BT Home router - can only connect phone OR laptop?

motorguy

Ok heres the position.

We've a BT wireless router thats been fine for a number of years. Theres hard wired connections from both a chromecast and our sky box.

Also, i connect my phone (HTC M8), laptops and tablet with no issues. Any combination, any of the time.

My wife has a Ipad and it connects fine.

BUT, my son can connect either his laptop OR his HTC M8. If his laptop is on, the phone wont connect. If his laptop is off and the phone is connected, and the laptop is switched on, the phone drops its wireless connection and cant reconnect.

Just those two devices.

No error messages.

Anyone any thoughts? Is there a possibility of duplicate IP addresses? And if so, how would i check and correct this?

bod1467

Which BT router do you have? (I recall reading that some early ones had firmware which restricted the number of wifi connections).

PS ... I very much doubt your Chromecast has a hard wired connection. It is a wifi device only as far as I remember.

Strider590

The BT homehub comes with a standard limitation of 6 IP addresses (at least the HH 1, 2 and 3 did). If you've exceeded this number of devices, then you need to extended the DHCP range (which may or may not work depending on the router version).

My advice would be to dump the homehub completely and get yourself a better, mores secure router.

motorguy

Strider590 wrote: »

The BT homehub comes with a standard limitation of 6 IP addresses (at least the HH 1, 2 and 3 did). If you've exceeded this number of devices, then you need to extended the DHCP range (which may or may not work depending on the router version).

My advice would be to dump the homehub completely and get yourself a better, mores secure router.

Cheers

Will check out options around doing that. I thought that you "had" to use the homehub as you didnt otherwise have the username and password

motorguy

bod1467 wrote: »

Which BT router do you have? (I recall reading that some early ones had firmware which restricted the number of wifi connections).

PS ... I very much doubt your Chromecast has a hard wired connection. It is a wifi device only as far as I remember.

Apologies, you're right RE: chromecast. My mistake.

bod1467

HH4 has no problems with multiple wifi devices. I can't comment on earlier Homehubs.

Strider590

bod1467 wrote: »

HH4 has no problems with multiple wifi devices. I can't comment on earlier Homehubs.

It's not a WiFi problem, it's a restriction on how many devices can connect to the hub at any one time.

If it's got a DHCP pool from 192.168.0.12 to 192.168.0.18, you can only connect 6 devices at a time, wireless or ethernet. Some versions of the BTHH won't allow you to change the DHCP range.

motorguy

Turns out ours is a HH3.

Have ordered a HH5. Will see how that goes.

tronator

Strider590 wrote: »

If it's got a DHCP pool from 192.168.0.12 to 192.168.0.18, you can only connect 6 devices at a time, wireless or ethernet.

Wouldn't that be 7 devices though?

What if you give some devices a static IP address? Wouldn't that free up some of the precious IP addresses in the DHCP range?

AJXX

As far as I know I've had a HH3, HH4 and currently HH5 and none of these have limited the DHCP scope to 6 or 7 devices - unless OP has manually gone in and done this.

Our current HH5 has over 40 devices connected (we also run a business from home and also have a server setup running VM's with their own dedicated IP's from the HH).

Admittedly we have the HH5 set to use the 179 IP address range to give us more addresses, but no issues.

motorguy

Got the new HH5 set up and whilst its definitely a better unit and we've got rid of xbox and chromecast dropping connection problems that we had (though minor), the issue remained with the laptop connecting.

Sat down today to check connections to the hub, IP addresses being allocated, etc.

And what we distilled it down to was if the laptop was off but connected to the mains, NO connections could be made via the TP-Link Powerline wireless boosters across the upstairs of the house (4 of them) by ANY device.

It transpires that if the laptop is charging, the mains adapter seems to be disrupting the powerline adapters ability to use the mains wiring as a network connection.

If the charger is not connected to the laptop all works fine.

Its a cheapie non OEM mains adapter, so i've ordered a new, genuine SONY one for the laptop.