Going to make the jump from EE to Youfibre.

Hi folks,

I have an old an oldt desktop computeer (15 years old start of next year) and connected to EE full fibre though Ethernet cable, on a 500 down package and getting speeds of 400 Mbps which is fine.

I am going to make the jump to Youfibre and may have to connect the above desktop wirelessly if on the install day, they are not willing to run the cable to the back of the house.
At the moment I have a direct Ethernet connection from the Openreach ONT to the router and then to the pc, which works good, as cable has been run to back of house by Openreach.

I have put in my old PC 1 wireless N 300Mbps wireless card, have run a few speedtests but I am only able to manage 30-40 Mbps after trying a few tests. The Router is on top of desktop so not a matter of distance away.

Limitations of the above card or the actual PC hardware do you think?

Here is a pic of the card.

if I can get Youfibre to run their cable to the back of house where the Openreach ONT is installed, then I could have a direct Ethernet connection the desktop, as I have at the moment with EE, though Youfibre will have to install their ONT beside the Openreach one.

I was thinking that maybe they could could just cable tie the two cables together, but as they can't touch Openreach equipment, that may be a problem, as well as the longevity of cables ties outside.
Thanks for any advice.

Wireless card

Edited by joemardo1 (Fri 04-Oct-24 10:09:54)

This may sound odd but try moving the router a bit further away. The case of the desktop could be interfering with wireless performance and sometimes wireless doesn't perform well if transmitter and receiver are too close together. I would try it about 10 feet away and see what the speeds are there.

You also have to consider that the speeds from front to back of the house for wireless could be a lot worse than this - if there are walls then you may find you don't have much wireless signal left at all.

If you can move the desktop temporarily to the point in the house where the router might end up then you would get an idea of how well the wireless works over that distance.

Equally, there is a decent chance Youfibre will be helpful and run the cable to where you want it.

Wireless N is a very old standard (wifi 4), and if your adapter claims 300Mbps that's the peak raw bit rate. You can expect to see little more than half that in practice, even under best conditions.

This is because the two sides have to keep taking it in turns to transmit, and even if you're doing only a "download" it's still necessary to keep sending TCP ACKs in the opposite direction.

I would still expect to see more like 150Mbps than 40Mbps though. This could be due to poor quality Windows drivers for the network card; you could try booting from an Ubuntu live USB to determine if that's the case.

Switching from a wired ethernet connection is going to be a performance downgrade in any case, so you should aim to get Youfibre to put the ONT where you want it.

If they won't, then you could run your own Cat5e internally from the front to back of the house - but routing it neatly may be tricky.

At very least, you could position the router at the rear of the front room, to make it closer to devices in the back of the house.

I’d not wish for those two external fibres to be cable tied together. A little over zealous tightening, and one or both might get damaged.
If they are going to run it around following the OR fibre lead in route, make sure it is properly cleated to the wall, and a decent distance away from the original to ensure no damage is done.

|Thanks for all replies,

I think my best bet is to try to get Youfibre to run that cable to back of the house, I am used to having the desktop having a more or less direct connection to the ONT via the router, so want to keep it that way.

If Youfibre don't want to run the cable I'll just call off the install, and pay the extra (that I would be saving with youfibre) to EE.

Are there many neighbouring networks? I can only get similar speeds on a good day via wifi on the 2.4ghz band, even with 40mhz channel bonding which can't be turned off on my TP link deco mesh. I just got 18mbps down and 35mbps up via the speedtest app on my phone with good wifi signal. Also it's not just wifi networks but other wireless radio devices using the 2.4ghz band hogging the waves.

Here's a (possibly silly) suggestion:

Why not buy a (very affordable) TP-Link WiFi extender (other makes are available) with an onboard ethernet port? Position the extender near the old PC, connect the extender wirelessly to the new YF router and connect the PC and extender with an ethernet cable?

Surely that would work?

On the other hand, I'm pretty certain that YouFibre would oblige with your installation requirements. They were more than happy to install to my upstairs study at the back of my house (which isn't easily accessed).

K

In reply to a post by joemardo1:

|Thanks for all replies,

I think my best bet is to try to get Youfibre to run that cable to back of the house, I am used to having the desktop having a more or less direct connection to the ONT via the router, so want to keep it that way.

If Youfibre don't want to run the cable I'll just call off the install, and pay the extra (that I would be saving with youfibre) to EE.

If they don't want to install there it might be worth letting us know as some people here might have connections to the people that may be able to help.

Alternatively a roll of outside grade ethernet will do the job just as well for a short run.

If going wireless then not sure it needs an extender, can just use a USB wireless dongle. Some potential reasons to do it with an extender but I am not sure they would make enough difference to the OP.

The OP sounded keen for the final connection to the PC to be made via ethernet - hence my mention of an extender with an onboard ethernet port. It would keep it simple and satisfy that need.

K