Super Wifi Boosters Keep Resetting

[Taylormeister]

Hi all

I have VF Pro Broadband for about 12 months now. The router is downstairs at the front of the house & they supplied me a booster which I positioned downstairs at the back of the house.

I home work in a spare bedroom upstairs at the back of the house & about 6 months ago had dropout issues so VF wifi Experst sorted me with an additional booster which I positioned upstairs in my workspace - this is almost directly above the one downstairs at the back of the house.  I numbered them Booster 1 & Booster 2 & they connected in that order.

A couple of weeks ago, I kept having dropouts & when I looked at booster 2, the white light was flashing red.  It would then reconnect after about 30 seconds but the devices that were connected had 'hunted' for a new signal so everything was connected to Booster 1 or the main router.

I got back onto the wifi experts who did some checks and sent me another booster but I don't think its that. I've moved booster 2 a little bit nearer booster 1 and it still occasionally drops out and then connects directly to the router with a 'Poor' signal. I've swapped them around to make sure its not a faulty booster, moved an Alexa that was near to Booster 1 and still getting dropouts.

That only leaves a faulty router but that never drops out itself & I can't see any error messages in the log.

Has anybody experienced similar issues - I'm wondering if the router is man enough to handle more than one booster and if that could be the issue.

TIA.

[CrimsonLiar]

A faulty router, wouldn't necessarily show in the log - in the case of physical failure it could present in exactly the manner that you are witnessing.  But, so could local interference!  The most common sources of interference in the home come from motors, often in water/heating pumps, but anything electrical that is failing can cause problems.  I'd maybe try physically unplugging anything that is on stand-by to see if that alleviates the problem, along with, if the problem is intermittent, that it doesn't coincide with the fridge being in a cooling cycle.  Last of all FISH TANKS - both aeration pumps and lighting!  Beyond that list, then I'd seriously be looking at a failure in the router itself!

[Jayach]

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@Taylormeister wrote:

A couple of weeks ago, I kept having dropouts & when I looked at booster 2, the white light was flashing red.  It would then reconnect after about 30 seconds but the devices that were connected had 'hunted' for a new signal so everything was connected to Booster 1 or the main router.

I've moved booster 2 a little bit nearer booster 1 and it still occasionally drops out and then connects directly to the router with a 'Poor' signal. I've swapped them around to make sure its not a faulty booster, 

.

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That wouldn't suggest a faulty router to me, especially if Booster 1 doesn't report a 'Poor' signal.

Unfortunately (as far as I know) Vodafone have released no info on how their "boosters" work. Are they some kind of "poor mans mesh" or what?

Do you actually get the booster tile on the Vodafone broadband app, as a lot of people have said they needed Vodafone to send a configuration file to their routers before they were able to set them up properly.

[Taylormeister]

Yes. All okay on the app. And it set up fine 12 months ago. It seems to have happened a few weeks back - I thought it was with the lads being off at half term with online gaming and streaming YouTube etc going on. They’re back at school now but still problems. Going to disconnect all devices tomorrow that aren’t being used and see how I go on.

I just think it’s a limit on the hardware from the free equipment.

[Taylormeister]

UPDATE

After spending a few hours on chat on Thursday, Vodafone have sent me a replacement router & also talked me through upgrading the firmware in the router (for this interested, directly connect the booster to the LAN ports on the router & hold in the reset button when rebooting. The boosters need re-connecting to your wifi with the tile on the app).

I am still having the same problems with Booster 2 trying to directly connect to the router even though it is further away than booster 1.

For now, I've done away with Booster 2 and hoping my laptop connection doesn't drop off Booster 1.  I'd be interested from anybody else with 2 boosters to see if it is a common problem - my suspicion is that the hardware cannot cope with 2 booster connected to the router so kicks one of them off but difficult to say with no real specification of the router & the boosters.

[rafaelrodriguez]

I have exactly the same issue.

Several boosters and keeps dropping.

Did you manage to solve it?

Vodafone is not offering me any solution

[Taylormeister]

No. I’ve been managing with 1 booster. 
even though during setup, the additional booster(s) identify whether the strongest signal is from the router or another booster, I think they continue to hunt for a stronger signal.  If this happens, it breaks the whole chain of the signal.

I’m not sure the Wi-Fi Xperts at VF are aware of the issue.

[ALSW123]

I've not gotten round to calling but it seems our single booster started disconnecting then reconnecting more frequently recently. Only had Vodafone broadband since feb. It seemed like an easy decision to switch as City Fibre are currently rolling out in our area and i wanted to get away from our previous home-brew solution for 4G backup and mesh routers to just have a simple solution i don't have to maintain/ fix.

However It was an absolute pain to setup the Vodafone App and the Boosters, just constantly failed, tried all the troubleshooting, watched videos online and stumbled on something that worked in the end, it was turning off the MAC filter then turning it back on, how on earth someone non technical could figure that out i don't know. This soured me on the product and left me reluctant to fiddle with anything/ call support! 

In our case i know it's the Wifi not the connection as i use powerline adaptors for working form home and they don't drop at the same time, but  you hear groans when someone is watching netflix etc and it's dropped out, comes back in 30 seconds or so generally but that's not the point, for Live sport it is particularly infuriating. 

Unfrotunately it has not lived up to the promise so far, so i'll give the support a try and report back on progress of it would help others but it just sounds like they are not currently reliable. 

[Jayach]

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@ALSW123 wrote:

previous home-brew solution for 4G backup and mesh routers to just have a simple solution i don't have to maintain/ fix.

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If you still have the mesh system, using that in AP mode will probably be better than the Mickey Mouse boosters.

[Taylormeister]

Further Update

So, I persisted for the last 12 months of my contract with one booster of Vodafone Pro Broadband and it seemed reasonably stable with one additional booster connected to the router.

My contract ended about a month ago so moved over to BT with their Smart Hub 2 and a couple of Wi-fi discs towards the end of April.

I must say, speed is the same as it’s using the same copper wires to the cabinet - around 30 mb. This was never the issue with Vodafone.

Both BT discs have maintained connection to the Smart Hub 2 with no dropouts and are positioned in exactly the same place as the Vodafone Boosters had been 12 months ago.

My only conclusion is that the Vodafone Router isn’t powerful enough to handle throughput from more than one booster particularly when lots of data is moving on the mesh network.

Hoping BT get their finger out now to get FTTP to increase overall speed but we do seem to manage and we do quite a bit of streaming and gaming with 2 teenagers in the house.