You need a small amount of brain power to understand that wi-fi is not the best when using the internet. Plenty of people have told you this.

You have proved that you are getting a reasonable speed at your router.

Directly wired via ethernet is the best way to connect to devices, TV, streamer, etc.

It is similar to using a mobile phone. The closer to a mast then the better the connection.

It is not up to an ISP to decide what is the best option for you.

Do you have plasterboard walls and do they have foil backing (that reduces wi-fi signal) on them? No way of knowing unless you drill holes and investigate. Very old houses have very thick walls that degrage signals.

If you don't understand the principles try googling wi-fi issues then sort it yourself or pay someone, that knows what they are doing,to add access points or a mesh set up.

More access points (ethernet to wifi, one is built in to your router) would improve the situation.

Imagine if you will that your trying to have a voice conversation with someone.

6ft away in a quiet room no issue
Between rooms in the house you may have to shout
In a nightclub conversing at 6ft is not easy

Now imagine if in a terraced house everyone was shouting, it would make it more difficult to converse, you could increase your volume but if everyone did that you'd be back to square one. The solution is for those trying to converse is to use a relay (say phone) or move closer

Multiple access points mean your devices only have to talk at low volume, and can raise volume if needs be. The volume of your access point can easily at low volumes drown out others (without being so loud it'd be a nuisance)

With just one your devices are having to shout at each other, and are more at the mercy of interference from others. Sometimes the environment is quiet and it works, other times its less so. It could be that a mobile phone moving in another house is having to shout to connect to its router, its fine if their phone and router are in same room but not if they are wrong end of house.

Another classic is the auto channel switching with several modems all trying to find the quietest channel, this tends to result in channels changing quite frequently, with varying performance

At the end of the day you can't control interference from legitimate use of a unlicensed radio band, what you can do is ensure your single is as strong as it needs to be when it needs to be

You should also try to ensure any new wireless routers or access points support 5GHz, this is shorter range, but much less congested (the lower range helps here) and higher bandwidth so higher speeds are easier

Well explained, was at a level everyone can understand. Good Job

In reply to a post by mwarby:

More access points (ethernet to wifi, one is built in to your router) would improve the situation.

Imagine if you will that your trying to have a voice conversation with someone.

6ft away in a quiet room no issue
Between rooms in the house you may have to shout
In a nightclub conversing at 6ft is not easy

Now imagine if in a terraced house everyone was shouting, it would make it more difficult to converse, you could increase your volume but if everyone did that you'd be back to square one. The solution is for those trying to converse is to use a relay (say phone) or move closer

Multiple access points mean your devices only have to talk at low volume, and can raise volume if needs be. The volume of your access point can easily at low volumes drown out others (without being so loud it'd be a nuisance)

With just one your devices are having to shout at each other, and are more at the mercy of interference from others. Sometimes the environment is quiet and it works, other times its less so. It could be that a mobile phone moving in another house is having to shout to connect to its router, its fine if their phone and router are in same room but not if they are wrong end of house.

Another classic is the auto channel switching with several modems all trying to find the quietest channel, this tends to result in channels changing quite frequently, with varying performance

At the end of the day you can't control interference from legitimate use of a unlicensed radio band, what you can do is ensure your single is as strong as it needs to be when it needs to be

You should also try to ensure any new wireless routers or access points support 5GHz, this is shorter range, but much less congested (the lower range helps here) and higher bandwidth so higher speeds are easier

I totally agree, access points are the way to go, at least the way i went for these reasons, before you ask I now get a min of 350Mbps everywhere and over 750 in the same room as the AP's.
While expensive to an average person its a long term solution that makes paying for high speed internet worthwhile, at least for me its long term, no need to keep replacing hardware all the time, I just add another AP in a room that hasn't got one when a new technology comes and obviously, when my speeds are slow in a particular room. No point putting 20AP's in a 4 bedroom house with paperwalls. It would cause more interference than there was before.

It's also easy to fit, poke a cable through the wall or use a bit of string to tug it through then you got yourself a cable.

On a serious note, run some ethernet and some POE access points you'll see an improvement.

I totally agree, access points are the way to go, at least the way i went for these reasons, before you ask I now get a min of 350Mbps everywhere and over 750 in the same room as the AP's.

Solid advice. When we refurbished our house recently, I allowed for access points throughout.

Doubtless the best performance is clearly where the AP is in the same room (e.g. our office / study). In areas where I didn't think it appropriate to fit a ceiling AP within the room (mostly bedrooms) they are installed in the adjacent corridor ceiling but the performance tails off, still perfectly acceptable though (around 500 Mbps on 802.11ac 4x4). In room performance generally exceeds 800 Mbps from the AP.

It doesn't take much distance or plasterboard, furniture / obstruction to dent the performance of WiFi. That's before you consider interference.

In reply to a post by monofoto:

Is it unreasonable to expect a Plusnet router ( maybe of the value of £50 ) to provide a reliable wifi service to this equipment?

Basically yes it is completely and utterly unreasonable to expect that an ISP supplied router will provide blanket WiFi coverage in your property.

There are so many things that can cause issues with WiFi that it is beyond a joke. The main ones being that it is highly dependant on the construction of your property, what other people are doing in the adjacent properties and any other equipment that could be spewing out interference; baby monitors and microwaves being the worst.

If you want good WiFi coverage and are having problems then you have two choices. Learn about it and do it yourself, or pay someone else to come in and do it for you. Neither option will be especially cheap. To give you an idea a Ubiquiti UniFi 6 Long-Range WiFi 6 Access Point with no PoE injector will set you back just shy of £200. The cheapest WiFi access point Ubiquiti do will cost you £85. The access point I use which with careful placement gives good coverage in my modest house (basically centre of the house on the downstairs ceiling) which is hardwired into the network cost £100.

If you think that a cheap ISP access point ican or should compete with proper WiFi access points installed to a professional standard then you are frankly on the crack pipe.

To put it bluntly any ISP is only responsible for the connection as it reaches your router. What happens after that is entirely down to you. If you want good reliable WiFi then for a very significant proportion of properties this will require one or more proper WiFi access points that are hardwired back to the router. The sooner that you accept this and stop blaming your ISP the sooner you will get decent WiFi.

I wonder if there’s any legs in the idea of an ISP supplying a router that doesn’t have Wi-Fi for a nominal monthly saving (maybe a couple of pounds discounted) in exchange for never having to deal with a support call talking about Wi-F issues.

Or not supplying a router at all, as a few already do. Albeit none of the major players.

I think the only providers that do this are generally at the more premium end of the market, rather than the cheaper end.

I expect any savings would quickly be outweighed by extra support or admin costs at the cheap end. A number of people would buy the cheapest possible modem/router and then blame the ISP for any issues, the ISP then has to try and support these or let people leave. Either of these options is likely to leave a bad taste in the mouth.

Some ISPs can make it work, but this is IMHO often due to the fact that those willing to spend twice or more as much as the cheapest provider(for a given speed) for less contention and better support etc, are also more likely use better kit and know how to use it

Edited by mwarby (Fri 27-May-22 07:43:01)

Thank you all for your comprehensive replies and explanations. Although I am being slightly provocative, I still believe that internet provision remains 'smoke and mirrors' for most people; delving into the detail is a journey where an expectation of 'plug and play' quickly evaporates. The attraction of 100mbps upload speed is the the major attraction for me of the Jurassic deal, though I assume the same caveats exist regarding interference with and degredation of the signal as with download speeds. I have read articles on https://www.increasebroadbandspeed.co.uk/ which suggests connecting stationery devices to ethernet and switches, and mobile devices ( laptops, phones and pads ) to wifi. As some of you have suggested, adding AP's ( connected by ethernet to the router ) ensures that wifi is more efficiently distributed throughout my house. Making best use of both the upload and download speed via wifi seems desirable in future. Laying ethernet cable seems not too difficult for the benefits to streaming services it brings. I need to read more and plan this around the provision of the new service. Maybe i could live with a variation in wifi speeds as long as my core music and video streaming services, and upload and download to website and cloud services on my workstation, are protected by ethernet.

As to ISPs, the advice received from 3 phone calls to my ISP still seems inadequate. Engineers 'dumbed down' their advice to me to ostensibly suit their agenda and mantra to deny their culpability for any wifi deficiency without explaining more of the potential issues causing my problems. The height of the router off the ground, are there mirrors in the room and the thickness of walls provides scant information when the other more intrusive factors of neighbours networks and channels seem to potentially explain the extreme range of speeds I experienced. It was the variation of speeds that I couldnt understand.

Maybe I could have googled this myself, but the fear of opening up a technological hornets nest I would not understand.

The promise of my router and network being installed by actual staff from Jurassic was extremely reassuring, as was the telephone contact I have already had with their call centre. If 1 ISP can provide this level of service, why cant others?

Thanks again.