My Wi-Fi Devices Keep Dropping - Router Can't Handle The Traffic?

CyberByte727

Over the past 2 years, I have been building up devices to develop my house into a smarthome.

I have a number of Amazon Echos, some Kasa plugs, a Nest Thermostat and several Nest Smoke Alarms, a smart alarm system, the Ring doobell - you get the idea.  Along with all of these are a Roku box for one TV, an Amazon Fire Stick for another, and a Now TV Stick for a third.

There are also mobile phones using wi-fi in the house as well, along with a tablet and a PC.

In recent weeks though, some of these devices have been dropping off the network, seemingly at random.  It has now gotten to the point where I have had to remove over half of them completely in order to have a stable wi-fi network for the remainder.

Can anyone tell me why this is happening?  Is there an upper limit on the number of wi-fi devices the Eir router can handle?  I cannot believe this far into the 21st Century that it is not possible to run a decent smarthome, so I must be missing something basic (I hope).

Any suggestions/support would be much appreciated.  By the way (Eir), I am putting this up on Boards.ie as your online chat and email support are unavailable on your website - again.

eir: Kyle

CyberByte727 wrote: »

Over the past 2 years, I have been building up devices to develop my house into a smarthome.

I have a number of Amazon Echos, some Kasa plugs, a Nest Thermostat and several Nest Smoke Alarms, a smart alarm system, the Ring doobell - you get the idea.  Along with all of these are a Roku box for one TV, an Amazon Fire Stick for another, and a Now TV Stick for a third.

There are also mobile phones using wi-fi in the house as well, along with a tablet and a PC.

In recent weeks though, some of these devices have been dropping off the network, seemingly at random.  It has now gotten to the point where I have had to remove over half of them completely in order to have a stable wi-fi network for the remainder.

Can anyone tell me why this is happening?  Is there an upper limit on the number of wi-fi devices the Eir router can handle?  I cannot believe this far into the 21st Century that it is not possible to run a decent smarthome, so I must be missing something basic (I hope).

Any suggestions/support would be much appreciated.  By the way (Eir), I am putting this up on Boards.ie as your online chat and email support are unavailable on your website - again.

Hi there CyberByte727

In the recent weeks, we've been experiencing intermittent services which would have affected voice calls & data but if you're saying that this has been going on for a while, I would suggest contacting the Technical Support Team directly at 1890260260. They will be the only department that will be able to do troubleshooting while on the call.

I would suggest letting them know exactly how many devices are in use at the same time so that they know exactly how to assist you

-Kyle

CyberByte727

eir: Kyle wrote: »

CyberByte727 wrote: »

Over the past 2 years, I have been building up devices to develop my house into a smarthome.

I have a number of Amazon Echos, some Kasa plugs, a Nest Thermostat and several Nest Smoke Alarms, a smart alarm system, the Ring doobell - you get the idea.  Along with all of these are a Roku box for one TV, an Amazon Fire Stick for another, and a Now TV Stick for a third.

There are also mobile phones using wi-fi in the house as well, along with a tablet and a PC.

In recent weeks though, some of these devices have been dropping off the network, seemingly at random.  It has now gotten to the point where I have had to remove over half of them completely in order to have a stable wi-fi network for the remainder.

Can anyone tell me why this is happening?  Is there an upper limit on the number of wi-fi devices the Eir router can handle?  I cannot believe this far into the 21st Century that it is not possible to run a decent smarthome, so I must be missing something basic (I hope).

Any suggestions/support would be much appreciated.  By the way (Eir), I am putting this up on Boards.ie as your online chat and email support are unavailable on your website - again.

Hi there CyberByte727

In the recent weeks, we've been experiencing intermittent services which would have affected voice calls & data but if you're saying that this has been going on for a while, I would suggest contacting the Technical Support Team directly at 1890260260. They will be the only department that will be able to do troubleshooting while on the call.

I would suggest letting them know exactly how many devices are in use at the same time so that they know exactly how to assist you

-Kyle

Hi Kyle,

Can you tell me when the Technical Support Team work until?  I don't get home from work myself until at least 6:30pm each day.  Also, I note that you have given me a 1890 number.  Will I get charged for calling this number from my Eir mobile?  I know how long the wait times can be and don't want to be paying for the privilege of listening to half an hour of hold music.

Thank you for the specific advice though - I'll make up a list of exactly what wi-fi devices I have in total.

Regards, James.

CyberByte727

CyberByte727 wrote: »

eir: Kyle wrote: »

CyberByte727 wrote: »

Over the past 2 years, I have been building up devices to develop my house into a smarthome.

I have a number of Amazon Echos, some Kasa plugs, a Nest Thermostat and several Nest Smoke Alarms, a smart alarm system, the Ring doobell - you get the idea.  Along with all of these are a Roku box for one TV, an Amazon Fire Stick for another, and a Now TV Stick for a third.

There are also mobile phones using wi-fi in the house as well, along with a tablet and a PC.

In recent weeks though, some of these devices have been dropping off the network, seemingly at random.  It has now gotten to the point where I have had to remove over half of them completely in order to have a stable wi-fi network for the remainder.

Can anyone tell me why this is happening?  Is there an upper limit on the number of wi-fi devices the Eir router can handle?  I cannot believe this far into the 21st Century that it is not possible to run a decent smarthome, so I must be missing something basic (I hope).

Any suggestions/support would be much appreciated.  By the way (Eir), I am putting this up on Boards.ie as your online chat and email support are unavailable on your website - again.

Hi there CyberByte727

In the recent weeks, we've been experiencing intermittent services which would have affected voice calls & data but if you're saying that this has been going on for a while, I would suggest contacting the Technical Support Team directly at 1890260260. They will be the only department that will be able to do troubleshooting while on the call.

I would suggest letting them know exactly how many devices are in use at the same time so that they know exactly how to assist you

-Kyle

Hi Kyle,

Can you tell me when the Technical Support Team work until?  I don't get home from work myself until at least 6:30pm each day.  Also, I note that you have given me a 1890 number.  Will I get charged for calling this number from my Eir mobile?  I know how long the wait times can be and don't want to be paying for the privilege of listening to half an hour of hold music.

Thank you for the specific advice though - I'll make up a list of exactly what wi-fi devices I have in total.

Regards, James.

Just log into your router, it tells you what is connected.

Speaking generally - filling your home with dozens of wifi devices can result in issues unless you plan carefully and have a good knowledge of networking.
Wifi operates on 2 frequency bands*. 2.4GHz only has 3 non-overlapping channels and is highly congested. 5GHz is less congested and has more channels but the inferior range and penetrating power can result in it's own set of issues.

Some general advice would be to wire (ethernet) anything which can wired. For wireless devices, anything close to the router should be connected to the 5GHz band. Be extremely careful with boosters, extenders and extra access points. Turn off unneccessary SSIDs (eg eir_Wifi). Check your security settings - enabling support for older protocols can slow everything else down.

There are also rogue devices which can crash a network due to bugs. For example Chromecast had a bad firmware recently which caused a lot of issues. Check all your devices for updates and if need be take them off the network one by one to see if your issues are caused by one specific device.

CyberByte727

Deleted User wrote: »

CyberByte727 wrote: »

eir: Kyle wrote: »

CyberByte727 wrote: »

Over the past 2 years, I have been building up devices to develop my house into a smarthome.

I have a number of Amazon Echos, some Kasa plugs, a Nest Thermostat and several Nest Smoke Alarms, a smart alarm system, the Ring doobell - you get the idea.  Along with all of these are a Roku box for one TV, an Amazon Fire Stick for another, and a Now TV Stick for a third.

There are also mobile phones using wi-fi in the house as well, along with a tablet and a PC.

In recent weeks though, some of these devices have been dropping off the network, seemingly at random.  It has now gotten to the point where I have had to remove over half of them completely in order to have a stable wi-fi network for the remainder.

Can anyone tell me why this is happening?  Is there an upper limit on the number of wi-fi devices the Eir router can handle?  I cannot believe this far into the 21st Century that it is not possible to run a decent smarthome, so I must be missing something basic (I hope).

Any suggestions/support would be much appreciated.  By the way (Eir), I am putting this up on Boards.ie as your online chat and email support are unavailable on your website - again.

Hi there CyberByte727

In the recent weeks, we've been experiencing intermittent services which would have affected voice calls & data but if you're saying that this has been going on for a while, I would suggest contacting the Technical Support Team directly at 1890260260. They will be the only department that will be able to do troubleshooting while on the call.

I would suggest letting them know exactly how many devices are in use at the same time so that they know exactly how to assist you

-Kyle

Hi Kyle,

Can you tell me when the Technical Support Team work until?  I don't get home from work myself until at least 6:30pm each day.  Also, I note that you have given me a 1890 number.  Will I get charged for calling this number from my Eir mobile?  I know how long the wait times can be and don't want to be paying for the privilege of listening to half an hour of hold music.

Thank you for the specific advice though - I'll make up a list of exactly what wi-fi devices I have in total.

Regards, James.

Just log into your router, it tells you what is connected.

Speaking generally - filling your home with dozens of wifi devices can result in issues unless you plan carefully and have a good knowledge of networking.
Wifi operates on 2 frequency bands*. 2.4GHz only has 3 non-overlapping channels and is highly congested. 5GHz is less congested and has more channels but the inferior range and penetrating power can result in it's own set of issues.

Some general advice would be to wire (ethernet) anything which can wired. For wireless devices, anything close to the router should be connected to the 5GHz band. Be extremely careful with boosters, extenders and extra access points. Turn off unneccessary SSIDs (eg eir_Wifi). Check your security settings - enabling support for older protocols can slow everything else down.

There are also rogue devices which can crash a network due to bugs. For example Chromecast had a bad firmware recently which caused a lot of issues. Check all your devices for updates and if need be take them off the network one by one to see if your issues are caused by one specific device.

Thanks for taking the time to offer the above advice.

I have a good working knowledge of networking - logging into the Huawei router was my first point of call.  The issue is not that I don't know what's connected, it's keeping them connected.

If you look over my initial post you will see that the majority of wireless devices I use are those which populate the 2.4Ghz band.  Kasa, Nest, Ring etc. don't offer you the choice to switch to the 5Ghz frequency.  I have not experienced any issues with overlapping.  In addition the Eir router's 5Ghz footprint isn't great anyway - I've put anything possible onto this band, but the majority all work from 2.4Ghz.
The security settings were a good idea, but I've tried this and it makes no difference.

My firmware across the board is up to date and seems to be holding fine.  When devices drop, it's not across the board.  For example, if one of my Nest smoke alarms drops off the network, it will only be one of them, not all.

Good advice though - I'll take any ideas going that might help!

PS - I'm seriously considering going for a mesh wi-fi system to handle my wireless devices.  Does anyone have any experience with these (like the TP-Link Deco for instance)?  I'm thinking that this might be able to handle the traffic better than the Huawei.