Wifi keeps freezing when streaming but vodafone says its ok

Hi every one,
Ive been complaining to vodafone for a year as my wifi keeps dropping and freezing when im streaming, i have 150mbph the speed looks ok, i only live in a small one bedroom flat, only ever have an alexa playing music at the same time so not loads of us using devices, have tried a new router and purchased a wifi extender, done various resets amd spent hours and hours on the phone to vodaphone for them to keep telling me although they can see some drops it must be because of somthing my end when its happening and ive not even moved and like i say a very small place and the router is pretty much in the same room. Im at my witts end as they made me increase my speed and contract saying that would help and it didnt please has anyone else had similar and have a solution?

Does a device connected via Ethernet suffer the same issues ?

Thank you for your reply, Im unsure as the position of the router and the open reach fibre port is right next to my front door with no space for me to be able to set anything up next to it. Its mainly just my phone and netflix on my tv that i use that keep cutting out.

Could you not , temporarily, connect your laptop via an Ethernet cable to the router ? Then run a few tests with it set up like this ?

I have seen foil backed dry lining completely ruin a wifi connection in a small property before. You need to establish the cause of the poor wifi, the above would be a good, easy, first step to take .

In reply to a post by Pipsky:

Im unsure as the position of the router and the open reach fibre port is right next to my front door with no space for me to be able to set anything up next to it.

This is not being suggested as a 'cure'. It is actually an essential test to determine whether your problem is wifi or the ISP connection. The routes to resolution are very different, depending on what this test reveals

In reply to a post by Pipsky:

Its mainly just my phone and netflix on my tv that i use that keep cutting out.

Well, yes, but I have to say that this is not very useful diagnostic information

A common issue in flats is wifi congestion; the total bandwidth is quite small and gets time-sliced between all the wifi networks sharing the same airwaves.

Many consumer wifi-enabled routers monitor the channel utilization and automatically switch to channels with less traffic. You should check your router’s wifi settings to confirm if that’s enabled, or if it’s not available then try switching to a different channel manually.

5GHz wifi tends to work better in high density environments because the signal doesn’t travel so far, meaning you get less interference from neighbours. Make sure 5Ghz is enabled.

This has been an issue in flats for years, and very much ensure devices are on 5 GHz if at all possible or Ethernet otherwise

Andrew

In reply to a post by Pipsky:

Thank you for your reply, Im unsure as the position of the router and the open reach fibre port is right next to my front door with no space for me to be able to set anything up next to it. Its mainly just my phone and netflix on my tv that i use that keep cutting out.

I can understand the frustration, atm we wish you to do some testing, so things may be moved. So can you purchase a cat5e cable idealy 3-5m so it gives you a chance to move a laptop or something to another room whilst testing.

In general wifi can be black art, No two premisis are the same. As Zarjaz said a foil lined wall or a large mirror can cause chaos to a wifi signal (loads of other objects can too!)

The sole reason for you to do this test is this: To confirm if the issue that you have, is with your network or the connection, that is its sole purpose. With wifi you can not diagose it because no two devices are the same (in the most simplifed reasoning i can give you)

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

This has been an issue in flats for years, and very much ensure devices are on 5 GHz if at all possible or Ethernet otherwise

Andrew

or 6ghz if possible but lets first see what the wired connection tells us

Or it may be possible to get an ethernet cable that is long enough to short term run to the TV (may have to leave doors open) if the OP doesn't have a laptop to test on. If they could run on a cable to the TV for a period of time and see if that fixes the problem then that would seriously help with troubleshooting.

At present though we don't know the layout of the OPs flat. We also don't know if the dropouts occur every few minutes, every few hours or once a week - this makes a difference as to how easy it is to reproduce the problem for testing.

As others have suggested, you need to identify whether the problem is the broadband or the wifi. Connect, ideally a laptop, or the TV to your router with an ethernet cable. With a laptop you can run a speed test. You might be able to on a TV with a browser but haven't tried it. I use Ookla (speedtest.net), it's the one that VF uses, and TBB.

You can also run a wi-fi analyser to check what other routers are using the same channel as yours. There is an analyser built in to the VF router under the Wifi tab of the interface but I'm not convinced of its accuracy - it always gives the same results until the channel the router is using changes, so 'Wi-fi analyzer' or 'Inssider' might be a better bet.

I don't know about the later models of VF router but the older grey rectangular one you can't manually set the channel. Vodaone say it automatically selects the best channel. I had a problem with wifi sitting in the same room 2m away from the router and like you tried everything but it eventually corrected itself (I think as a result of an update in the firmware). You may have already tried but reboot the router frequently until the problem is resolved.

Wifi extenders may not work if the problem is a partition that's attenuating the signal, after all they are getting the same signal as any other device in the room. You would need a wired access point to overcame the problem. From your description, that might be a case of drilling a hole big enough for a cable and placing the access point just inside the room connected through the partition. Again if your wifi extender has an access point mode you could try a temporary setup with a cable connection.

To check the broadband, try running TBB Quality Monitor. Read the detailed instructions to understand the results. Use the IP6 address shown at the bottom of the router browser interface.

Reducing WiFi transmit power can help in dense environments by limiting overlap with neighbouring networks. As using maximum power can sometimes hurting your WiFi connection

Even terraced housing can be similar.

On my access point I can see 26 2.4ghz networks and 14 5ghz networks.
Due to the restrictions, its even worse, DFS disabled channels in my area, and so there is a lot of people trying to use the same channels, when I try to use higher 5ghz channels, I then find out the vendors who didnt implement support to save some pennies.

But no question 5ghz still actually performs ok in the 100s of mbits second, my PS5 can reach in excess of 800, steam deck about 500-550, Xbox Series S which microsoft cheap'd out on about 200-250.

Meanwhile Tapo camera which Tapo cheap'd out on is restricted to 2.4ghz even though its multimedia, and if I am watching the camera, I often get messages saying there is network problems, and clear congestion with it freezing etc. Lukcily all my other 2.4ghz devices dont need bandwidth, just availability, smart plugs, energy IHD, smart bulb IoT type devices.