I’ve used Bell’s Giga Hub router since Black Friday 2022, and my internet experience has been unbelievable. That’s the successor to the Home Hub 4000 (the two routers look equal), nonetheless the Giga Hub affords assist for Wi-Fi 6E, which in precept must make it work greater with quite a lot of models, as long as as well as they assist the model new Wi-fi regular.
The Giga Hub was launched alongside Bell’s faster 8Gbps speeds in late 2022, and I’ve been testing it with a 1.5Gbps connection. The signal persistently covers my entire dwelling, and throughout the three months I’ve been using it, I’ve had no complaints. Nonetheless, I latterly tried altering it with a top-of-the-line TP-Hyperlink E2000 (evaluation coming rapidly), and the tactic has been a tech nightmare.
Nonetheless, as compared with its predecessors from Bell, the Giga Hub is the company’s best router however and is trendy ample to make most subscribers joyful.
Sturdy value, notably if you’ll get it with out price
Bell’s latest router is very simple to utilize and organize. Mine was bundled into my plan with out price as long as I return it as soon as I cancel my service. After signing up, a technician confirmed up at my dwelling the next week, put in a fibre line, and I was off to the races.
After he left, I downloaded the Bell Wi-Fi app and set my password and group establish with ease. There won’t be as many superior decisions as I wanted throughout the app, nonetheless organising a group and monitoring who’s on-line is easy, and it’s all most people need. If it is important dive deeper into the superior settings, you probably can always go to the traditional modem administration panel at Bell.ca/mymodem for full entry.
My residence is on the underside floor of an older Toronto dwelling, and the Giga Hub has no factors blanketing my residence with Wi-Fi. I could even use it exterior on my once more porch or throughout the basement, so the one unit ought to offer ample safety for a lot of smaller homes. Bell sells Wi-Fi extenders for $5 month-to-month in case you occur to need further safety. I haven’t examined these, nonetheless the telecom large makes use of a model from Plume that helps most speeds of 1Gbps by the use of ethernet jacks and slower speeds over Wi-Fi.
I haven’t tried the Wi-Fi extender out, nonetheless I’d depend on that whereas they improve your Wi-Fi fluctuate, your velocity will attainable decrease barely everytime you’re linked to a Plume pod as a substitute of the first router. Learning about them on-line, of us have mixed opinions. Nonetheless, for a lot of, I’d advocate starting with merely the router, after which in case you occur to need further safety, seek for a cheaper wired entry stage extender sooner than deciding to pay Bell one different $5-$15 month-to-month, counting on how big your non-public house is. Only a few hundred for an entry stage you private might appear to be a significant upfront funding, nonetheless the value of renting pods can snowball over two-three years.
Possibly my favourite issue regarding the Giga Hub is the small present on the doorway. It makes it easy to work along with the router for straightforward points like resetting it or viewing your password. There’s even a toggle on the router to hook up with Bell TV to make that straightforward for people with an IPTV setup.
Are points too easy
I spent method an extreme period of time on a self-imposed tech outing attempting to troubleshoot Wi-Fi
Whereas organising the Giga Hub is easy, I found that almost all days, my speeds averaged out to spherical 400-600Mbps as a substitute of the 1.5Gbps I’m paying for. If I jack in with a Cat6 cable, I can get nearer to my full speeds out of the one 10gbps ethernet port, nonetheless all the alternative jacks are solely 1Gbps. Previous that, the promise of latest Wi-Fi has me in search of to ditch ethernet cables throughout the Wi-Fi 6 expertise.
I’m not complaining on account of one thing over 500mbps is ample for a lot of of my work, web wanting and streaming films. Nonetheless, since I’m paying for larger than twice that velocity, it is perhaps good if the Wi-Fi 6E appropriate router would possibly get barely nearer to the theoretical most, notably since most of my models now assist Wi-Fi 6 a minimal of, which must be able to cope with gigabit Wi-Fi speeds. I do know I’m unlikely to see these, nonetheless even hitting further regularly throughout the 800Mbps-1Gbps fluctuate would actually really feel further like I’m getting my money’s worth from my ISP.
Plus, the speed check out on the Giga Hub (pictured above) reveals that I was getting a attainable 1.6Gbps in from my fibre connection so nothing must stop me from having unbelievable group speeds.
There’s moreover the nerd inside me that wishes to experiment with utterly completely different modems to see how briskly I can get my Wi-Fi connection. To try this, I attempted to mix the TP-Hyperlink E2000 into my setup and demote the Giga Hub to modem obligation. Nonetheless, that’s not virtually as easy as a result of it sounds. When you possibly can plug one different router into the Giga Hub, it obtained’t disable the Wi-Fi properties of the Bell-provided router/modem combo machine.
This suggests upon the first methodology, I had two Wi-Fi networks that I’m pretty sure suffered from a double NAT. This led me down a rabbit hole of various Canadians attempting desperately to find out simple strategies to make use of the Giga Hub as a modem. What initially stumped me was that I believed the Home Hub 4000 and the Giga Hub have been the equivalent gadget. In reality, they seem the equivalent, nonetheless the internal software program program choices quite a lot of variations, so a lot of the further in-depth tutorials that work for the Home Hub 4000 didn’t work with the Giga Hub. As I purchased further invested on this endeavor, I came across that Bell has mostly updated the Giga Hub to be equal to the Home Hub 4000, nonetheless the reality that the two modems look the equivalent nonetheless perform slight variations was ample to throw one different variable, and an entire lot of doubts, into my troubleshooting.
The size of the Giga Hub does allow for a giant and safe channel for the fibre wire to sit down down in.
That said, I found some helpful information on an necessary weblog often known as The IT Nerd, along with DSL Reports and Reddit.
At this stage in my troubleshooting, I’m effectively previous one thing I’d advocate non-techie of us do. So for a lot of, I’d say stick with the Giga Hub. Nonetheless, it purchased me questioning why this was so exhausting. I’d not at all had factors like this with my earlier ISPs (Cogeco and TekSavvy). Nonetheless, one distinction with Bell is that it sells Wi-Fi extension pods, incentivizing it to take care of of us by itself tech.
This realization refilled my resolve with ample hatred for Bell that I was able to dive once more into the individual v. machine troubleshooting battle as quickly as as soon as extra. I be taught by way of miles of debate board posts the place Bell reps tell users to DM them for details and tons of of Reddit threads from of us with completely different producers of routers sooner than I lastly decided to give up and title tech assist.
The choice didn’t go super properly.
All night time time and all day throughout the nook…
The actual individual was able to give me Stage-to-Stage Protocol over Ethernet (PPPoE) credentials nonetheless couldn’t stroll me by way of organising my Giga Hub with a third-party router. Instead, they tried to upsell me on a subscription to Bell’s Tech assist Consultants, which worth $6 month-to-month. It’s a large rip-off, and it’s anti-consumer to cowl full tech assist behind a paywall, so I left this title further irritated than as soon as I started. Nonetheless, with my credentials in hand, I returned to one amongst the first Reddit posts I had tried and tried as soon as extra, solely to fail as quickly as further.
This led me once more to the online, the place I seen that completely different Bell prospects talked about that their PPPoE credentials started with ‘b1.’ So I opened my Bell account in a model new tab and positioned a amount that began with b1 beneath the online half. It was utterly completely different than the username I was merely given by tech assist, nonetheless it labored with the model new password. The model new router appeared to work barely greater. I’m nonetheless not getting over 1gbps by the use of Wi-Fi, nonetheless I’m persistently hitting 700-800 Mbps, so I suppose that’s a win for now.
