BT broadband with 3rd party router

[putrokasi]

For all my fellow community members from the UK with BT broadband, I have a couple of questions. As I’m sure most of you will already be aware, the BT Smart Hub 2 isn’t as great as it’s made out to be. It doesn’t have Wi-Fi 6 and the speed drop off when a bit of range from the router is factored in is abysmal.

For context, I have BT Full Fibre 900 which gives me download speeds to the hub of 900Mbs and a speed guarantee of 700Mbs. Again, this is just to the hub and as I said above, the speed over Wi-Fi drops off to about 300-400 even stood right next to the router. I have a 2 story, 3 bedroom semi-detached house and the speeds upstairs drop off to about 150.

My questions are:

1. Do any of you with BT broadband use a 3rd party router with Wi-Fi 6? If so, does it improve yours speeds over Wi-Fi and the overall speed range of the Wi-Fi?

2. Is it easy to set up the 3rd party router with BT broadband?

Any help/advice/guidance on the matter would be great appreciated!

[orion_pilot]

Yes, I'd say generally that you can use any 3rd party router that supports a PPPoE connection for the WAN. There are literally hundreds to chose from.  Do your research though to make sure you buy one which does support PPPoE and when you have sourced one, connect its WAN port to the Optical Network Terminator (ONT) and set the PPPoE credentials.  You won't need to restart the ONT, the WAN connection will auto-negotiate its handshake with BT when you power cycle the router.

The overall range of WIFI is limited across the board on 100% of routers from all manufacturers, so don't expect miracles.  The reason for this is the regulations only allow for a puny 100 milliamp transmission power from any consumer WIFI device, specifically to make sure that your WIFI service does not bleed through your walls and destroy the WIFI services of your neighbourhood.  So, you will find all sorts of jargon explaining how directional antennas and 'built for gaming' etc on some of these routers, but under the hood they are all equally limited in their power by the law.  Even if your router was on 'steroids' your devices in the building are as limited on their transmit power, often on purpose to increase battery life.

But, on the whole, the BT supplied equipment is as simple as they can make it with just enough functionality in a plug and play world to make it possible for BT to support millions of customers who haven't go a clue what they are doing, so buying and implementing your own Router will give you far more functionality than you will ever see in the firmware of BT supplied equipment.