Home Hub 4 connected by Ethernet cable always displays weak signal. Modem is very close to the computer.

Restart and disconnecting power has no effect.
I am 5 miles from the BT exchange so have always had a poor download speed.

What is the likely cause of the weak signal - not very often the signal displays good.

Can you hear any noise or crackles on the phone? That certainly won't help.

Do you have any extension phones? If so do they have filters fitted on any that are in use? An unfiltered phone or Sky box for example won't do the ADSL signal any favours. And it is possible for the filters to go dodgy so always worth swapping them around if possible to see if that has any effect.

If you do have extensions another trick is to remove any wires attached to terminals 3 and 4 on the back of the sockets and also at the master socket removable lower section (assuming you have an NTE 5 type master). These wires are not really needed and can act as "aerials" for interference which can get on the line pair and affect the ADSL performance.

If you do have extensions and an NTE5 type master then one way to check if the extensions are affecting the ADSL signal is to remove the lower half of the faceplate on the master and plug your modem directly into the test socket that is revealed. This connects direct to the line and the extensions are isolated so any performance issues on the test socket are down to the line.

And of course if you see an improvement in performance on the test socket then that can indicate your extension wiring may be affecting things. Damage to the cable as well as anything wired to terminals 3 and 4 can have an effect. So if you do determine the extensions are causing problems check the state of the cable run as much as you possibly can to check for any signs of damage.

ADSL V10 connection Box Led to believe filters not necessary. Installed by BT


No noise whatsoever on phone.
One BT Phone line -Speedtouch ASDL filter attached -replaced with a brand new unused filter- no improvement.

Sky Box on line - same filter.

BT speed test Connection speed 2.49
Download test 2.17 Upload 0.74
Test says good for both
Cable length from BT box to Home Hub 4 - 10 metre.
In view of distance top quality cable installed.
Signal strength is measured by showing 5 bars.
Normally on bar 2 - poor
now on bar 3 three showing good
Varies regularly between poor and good.
BT Health check for signal quality identifies poor signal.
The connection from home hub is Ethernet cable -cat 5
Thanks for help

If the master socket has a filtered faceplate fitted then you won't need any filters. So if it looks like this

http://www.plus.net/images/support/b...cket_type1.png

You have a filtered faceplate. If it's just got a single phone socket on it then it's not filtered.

It also means that the HomeHub must be connected to the router socket on the master phone socket. Unless the BT guy connected any extension to the unfiltered terminals on the back of the faceplate, the phone socket on the faceplate plus the extensions will have the ADSL signal removed by the faceplate.

One thing to try is to plug the HomeHub in via a short lead direct to the master phone socket. That will eliminate the extension cable you are using. If that gives a better performance then replace the extension cable you put in for the HomeHub with a CAT5 ethernet lead and use that to connect your PC.

I'm not familiar with the home hub, but I am confused here. What signal strength are you measuring? If it's the WiFi strength on your laptop then what is connected to the home hub via Ethernet cable?

If you have the laptop connected via Ethernet then the WiFi signal is irrelevant, the laptop should be using the cable.

No laptop.
The Ethernet cable is connected from the home hub to my desk top computer.
No Wi-Fi connection.
The signal strength I refer to is shown on my computer-as mentioned - 5 bar !!!!! which always shows !! or !!! bars.
BT Help Health check shows weak signal.

Sorry for any confusion.

I'm confused also. Is there a special programme that you are using to measure the signal,
because on my windows 7 pc there is nothing that measures signal strength of the incoming LAN connection.

I am even more confused.
No special programme.
The computer is a Dell-bottom right hand corner of the screen is a logo for action centre, speaker sound and the !!!!! graph for the quality of the signal strength. Placing the mouse over the graph identifies the logo for the BTHub4-Q7PG.

Doing a PC health check opening the box for the Wireless Signal Strength states
"the wireless signal strength is poor. Consider moving closer to the hub".
Also
Change your wireless channel if you experience intermittent drops in your wireless connection.
Changing channel makes no difference.
At present I have no wi fi equipment but am considering having a Samsung Wifi smart tv and wireless keyboard which will be located in the kitchen 20 feet away from the modem.

You must have a WiFi adapter in your PC. Otherwise that indicator would not be there and there would be no mention of WiFi in the PC Health check.

There is no way for the PC to display any information about the ADSL connection without something interrogating the HomeHub to obtain this data.

What you have described sounds very much like the bog standard Windows WiFi signal indicator. The fact that it also mentions WiFi in the PC Health check reinforces this.

So what you are seeing is nothing to do with the state of the ADSL signal. It is the WiFi signal being received by your computer.

I would bet a guaranteed lottery jackpot wining ticket that if you look on the back of the HomeHub there is a label on the back giving the WiFi SSID name and that says BTHub4-Q7PG

I agree with chrisjr, it seems like your pc is connecting by default to the wi-fi adapter which could be inbuilt in your pc.
To check, open up 'network and sharing centre' & click on 'local area connection'. Then click on the 'properties' tab of the box that pops up and see what it says in the 'connect using' line at the top. It should say, (company model No) followed by PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller.

Thanks for all the help.

Will get colleague to try and identify points raised. Nothing appears as suggested.
As far as I am aware the only wireless connection facilities I have on this two year old computer is a dell wireless mouse and keyboard.

Prior to installation of Home Hub 4 I had HH 2 version.
Same signal !!!!! was shown then.

The good news is I have installed a Smart 32inch Samsung in
kitchen - connected by Ethernet cable 6 - works perfectly. Took 40 minutes to download software update.

Also installed a Samsung Wireless mouse - works perfectly.
These additions show on the network .

The signal strength !! is currently displayed. No change with that.

I will return to answer the points raised when colleague
assists.

Thanks. The lottery ticket was a winner.

NJ

What model of Dell is it? I can't think of any other reason for the signal strength indicator than it's got a WiFi card in it. If it is a PCI slot device then it may need an external aerial which might not be fitted, hence to poor signal reading.

I wonder if the fact you have a wireless mouse/keyboard is significant. Could the same dongle/adapter that serves those also act as a WiFi adapter?

One way to see if the indicator on the PC is WiFi would be to dive into the set-up of the HomeHub and turn WiFi off. If the signal indicator drops to zero then that tells you it's WiFi. And if your connection to the interweb vanishes at the same time then that tells you you were using it and the cable is a placebo!

Dell Studio XPS 7100 64bit 4gb
AMD Phenom 6X1055T Processor 2.80ghz

Looking at the specs it seems that model has an Atheros Wireless 1525 WLAN Mini Card installed. I suspect that is your problem as it seems it is connecting to your BT hub by that.
Quite easy to rectify, go into device manager & under 'network adapters' click on that adapter and disable it. Then reboot your pc and see if you are told there is a new network found (Broadcom BCM57788). If so then connect using that.
That connection is the wired ethernet one

Looks like that PC can have WiFi built in. The specs in the manual I've read from the Dell website suggest it has an optional WiFi?Bluetooth module. As you say you've got a wireless keyboard and muse chances are it's been fitted with the WiFi/Bluetooth module.

So in that case chances are what you are seeing on the taskbar is simply WiFi signal strength. So nothing to do with the quality of your ADSL connection. It would only be a factor if you were using WiFi to connect to the HomeHub instead of the cable connection.

There shouldn't be any need to go that far.

In Network Sharing Center you can see what connections are established. Quite likely there are two connections, WiFi and wired. You can disable the WiFi connection from there with no need to go into Device Manager or re-boot.

There is a link in Network Sharing to Manage Wireless Networks. You just go in there and delete the WiFi connection. Provided you don't then re-configure the connection Windows won't bother auto-connecting via WiFi again. And as long as the cable connection is showing you don't lose any connection to the hub.

In his other post though he states:- Placing the mouse over the graph identifies the logo for the BTHub4-Q7PG.
That would imply that it is connected to the internet by wi fi

Windows does not connect to 2 different networks at the same time(wired & wireless), If you disable one it will only ask to connect to another network when you reboot

I have connected my laptop to my router via cable and had the WiFi active at the same time. Turned off WiFi and it has used the cable connection.

Turn WiFi back on unplug the cable and it has gone back to WiFi. All without re-booting or needing to go anywhere near Device Manager.

Your router may have the option for that, the home hub doesn't

Cannot detect or see any mention of inbuilt hi fi facility in this computer but will await opinion of my knowledgeable friend
and once known will add his findings. He also has a Dell computer-see if he has the same "signal meter" on his computer.
Once again thanks to all.

What do you mean by "weak signal" and which "signal": DSL, Ethernet, WiFi? And how are you measuring this weal signal.

There is a meter on the task bar - showing !!!!!
This signifies the signal strength.
More often shows !! and very rarely !!! never !!!! or !!!!!
Now showing !!! - good according to the pop up that tells me I am currently connected to the internet with BT HUB4-Q7P9

Connection Home Hub to computer - Ethernet 5 provided by BT.
11.42 entry be me on 13/9 shows the reading when I do a check with BT help.

I am still confused - is the problem because I live such a distance away from the exchange ? Entry 12.09 13/9 shows my BT speedtest details.
May be resolved in Dec - optic link may be introduced in this part of Runcorn.

Further to the above as soon as the computer has booted up this meter scale - a speaker sign and an Action centre flag appears. All three at once. If there is no broadband connection the meter scale is not present.
No wireless connection so I presumed the signal strength was always determined by the poor download speed provided by BT and picked up by the Hub.

Am I going down the wrong road with this presumption ?

You have WiFi enabled on your PC. That is what the signal bar is indicating. I cannot see any reason why it would be there otherwise.

When you set up the PC and were connecting to the HomeHub did you have to enter a security password? If you did (and it matches the one on the label on the back of the HomeHub) then you are using WiFi. A cabled connection to the hub would not need any password.

Whether or not the WiFi is the active connection or not is another matter. A very simple way to check would be to shut down the PC, unplug the cable (either or both ends) then boot the PC back up. If you have an internet connection still then it's using WiFi.

If it is using WiFi then you can tell it to ignore the WiFi and only use the cable connection. Using a cable may not have much if any effect on your connection speed as it sounds like your internet speed is way lower than WiFi speeds anyway. But it can be more reliable and as you are unlikely to be lugging the PC round the room all the time WiFi is probably unnecessary.