Options for Domestic Wired Networking / Broadband

Owen Smith said:
I'm with Andrews & Arnold ISP, expensive but worth it. Their prices tend to stay the same or go down, or you get more for the same money. They're not trying to compete with anyone, if I left they'd just let me go. Their technical knowledge is second to none, I once questioned something and got sent the relevant RFC and a statement saying which clause they conformed to.
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Never heard of them before, great reviews but pretty dear. This is what they are quoting for me.

Superfast" FTTC services, speeds up to 80Mb/s, and G.FAST.

Install from £0, migration from £0
  • 1, 6 or 12 month term options
  • Monthly price from £45.00, including the 'copper pair'
"Ultrafast" FTTP services using CityFibre's network. Speeds of 160M or 1G, symmetrical.

New install £10.00 or migrate for £10.00
  • 1 month minimum term
  • Monthly from £37.00
  • Using CityFibre's infrastructure, not available in all areas
 
trog said:
Never heard of them before, great reviews but quite expensive. This is what they are quoting for me.
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They quote the same price for everyone for a particular service. There are no deals to be had at A&A, the price is the price and you take it or leave it. It's one of the reasons I like them, tell me the price and what I get for it and I'll say yes or no.
 
Owen Smith said:
They quote the same price for everyone for a particular service. There are no deals to be had at A&A, the price is the price and you take it or leave it. It's one of the reasons I like them, tell me the price and what I get for it and I'll say yes or no.
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I am assuming that I am more likely to bump into you in Waitrose than Lidl :).
 
trog said:
I am assuming that I am more likely to bump into you in Waitrose than Lidl :).
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Neither, I shop in Sainsburys most of the time. I tried Waitrose and there were too many things I like that they don't stock. But yes, you're not likely to bump into me in Lidl or Aldi.
 
Black Hole said:
I 😍 Sainsbury's, they keep the riff-raff out of Waitrose.

Oh for access to fibre AT ALL!
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I have the choice of G.Fast (which I have at 330/50 and I get 326/49.9 megabits up/down), Virgin, or Cambridge Fibre which will do up to gigabit symmetric (which my neighbours have). I agree it's not fair, for a decade I had crappy 3 megabits ADSL and then three high speed options came along like busses all at once.
 
Owen Smith said:
Neither, I shop in Sainsburys most of the time. I tried Waitrose and there were too many things I like that they don't stock. But yes, you're not likely to bump into me in Lidl or Aldi.
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There are certainly some things from Sainsburys that I really like so do I shop there from time but most of my grocery shopping these days is in Aldi because the prices are cheaper (although the gap in prices is significantly smaller than it was a years ago), the quality is good and they don't play silly games with the pricing of their own brand items.
 
I recently installed a WiFi range extender (I say "installed" – all it took was plugging it into a mains socket and pressing the WPS button on the router).

Coincidentally, I have also noticed some strange behaviour with my WiFi-connected HDRs/HDs (two on WiFi, two on HomePlug): sometimes I try to reach the WebIF on a WiFi HDR from my iPad (WiFi) and it takes minutes (several browser refreshes) to respond. Once it has responded, it works fine. First time it happened, I thought the HDR must need a reboot... but the other WiFi HDR showed exactly the same thing, and they both started working at the same time. This scenario re-occurs on a frequent basis, but not every time (like... not at the moment!).

The HomePlug-connected units show none of this (HomePlug has its own problems!).

I'm blaming the range extender, but the iPad is (probably) connecting to the range extender much of the time and shows no delays reaching the HomePlug units nor the wider Internet. Okay, I can try turning off the range extender, but as this problem does not manifest every time it would be hard to tell whether that cures it.

Does anyone know how to tell whether the HDRs are connected to the range extender or directly to the router?
 
Sounds like the HDRs, or the WiFi adapters, have trouble dealing with duplicate SSIDs.

Not the same but one of our tablets has a bug handling 5MHz meaning it would often not connect. (We have 2.4 and 5 in use.) My solution was to change the SSID on the 5 (just added '5' on the end) and didn't register that tablet to use it. Bit of a pain having to register the other phones and tablet but it worked.
 
Yes but is that using their app?

Accessing the extender's IP address (as reported by the router) doesn't seem to provide a list of connected devices, but it also reports the model as RE200. It's a second hand unit, so maybe it was just sent in a RE220 box!

...and it doesn't support the TP-Link Tether app.
 
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Looking at the user guide for the 200 it is almost the same as the 220. It shows Clients.
Are you using the default SSID (ie, routers name and _EXT) ? Mine is setup using just the routers name (see chapter 5 in the user guide).
I have not tried the app - I connect fine using my browser. I have also set up a static IP address for it in the 220 rather than on the router.
 
peterworks said:
I have not tried the app - I connect fine using my browser.
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Yeah, well, this is what my extender's "home page" looks like:

03E0BF3D-0C2D-4F75-8F1D-65F797C6E061.jpeg

...and the only list of clients I can find ("stations") only lists MACs:

9582ACE7-5A59-4DF1-9445-D05235D4A97F.jpg

...which seem to bear no resemblance to the MACs listed by the router:

6F1F2689-C090-4D46-A3C6-724A6B0536BE.jpeg

peterworks said:
Mine is setup using just the routers name
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Ditto, because I didn't want to have to go around registering a new WiFi network with all my devices and the HDRs can only remember one network at a time anyway. However, I could exclude the HDRs from the extended network by using separate SSIDs.
 
Hmm - found the manual you refer to which is different to the one I found when searching for the RE200 manual. It seems you can only see clients that have used the extenders DHCP which, if you are like me, you don't want.
Sorry :( can not be of further help...
 
What a strange concept having a wifi extender do DHCP. It's supposed to be extending the wifi, DHCP operates at an entirely different level in the network stack. Once the wifi extension is working, the normal DHCP server should be accessible from anywhere on the network, and adding a second one sounds like a recipe for chaos to me.
 
peterworks said:
found the manual you refer to
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What manual I referred to?

Owen Smith said:
What a strange concept having a wifi extender do DHCP. It's supposed to be extending the wifi
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The default sets up a different SSID, therefore (I guess) effectively a separate network managed separately. I don't know how items on one network would be able to address the other though...

Nobody have any ideas how I can tell which devices are connected to the extender as opposed to the router's WiFi?

Where are the listed MACs coming from?
 
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