BT home hub is it any good?

crispeater

just wondering what peoples opinions are on this. i currently have a laptop on bt broadband so im limited to sitting on the sofa (shame). anyway i was going to buy a pc after xmas and get the home hub as its wireless (isnt it)?

whats everyones opinion on it

thank you

Browntoa

plus

works fine, wireless with no problems

minus

then again..first hub died after 13 days, new one turned up yesterday which I have yet to install...will keep you posted. Colleague at work is on his 3rd !!!

Browntoa

update, just got the NEW hub out the box, online on it now

IT WON'T LET ME IN THE ADVANCED SETTINGS EVEN THOUGH I'VE NOT CHANGED THE PASSWORD FROM DEFAULT !!!

Lorian

The BT home hub is a badge engineered Thomson/inventel router with a broadcom chipset. Basically it's a speedtouch 7G.

The technology is good, only it's locked to BT, for the moment at least.

The BT firmware stops you changing ISP. I'm sure it'll get cracked one day, expecially as it almost certainly runs on OpenSource firmware (linux).

So if you plan to use BT as your ISP forever, then it's OK.

Don't pay over the odds, Last time I looked they were going for <£30 on Ebay.

crispeater

i've been with BT for well over 5 years and never had a problem. my friend has the home hub and uses the phone too ? only problem is the poxy thing keeps cutting out lol

how you getting on with your new hub now browntoa??

danbilling

I'll let you know. Mine should arrive by next monday. Can't be any worse than Talk Talk?

Browntoa

right, worked out that the new one does not like internet Explrorer 7 (although my old one did )

I had another play last night can get old windows 98 pc logged on and working (after a while...at first I could not connect to the internet !! ) using a Bt branded USB wirless adapter

then tried the Main XP pc which has a Belkin USB wireless adapter but it refuses to connect properly , getting limited connectivity or no connection at all as it cannot seem to acquire an IP address (although it works straight away with my old BT Voyager router/modem !!). On the old hub this worked fine although I used to get the limited connectivity problem. before it died

so I'm back with the old voyager hub again as it's less grief and works fine, all I'm missing is the broadband talk option via the hub.

ps ..you only need to install all the btbroadband software if you are connecting via USB, otherwise leave it alone as it takes over your PC !!!!!!

Browntoa

oh...and I'll keep playing and keep you updated !!

just found new drivers for the Belkin adapter

http://web.belkin.com/support/download/downloaddetails.asp?download=1968&lang=1

trying that now

m4rky

I have had my Home Hub for a few months now and its currently working fine.

I had a few teething problems where the wireless kept cutting out and the Home Hub needed switching OFF and ON.

But after a search on the web it seems that the BT software that the Home Hub comes with is the problem.

I un-installed all the BT Home Hub software and set it up, by hand, using the standard Windows Networking tools.

Now it works much faster and I have no reliability problems (Touch wood).

I would recommend not using the BT Software. But I did need it initially to find out the details of the Home Hub, IP Address, Wireless settings etc before it can be done manually as the handbook does not have this info.

littleboo

Browntoa wrote:

right, worked out that the new one does not like internet Explrorer 7 (although my old one did )

Home Hubs on firmware version M had a problem with IE7 when it was released, this was fixed in version R which is the current. If you get a replacement hub, I guess it might be at M in which case you'll need to wait for it to update itself to R before using IE7. You see what version you have by clicking on Advanced from the main menu, it's in the purple bar at the bottom.

silverfoxdude

i had problems with the home hub when i first started using it i had it near the tv and electrical sockets but since moving it away from tv ect its been working fine