Issues with Bell Home WI-Fi optimization process

[-cGs-]

Greetings,

I have been dealing with a pretty major issue in my home network and I cannot figure out how to resolve it. I am fairly knowledgeable when it comes to setting up networks and I have never encountered this issue.

I have the latest Giga Hub modem and I am on the Gigabit Fibe 3.0 plan. I have set up a Bell Whole Home Wi-Fi Network in my house using four Wi-Fi 6E pods, and three of those pods are hard wired into the modem.

When first installing the pods, everything works brilliantly. While connected to any of the pods in the network, all of my Wi-Fi 6E devices reach DL speeds of about 900Mbps, and my older devices easily get up to 350Mbps. This utopia sadly ends after an hour or so once the Bell Wi-Fi app finishes optimizing the network. Once the network has been optimized, the pods limit all connected devices to a maximum DL speed of 90Mbps (on the dot). I explained all of this to Bell last year and they sent a tech in to replace all of the pods. Everything was obviously "fixed" when the tech tested the connection to the pods, and despite me explaining that he had to wait until the app finished "optimizing" the network, he left. I'm sure you can guess what happened roughly one hour after the tech left.

How can I fix this? I checked all of the settings inside of the Home Hub portal/Bell Wi-Fi app and could not find anything that would instruct the pods to cap the DL speed to a hard value. I also could not find any help online.

TL:DR List:

• The Giga Hub is located in my basement.
• There is one pod in the basement that is connected to the Giga Hub wirelessly on the 6GHz band with an Excellent signal. It is roughly 15 meters (49 feet) from the Giga Hub. This pod does not appear to cap the DL speeds.
• There is one pod on the ground floor that is hardwired to the Giga Hub using a high quality CAT 7 ethernet cable. This pod does not appear to cap the DL speeds.
• There is one pod on the top floor that is hardwired to the Giga Hub using a high quality CAT 7 ethernet cable, and another pod that connects to that hardwired pod wirelessly on the 6GHz band with an Excellent signal. It is roughly 7 meters (23 feet) from the hardwired pod. These pods do cap all DL speeds.
• When I perform the speed test on the top floor, I ensure that only the test device is utilizing a significant amount of bandwidth. No other devices connected to either of the pods are streaming/downloading/uploading.
• My network has 196 registered devices and there are usually 65 devices connected concurrently at any given time.
• If I delete the pods from my network and re-add them, the DL speeds from all pods go back to normal.
• Once the Bell Wi-Fi app finishes optimizing the network, the DL speeds get capped at 90Mbps. 

Please help 😞

[dks · Accepted solution]

Thank you for your concern. As a fellow pod user, I understand what you are saying and trying to do. There are several factors at play here. 

First is the number of devices which are connecting, including those at one time. Every device is allotted a certain amount of bandwidth. That is defined by the optimizing algorithm. That can't be changed, unfortunately. With that number of devices, even 65 at once, your bandwidth is allotted to each device and switch on and off by the pod or the modem. That's a lot of devices for about 1Gb of available wireless signal. 

The reason your speeds go back to "normal" when pods are deleted is that the pods think it is a new, unoptimized network. Optimization just returns the same result. 

You have done your best by using hardwired ethernet cables to pods. Unfortunately, with the number of devices you have you are likely pushing the limits of the capacity of your pods. You may have reached maximum pod capacity and the pod optimization is likely giving you the best possible speed it can provide. It is working as it is designed. 

Is this causing you any problems or issues? Are any of your devices not working? If so, please say more. 

[-cGs-]

Thanks for such a detailed response. This is exactly what I thought was happening so it's relieving to hear someone else say it. Having said that, this is a poor way to optimize the network. The optimization should be smarter and more dynamic, allowing the alloted bandwidth to go up and down based on real time needs and usage. Whilst there are 65 devices connected across all the pods and router, there is usually only one or two using bandwidth. The majority of the devices are smart lights and plugs that just sit there. Using a static formula to take the available bandwidth and divide it evenly across all connected devices is a waste of bandwidth allocation when some devices hardly use more than 10kb every day. The result of this poor optimization process is that the devices that need more bandwith (such as my Google TVs) are capped at 90Mbps when the pods can easily deliver +350 to that device.

I may have to switch from the bell pods to a custom solution. Thanks again.  

[dks]

Thank you for the feedback. The pods are made by Plume. You may well find a customized solution to be much more satisfactory for your own household needs. Best wishes. 

[Desty]

Did you figure it out?

I have the same problem.

[Desty]

Is there a way to prevent the optimization from happening ?

[dks]

Thanks for your question . The brief answer is no. There is no way to prevent optimization by the pods. This is a case of the pods knowing more than us and doing better.