HG659b - just not reliable enough!

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › HG659b - just not reliable enough!

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1286 posts

Uber Geek

#1574525 15-Jun-2016 16:41

1eStar: And to continue the analogy, of you wish to get to work fast, use the motorbike you have at home in the garage and lane split.

Your motor bike is the 5GHz band. It doesn't have the same range, but mighty quick over short distances.

Or use ethernet, which is like when work is right next door and you don't even have to get in the car.

PhantomNVD

2619 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#1574748 15-Jun-2016 23:52

Except as he said (and listed) many of his devices are capable of wifi only. It occurs to me if he got fibre as soon as it came out in his street, and his issues started then, perhaps more than one neighbour got a freebie wifi router with their own fibre install around then too?

Best bet, move rurally! Best wifi ever, no (or very few if 'semi' rural) neighbourhood interference and no wifi issues at all 👍

no fibre either and crappy copper at its maximum reach through a Euba exchange but hey, no more wifi issues = happiness right? And maybe Spark will upgrade your 5.4km copper line to a fibre line as they advertise 'connect at the fastest speed possible' and your copper can't do it... Oh wait, that WON'T happen either!

Jokes aside, you've been offered a new router, you still have an old router you believe in, and you've been told at least 3 different ways to troubleshoot this. TRY them and then come back with more info?

mattyb

254 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1574916 16-Jun-2016 10:54

PhantomNVD:

Jokes aside, you've been offered a new router, you still have an old router you believe in, and you've been told at least 3 different ways to troubleshoot this. TRY them and then come back with more info?

Yes, fair call. I had a look at the wifi analyser app again last night then changed the channel on the router back to 6 where it seems relatively clear from the neighbours. I'll leave it there for a while and monitor. After that I'll try turning off the 2.4GHz radio and going 5GHz only and monitor for a period, then maybe vice versa. Then I can also try the HG630 for a bit.

I think that was all the suggestions? Barring purchasing a new router of course... (just throw money at the problem!)

frankv

5680 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#1574946 16-Jun-2016 11:34

mattyb:

I think that was all the suggestions? Barring purchasing a new router of course... (just throw money at the problem!)

Get another HG659b from Spark for free.

UncleArk

110 posts

Master Geek

#1576216 18-Jun-2016 14:28

I recently posted a thread about our fibre install... the point of this bit of info is that as part of that install we were courierd a HG659b as part of that install.

Since it was the new shiny device I replaced the (not that old) HG630b I had previously.

I used the 659b for about 3 weeks and finally put it back in it's box and have once again reverted to the 630b. I am hoping that when the final appointment is done for our fibre install the 630b will be adequate.

In terms of the PC using ethernet - no problems whatsoever.

However, like a lot of homes these days.. the PC is used infrequently. We have two iPads, a SmartTV in our lounge and an AppleTV as a set-top box in the bedroom for Lightbox and Netflix. These are all WiFi devices.

My personal experience of the 659b for WiFi is that it performs very poorly.

In terms of leaving techie stuff behind (analyzing signals etc and leaving channels at auto) I can report this.

Using the 630b my phone or iPad works on 2.4 anywhere in our house - in fact anywhere on our entire property - even down the drive to the road!

Using the 659b with 5G - pretty much only works in the primary living room area where the device sits. Constant drop-outs in any other room. That got turned off really quick and was considered more of a techie novelty.

Using the 659b on the 2.4 does connect anywhere in the house and I have to be honest and say I haven't tested it outside. HOWEVER... using 2.4 the signal strength bars are only ever 1 anywhere other than the same room (yes, I know one shouldn't judge on the bars) and in other rooms it very frequently just drops. For example you are browsing the web on the iPad and a page doesn't load and ooops there's no WiFi connected and you have to go into the living room where it auto reconnects.

So, from a purely unscientific "users point of view" the 659b is very poor compared to the rock-solid performance of the 630b which never EVER drops the iPad WiFi connection anywhere on the property...

Just my 2c...

Linuxluver

5828 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Subscriber

#1576232 18-Jun-2016 15:47

I had the same kind of issues with my HG659b. It would slow down after about 36 hours...and need a restart to get back to top speed. I think there is a memory leak in the routing code as this would explain the deterioration over 36-48 hours.

In the end, I put the HG659b into bridge mode (to talk to the fibre for my NEW router, which doesn't speak 'fibre') and added a D-Link "Taipan" 890-L AC3200 router behind it. The model that doesn't do fibre was $399 and the model that could connect to fibre was $649. The HG659b talks to the fibre just fine and bridge mode seems to be stable. That saved me $249.

The D-Link uses 2.4GHz...and two different (configurable) 5GHz bands. It treats them all as one continuum and will - supposedly - move a device from one band to another (if it supports it) to maximise performance. I can get 866mbps to my laptop in the same room and 702mbps to my desktop system in another room with two walls in between. You can see my speedtest in my sig...and that's over wifi.

I can now let my routers run for about 45 days before they need a re-boot.....but that's a lot better than 45 hours.

_____________________________________________________________________

I've been on Geekzone over 16 years..... Time flies....

staticnz

151 posts

Master Geek

#1576236 18-Jun-2016 16:07

I've heard that if you name the 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz WiFi SSIDs the same, your devices will pick up whatever is best depending on range and compatibility - anyone know if this is true?

In any case, this is how my 659b is set up and I don't have any issues with the WiFi, just wish the ADSL was faster :)

Equinox IT

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sbiddle

30853 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

Trusted

Biddle Corp

Lifetime subscriber

#1576258 18-Jun-2016 17:17

staticnz:

I've heard that if you name the 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz WiFi SSIDs the same, your devices will pick up whatever is best depending on range and compatibility - anyone know if this is true?

In any case, this is how my 659b is set up and I don't have any issues with the WiFi, just wish the ADSL was faster :)

It's kind of true. Setting both SSID's the same is how WiFi should be - your device should just be able to pick and choose between a 2.4GHz or a 5GHz channel.

In the real world however it's not always the case. The 802.11 standard doesn't have anything to do with band selection in it, so many companies implement band steering to force devices that support both bands to the 5GHz band when 5GHz will deliver the best performance. I'm yet to see a single dual band router that supports band steering, it's a feature you only get on stand alone access points.

mattyb

254 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1576937 20-Jun-2016 10:25

UncleArk: I recently posted a thread about our fibre install... the point of this bit of info is that as part of that install we were courierd a HG659b as part of that install.

Since it was the new shiny device I replaced the (not that old) HG630b I had previously.

I used the 659b for about 3 weeks and finally put it back in it's box and have once again reverted to the 630b. I am hoping that when the final appointment is done for our fibre install the 630b will be adequate.

In terms of the PC using ethernet - no problems whatsoever.

However, like a lot of homes these days.. the PC is used infrequently. We have two iPads, a SmartTV in our lounge and an AppleTV as a set-top box in the bedroom for Lightbox and Netflix. These are all WiFi devices.

My personal experience of the 659b for WiFi is that it performs very poorly.

In terms of leaving techie stuff behind (analyzing signals etc and leaving channels at auto) I can report this.

Using the 630b my phone or iPad works on 2.4 anywhere in our house - in fact anywhere on our entire property - even down the drive to the road!

Using the 659b with 5G - pretty much only works in the primary living room area where the device sits. Constant drop-outs in any other room. That got turned off really quick and was considered more of a techie novelty.

Using the 659b on the 2.4 does connect anywhere in the house and I have to be honest and say I haven't tested it outside. HOWEVER... using 2.4 the signal strength bars are only ever 1 anywhere other than the same room (yes, I know one shouldn't judge on the bars) and in other rooms it very frequently just drops. For example you are browsing the web on the iPad and a page doesn't load and ooops there's no WiFi connected and you have to go into the living room where it auto reconnects.

So, from a purely unscientific "users point of view" the 659b is very poor compared to the rock-solid performance of the 630b which never EVER drops the iPad WiFi connection anywhere on the property...

Just my 2c...

Interesting to read your experiences - thanks for posting. Yes my experience of the wifi performance of the 659b is very similar. I think I'll move up trialing the 630b now!

Your comment, "For example you are browsing the web on the iPad and a page doesn't load and ooops there's no WiFi connected and you have to go into the living room where it auto reconnects." is identical. I get a fair few "DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_BAD_CONFIG" errors on Chrome.

bitserf

101 posts

Master Geek

#1578101 22-Jun-2016 09:55

How big is your house?

We moved into a new house recently, and despite dropping a few hundred on the ASUS RT-AC68U, by the time you get to the edge of the house (router is in center, mounted high up), 5GHz signal is almost gone.

So I'm having to look at installing two more APs. Luckily we got CAT-6E ports everywhere, so communication between APs for extending should be fast.

5GHz drops off fast, due to physics :)

If you're in decent range though, TX rate is usually around 450Mbps, so I can get the maximum throughput for the fibre connection on AC devices.

davisg

74 posts

Master Geek

#1587622 7-Jul-2016 13:38

I am on my 4th router since fibre install in March. The others all worked but had various issues. The first one was free from Spark but only had 100bps ethernet so they sent a new one with Gigabit ethernet allowing us to use all the 200mbps we are paying for. I bought a NetComm router to improve wifi which it did but it was not possible to remote access our Webcam (will not route to a fixed ip address only a mac address).
Last week I bought a Linksys EA8500 and it is fantastic. With the beam forming wifi technology it pushes both 2.4 and 5GHz wifi to the farthest reaches of our house. This is the best router I ever had, far better than our pre-fibre Linksys E4200.
An expensive solution but really worth it. Some minor manual setting up was required (VLAN tag 10 and the fibre login settings but I just copied those from previous routers).

Dairyxox

1594 posts

Uber Geek

#1587647 7-Jul-2016 14:17

I've got a few HG659b's and they never skip a beat.

You need to understand that 2.4ghz is performant over longer distances through walls, 5ghz will perform better over short distances/same room. Horses for courses. 802.11ac skews this a little with beam-forming.

MikeAqua

7773 posts

Uber Geek

#1587662 7-Jul-2016 14:31

We have the same HG659b router. I find it performs worse on 5Ghz than 2.4Ghz. The connection to 5Ghz from my phone/surface is often unstable (even in the same room). Sure the 5Ghz is faster while it's connected but it drops out a lot.

5Ghz may not help ..

Mike

mattwnz

20141 posts

Uber Geek

#1587665 7-Jul-2016 14:36

I got one of these monster sized routers (at least it is compared to previous ones I have had) a few days ago, and I am also having problems with it compared to my old one. Itwas fine initially, but a day or so later it slows down and can't get much data coming through. It is fine however with wired Ethernet connections. So I wonder if there is a memory leak or something similar, as someone stated above, and whether they may release a firmware update.

MikeAqua

7773 posts

Uber Geek

#1587684 7-Jul-2016 14:45

mattwnz:

I got one of these monster sized routers (at least it is compared to previous ones I have had) a few days ago, and I am also having problems with it compared to my old one. Itwas fine initially, but a day or so later it slows down and can't get much data coming through. It is fine however with wired Ethernet connections. So I wonder if there is a memory leak or something similar, as someone stated above, and whether they may release a firmware update.

That is good summary of my experience of HG659b. Not as good as the previous WiFi/router which was 4 years old.

A backward step in WiFi performance from the same location.

Mike

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