Forum Discussion

dms4's avatar
dms4
Tuning in
2 years ago

Slow speed and no DHCP

 

Hi all,

Just looking for some advise on next steps please! 

Until now I've been enjoying speeds of over 500Mbit (M500 Fibre Broadband), but have always had issues with wifi drops in parts of my home. Working in IT, I've been meaning to replace it with an a third party wifi router for some time and yesterday finally pulled the trigger...

I installed my new Eero wifi system and everything worked great. No wifi drops, blazing speeds all over my home. Happy days! Now, I should have just left it like that, but I gave into my OCD and decided to put my router into Modem-only mode.

The virgin router reboots and nothing works. I can't connect to 192.168.100.1, or 192.168.0.1, the TV can't connect and nor can the Eero router.

Only one thing for it, a factory reset. The virgin box comes back up broadcasting on it's built in SSID, the TV comes back and the Eero box is now able to serve internet. However I now have two problems.

The first is that I can't connect to the virgin wifi anymore. My devices are not receiving an IP address via DHCP and they end up assigning themselves a 169 address. Setting a static IP address doesn't seem to help (I'm assuming 192.168.0.1 is the default gateway I'm supposed to set, but perhaps it isn't! Can anyone confirm?)

The second is that I'm not getting speeds over 100Mbit anymore. I tried plugging in an ethernet cable direct to the virgin box and it's not any better like that either, so it's not the Eero.

What do people suggest? Anyone had anything similar? I'm reluctant to contact support as I know it'll be a long process of rebooting irrelevant things before I have an engineer visit who may or may not replace my virgin box. Has anyone had something similar, and is it even possible for my slow speeds and the issues I've been having with the virgin media box be related?

I'm able to connect to the virgin box so can possibly try modem mode again, but I'm not sure when I'll get the chance as my wife is getting a bit tired of my tinkering bringing the internet down all the time.


Thank you!

  • Adduxi's avatar
    Adduxi
    2 years ago

    The Eero needs to be set to DHCP Router mode when the Hub is in modem mode. It needs to be done in order. 
    Set the Hub to modem mode and switch it off.  Set the Eero to Router mode (Auto DHCP) and make sure it is fully up and running. 
    Switch on the Hub and leave it to initialise.  The Eero should get a WAN IP at this stage.

    Note there should only be a single Cat 6 cable from the Hub to the eero’s WAN port.  All other cables need to come from the Eero other port or a switch connected to the Eero’s other port. 

  • Adduxi's avatar
    Adduxi
    Very Insightful Person
    2 years ago

    The Eero needs to be set to DHCP Router mode when the Hub is in modem mode. It needs to be done in order. 
    Set the Hub to modem mode and switch it off.  Set the Eero to Router mode (Auto DHCP) and make sure it is fully up and running. 
    Switch on the Hub and leave it to initialise.  The Eero should get a WAN IP at this stage.

    Note there should only be a single Cat 6 cable from the Hub to the eero’s WAN port.  All other cables need to come from the Eero other port or a switch connected to the Eero’s other port. 

    • dms4's avatar
      dms4
      Tuning in
      2 years ago

      Thanks, I'll give this a go. I may need to get a small switch as the Eero only has two ports

  • legacy1's avatar
    legacy1
    Alessandro Volta
    2 years ago
    dms4 wrote:

    The second is that I'm not getting speeds over 100Mbit anymore. I tried plugging in an ethernet cable direct to the virgin box and it's not any better like that either, so it's not the Eero.

    In router mode?

    • dms4's avatar
      dms4
      Tuning in
      2 years ago

      No, I never had any luck with Modem mode, I suspect for the reasons Adduxi outlined above.

  • HUGH_EFFO's avatar
    HUGH_EFFO
    Up to speed
    2 years ago

    I use my SH5 in modem mode connected to an Asus Router.  I just set the SH5 to modem mode in the settings, then connected to the WAN port on the ASUS and choose DHCP as the connection method.  Getting full 500Mbit on wired and wireless.

  • dms4's avatar
    dms4
    Tuning in
    2 years ago

    I've solved the slow-speed issue, everyone.

    When I put the device into modem mode, it was part of a wider effort to make the area neater and so I swapped the Eero supplied network cable with a longer one I found in a cupboard. When modem mode failed for me and I factory reset to get back to a "known good" state, I naturally blamed the device (wifi doesn't work so it's probably throttling the speed somehow as well). 

    Turns out the cable I used was a Cat5 cable, capable of 100M max, rather than Cat5e capable of 1G. Once I replaced the cable I'm back up to a comfortable 550M on fast.com

    I've turned off the 5Ghz and 2.4 Ghz wifi options to disable wifi (even though it doesn't work), leaving it in router mode. I think I prefer it like this since it lets me use the other 3 network ports for my apple tv, chromecast ultra, etc.

    All sorted, thanks everyone for your help.

    • Adduxi's avatar
      Adduxi
      Very Insightful Person
      2 years ago

      Ahh, easy mistake.  Cat 5 cables only use two pair, so 100Mb max.  Cat 5e and above for 1Gb.  One of the the old Xbox versions shipped with a Cat 5 cable btw, as the NIC was only 10/100 

      • dms4's avatar
        dms4
        Tuning in
        2 years ago

        heh, that may well have been the cable I used. You are "Very Insightful" indeed!