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Extender weirdness plus other problems

I recently upgraded from an ancient router to a more modern 300mps speed. Technician arrived today, set it up, but decided to put the router at the opposite end of the house (easier for him) ... which admittedly would have required a long ethernet cable to do otherwise.

So he set up an extender where I originally had the router.

However, the extender seems to cause nothing but problems. The ethernet cable connected to it to my PC is now rather flaky (worked great before w/ slower router). Technically it connects, but webpages barely load (or not at all). It's like a fake connection. And even if I then try wifi, wifi is wonky and won't work correctly (again, technically connected, but no pages load).

So I simply turned off the extender, and now wifi on my pc works fine. Slower than ethernet, but it works.

So what is going on there? Bad extender? Or are extenders by their nature not reliable? Again, I really wish I could just have the router where I wanted it... have a feeling I may end up going to optimum as I can at least put their modem where I want it (coaxial is throughout the house, while ethernet is limited).

As an extra bonus, the home phone the tech was supposed to set up doesn't work at all (he never tested it before he left). No line, no dial tone. And I may or may not be getting a tech guy to return -- chat was... bizarre. One rep stated he would send someone, no charge, as the installation wasn't done properly and tested. But then with no record of the appt, I asked another rep for verification, who wanted to charge me $99 (or $15/month) for them to come and fix what they broke.

So.... either they fix it for free, or I give up and go with Optimum. And even if they fix it, I now have a router on the opposite side of the house where my TV is...

Comments

smith6612

Sounds like the IPv6 issue that has been going around. Do you have Intel or Realtek Ethernet in your computer? If so, go into the Device Manager on Windows and disable the options for "UDP Checksum Offload (IPv6)" and "TCP Checksum Offload (IPv6)" and see if this helps the slowness out.

Was the extender using wireless or Coax/Ethernet for the backhaul? Wireless backhaul will always be trouble, so I'm not surprised you had mixed results with it if that's the case.

For the phone, that can be a easy fix if the POTS light on your ONT is lit if you want to do it yourself. Otherwise get Verizon out to fix your install - by running Ethernet from the ONT to where you want the router to live, and to connect the two wires for phone to the rest of your phone jacks.

anonyme

Thanks for the reply.

Disabled those two things... will test later to see if they helped. I should add that my Roku connected to the extender (by ethernet) wasn't always working either... so it wasn't just slowness, just... well, brokenness.

And the extender is connected by coaxial. Although I am not certain how clean a connection it is... it seems like the tech connected it to coaxial wires already existing, but it may not necessarily be a straight, even connection. He didn't connect a brand new coaxial all the way across the house to the extender as one line.

As for phone... I asked the tech where the router connected to the phone jack, and he said it wasn't needed. I'm not sure if he connected anything into any phone jack, anywhere.

Edit: And doing some reading, the phone connection should be in the ONT, correct? Since the phone was working there previously (freedom essentials) and all they were supposed to do was switch to Home phone, it should have worked? Right? One chat guy sort of insinuated that they forgot to set something up on their end, and they tried to fix it without a visit, but it didn't work.

smith6612

Coax does have some tolerance to it. As long as the cable isn't shoddy, it should work. You'll lose bandwidth if it's sub-optimal. The router / extender should have status pages you can log into in order to check the MoCA speeds. MoCA 2.0+ should be operating at above 175Mbps... up to 500Mbps for 2.0 mode, up to 1Gbps for bonded 2.0 mode, and up to 2500Mbps for MoCA 2.5

For the Roku, it could be the IPv6 weirdness as well, especially if it's broken in your area. I'm not sure what they use for Wireless chipsets, but as a Roku owner myself, I know most Rokus don't use the greatest radios. Low performance compared to products like Apple TV or NVIDIA Shield. Lets see how the PC works first, then we can troubleshoot the Roku further.

The router doesn't connect up to the phone wiring in this case. On the ONT you should have at least two phone jacks, and Line 1 should be the one active. Check to see if the "POTS" light is lit up. If it is, take a corded telephone to your ONT and connect it directly to the Line 1 jack, to see if you have dial tone and can make calls. If you can, the disconnect is likely between the ONT and however your home's wiring is connecting up to the ONT.

anonyme

The ONT box for me is outside, so not so easy to connect things to it (at least now at night). I can check it tomorrow, assuming I can just open it up and peek inside.

As for the ethernet, not sure if it's IPv6 weirdness or not.

I just did a test and disabled what you mentioned. It made no difference at all. I put the settings back, did regular wifi browsing, then simply tried the extender once again (plugged it back in). This time roku worked fine, watched a show, and to my surprise my computer is using ethernet from it... and is fine again.

My verizon speed test (300+/300+ router) and (300+/300+ device) via ethernet to extender. But if using wifi, I get like 85/85 for device. So ethernet does make a big difference, when it works, that is.

So... we have initial setup right after tech set things up (ethernet via extender) and it worked for a short while fine today. Then it simply stopped working where technically I could connect, but no webpages would load. If I disconnected the extender, I could at least then use regular wifi w/ my PC. And just now, hours later, it seems to work fine again via ethernet.

No clue what any of that means, unless maybe the extender is simply partly broken or something? It's bizarre. If a tech guy does happen to stop by tomorrow, I can maybe ask him to at least swap extenders, maybe I got a lemon -- or ideally set up ethernet across the basement and ditch the extender, but I expect he wouldn't be so fond of that idea.

Edit:

And to provide more clues:

I just turned off my pc, restarted it... and it took quite some time to connect to the network via ethernet. With my old ancient router, ethernet connections were like 2-3 seconds. This was much, much longer.

When it did connect, it was slow....like so slow some pages timed out. AOL strangely worked okay, while a site like this message board would eventually just show text links, and not fully load.

Connecting to wifi was no different.

Until I turned off the extender. Now I can use wifi at normal speeds.

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