Ditched the Home Hub

We're all pretty obsessed with our broadband speed on this forum. I was recently lucky enough that BT plonked a VDSL cabinet in front of my house so at long last got the speeds that I've been craving! However this lead me to discover that some of the issues that I was putting down to my slow internet connection where really down to poor quality consumer grade kit in my home. I took the plunge and upgraded to Enterprise ("Prosumer") grade kit. Now instead of a home hub and wifi extenders I've dusted down a Huawei EchoLife HG612, hooked it to an Ubiquity Edge Router Lite, put in a quality 24 port unmanaged switch and hard wired 3 Unifi AC lite access points powered via POE around my home. Yes it was a days work putting in a couple of cable runs and watching youtube videos to get the set up right for the router (super-easy once you know how). My only regret is not doing this all sooner, everything now "just works" - seamlessly. I'd recommend to everyone regardless of connection speed to ditch the combo modem-router-switch-wifi box and get kit in fit for purpose.

I'm with you on the principles here.

Are you running a controller to help roaming between the Unifi access points?

That sounds like a result. I'm glad you've got it all working well. I'm a great fan of Unifi equipment. I've not used the edge router yet but their access points are really solid.

In reply to a post by plankton:

... seamlessly. I'd recommend to everyone regardless of connection speed to ditch the combo modem-router-switch-wifi box and get kit in fit for purpose.

One reason that ISPs have moved to "all-in-one" is that they are cheaper to produce and supply than two or three dedicated units. And as some many demand everything as cheap as possible, it is one way costs can be cut.

For years I have said use a separate modem and router.

In reply to a post by plankton:

I'd recommend to everyone regardless of connection speed to ditch the combo modem-router-switch-wifi box and get kit in fit for purpose.

Couple of problems - you're no longer transmitting BTWifi, and if you have a fault you'll have to replace the homehub or the engineer will just blame your setup

I'd question if the HG612 is any longer suitable for anyone obsessed with speed.

As for saying "everyone" should ditch combo kit, why? You may choose to, many others here we know also do so, but thousands of others I warrant are perfectly happy with their combo kit. Though many of them may have switched from or declined the ISP-supplied box.

Your arrangement looks to me as highly geeky. As for a 24-port switch, how many ports will you ever use, given the possibly justifiable wifi setup and the three that your router had before you added the switch?

In fact, by how much has your "internet connection speed" changed, and in which direction? (Edit - probably not at all, given the location of your cabinet. But the Max Attainable would be just as indicative).

Edited by RobertoS (Sat 28-Jan-17 11:41:25)

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

In reply to a post by plankton:

I'd recommend to everyone regardless of connection speed to ditch the combo modem-router-switch-wifi box and get kit in fit for purpose.

Couple of problems - you're no longer transmitting BTWifi, and if you have a fault you'll have to replace the homehub or the engineer will just blame your setup

I think BTWifi is still a bit niche and I'd be interested to see how many people buy BT broadband for BTWifi.

I've had a couple of engineers out and having the HG612 modem there as made no issues at all, considering the HG612 is/was a BT product.

My HH5 broke when it kept disconnecting for no reason a year ago. Luckily I was already thinking of changing to the HG612+router setup. Interestingly if I want another HH they will charge me. So I'm holding out for the G.fast modems when they come out.

Yes I'll confess it's a little geeky! I would say though since I set it up I've never had the phone call from home saying the "internet has broken" and then having to talk through how to switch the hub on and off etc etc. Once the setup was done that was it though (It really wasn't that hard). My house is a little geeky (and with 4 teenagers very techie!) in that I've ethernet cables to all rooms and any device that can be wired is. With Xboxes, Sky boxes x3, Smart TVs x3, NAS x3, PCx4, bluray player, Steam Boxes, Printer x2 ... I've managed to use every port of the 24 port switch and have some desktop switches too! ..... And yes the switch was in place before I ditched the hub. as for Wifi 6 smart phones, ipads, kindles, laptops, Alexas (Should that be Alexi ?) and that's not including the hords of yoof that hook onto the guest network!!!! As for speed increase .... very very marginal increase c. 400 kbps download and 150 kbps upload with about a 8% reduction in ping times to most services (Which my COD playing boys tell me is the difference between life and death! ......... but that's my point...... Browsers hanging, iplayer just stopping, Sky download stopping, netflix bugging out, skype calls falling apart where happening post speed upgrade and I'd previously blamed these occurrences on connecting bandwidth. And yes kept the BT hub for any issues that might come along...... I do want to ditch the HG612, but I haven't had time to research a replacement as yet (recommendations pls). Its a good thing that the likes of BT, Sky and Talktalk have the buying power to dish out hubs cheaply as this helps people get on the net at a sensible cost, but it's probably true that BT give Hauwei £15-£20 odd for a Hub. That doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room from quality software and components....................

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

I'm with you on the principles here.

Are you running a controller to help roaming between the Unifi access points?

Yes running unifi controller. Everything works well and roams between points. On a windows laptop I can move between AP's for skype calls but I can't on an iphone, that's about the only limitation that I've found.

Thinking of using a Cloud Key so that I can tweak the system from anywhere.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I'd question if the HG612 is any longer suitable for anyone obsessed with speed.

Any particular reason? I thought it was still well regarded as a modem.