Wifi problems with fibre Broadband

mickevh

For the avoidance of doubt, a data network transport beit Wi-Fi, ethernet, DSL, or whatever does not effect the "quality" of anything it conveys - it's all just "bits" and they get transported entirely intact or not at all. It's not like the days of (for example) old analogue TV whereby the signalling conditions could worsen and worsen gradually yielding a picture with more and more "snow" on it until you couldn't see anything. Digital transmission is either perfect, or completely absent  - there's nothing in between. If you get lost packets, that tends to manifest itself as glitches and/or "pops" in the playback, or the dreaded "buffering" not "quality" loss.

As others have indicated, it may be that the technology in the end stations is capable of assessing the performance of the end-to-end pathway between source and sink stations and "throttling" the transmission rates or reducing quality to cope. But that's entirely a function of the source and sink devices (if they do it at all,) not something the network transport implements.

Thusly, I wouldn't get hung up on whether (for example) 2.4GHz or 5GHz somehow effects your playback quality - in and of themselves, it doesn't make any difference - it's all about the bandwidth across the channel, and even if the bandwidth is a problem, Wi-Fi itself won't change the "quality" of the stream, it would be up to the source/sink endstations to do so. Things like BBC iPlayer and Youtube do this for example, but the static text pages on web servers (and pretty much everything else) doesn't bother.

FaxFan2002

@mickevh Not sure I'd totally agree with that. I've certainly had the situation where my wifi has impacted on the quality of music playback. The streaming device (NAD AMP with BluOS & Naim Mu-So QB) has a had poor connection to wifi and the music service (spotify, tidal) has automatically change the quality of the stream to take account of this. It was very noticeable and lead me to find an issue with my Unifi AP's.

tich77

Strictly speaking, Mick is correct and you are agreeing with him

It's not the wifi link per-se that is changing (or affecting) the quality of the stream, but the source (as he put it), aka "the music service (spotify, tidal)" as you put it.

The only time the transmission medium affects the quality of the stream is when one replaces standard SATA cables in a NAS for SuperSATA cables, which result in

“clearly identified easily perceptible improvements.” and "the Super SATAs reject interference significantly better than the standard cables and in so doing lower the noise floor revealing greater low-level musical detail and presentational improvements in the soundstage and the ‘air’ around instruments."

Can SATA cables make your music sound better?


What's the tag for sarcasm?

FaxFan2002

Yes, re-reading Mick's post.

Tonyb1959

The new router is Huawei Ecolife DN8245W which I believe is the second gen router in use on the TRUESPEED Network.
Thanks again for all info so far!!

psychopomp1

Thanks, a bit clearer now - so you're not on Openreach flavoured FTTP where you can usually plug in your own router of choice to the ONT. Is your Huawei router connected to a fibre ONT such as mine below? It should, as the router you mentioned (Huawei Echolife DN8245W) doesn't appear to have a GPON terminal built-in so should already be plugged into an ONT of some sort.



If your Truespeed router is definitely connected to an ONT (won't necessarily look like mine), then it might be worth connecting your old router from BT to the same port on the ONT as the Huawei , that's assuming it can be used in router only mode.. However you may need to obtain PPPoE login details from your ISP, if any kind of authentication is used to login - not sure about Truespeed FTTP but Openreach based FTTP lines definitely require PPPoE authentication. Another option is to connect your old BT router directly to the Huawei router and switch off wifi on the Huawei if you can.

Probably worth giving your ISP's support dept a call as well, to ask for their help in setting up a router of your choice or if they can send you a better (802.11ac) router. Can't believe they would provide you with a 802.11n router for a high speed FTTP connection! (they don't appear to sell anything less than 200 Mbps)