better than yesterday. I want to do whatever I need to to make sure my home wifi can achieve the full level of service for the Fibre 500 data package, so any advice welcome.

Additionally having checked the eero app I can see that my street (surrounding properties) show there is a lot of wifi around here and it is quite busy. I used to tweak which channel our wifi 2.4Ghz was connecting on sometimes to overcome slow network, but I don't know how to do that with the Eero. The 5Ghz channel doesn't seem that busy though.

I would be happy to do some manual setup as am quite techie, and get more eero or a different Eero product in order to get the best performance and mesh set up.

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Thanks for all your help @KeithFrench  🙂

Michelle

[KeithFrench]

You are very welcome @glide98 and thanks for the praise.

[glide98]

After about a week or so, I am putting this update on here for anyone else that experiences issues when upgrading to new fibre installation with eero devices. To recap, OpenReach installed new ONT fibre point at the front of the house and I ordered a second eero pro 6 device to extend the range to upstairs back of the house (the other comes with the fibre 500 package and is the gateway at the ONT access point - so spent an extra 60-70 pounds). Worth noting there is quite a lot of wifi traffic on this street (saw about 20 other households on the scans so 2.4Ghz gets a bit busy sometimes).

Initally range was about 2 metres and the second eero didn't connect at all. This requires a bit of patience. TalkTalk informed me that although the installation in the home was complete they still had some work to their end to get the service up and running. That takes 2-3 days. After that, having restarted the devices the connection was poor still. At this point @KeithFrench (a super hero in the community) stepped in and recommended network scans. I am on a mac, it took about 10 mins to download and install the recommended app and produce the screenshots for Keith. Keith then almost instantly discovered an issue and recommended a step that I would never have known about otherwise. He then asked me to confirm to have TalkTalk team apply the fix, which I did as well as following his recommendations for data to add to my private profile so that TalkTalk team could find the right account. The TalkTalk team then applied the fix within about 2 days and it worked a charm. Near 100% performance and range extends throughout the house.

I will say it again a huge thank you to @KeithFrench for giving your time so generously in this forum (TalkTalk should really sponsor you) and for knowing exactly what to do. Thanks also to TalkTalk team for being efficient and always trying to help in the chat.

Good luck to the next reader and thanks again.

[glide98]

Hi Chris,

I restarted eero devices and ran a speed check from the app and am getting almost 100% of the performance of this service. I would say it's all fine now. Thank you.

A shout out to @KeithFrench, because frankly without his help I would never have discovered what the issue was and quite possibly been chasing my tail on this for months.

Thanks

[Chris-TalkTalk]

Hi glide98,

We think this should have been done, are you still experiencing the same issue?

Chris

[glide98]

Hi Chris,

any update on the fix yet?

thanks

[Chris-TalkTalk]

Hi glide98,

I've escalated this to have the fix applied as requested

Chris

[glide98]

I would like TalkTalk to apply this fix, yes. How should I proceed?

[KeithFrench]

I'll ask them now.

They aim to respond within 48 hours (Monday - Friday) excluding Bank Holidays, but if more urgent you can always try the Service Centre on 0345 172 0088. The posts are responded to in time/date order, oldest first.

To save yourself time, please make sure that your community profile includes your first & last names, Full Fibre account number & if you can, please include the serial number from your ONT in the Private Notes section. Please also try to include an alternative contact number. This can be done by clicking on your Avatar picture then click on "My Settings" followed by:-

Personal Profile > Personal Information

Otherwise, TalkTalk will not be able to tie up your forum username to your broadband account. Only you & TalkTalk have visibility of your details.

[glide98]

Hi Keith,

I would like that fix to be applied by TalkTalk, yes.

Thanks

[KeithFrench]

Hi @glide98 

There is a potential problem that I can see, one of your Eero's 5GHz band (BSSID 84:70:D7:E9:25:E8) is using channel 149. This is not compatible with a lot of Wi-Fi adapters in devices, meaning that they cannot connect to this AP. They will then either use the same Eero's 2.4GHz band, or the 5GHz band from the Eero on the other floor, both of which will have speed implications.

There is a fix for this that TalkTalk can apply to your Eeros if you want them to. Would you like them to get it applied?

[KeithFrench]

I will PM you a link for a guide of mine on Wi-Fi interference & initially look at the section called "Are you suffering from interference – prove it first". This section includes full details of 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. 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 they can be difficult to read as text can get out of focus when zoomed in, from the analyser you are using (also in my attached guide). 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. If they are too small, I will not be able to read them & although I can enlarge them, this puts the text out of focus. 

[glide98]

Thank @KeithFrench Can you send me your guide please.

[KeithFrench]

Hi @glide98 thanks for creating your own thread.

Slow speed, intermittent dropouts, breaks in the signal or 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 much more from interference than the 5GHz band, but the 2.4GHz one can sometimes have a better range, but this all depends on your local area.

The next stage involves sending out a guide to you to help you get me some important diagnostic results so that I can analyse them for you and recommend changes to your router configuration to solve them.

I only send this out to people who request it.

Whilst the Eero is supposed to manage Wi-Fi interference, if this is very bad, particularly in the 2.4GHz band, then it cannot do anything about it, no router can. The same goes for any router at that point. Other things that may then need to be investigated are its location within your property and the WiFi bands that you use. It is possible that you may also need to purchase additional Eero nodes as it is supposed to operate as part of a mesh system. I can help with any of this. However, I would suggest that you follow my help to find out what the root cause of the problem is, before throwing money at it.