Vodafone Broadband - Router Wireless Device Limit / Problems

[malbrecht23]

Am I glad I stumbled across this post...!!

Firstly, it's incredibly disappointing that the Vodafone stance is continually "we don't support another hub... etc etc".  I can understand from a business perspective but it's getting tedious.  I think it's best they just don't respond and allow the great advice being shared here to continue.  That way at least they'll have users remaining on their service rather than leaving.  Kudos to those who have input so far!

My main issue is latency.  Online gaming is incredibly frustrating.  I'm using tp-link adaptors (and have done for years - during which the BT service served me well) but the figures (upwards of 150fps) across this are very poor.  I had WIFI issues originally (solved by splitting the SSIDs and fixing channels) but even my 9yr old son is now complaining - thats how bad it's become.  

So I think I will try the airport extreme option but can anyone confirm if for any reason they think it won't help with latency across tp-links?  Or should I just change my xbox one back to WIFI across the extreme?  Assistance appreciated!

Thanks

Mark 

[Raybateman]

Agreed.. I find it quite shocking that in 2017 a company does not support extenders to help its customers just because they are from different companies. Basically I can't even use my amazon prime no more because of how bad the wifi is. I am tempted to leave and go back to BT to be honest seeing as I have a few days to change my mind still.

I mean the fact that they expect people to have 100 meter wires around the house with kids and pets around is crazy in todays day and age.. all I want is to connect my tv to the internet so my son can watch some cartoons, is that so much to ask for?

Can someone please confirm if there is any way around using an extender? Why would one of their advisors on live chat tell me to buy a tp link extender when on the phone they said don't bother. Bad service.

[jeffkinn]

Can you use a Powerline system that pipes broadband around the house using the electric mains system and acts like an ethernet connection?

[12Bramble]

This has already been suggested by me, although i referred to them as 'homeplugs' so the varying terminology may get confusing.  'Homeplugs', 'Ethernet adaptors', 'power line - all the same thing.  I is a very good solution!

[jeffkinn]

and they can also act as Wi Fi extenders by creating a second Wi Fi network in the property. I have my main desktop computer plugged into one and two Sky boxes. They work very well.

[malbrecht23]

HI All,

So I now have an Airport Extreme integrated - even for a novice techie like myself this was straight forward and all wireless working well without any hitches so far.  The only issue I have still is with lag on the xbox(es).  Both over 150ms for which 150ms is the max figure for 'optimal' experience and whilst I've not tried any online gaming yet I'm expecting to experience the same issues with lag as the figure hasn't changed.  Now I've tried this both as wired and wireless AND before and after the Airport Extreme install.  Download is considerably slower on the Xbox (2.64Mb) than the Macbook I'm currently typing on (31.74Mb) which is next to the Xbox at the back of my house - some 12m from the Airport Extreme.  Question is whether this is an XBox issue or a Broadband issue...  Any thoughts appreciated.

Thanks

Mark

[Colleen]

@malbrecht23 Have you set the preferences to pick up the Macbook as a priority device? If so, this would affect the speed of your Xbox.

Also, you may want to look at using Power-line communication (PLC) because the connection would be more stable than Wi-Fi and fewer packets would be lost. 

[smallcheese]

slippy,

If you have the option with your Apple hardware you should look to run your non-sonos network on 5Ghz only. Assuming you have a sonos component wired at some point in your setup then these devices will all act entirely independent of your wifi setup so that you don't need to keep 2.4Ghz enabled, reducing channel conflicts and improving performance, providing you have sufficient 5Ghz coverage.

Sonos talks between itself on only 2.4Ghz, excluding the magic around the home cinema setup, but it still handles that on its own without any help from the consumer.

Going 5Ghz only should improve your performance, but in such a large house you might not be able to get away with it due to the shorter range you'll get.

Interesting to read this thread, which obviously I've found because I've been experiencing poor wireless performance with my VC router! The connection is awesome and solid - I get 70+ down and close to 18 up, but sometimes the wireless is incredibly latent. I don't have any wired stuff apart from my main sonos unit right now, an old play 5, but I have managed to turn off 2.4 on my VC router so, when it works, I get the benefits of the uncongested 5Ghz spectrum.

For any non techy folks reading, if you are in a small enough property and all your devices support 5Ghz networks (I think approx iPhone 4S and onwards) then you might improve your situation by turning off 2.4Ghz in wireless settings, but it won't fix the issues of the VC router being overall, seemingly unable to cope with many devices. The reason 5Ghz is better is that on 2.4Ghz there are only 3 non overlapping channels to choose from. This is why even though you see options 1-13, your router will only ever be on channel 1. 6 or 11. Now, if you're in a congested area (e.g a flat on a block or a built up area) how many wireless networks can you see when you look on your settings - likely a ton. Any more than 2 that aren't yours and you are going to be on the same channel as someone else, sharing their airwaves. Add to that, you are also sharing the airwaves with microwaves (the ones that heat food), DECT phones, Bluetooth devices, etc etc. And thanks to the long range penetration of 2.4Ghz thanks to its narrower bandwidth you're likely able to hear from a ton of other devices and wireless networks which aren't yours.

5Ghz has many many more no overlapping channels so the chance of sharing air space are much slimmer, and because the wider bandwidth doesn't travel as far, this much improves the likelihood further as you're less likely to be hearing from other people as their signals won't travel that far. Plus all your microwave and DECT and Bluetooth traffic is not there too, so your experience should be much better. However, the down side is that the signals don't travel as well through walls as 2.4Ghz because they are wider, so you might find issues with range. When I hit this problem I would rather improve it with an additional booster or repeater, preferably wired to the main device, than resort to having 2.4Ghz turned on, due to the crowding issues.

That took a while! You can all wake up now. I guess I'll be getting a 3rd party device once my house renovations are finished and my comms cabinet is available! Unless Vodafone can correct with a firmware update (it sounds like they can't as this thread is quite old) or a new hardware model then everyone is likely in the same boat.

For those that have been customers a long time, are you on the same physical hardware as those of us that only joined in the last few months? Has Vodafone ever used a different router from the Huawei one which they use now?

Cheers,
Tom

[SomersetBob]

Hi All,

I went with Vodafone broadband on 17th February 2017. It wasn't long after it was activated that I started experiencing the wifi issues you've all talked about here, and I found this topic to be of great interest. We only have nine wifi devices - a PC in the conservatory, an HP printer (close to the router), two iPhone 5Ss, two iPads, a Sky box, a Kodak iFrame and a Kindle. And there are two cabled devices close to the router: my PC and a Vodafone Sure Signal box. My previous router, a Netgear DGN 2000, handled them all without problems, and the signal was strong enough to get to the back of our bungalow. I could sit in there, streaming music to my phone for hours at a time without a single error. With the VF router, it breaks every few minutes - and it's driving me bonkers. 

I still have that router, and out of sheer frustration today I connected it to the VF router via a LAN cable, turned off the VF router's wifi, turned on the Netgear's router - and to my amazement, it worked!

Well, kind of - I thought it was too good to be true: everything except the printer (and the iFrame, but that's not important right now) connected to it. Ater some fiddling around to try to get the printer working - as part of which experimentation I unplugged my PC's LAN cable from the VF router and plugged it into the Netgear to see if the PC needed to be plugged into the same router that the printer should have been connecting to, but that seemed to mess things up - so I turned off both routers, put the PC's LAN cable back in the VF router and switched them both back on again. But although my devices (except the printer and the iFrame) were connecting to the Netgear's wifi, there was no internet connection beyond that.

So in the end I shut down the Netgear router, turned the VF router's wifi back on, and now everything's connected again (except the damned iFrame). But I'm back to square one as far as the poor wifi is concerned - the signal's OK (I've forced it onto 2.4gHz, as this seems to go further to the back of the house than 5gHz, as you might expect), but the phones are back to suffering a lot of dropped connections/stuck on buffering.

My main question right now is this: when the Netgear router is connected, how can I access it? When it was the only router (on my previous broadband service with Talk Talk), I used to type 192.168.0.1 in my browser and this would bring up the login page. I've tried that, as well as trying the IP address it was assigned by the VF router, but to no avail. The browser won't connect to them. I feel that if I could get into it, I might be able to figure out how to configure it to behave like a proper bridge between the wifi and the VF router, because it still contains the previous settings it had when it was a full router. There are probably all sorts of conflicts going on in its brain.

So does anyone have any idea how I might get into the Netgear to reconfigure it?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers.

[12Bramble]

Plug your computer into your router with an ethernet cable, and then (from Netgear's site)

To log in to your router:
Launch a web browser from a computer or mobile device that is connected to your router's network.
Type http://www.routerlogin.net or http://www.routerlogin.com.
A login window opens.
Enter the router user name and password.
The user name is admin. The default password is password. The user name and password are case-sensitive.
The BASIC Home screen page displays.

Hope that helps

[M14DMX]

Hi all

This thread has been an absolute life saver I have been a VC customer for about 5 weeks and have had the internet "up and running" for about a week.

Live in a large property and having countless issues with Sky Q & Sky Mini boxes not talking, drop in wi-fi for multiple devices and lost countless strands of hair and gained a few grey ones lately.

Apple airport extreme sounds like this will be my problem solver but before I invest I wanted to ask:

If I was to bridge two VC routers together via ethernet and essentially have one one side of the house and a 2nd on the other ... If I wire up the Sky boxes and Xboxes to each ... Would I be able to use the wi-fi on both boxes essentially allowing up to 10 devices to connect ?

The buy some wall plugs (forgot what someone called these on the thread) power line, tp link etc. For upstairs

Can anyone see an issue with this or would the apple give me what I need even if I am in a big property as I ideally want the sky and x boxes wired rather than wireless??

Many thanks in advance

[12Bramble]

I am not sure why you want to tether two VC routers when one on its own is enough of a problem!  You could try it of course and let the other folks here know how you get on, but I cannot offer any advice on this idea.

I also live in a large house.  The phone access point (i.e. where the router has to be sited) is in an inconvenient place at one end of the house on the ground floor.  The Apple AirPort Extreme sits next to it.  I have a number of homeplugs (powerline devices, whatever) around the house.  I have chosen the BT ones as I had some anyway.  Trying out some TP link devices turned out to be a bad idea as they did not stay connected to the BT homeplug connected to the router.Two of these BT homeplugs are also hotspots - i.e. they give boost to the wireless signal in key parts of the house.  

In a nutshell, it all works very well.  So, I would recommend you don't risk any further expense with VC routers.  Second hand Airport Extremes are easy to find on eBay.  Good luck.

[M14DMX]

Thanks for this

Same here BT thought it would be a good idea to put the landline going through a balcony on the opposite side of the house where no one sits ... So I've ran a phone extension from this to the middle of the house, hooked up the router but wi-fi is terrible on both ends

So as Vodafone ##~## my order up I have ended up with 2 x routers so I was going to plug in one near the landline then hard wire that to a 2nd one to the other side of the house and have the homeplugs everywhere in between .. in theory it should work better but I have the airport on standby

... No airport pun intended there !!

Will provide an update on how it goes but don't hold your breath people

[SomersetBob]

Thanks Bramble - I hadn't thought about temporarily plugging my PC into the Netgear router with it isolated, to see if that worked! If I need to, I'll bear that in mind ...

In the meantime, I can report that since my fiddling about a couple of days ago (see my previous post in this thread), both iPhones are now unaccountably behaving impeccably! I can stream music through my phone all around the house, moving from room to room, for hours at a time with no drops (and no need to use the VF router app to boost the network performance for my phone, which admittedly did improve things when I used it in the past). I don't know whether turning the VF router off and on again, or perhaps just turning its wifi off and on again (or the combination of doing both), has made the difference, but as it ain't broke, I ain't gonna fix it - for now, anyway!

[malbrecht23]

So this wretched router is still causing me a lot of pain.  I had Airport Extreme hard wired to the Connect device and had everything over WIFI via the AE working without issue for a number of weeks.  The only hard wired device from the AE was my WD Network Drive which never worked with the Vodafone Connect Router so this was a huge bonus to get it working again.

However, recently we've had a few issues with both the Xboxs so I've changed the newer one to use TP Link extenders but these for some reason didn't work with the AE so it's in via a second Ethernet port from the Vodafone Connect.  Lo and behold all the old issues have returned.  The Vodafone Connect device decides to randomly reboot (The VC can only handle one Hard Wired connection perhaps..??).  How incredibly frustrating....  I'd happily change Xbox back to wireless but the distance and number of walls in the house is too far for a stable connection and in reality I'd prefer them hard wired anyway.  If I could get the TP Links to work with the AE happy days but it's not working for me right now.

Anyone got any good suggestions?

Cheers

[12Bramble]

My BT homeplugs work just fine connected to the AirPort Extreme.  They have ethernet wired TV, Blu-ray and Receiver connected, plus wireless hotspot in two other locations.  When I tried adding some additional (TP Link) homeplugs to the system, they were unreliable so I replaced those also with BT Home plugs.  See earlier messages.  I have not found connecting anything directly to the VC router to be a rewarding experience. 

[malbrecht23]

Thanks - sounds like I've found another incompatibility issue then.  The WD Network Drive never worked with the Vodafone Connect and the TP Link extenders with the Airport Extreme.  So frustrating as everything worked absolutely fine with the old BT Hub....  

I guess that leaves me looking to find some suitable extenders to work with the Airport Extreme.  Amazing isn't it, you move to Vodafone to save money and end up spending money to make the damn thing work!!!  

[smallcheese]

Hey malbrecht23

I've read in another thread about how poor the router is that some people have had luck calling up Vodafone to ask for the Username/Password details so that they can use their own router.  Is this an option for you with the Apple Airport?  I've never seen one so I don't know if it has modem capability.

Any router which can operate in pure modem mode would be better suited.  I'll be looking for something similar when I have finished my renovations unless Vodafone end up shipping something better which actually performs.

So frustrating - the internet connection is solid and high-performance, but the router in the end of it is so unreliable.

I don't know if anyone from Vodafone monitors these threads (I would assume not) but if they do, or anyone else has any info, it would be great to know if there is any pending release for a new router option.  I would assume since it appears to have been ongoing for a very long time that this isn't something that firmware updates could fix, else it would have been improved by now surely.

[jeffkinn]

Every thread and post on this forum is read by Vodafone staff so they are and will continue to be very aware of the issues being reported here.

The network never comments on anything new or changed on here until there is am official public announcement. So don't expect to gain any insights here.

[malbrecht23]

OK I think I'm out of the woods for now.  Managed to get the Ethernet Power Adaptors working through the Airport Extreme which means I'm back to just a single connection from the Vodafone Connect to the Airport Extreme which does all the magic.

It's been a couple of days and no drops... Fingers crossed thats sorted it (famous last words...??)