Signal strength or line speed - which is more important?

maryb

We have been having a lot of problems recently with our BT broadband. We can no longer get the range extender to "talk to" the router so no broadband in the furthest part of the house and even in the bits of the house where we could get a signal before, we either get the message "unable to connect to BT Home hub..." or the connection keeps dropping. Changing the channel on the router (it's a Home Hub 2) helps for about half a day.

However our contract expires on Friday as it happens so I am in an ideal position to shop around for a new deal. BT have offered me a good price to stay together with a Home hub 3 but I've been looking at other deals. Price doesn't really come into it as there is very little difference with the deal BT have offered. So I'm basically choosing between signal strength and download speed.

We can actually pick up our next door neighbour's Sky signal all over the house (it's even stronger than the BT signal) but Sky say they can only offer speeds of between 4-9 Mbps whereas doing a line test shows we are getting speeds of 12-13 Mbps with BT. I used the app that shows you what line speeds people in your area are getting in practice and BT is consistently better than Sky. I have 2 teenage/young adult children living at home who are YouTube and Iplayer addicts so slow streaming would be very irritating for them. On the other hand a fast line speed is not much good if they can't get a signal in their rooms.

So I suppose the bottom line is, would I get a good enough signal with a BT home hub 3 to be worth sticking with BT? I don't mind spending a bit extra to get a wifi range extender to cover the far edge of the house (we have a wide frontage but not very deep and thick Victorian walls).

Any opinions/advice very gratefully received

bod1467

Tricky one. This shows the vagaries of wifi. On possible option is powerline adapters (ethernet over power wiring). Perhaps with a wifi access point at the other end. e.g.

Phone Socket --> Wifi Router --> Powerline --> Wiring --> Powerline --> Wifi AP

That way you could have 2 wifi networks (different channels, and different SSIDs) to help increase coverage. In this respect it then wouldn't really matter who your BB was with - you could concentrate on speed rather than quality of wifi router.

Have a look on samknows.com and see who offers BB at your exchange ... LLU providers tend to have better speeds as they use ADSL2+. Obviously if speed is high priority then FTTC (e.g.BT Infinity) would give you the best ... or Virgin cable (if available).

closed

The estimated line speeds you quote wont result in slow streaming. What sync rate and download speed do you get now?

Your line to the exchange is a fixed length, so the sync rate isn't going to differ that much between a bt connection, and a llu connection. infinity may also be on it's way in your area.

BT offering a good deal, unusual, what's the deal?

The signal strength/wireless issue is down to your router, your walls, your router location and orientation, wireless interference - have you checked what channels are in use around the area and what signal strength you are getting? http://www.metageek.net/products/inssider/

Next door may have an old netgear router with an aerial sticking up, (centrally placed, and near your rooms) the signal tends to go a long way.

Have you tried moving the router?

You could always have a little negotiation with your neighbour

maryb

Thanks for the replies, that's helpful. I was beginning to think along the lines of Powerline adapters as a bit of Googling showed me that you can get receivers which are also wifi range extenders. We need it to be wifi in the furthest reaches as DH likes to read the Times on his Ipad in the bedroom so initially I thought powerline adapters wouldn't work because I assumed they were to enable you to have a wired connection. But it looks like speed is the first consideration and use something like this to deal with signal strength. I think it's between BT and Sky as the other providers we could access have even lower speeds

Closed, we did think about approaching the neighbours;) but I don't think they'd appreciate our offpsring's YouTube and Iplayer addiction using up their download limit!! I go for unlimited broadband because we use up to 85GB per month. I've been with BT for about 4 years now and it's been fine until the last month or so. I always get a retention deal out of them which means any saving from moving ISPs is fairly small and isn't really worth the hassle. Although we are going to go in with my brother in law to get a domain name so that we can have fixed email addresses so if I do decide to change I don't have the hassle of changing email addresses for online billing, banking etc

Rodders53

Use something like InSSIDer to try and find a wi-fi channel (or channels) for your router that are 'clear' of the neighbours' channels.

I use ch4 rather than any of the most common wi-fii recommended ones as my signal is the mostly 'in the clear'. The router has also been placed in the loft above the centre of the bungalow to give a fairly even coverage.

Changing ISP won't help wi-fi interference problems - CAT5 cabling and Powerline should help, though.

bod1467

As regards email addresses ... Gmail? Hotmail? Ymail?

maryb

Bod1467, I occasionally do some consulting and they don't like me having one of those email addresses as their IT department seem to think they are less secure and their spam software sometimes blocks them.

Anyway I just wanted to say again many thanks to those who replied, it has helped me to clarify my thinking. I'll stick with BT for now, as they will give me a new Homehub 3 which supposedly has a better range than the Homehub 2 so may sort out the wifi access. One extra advantage of that is that I may get BT Infinity at some stage, since DH would quite like to get a smart TV so we can watch Iplayer and stream films from Lovefilm, and having a Homehub 3 would make it pretty simple to upgrade

espresso

maryb wrote: »

Bod1467, I occasionally do some consulting and they don't like me having one of those email addresses as their IT department seem to think they are less secure and their spam software sometimes blocks them.

Anyway I just wanted to say again many thanks to those who replied, it has helped me to clarify my thinking. I'll stick with BT for now, as they will give me a new Homehub 3 which supposedly has a better range than the Homehub 2 so may sort out the wifi access. One extra advantage of that is that I may get BT Infinity at some stage, since DH would quite like to get a smart TV so we can watch Iplayer and stream films from Lovefilm, and having a Homehub 3 would make it pretty simple to upgrade

If you are staying with BT, ring retentions 0800 800 030 option 1 - 8 am till 9 pm and you should get your broadband for half the price on their website.

maryb

espresso, thanks that's what I do each year just before my contract is up and I always get a good retention deal - that's why it's not a price decision. Although I do it by going through to the number to ask for a MAC code and you get an offer you can't refuse. Unlimited broadband for £13.25 per month plus line rental (which I pay up front so it works out at £10.75 per month). Assuming we can get the wifi coverage sorted, and I feel more confident from all the replies that we can, especially if they give us a new Homehub, then the speed we get is pretty good for that money