[SOLVED] Occasional unexplained drop out since installing BT Whole Home discs

[danyorkshire]

Hi all,

I've had talktalk standard broadband for a long time with their provided router and quite often had occasions where I needed to turn wifi off and back on with my phone when it got stuck browsing etc.

I also had blackspots in my house so I opted for BT Whole Home mini discs and they immediately gave good coverage around my house, however....

Occasionally maybe every 2/3 days a problem occurs where the wifi does not operate correctly.

Devices correctly operates some apps/websites, for instance Instagram however Twitter only updates text not images.
Some websites open fine and others open from cache with just text no images. Also noticed that google.co.uk is fine but google.com comes back with an error.

'www.google.com's servers IP address could not be found'
'DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN'

Another thing which may be give a clue is my imac a few weeeks ago had a week of constantly reminding me about another device using my IP Address.

I'm in above my knowledge and the only thing I've done after browsing the net is turn off 'legacy steering' on my mesh system and renewed my IP Address on my Imac, neither have fixed the problem.

This problem occurs across all devices, Imac/Ipads/Iphones/SmartTV.

If I wait long enough the problem corrects itself (maybe half an hour) or a couple of router reboots often correct the issue.

Many thanks in advance for your help.

 

[bill001g]

You first mistake was to believe there was a magic box that can solve wifi problems.

All you did was trade one kind of problem for another. Just because you get more "bars" does not mean you signal is actually better. What you actually want is a better quality signal not one that just has stronger power.

The main problem with any of these so called mesh systems is that the end device not the network has the final say on where connections are made. This does not work like cell phone towers where the tower is in full control.

The next problem is that you now have multiple radio signals that can be interfered with. These extra radio hops also decrease the total bandwidth in your house because it is being used to send messages mulitple times as well as it add latency for each extra hop.

Wifi with a just one radio source is hard to trouble shoot with multiple who know what silly bugs in the mesh software it becomes almost impossible.

Since end devices have no ability to find a better radio source (they are using the radio to communicate and can not scan) these so called mesh units will try to force a disconnect when they think there is a better connection. This is many times not true since the mesh system can only see its signal levels not the end device. The end device may not properly reconnect at the very least it will cause a small outage.

Rule 1 in most this Simple is better. A single router with a one wifi source is much easier to find problems with.

If you have ethernet cabling in your house you may be better off disabling any of the repeater/mesh ability and use as few units as possible as simple AP. You will still have the roaming issue but generally you stop and start the wifi client and it will connect to the nearest wifi source without any sill mesh software.

If you don't I would try to reduce the number of of repeater units. You likely are going to be better off with with a weak signal that runs consistently than a strong signal that has all kinds of stability issues.

 

[danyorkshire]

Thankyou for your reply and I appreciate what you're saying but surely there are things I can try to at least have a go at correcting this issue?

Changing DNS settings etc?

 

[bill001g]

It is much more likely you are completely losing connectivity than just a DNS issue. This is almost as silly as someone complaining his pc will not turn on when the power is off in his house. Of course the DNS will have issues when you lose internet connection not sure why windows does not put up better messages.

I always set my DNS in my pc manually to say 8.8.8.8 or 1.1.1.1. That will solve most common dns issues but does little to fix the problem of not being able to actually talk to those ip addresses.

You have way to many variables involved to find this issue. Could be bugs in device drivers or could be issues with silly mesh software or could be a problem with your internet connection. Could be interference from neighbors but you have so many different radio connections it is even harder to see which if any are being interfered with . You are going to have to find a way to isolate the problem.

Try removing some of the wifi nodes and see if it is more stable.

Mesh is just a fancy form of the older repeater/extenders. My opinion is the same. You only use these type of systems when you have no other options. The trade off is a crappy unstable internet connection is better than no wifi internet connectivity at all. When you start at that point you get a much more realistic expectation of this technology.

Maybe consider powerline units with wifi radios in the remote units. Actual AP work better than the wifi in teh powerline units but they are ok. Do not get carried away with lots of powerline units the performance degrades greatly the more you add to a network.

 

[danyorkshire]

I there an option to replace my provided router from Talktalk with one from Amazon etc which will have much superior distance performance?

 

[bill001g]

Maybe but unlikely. This would be dig though the specs and read FCC reports. Used to be ISP routers were cheap crap. They are still cheap but the cost of radio chipsets has come down so much it does not save them anything to put in low power chip anymore.

In many cases the ISP routers transmit at the legal maximum power. Many times they have exactly the same radio and cpu chips of very popular consumer routers.

All this means is the coverage is likely very similar no matter what you buy because the output power determine coverage and almost everyone transmits near the maximum.

What is much more likely is the end device especially portable and battery powered devices do not have enough power for the signal to return to the router.

Unless you have a house with all concrete walls you should get ok coverage with say just 2 radios. You could use the router say down stairs and then use powerline networks to run a "cable" upstairs to a second radio unit.

Note do no confuse signal levels with data throughput. You could have maximum signal levels but also have large interfering signals from your neighbors. This will cause massive reduction in the amount of data you can transfer. There really is no solution to this problem. Everyone buying fancy tri-band routers and mesh systems just means all your neighbors are pumping out more and more interfering signals. This is almost like a competition to see who can blast their stereo the loudest.