Hi All. I'm helping a friend who is experiencing strange issues with his broadband at home. He's been back and forth with the 2degrees helpdesk without success.

Main points

2degrees fibre broadband with a 2degrees-supplied Netgear ORBI RBR350, since 17 July. Previously, fibre broadband was from Spark for 5 years.

All was OK for a month after going live with 2degrees, then from about the 3rd week of August, several issues arose:

1. His wireless-connected laptop could no longer access westpac.co.nz. Connections would time out.

2. Facebook videos accessed from a wireless-connected phone or laptop were unplayable due to buffering. 

3. The DisneyPlus and TVNZ+ app's on his wireless-connected Samsung TV would connect, but would no longer reliably stream video. Either major buffering occurred, or both app's would fail after about 2 minutes with errors. 

But... The YouTube and Netflix app's on the TV have always worked correctly and still do.

Today

1. Speedtest
An initial test from my phone when connected to his wireless network and 5 metres from the Orbi: 
32.4Mbps D/L, 24.6Mbps U/L. Second and subsequent tests over the next 5 minutes: 225Mbps D/L, 97Mbps U/L.  

2. Transferring the TV to a LAN port on the ORBI made no difference to the DisneyPlus and TVNZ+ issues.

3. Connecting the TV to my phone's wireless hostspot, the DisneyPlus and TVNZ+ app's worked correctly.

4. The DisneyPlus and TVNZ+ app's installed on his phone worked correctly when the phone was using his (ORBI) wireless network (mobile data disabled).

5. With my laptop connected to a LAN port on the ORBI, Internet connectivity would drop out for a second or two, every 1-2 minutes. (Shown by the Windows 10 globe coming and going. This continued even after the LAN cable was replaced).

6. Westpac.co.nz was accessible and worked correctly from my LAN-connected laptop. The DisneyPlus and TVNZ+ websites were also accessible and usable.

Router change
The ORBI router was replaced with a Spark Smart Modem (Arcadyn), but the issues listed above (Westpac from his laptop, DisneyPlus and TVNZ+ app's on the TV, etc) remained. However, the Windows 10 globe no longer appeared on my laptop.

Conclusion
It's hard to not conclude that a subtle and specific fault was introduced in the third week of August, which is still present, to cause the issues described above. E.g., two TV app's stopped working, the other two still work.

From other posts with weird stuff happening, replacing the ONT seems to be a good next step. 

Suggestions, please folks! 

And, could someone from 2degrees put their hand up:-) (Multiple fault calls were raised. The account number is available)

All input will be gratefully received. If further information is needed, please ask.

Thanks,

Scott