Vodafone Power Hub BT Whole Home Mesh issues

[Bigears24]

Evening all,

Had FTTP fitted yesterday and have finally switched my existing BT whole home wifi mesh system across. Well, all I had to do was unplug the Ethernet cable from my virgin modem and into one of the free ports on the Power Hub. 

For context, when I had the mesh system plugged into my Virgin modem I had 0 issues with the WiFi speed. I was able to benefit from the extended coverage with the ability to get near enough line speed in all the areas I needed it. The kit itself is capable of 1gb/s, which I did randomly see on the Virgin line. 

Alas, having plugged the BT whole home kit into my Power Hub I’m seeing a discrepancy of around 2-300mb/s. If I connect to the Power Hub, I consistently get speeds of 550-600mb/s. If I switch across to the mesh network, I get around 290mb/s but sometimes it struggles to break past 100mb/s. The Power Hub is one floor beneath me whereas the nearest mesh module is literally 2 metres away from me. I have also run similar speed tests on another device with similar results. 

I have tried turning the WiFi network off on the Power Hub which made no difference. 

Has anyone experienced similar issues and overcome them? Or am I best changing the mesh to a different system?

Appreciate the go to response may be to blame the BT mesh kit but given the variable here which is causing the issue is the Power Hub, it’s fair to say it is likely the Vodafone equipment which needs optimising. There doesn’t seem to be any meaningful settings to adjust on the BT kit either. 

Many thanks,

BE24. 

[Cynric]

Measure only over wired connections. What speed does the router say that you are getting?

[Bigears24]

This was an after thought actually, on a wired connection I’m seeing near enough line speed. 

However it seems if I connect to the mesh network utilising the module which is connected to the Power Hub I get 500+mbps. As soon as I connect to either of the two modules on floors above, it struggles with the speed. I will try disabling the wifi network on the Power Hub again tomorrow to eliminate any interference from the Power Hub broadcasting a separate WiFi network. 

Just to further note, upload speeds aren’t impacted by the speed issues, they remain consistent regardless of how I connect to the wifi network, though that may not mean much as I generally see 60-70mbps upstream. 

kind regards - BE24

[Bigears24 · Accepted solution]

After some reflection given the latest discovery that the first mesh module which is hardwired is able to provide near enough line I’m beginning to think maybe the dated AC2600 modules aren’t capable of providing the full line speed, rather once it’s gone through the backhaul and been broadcasted as an access point, it may make sense as to why it is roughly half of the line speed. 

I will do some more digging and confirm my findings once I’ve had some meaningful sleep. May be the case that I need to upgrade the mesh system to benefit from the extra bandwidth available. More so for the other half as she is the one relies upon the extended coverage working from the office room, with both of us usually running a few data heavy devices at the same time during the day. 

[Cynric]

@Bigears24 Here's another, possibly dumb thought. The upload isn't impacted because it can be achieved over a wider spread of frequency. The high speed download depends on 5Ghz and 6Ghz both of which are more sensitive to the construction materials of the house.

[Bigears24]

It seems I may have been hasty in pointing the finger at the voda kit. 

My initial concern was the massive drop after connecting the mesh system to the Power Hub. It seems like the kit (which I have had for over 4 years now and it wasn’t cutting edge at the time but rather had strong reviews) just isn’t able to support more than around 300mbps on any of the nodes connected via WiFi. 

I will update this thread if there is a eureka moment in amending any of the settings but I am doubtful. After logging into the settings for the mesh, I can see the back haul is being delivered over 5ghz as is most of the connectivity for devices connected to each node. I did consider the interruption caused by having to travel through floors and walls but the curveball to that theory is if I connect to main node which is hardwired to the Power Hub from the first floor, I can still see 500+mbps. As soon as I jump onto the secondary node in the same room which is using the WiFi backhaul, it drops to 300mbps. The nodes are capable of supporting device connectivity at 1gbps but my suspicions lay in the back haul throttling the headline speed unless there’s a setting somewhere which is artificially doing this (unlikely but have to be open minded). 

I guess my resolve for this is to upgrade the mesh, however there’s no rush so I have plenty of time to investigate what system would work best for my application. Can’t moan too much, I remember the days of dial up and getting a matter of kbps never mind mbps, whilst being sat next to the modem (as there was no WiFi) - so wanting 300+mbps at the far end of the garden is but a luxury really! 

Many thanks for your input

BE24. 

[billhinge]

Another 'consideration' is your computer, you need enough aerials.

The Ultra Hub is 3 times 4x4 MiMo meaning it has 4 aerials per band (4 receive, 4 transmit), many computers are only 2x2 MiMo (2 each) and you are losing lots of bandwidth. Apple macbooks are 3x3 Mimo with 802.11ax wifi.

To get the best speed you need to have a good selection of aerials on both router and computer. I get a 2400mbs connection on 6Ghz via the UltraHub from where I sit, but I'm looking to replace it by a dedicated 4x4 prosumer Zyxel AP. The 4x4 Zyxel is more than twice the price of the 2x2 even though they look similar.

For info, the power hub status says max sync speed is 866.5 Mbps at 5 Ghz and 2400 Mps at 6 Ghz so I'm getting maximum speed at 6Ghz

Some commercial mesh systems are  2x2  eg Deco, fine for windows 2x2 but not macbook 3x3  meaning you don't get to use the full bandwidth. So you need a good wifi card, and enough aerials (read small print on spec carefully). Prior to the UltraHub I had respected commercial and prosumer wifi and the UltraHub is easily the fastest  by far (even though I have a love hate relationship with it)

PS don't believe some of what you read on reddit etc as some of the commenters have clearly never tested 2x2 vs 3x3 vs 4x4 and are just assuming (goes in general, unless you've tested it yourself you shouldn't guess !)

[Bigears24]

Very good points raised. I believe the mesh nodes I am using have 4x4 antennas in each. This does make sense as to why the laptops aren’t able to maximise the available line speed however they are not a priority. Though we do have the option for using the lan connectors on the mesh nodes to eliminate the bottle neck of the onboard 2x2 WiFi card on our laptops. The devices we use on a daily basis are able to make use of the full bandwidth the power hub sees - it’s just a case of building a capable WiFi network. The real test will be tomorrow once myself and the other half are working simultaneously with multiple devices eating away at the bandwidth. 

Reddit can be helpful however it’s very easy to become a self certified expert on there, leading to misinformation and pseudoscience. 

[Cynric]

@Bigears24 Apart from mobile devices, everything here is wired. I got fed-up with cross-channel noise from neighbours and stray EM from other sources.

PS. 300bps on an acoustic coupler, those were the days.

[Bigears24]

Having run a few analyser sessions, we are fortunate to not suffer much if any interference and the channel usage is fairly spread out. Most the devices in use are mobile, the 2-3 which aren’t wouldn’t really benefit from the effort of running the required cabling. The situation I have is fine for now, when we have guests over they’ll like connect to the main hard wired node anyway. 

Ah such contraptions were before my day, 300bps does not sound like fun!