intermittent network issues at home

[familyguy1]

Hi all,

as the subject states I'm getting intermittent network issues at home. ok so what do I mean by issues....

youtube is slow to start streaming a video once selected (mainly from mobile and ipad devices) and can stream in lower (pixelated quality)
Netflix/iplayer on the firestick sometimes needs multiple attempts to log in or takes a long time (1mins to streaming a video)
web pages with video stream in low quality

to get back to "normal" it only needs a refresh of the video/web page and everything is fine, so the issue lasts milliseconds.

my setup is just a BT homehub6 with the usual home devices laptop/ipads/firestick tv etc

when I use the speedchecker app on my phone it consistently shows 45Mb/s down and 10Mb/s up with a ping of 13-16ms and my router/wifi speeds as being 308Mb/s throughput and linkspeed as 468 Mb/s. All I can think that the ping might be high, is it ?

This issue has slowly got worse over the last few weeks (probably due to the family being at home) but has always been there, I've rebooted the router which does not seem to make a difference and cannot make this issue happen on demand.

Another observation is that my work laptop when VPN'ed in has not experienced any of these issues, and our point of presence for the internet is somewhere in the US as I get US adverts on youtube even thou I'm vpn'ed in to a connect in europe.

When I ping test from a device to my router (BT homehub) the time is around 1.4 - 3ms with the odd one or two jumping to 15/20 but this is a wireless connection.

every device has strong wifi signal (firestick is one room away)

I've experienced these issues at 5am when everyone is in bed still, so not just at peak times.

Any thoughts on how to track down if this is a router/wifi issue or something else.

any scripts or tools like ping, to test network connectivity ?

all thoughts welcome

Edited by familyguy1 on Thursday 16th April 08:41

[stuthemong]

I have a by home hub and it seems to stall about one per hour for about a minute,and sometimes needs to be hard reset.

POS.

[familyguy1]

stuthe said:

I have a by home hub and it seems to stall about one per hour for about a minute,and sometimes needs to be hard reset.

POS.

Its actually a homehub6, it would be great to be able to prove this or not, any ideas ?

is it DNS resolution/forwarding thats failing ?
or routing ?

[robbieduncan]

Doesn't sound like DNS: DNS resolution should only be required at the start of a video so if quality drops during the video that's some sort of throughput/routing issue. It could be contention on the BT local network rather than within your network, it could be the router "stalling"

[familyguy1]

robbieduncan said:

Doesn't sound like DNS: DNS resolution should only be required at the start of a video so if quality drops during the video that's some sort of throughput/routing issue. It could be contention on the BT local network rather than within your network, it could be the router "stalling"

thanks, to be clear the video quality issue, when it happens can sometimes improve back to normal.

how to test any of this, i don't want to shell out for a new router if its contention...any way to test this ? or is it a case of speak to BT ?

[robbieduncan]

familyguy1 said:

thanks, to be clear the video quality issue, when it happens can sometimes improve back to normal.

how to test any of this, i don't want to shell out for a new router if its contention...any way to test this ? or is it a case of speak to BT ?

I believe that is throughput drop-off. Netflix and other streaming video providers have adaptive video quality: if throughput between their servers and your endpoint drops off then they reduce quality (as the video plays) to stay within the bandwidth available.

If you were on Virgin I'd be pointing to a known issue with the SuperHub3. Not sure if there is a similar issue with HomeHubs...

[Sheepshanks]

familyguy1 said:

Another observation is that my work laptop when VPN'ed in has not experienced any of these issues,

That part strikes me as odd. Presumably you're saying the laptop is as bad as the other devices when it's not VPN'd?

Is the laptop wireless too? Any difference when hard wired to the router?

I'd say it's not a general BT problem - I use it at home for work and steaming to TV etc. Had HH5 and just got HH6 - both work fine.

[familyguy1]

Sheepshanks said:

That part strikes me as odd. Presumably you're saying the laptop is as bad as the other devices when it's not VPN'd?

Is the laptop wireless too? Any difference when hard wired to the router?

I'd say it's not a general BT problem - I use it at home for work and steaming to TV etc. Had HH5 and just got HH6 - both work fine.

As its so intermittent its hard to reproduce, also my work laptop immediately connects to the work vpn and its frowned upon to disconnect making it harder to test, but using work internet i dont see the issues.

[xjay1337]

familyguy1 said:

Hi all,

as the subject states I'm getting intermittent network issues at home. ok so what do I mean by issues....

youtube is slow to start streaming a video once selected (mainly from mobile and ipad devices) and can stream in lower (pixelated quality)
Netflix/iplayer on the firestick sometimes needs multiple attempts to log in or takes a long time (1mins to streaming a video)
web pages with video stream in low quality

to get back to "normal" it only needs a refresh of the video/web page and everything is fine, so the issue lasts milliseconds.

my setup is just a BT homehub6 with the usual home devices laptop/ipads/firestick tv etc

when I use the speedchecker app on my phone it consistently shows 45Mb/s down and 10Mb/s up with a ping of 13-16ms and my router/wifi speeds as being 308Mb/s throughput and linkspeed as 468 Mb/s. All I can think that the ping might be high, is it ?

This issue has slowly got worse over the last few weeks (probably due to the family being at home) but has always been there, I've rebooted the router which does not seem to make a difference and cannot make this issue happen on demand.

Another observation is that my work laptop when VPN'ed in has not experienced any of these issues, and our point of presence for the internet is somewhere in the US as I get US adverts on youtube even thou I'm vpn'ed in to a connect in europe.

When I ping test from a device to my router (BT homehub) the time is around 1.4 - 3ms with the odd one or two jumping to 15/20 but this is a wireless connection.

every device has strong wifi signal (firestick is one room away)

I've experienced these issues at 5am when everyone is in bed still, so not just at peak times.

Any thoughts on how to track down if this is a router/wifi issue or something else.

any scripts or tools like ping, to test network connectivity ?

all thoughts welcome

Edited by familyguy1 on Thursday 16th April 08:41

This is really hard to diagnose because I assume you are not super technical from your post.

The fact it's fine on a VPN makes no difference it's still going over your home internet connection just data is encapsulated.

It could literally be anything from a duff WiFi router , to some random setting , to a device with a weak signal slowing network speed down ,

Wireless can and should work perfectly - I can game and stream my gameplay to Twitch all over Wireless without any lags or stutters, in a 4 hour stream my packet loss is around 0.5% at 720p

Ping doesn't really matter in this case
The main thing is your upload and download speed and air time.
I'm afraid I don't know the BT Homehub as to what it does, in terms of airtime management etc.

I use a Netgear XR500 and a DM200 Modem. But even on my old Sky Router it was OK and I had no issues.

I think if you really want to get to the bottom of it you need to get someone who knows what they are doing to actually spend an hour or two investigating and checking the settings.
If you don't get anywhere then you can talk to BT as it could well be them throttling your traffic.

[LordLoveLength]

familyguy1 said:

Hi all,

as the subject states I'm getting intermittent network issues at home. ok so what do I mean by issues....

youtube is slow to start streaming a video once selected (mainly from mobile and ipad devices) and can stream in lower (pixelated quality)
Netflix/iplayer on the firestick sometimes needs multiple attempts to log in or takes a long time (1mins to streaming a video)
web pages with video stream in low quality

to get back to "normal" it only needs a refresh of the video/web page and everything is fine, so the issue lasts milliseconds.

Edited by familyguy1 on Thursday 16th April 08:41

Seen exactly this behaviour with an iPad.
Caused by low or corrupt WiFi signal. 2 bars of WiFi meant that things took a while to load. Refresh often fixed it.
Easy enough to check - how many WiFi ‘bars’ do you have when it happens? Move closer to the router (and away from other potential WiFi sources) and try again.
I ended up using a mains WiFi extender and problems have gone.

[geeks]

How is it with a cable connected?

Wifi could just be a bit fked. How old is your HH6? Have to say ours was very good for a couple of years but then always needed replacing after about 2.5 years.

[Sheepshanks]

Is it any different if the device is close the router?

I just remembered that I have 5Ghz wifi disabled on ours - there seemed to be an issue where devices would try and hang on to the 5Ghz signal rather than switch over to 2.4 as you get further away from the router. Doesn't seem to affect performance - never done any specific comparison but everything seems to work fine.

[xjay1337]

Sheepshanks said:

Is it any different if the device is close the router?

I just remembered that I have 5Ghz wifi disabled on ours - there seemed to be an issue where devices would try and hang on to the 5Ghz signal rather than switch over to 2.4 as you get further away from the router. Doesn't seem to affect performance - never done any specific comparison but everything seems to work fine.

Shouldnt really matter.
The issue is when both the 2.4g and 5g networks share the same ssid so the client gets confused sometimes.

I had that issue on my Sky router so made both networks have their own SSID.

5g does drop off a little sooner than 2.4 but in your average 2/3 bed it doesn't usually make a difference.

Some devices can only use 2.4 though for example my smart TV and sky Q only connect via 2.4.
Given my Smart tv has a stty wifi chipset / antenna it doesn't get much of a signal in the house and drops the speed of the rest of the network in some cases.

So I can use 5ghz on my phones and computers and connect crappy devices on 2.4

Op.


If you are local to Wilts i am a qualified network tech with 5k of wifi analytic and spectrum kit in my house sitting un used at the moment - i would have no problems helping you investigate at no cost to yourself.
You probably have some issues with the home hub settings and perhaps your chosen channel(s) are congested in your local area

[manracer]

I have the bt hub 6 and I too have had similar issues recently whereby every hour or two the device (phone or laptop) reports no internet connection (though full WiFi signal), cycling WiFi off and back on on the phone or laptop OR moving from 5ghz to 2.4 resolves the issue.

I also notice improved load speeds and YouTube etc when connection to my VPN Vs not connected.

[Sheepshanks]

xjay1337 said:

Shouldnt really matter.
The issue is when both the 2.4g and 5g networks share the same ssid so the client gets confused sometimes.

I had that issue on my Sky router so made both networks have their own SSID.

5g does drop off a little sooner than 2.4 but in your average 2/3 bed it doesn't usually make a difference.

I gave them different names but found 5g pretty well didn’t work once outside the room the router was in but devices wouldn’t let it go and switch to 2.4g.

I haven’t tried it with HH6 - I just set that up same as I’d had my HH5 as it was fine on 2.4g only.

[xjay1337]

Sheepshanks said:

I gave them different names but found 5g pretty well didn’t work once outside the room the router was in but devices wouldn’t let it go and switch to 2.4g.

I haven’t tried it with HH6 - I just set that up same as I’d had my HH5 as it was fine on 2.4g only.

Really odd.
Im on 5g right now upstairs in bed . Router is downstairs in living room
Im on -67 to -70 db on my Galaxy s9.
You'd get around -40 stood next to the router. It becomes useless around -75 to -78 depending in device and use type

Maybe you have a bigger house or its made of adamantium

I find usable range of 5g in corporate environments to be around 20-30m of office with usual thin or stud walls .. 40-50 in open office space.

For voice over ip systems in wifi we look to limit it to -67 so anything above that is generally considered good enough for enterprise grade phone call (voice is very sensitive to packet loss and delay)

Edited by xjay1337 on Thursday 16th April 23:54

[familyguy1]

xjay1337 said:

If you are local to Wilts i am a qualified network tech with 5k of wifi analytic and spectrum kit in my house sitting un used at the moment - i would have no problems helping you investigate at no cost to yourself.
You probably have some issues with the home hub settings and perhaps your chosen channel(s) are congested in your local area

Thanks for the kind offer, i'm not that close.

appreciate all the responses, just thought there would be some ways to test streaming/downloading, I used to use downloading a large windows ISO download from a wired and wireless connection, I'll find something like that and test.

[Scooobydont]

familyguy1 said:

Thanks for the kind offer, i'm not that close.

appreciate all the responses, just thought there would be some ways to test streaming/downloading, I used to use downloading a large windows ISO download from a wired and wireless connection, I'll find something like that and test.

Here you go:

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/download

[familyguy1]

Scooobydont said:

Here you go:

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/download

very useful thanks

[Sheepshanks]

xjay1337 said:

Really odd.
Im on 5g right now upstairs in bed . Router is downstairs in living room
Im on -67 to -70 db on my Galaxy s9.
You'd get around -40 stood next to the router. It becomes useless around -75 to -78 depending in device and use type

Maybe you have a bigger house or its made of adamantium

I find usable range of 5g in corporate environments to be around 20-30m of office with usual thin or stud walls .. 40-50 in open office space.

For voice over ip systems in wifi we look to limit it to -67 so anything above that is generally considered good enough for enterprise grade phone call (voice is very sensitive to packet loss and delay)

House is a fairly crappy built 60's estate house, although the internal walls are blockwork.

I didn't do a lot of testing to be honest, just had a problem with iffy wifi connection, tried giving the bands different names (i wasn't sure if that's a good idea as it stops both being connected at once?). When that didn't help I disabled 5g and since then it's just worked. Never had an issue with speed although not doing anything particularly taxing, so just left it as is.