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Should Be a Healthy Network But It's Not - Looking for Advice

Kintarō Hattori

Hi Folks,

I'm looking for some ideas, advice, direction- in regards to my home network. My frustration with it stems from the fact that I have and need a Nest camera to remain stable but it never does. Back in 2018 we had some trouble with our next door neighbour causing all sorts of noise at all hours of the night. As a result I put in a nest outdoor camera front and back, we went to court and I successfully got a court order against the neighbour. For the most part the camera's worked with the occasional dropout from the rear camera. Extenders worked but were never an ideal solution and they seem to not work at the moment.

So. I have a 2 bed end of terrace timber framed home (77sqm), something that should be relatively easy for modern routers/mesh systems to deal with but that seems not to be the case. I have SIRO from Digibweb using a FritzBox which is located in the living room to the front of the house. The front mounted Nest cam is pretty much rock solid but the camera to the rear of the house suffers from frequent dropouts.
I had tried some branded extenders which were patchy but mostly worked. It was never an ideal solution so I went with a Mesh system which I thought would have given the rear nest camera a stable connection but that doesn't seem to be the case. I got the following unit:

https://www.box.co.uk/Huawei-WiFi-Q2-Pro-Wi-Fi-System-(3-Pack)_2784181.html

The main unit is plugged into the fritzbox downstairs, a secondary unit in the front bedroom near the front nest and the third unit is in the rear bedroom mere feet from the rear nest camera which still drops out. I thought this would have given me pretty solid coverage but that just doesn't seem to be the case.

Running cable around the house isn't a solution I can go for right now and well it's not one I thought would have had to be done as it's a small timber framed house. Running a speedtest downstairs and I can get close to 400Mbps down & 200Mbps up, upstairs is a different kettle of fish though. Sometimes I'm getting less than 10Mbps down and less up.

It is a very connected house with multiple phones, laptops, smart bulbs & displays etc. At worst is there any sort of service where I can have someone come out, diagnose it and recommend a solution to implement?

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Cyrus

have you seperate the 2.4 and 5g bands?

with that size house and those extenders you should be using 5g exclusively imo.

Kintarō Hattori

Cyrus wrote: »

have you seperate the 2.4 and 5g bands?

with that size house and those extenders you should be using 5g exclusively imo.

I had done that previously but think it was causing an issue with the Hub Max but I hadn't left it long enough to really tell. I've separated them again and I'm still getting around 12Mbps down and 28Mbps up.

The house is 77 square metres so hardly a mansion :mad:

I should add that the camera's only use the 2.4Ghz band.

Cyrus

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

I had done that previously but think it was causing an issue with the Hub Max but I hadn't left it long enough to really tell. I've separated them again and I'm still getting around 12Mbps down and 28Mbps up.

The house is 77 square metres so hardly a mansion :mad:

I should add that the camera's only use the 2.4Ghz band.

thats very odd, so connected to the 5g only you are getting 12mbps down upstairs on a 500mb connection? or 1gb?

Kintarō Hattori

Cyrus wrote: »

thats very odd, so connected to the 5g only you are getting 12mbps down upstairs on a 500mb connection? or 1gb?

It's a 1GB connection. Naturally I don't expect that being wireless but I'd have hoped for a lot better than 12Mbps.

Cyrus

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

It's a 1GB connection. Naturally I don't expect that being wireless but I'd have hoped for a lot better than 12Mbps.

yeah but id expect 2-300 to be honest.

is there any speed limitation on the huawei thingys? i know mesh isnt the best for speeds either but thats ridiculous.

Kintarō Hattori

Cyrus wrote: »

yeah but id expect 2-300 to be honest.

is there any speed limitation on the huawei thingys? i know mesh isnt the best for speeds either but thats ridiculous.

Not that I'm aware of. There's a sizeable thread here in the Home Automation forum where people are delighted with its performance. I really don't think there's any issue with the unit itself, I think it's down to something with my network. I bought this unit precisely because it was getting good feedback.

I've just run a speedtest again and it's 156Mbps down with 106Mbps up. It's so unstable. One test it'll be a satisfactory number like that, the next it'll be around 12Mbps.

Cyrus

ok if you separate the bands and connect only to the 5g ssid what kinds of speeds do you get

youll need to forget the others so it doesnt connect back to them.

tedimc

Would it be a faulty Nest camera by any chance?

Or, have you looked into the power line adopters? If it's not the camera, you could have a lot of interference on that particular channel - wither from an internal device or external (next doors wifi, etc.)

Kintarō Hattori

Cyrus wrote: »

ok if you separate the bands and connect only to the 5g ssid what kinds of speeds do you get

youll need to forget the others so it doesnt connect back to them.

Running speedtest on my phone the last 3 results on 5Ghz are:

14.1Mbps down & 46.5Mbps up
28.2Mbps down & 45.2Mbps up
8.5Mbps down & 33.8Mbps up

tedimc wrote: »

Would it be a faulty Nest camera by any chance?

Or, have you looked into the power line adopters? If it's not the camera, you could have a lot of interference on that particular channel - wither from an internal device or external (next doors wifi, etc.)

I suppose that could be an option. The only way to really tell would be to bring it indoors and test it I suppose.

Power line adapters I suppose I could look at that but I would ideally like to figure out what's up with the Wi-Fi and get that running.

I don't suppose there's a way to identify interference?

GerardKeating

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

https://www.box.co.uk/Huawei-WiFi-Q2-Pro-Wi-Fi-System-(3-Pack)_2784181.html

The main unit is plugged into the fritzbox downstairs, a secondary unit in the front bedroom near the front nest and the third unit is in the rear bedroom mere feet from the rear nest camera which still drops out. I thought this would have given me pretty solid coverage but that just doesn't seem to be the case.

With the Huawei, do you even need the fritzbox, but if you do, ensure you have disabled wifi on fritzbox. I installed the Huawei-WiFi-Q2-Pro in my house recently, and it replaced my LinkSys and netgear routes, and a pair of power line adaptors.

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

Power line adapters I suppose I could look at that but I would ideally like to figure out what's up with the Wi-Fi and get that running.

The Huawei-WiFi-Q2-Pro incorporate powerline adapters, that's how the 3 units "talk" to each other.

My setup here (if this helps you) is that main Huawei unit is beside the broadband box, and the ethernet cable from that plugs into the WAN port of the base unit. For each of the units, scatter over the house, I have a 5 port switch connected, and all the computers/printers/TV etc connect to the switch. Then we have 5 phones and two google mini's connecting via the wifi.

It's only been in a few days and wifi is greatly improved, even the actual broadband seem "better". Only real issue is the BluRay plays seems to lose connection with the network when streaming a long movie, but that seems to have settled for now

tedimc

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

I don't suppose there's a way to identify interference?

I use Ubiquity devices and the controller software has some very good info about inference on the wifi networks.

There should also be some tools that you can run. I think there may be some apps you can use on a mobile device. But there is also some specialist software. I think Wireshark may also provide this. Worth googling for a few options.

Kintarō Hattori

GerardKeating wrote: »

With the Huawei, do you even need the fritzbox, but if you do, ensure you have disabled wifi on fritzbox. I installed the Huawei-WiFi-Q2-Pro in my house recently, and it replaced my LinkSys and netgear routes, and a pair of power line adaptors.

I did indeed disable the Wi-Fi (just from the button on the front) on the Fritzbox. Is that enough in that case? As you can't just 'flick a switch' and use it as a modem only, such as you can on the Virgin Hub, I just disabled it there.

Someone else did indeed mention if I actually needed the Fritzbox. Can I just plug the cable from that into the Mesh system instead? Would I need to configure anything else?

GerardKeating wrote: »

The Huawei-WiFi-Q2-Pro incorporate powerline adapters, that's how the 3 units "talk" to each other.

My setup here (if this helps you) is that main Huawei unit is beside the broadband box, and the ethernet cable from that plugs into the WAN port of the base unit. For each of the units, scatter over the house, I have a 5 port switch connected, and all the computers/printers/TV etc connect to the switch. Then we have 5 phones and two google mini's connecting via the wifi.

It's only been in a few days and wifi is greatly improved, even the actual broadband seem "better". Only real issue is the BluRay plays seems to lose connection with the network when streaming a long movie, but that seems to have settled for now

I'm not sure what use I could make from a switch as one laptop is upstairs and another is in the kitchen. I could plug the PS3/PS4 into one but that would seem like a bit of overkill.

Deliverance XXV

Something worth trying is downloading a WiFi analysis app on your phone. I use WiFiman (from Ubiquiti) quite a bit.

Measure the below at three locations (beside router, at rear nest camera and in the middle somewhere) on 2.4 and 5.0 bandwidths.

Speedtest - record latency and bandwidth
App: Check signal strength (-X dBm) - lower is better
App: Check channels - any crossover with neighbouring WiFi channels

Another thing to consider if the Nest cameras connect to a base station in your house. I have Blink cameras and they connect to a Blink base station. The base station is beside my router and has poorer wireless coverage than the router so camera placement for me depended on signal quality on the base station.

GerardKeating

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

Someone else did indeed mention if I actually needed the Fritzbox. Can I just plug the cable from that into the Mesh system instead? Would I need to configure anything else?

For me it was that simple, plug the cable into the WAN port of the base unit, PPoE seems to be the default option, and i just put in the username (or Broadband account as they call it) and password and was online.

If you do this, you might need to reboot any/all devices on the network, unless the IP address ranges of the Fritzbox and Huawei are compatable. I did have one issue with my NAS, I had hardwire the IP address, so which i switch over, it disappear until i changed the IP.

Kintarō Hattori

Deliverance XXV wrote: »

Something worth trying is downloading a WiFi analysis app on your phone. I use WiFiman (from Ubiquiti) quite a bit.

Measure the below at three locations (beside router, at rear nest camera and in the middle somewhere) on 2.4 and 5.0 bandwidths.
Speedtest - record latency and bandwidth

App: Check signal strength (-X dBm) - lower is better

App: Check channels - any crossover with neighbouring WiFi channels

Another thing to consider if the Nest cameras connect to a base station in your house. I have Blink cameras and they connect to a Blink base station. The base station is beside my router and has poorer wireless coverage than the router so camera placement for me depended on signal quality on the base station.

I'll download an app tonight when the little one is in bed and see what the results are.

The Nest camera's don't have a base station that they connect to- they connect directly to your Wi-Fi network.

GerardKeating wrote: »

For me it was that simple, plug the cable into the WAN port of the base unit, PPoE seems to be the default option, and i just put in the username (or Broadband account as they call it) and password and was online.

If you do this, you might need to reboot any/all devices on the network, unless the IP address ranges of the Fritzbox and Huawei are compatable. I did have one issue with my NAS, I had hardwire the IP address, so which i switch over, it disappear until i changed the IP.

I had wanted to the option of PPoE but I think I was missing a detail. Digiweb had kindly supplied me the details but I think one field was missing. I'll check that out later and report back.

I do appreciate all the replies and advice so far.

Static M.e.

I'm also running with VF SIRO and I have the PPPoE settings here if it's any use.

Have you tried swapping the Front and Rear cameras to see if the problem is the camera or not. You could update both to the latest Firmware too if you needed to take them down.

I'm doing a little rewiring at the moment and while it has taken me a while to figure out exactly what I want to do, and order the gear, I don't think installing it will be difficult. If you need to always have the camera footage, I would just wire them to be sure...

Cyrus

To be fair if the network speeds are that poor upstairs it points to the camera not getting a decent WiFi connection rather than anything else it seems

smuggler.ie

Static M.e. wrote: »

If you need to always have the camera footage, I would just wire them to be sure...

100%
If its "mission critical" application - wire up - stop messing with WiFi....

GerardKeating

smuggler.ie wrote: »

100%
If its "mission critical" application - wire up - stop messing with WiFi....

Assuming the camera's have an option to be wired up.

Kintarō Hattori

GerardKeating wrote: »

Assuming the camera's have an option to be wired up.

They don't and we might be looking to move out of here at some point in the not too distant future so running cables and replacing the camera's that are already there isn't ideal.

Swapping the camera's out is a great simple idea. I should have thought of that myself, I can't believe I didn't. I'll give that a go.

Kintarō Hattori

Below are the results of a test on the 5G network:

This is in the living room beside the router

Between the kitchen and hallway

Rear bedroom close to where the rear Nest would be

Kintarō Hattori

Living Room 2.4Ghz

Kitchen 2.4Ghz

Rear Bedroom 2.4Ghz

Kintarō Hattori

Roaming decent around the house on 5Ghz and there's a pretty decent speed throughout. However on 2.4Ghz around the kitchen which is to the rear and upstairs in the rear bedroom by the outside Nest, the speed drops to below 70Mbps.

Cyrus

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

Roaming decent around the house on 5Ghz and there's a pretty decent speed throughout. However on 2.4Ghz around the kitchen which is to the rear and upstairs in the rear bedroom by the outside Nest, the speed drops to below 70Mbps.

2.4ghz is prone to interference, what channel are you on?

1,6 or 11 is best

Kintarō Hattori

Cyrus wrote: »

2.4ghz is prone to interference, what channel are you on?

1,6 or 11 is best

Looking at the Huawei app it shows 1 as being 'In Use' and there's always an option to 'Remove Interference'. When doing that it looks like we're on 6.

This has me confused though. While the Wi-Fi analyzer says we have a reasonable speed, the figures this shows are almost always below 1Mbps.

Cyrus

can you pick a channel, that looks to be automatic, so itll be changing them.

the speeds shown there may be real time (with little traffic moving)

if you goto fast.com or speed test what are you getting.

Kintarō Hattori

Cyrus wrote: »

can you pick a channel, that looks to be automatic, so itll be changing them.

the speeds shown there may be real time (with little traffic moving)

if you goto fast.com or speed test what are you getting.

I can't pick a channel no. Standing right beside the mesh unit in the rear room I'm getting the following:

2.4Ghz - 13.1Mbps down & 7.61Mbps up
5Ghz - 168Mbps down & 169Mbps up

That's shocking on the 2.4Ghz band.

ED E

I think its important to note here, the Q2 isnt a true mesh system, its mesh WITH POWERLINE. I wasnt aware of this and its not immediately obvious to thread contributors.

If you stand at a window in the rear of the house how many networks are you picking up?

Kintarō Hattori

ED E wrote: »

I think its important to note here, the Q2 isnt a true mesh system, its mesh WITH POWERLINE. I wasnt aware of this and its not immediately obvious to thread contributors.

If you stand at a window in the rear of the house how many networks are you picking up?

Including my own, 10. Is there a workable product you can suggest Ed?

Cyrus

ED E wrote: »

I think its important to note here, the Q2 isnt a true mesh system, its mesh WITH POWERLINE. I wasnt aware of this and its not immediately obvious to thread contributors.

If you stand at a window in the rear of the house how many networks are you picking up?

is mesh with power line better? i dont think powerline is really suitable for 1gb internet is it?