Sonic Factory Equipment has been horrible...what is better?

[scobun]

We're in Brentwood and got Sonic Fiber about six weeks ago. The customer service from the company has good. Unfortunately, the end product has not.

We made the switch from Comcast and have had lots of problems with our new Sonic Fiber. They've come out and take a look. We're only getting 40-50mbps with wild fluctuation in speed and with weaker signals all throughout the house. They think it is caused by a neighbor who has a very strong wireless signal that's messing with ours. We get intermittent outages around our house on the WiFi (it's a 2100 sq ft 2 story with the modem/router in the same place as our old service). Devices like our Roku and wireless desktop have worse performance than with our old service which should have been much slower than our current one. I believe the problem is coming from the Sonic supplied modem and particularly the wireless router.

What equipment would you recommend to take the place of the modem? I already have a wireless router that I can use, and I'd rather not pay to rent the modem if there is one that works. I don't want to rent hardware that performs this badly. If we can't find equipment works...and I never thought I'd say this...I think we'll pay the early termination and go back to Comcast.

Help me, Sonic Forum User, you're my only hope.

[rtrinh]

Your own wireless router works better? Just plug the Ethernet cable that goes from the fiber box to the Sonic supplied router into your router.

[blackmage]

The Pace 5268 is really good with 5ghz. The problem is that 5ghz doesn't handle range as well as 2.4ghz so bigger houses can suffer from signal strength from the 5 and interference in the 2.4.

You can plug your old router into the ONT, the little white box, or straight into one of the yellow ports on the back of the Pace. I personally recommend connecting it to the Pace, so if your router ever acts faulty, you can quickly test the Pace and find out where the problem. Free dispatches are also nice.

If your old router can't handle gigabit speeds over the whole house, I've seen a lot of hype about wifi mesh networks recently and those may be worth looking in to.

[Guest]

I know I can plug in mine, but I don't want to pay a monthly rental fee for equipment I'm not really using which is why I'd like to just buy my own modem. Is there a list of Fiber compatible modems?

[danielg4]

The fiber service does not use a modem at all, only a router. By all accounts, renting any equipment at all is completely optional with the fiber service.

[dane]

Two points: First, it's important that the 2.4ghz (WiFi-N) and the 5ghz (WiFi-AC) SSID names are split, so you see a "Sonic-1234-5g" and a "Sonic-1234" (which is the 2.4ghz). In your case, support records indicate that this has already been done - but for other members, that configuration will be pushed to all members shortly. If you are experiencing slow WiFi prior to that being completed, support can assist with doing that manually for you, email support@sonic.net and they can take care of it. (The back-story on why this is necessary: because 2.4ghz propogates better, devices will often seize on the WiFi-N signal, which can generally only deliver 25-30Mbps maximum. Then as the device moves closer, and a 5ghz WiFi-AC connection would be possible, the device doesn't "band steer" itself to the better throughput connection. By having two SSIDs, you can make the 5ghz one "preferred", higher in the list or more recently connected to, and most devices will swap as they get close enough to achieve an AC signal.)

The second point: If a single access point does not provide adequate coverage in your home, you may want to consider an Ethernet-connected WiFi extender, or one of the myriad of WiFi mesh solutions. Any of these can be connected to one of the Ethernet ports on the back of the Sonic Pace router/firewall. (It is important to retain the Sonic device; it provides network address translation, firewalling, and will soon enable IPv6 support. The equipment rental also includes on-site support; without it, you'd be charged a truck-roll fee for any site visits. FYI!)

The mesh solutions from Eero, AmpiFi, or Orbi are all reportedly good for expanding coverage within the home. Of course, as they are WiFi devices, you won't see full Gigabit speeds, but you should be able to achieve hundreds of megabits. (The 900Mbps+ throughput of your Gigabit connection is only possible on wired Ethernet devices - WiFi doesn't go that fast, yet.)

[danielg4]

Two points: First, it's important that the 2.4ghz (WiFi-N) and the 5ghz (WiFi-AC) SSID names are split, so you see a "Sonic-1234-5g" and a "Sonic-1234" (which is the 2.4ghz). In your case, support records indicate that this has already been done - but for other members, that configuration will be pushed to all members shortly. If you are experiencing slow WiFi prior to that being completed, support can assist with doing that manually for you, email support@sonic.net and they can take care of it. (The back-story on why this is necessary: because 2.4ghz propogates better, devices will often seize on the WiFi-N signal, which can generally only deliver 25-30Mbps maximum. Then as the device moves closer, and a 5ghz WiFi-AC connection would be possible, the device doesn't "band steer" itself to the better throughput connection. By having two SSIDs, you can make the 5ghz one "preferred", higher in the list or more recently connected to, and most devices will swap as they get close enough to achieve an AC signal.)

The second point: If a single access point does not provide adequate coverage in your home, you may want to consider an Ethernet-connected WiFi extender, or one of the myriad of WiFi mesh solutions. Any of these can be connected to one of the Ethernet ports on the back of the Sonic Pace router/firewall. (It is important to retain the Sonic device; it provides network address translation, firewalling, and will soon enable IPv6 support. The equipment rental also includes on-site support; without it, you'd be charged a truck-roll fee for any site visits. FYI!)

The mesh solutions from Eero, AmpiFi, or Orbi are all reportedly good for expanding coverage within the home. Of course, as they are WiFi devices, you won't see full Gigabit speeds, but you should be able to achieve hundreds of megabits. (The 900Mbps+ throughput of your Gigabit connection is only possible on wired Ethernet devices - WiFi doesn't go that fast, yet.)

Actually, it does:
http://www.tp-link.com/us/products/deta ... D7200.html

[dane]

Of course, as they are WiFi devices, you won't see full Gigabit speeds, but you should be able to achieve hundreds of megabits. (The 900Mbps+ throughput of your Gigabit connection is only possible on wired Ethernet devices - WiFi doesn't go that fast, yet.)

Actually, it does:
http://www.tp-link.com/us/products/deta ... D7200.html

802.11AD on 60ghz (millimeter wave) offers the promise of greater than Gigabit speeds, but do you have a client device (laptop, tablet, phone) with this technology in it? Acer reportedly was offering a laptop with 802.11AD, the model P648, but the Acer website doesn't say that 802.11AD is supported on that model in the specifications section. Looking at the TP-Link site, I don't see that they offer any expansion cards which support WiFi-AD yet either. (And if you've got a desktop, in the same room as the router, just use Ethernet!)

In theory, with simultaneous 2.4g and 5g, a client device could achieve gigabit speed, but I've never seen a setup that'd do that. Anyone got one working, and able to speed test at full gigabit speed over wireless? I'd be interested to hear!

[pockyken007]

We did some testing at my buddy's place ( he just got gig fiber from Sonic ) and the fastest we could get was around 400-450 mbps with his setup ( nighthawk router ) we tried squeezing more but the laptop he has was not capable of getting more

I'll play around with my setup at home and see what I can come up with but I am pretty sure the numbers will look similar

[dane]

We did some testing at my buddy's place ( he just got gig fiber from Sonic ) and the fastest we could get was around 400-450 mbps with his setup ( nighthawk router ) we tried squeezing more but the laptop he has was not capable of getting more

I'll play around with my setup at home and see what I can come up with but I am pretty sure the numbers will look similar

That's been our experience too - with the Sonic Pace equipment, and most of the other high-end 802.11AC equipment we tested; around 450Mbps max.