Weird wifi/broadband fault

[valkyrie]

I've got TalkTalk broadband (there wasn't a lot of choice). The TalkTalk wifi isn't suitable for my old and oddly shaped house so the only thing connected to the TalkTalk box is an ethernet cable connection to one of three Deco M5 mesh wifi units. Normally this all works well but occasionally I get a fault I find hard to understand. The Deco units "lose" the broadband connection, their status LEDs turn Red and my wife starts shouting that her connection isn't working. The strange bit is that all this can happen and I can still work away with full internet access on my desktop PC for a period of time. Eventually it usually chucks it too but it's very odd that it still has a connection when all the wifi diagnostics says it ain't so. Only way to get back to normal is to power cycle the TalkTalk box.

I've had a look at the admin menus on the TalkTalk box and there are very few controls to use. Are there any settings I could usefully look to adjust? Or would buying a TP-Link box to replace the TalkTalk box help?

[rusky]

Are you using the deco in access point mode or wireless router mode?

I also find that certain devices can't connect or lose internet access and rebooting the TT router brings it back.

[Kim]

Could be all sorts of things, mostly the router's fault.  For example, it could stop responding to DHCP requests, which would cause clients to lose their connection at different times as their IP leases expire.

[frankly frankie]

Is your desktop PC wired to the Deco, or wifi'd.
I must admit that I do find my Deco mesh setup a bit fragile, compared with my previous old-style TP-link router, because when the WAN goes down (thankyou Virgin) I lose wired access to my LAN as well.  Also the individual units don't have much coverage, three units have to be deployed into some pretty odd places to get a 'tailored' overall coverage that works better than the old router did.

[ian]

My Deco mesh is connected to an older BT Hub (which provides the router, the mesh is in AP mode). It's been rock solid, I've not had to reboot anything since I installed it. Much as I'd love to hate BT, the broadband service has been impeccable. There's been one short outage in the last several years (when someone decided to randomly unplug existing connections in the cabinet).

[Afasoas]

In addition to the other questions, does the TT hub have a status page which shows you the connected clients? If so, might be interesting to see what that looks like things are operating as they should, versus when they are not.

There's probably some logs hidden somewhere about the TT hub user interface and/or in the Deco app/user interface that might yield useful clues.