Forum Discussion

robincm's avatar
robincm
Joining in
4 months ago

Pod(s) misbehaving

Hi, I've got an bit of an annoying problem with the WiFi in a remote (from the Hub) part of the house.

There's two pods needed to get the WiFi out to this ground floor location, and when things are working fine I get about 90Mbps, which is more than enough. The pods are all white ones, the Hub is also on the ground floor.

The problem is that sometimes the speed falls off a cliff. SamKnows told me 0.5Mbps earlier. The broadband speed was working fine. I think the problem is being caused by the pod located part way between the Hub and the pod in the remote part of the house, serial number XBAI21640B41.

Logically, that one should be talking direct to the hub, and the pod in the remote part of house should in turn talk to it. If I turn the "intermediate" pod off and back on again then things start working sensibly again.

There's a third pod on the top floor directly above the Hub (two floors up). I'd be surprised if the pod in the remote part of the house is talking to this one due to the distances and thick stone walls in the way. Without the pods, the remote part of house gets zero WiFi.

If it helps, the ground floor of the house is roughly L shaped, with the Hub at one tip, a pod at the corner (intermediate pod) and the one on the remote part of the house at the other tip. It's not a big house, but the thick walls make it annoying to get WiFi around it where we want it.

I don't know enough about how these pods decide what to talk to to know how to troubleshoot any further. Right now, things seem to be working ok but the intermediate (suspect?) pod is showing as "Fair" in the VM Connect app, whereas the other two pods are showing as "Great".

Any advice much appreciated, thanks :-)

4 Replies

  • Adduxi's avatar
    Adduxi
    Very Insightful Person
    4 months ago

    Apart from the Connect app there is no management software for the Pods.  It is up to the Hubs “Intelligent WiFi” to work out the best solution.  Perhaps the Hub is connecting to the upstairs and then on to the other Pods? Who knows …

  • Vikki_M's avatar
    Vikki_M
    Icon for Forum Team rankForum Team
    4 months ago

    Hi robincm,

    Thanks for your post and welcome to our community.

    We're sorry to hear you're having some WiFi issues in one area of the home. 

    3 pods is the maximum we can send, however we'd recommend placing the pods in different areas until you find the best position for this to optimise in the home.

    There is also some helpful advise here on how to improve WiFi.

    If you have any further questions, please pop back to us and we'd be happy to help 

    • robincm's avatar
      robincm
      Joining in
      4 months ago

      Thanks. I'm pretty sure the pods are in the right place.

      They just don't seem to work very well, so far...

      For example, just now two of us were using laptops in the remote part of the house. All good. Then, after maybe half an hour, both laptops simultaneously lost internet, and then the WiFi symbol changed to show no network too. And our phones switched to the mobile network instead of WiFi. When I went to check the pods, both the one nearest us and the intermediate one had their lights flashing.

      After a few minutes they seemed to start working again, and then a few minutes later it all dropped out for about 30 seconds. No flashing lights on the pods this time.

      Now, perhaps this was some kind of firmware update, but why would VM or whoever manages the pods, allow the things to update during peak evening hours? Surely you/they would schedule this stuff for 2-5am when most people would likely be asleep? If it wasn't a firmware update, why did two of the pods (I didn't check the third one!) decide to reboot all by themselves? (If indeed that's what they did)

      One of us was working from here on Monday and several times had brief WiFi dropouts. Note that if we get up and go into the room with the Hub3 in it, the WiFi coming from that is working fine throughout and seems rock solid.