Renew with PlusNet Unlimited Fibre Extra or move to...?

matelodave

Interestingly this appeared on the BBC website this very day and describes the problems that I mentioned above - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56949262

[Deleted User]

matelodave said:

Interestingly this appeared on the BBC website this very day and describes the problems that I mentioned above - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56949262

That's a pretty poor show from BT, sounds like they haven't bridged the 2 Wi-Fi network interfaces properly before routing to the WAN.

Another reason to buy a properly configurable, supported and maintained 3rd party router and ditch all the crap that ISP's send out for free. 

matelodave

People have been whinging about it on the BT Forum ever since the Smart Hub 2 was introduced but of course BT weren't going to do too much about it until it eventually reached the newspapers/BBC and now its going to get sorted out.
The first complaint I saw was December 2018, nearly two and ahalf years ago.

southsidergs

The BT issue just now is seeming to only affect sonos and/or apple devices so hardly the massive issue that it is being made out. FWIW i've had a smarthub 2 since they first released it for testing & never had ant issues so far

matelodave

southsidergs said:

The BT issue just now is seeming to only affect sonos and/or apple devices so hardly the massive issue that it is being made out. FWIW i've had a smarthub 2 since they first released it for testing & never had ant issues so far

Well I have and so has my Bro and niether of us have Sonos or Apple devices, even the Sky Q box has a problem

southsidergs

matelodave said:

southsidergs said:

The BT issue just now is seeming to only affect sonos and/or apple devices so hardly the massive issue that it is being made out. FWIW i've had a smarthub 2 since they first released it for testing & never had ant issues so far

Well I have and so has my Bro and niether of us have Sonos or Apple devices, even the Sky Q box has a problem

Well I haven't & neither has anyone else I know so doesn't seem too widespread an issue

[Deleted User]

southsidergs said:

matelodave said:

southsidergs said:

The BT issue just now is seeming to only affect sonos and/or apple devices so hardly the massive issue that it is being made out. FWIW i've had a smarthub 2 since they first released it for testing & never had ant issues so far

Well I have and so has my Bro and niether of us have Sonos or Apple devices, even the Sky Q box has a problem

Well I haven't & neither has anyone else I know so doesn't seem too widespread an issue

Nobody has said it is a widespread issue but it is definitely affecting specific a use case where people require devices on the 5Ghz network to directly communicate with devices on the 2.4Ghz network.

Many users with simple requirements just need internet access for devices are not affected, but people with more sophisticated home networks utilising smart solutions such as Sonos are broken and left with hundreds or thousands of pounds of equipment that won't work and nothing they can do about it so it is a massive issue to those affected by it.

Whilst it is the Sonos users making the noise and raising the issue, countless other users will have problems that may be affecting critical home smart devices the talk directly to other devices on the network like Sky Q, smart home devices like bulbs / heating / doorbells / cctv etc.

The real problems lie in the fact that:

• BT push the firmware updates out without giving the user any control of when or the option to manually roll back the firmware to a previous version if they do have a problem. These users are now at the mercy of BT pressing a button to update their hub to fix it at some point over the next few weeks.
• This connection issue shows a total lack of testing of the new firmware and dubious coding when a very basic network function - ie two wifi interfaces being bridged - doesn't work - this feature is decades old and should not be broken.
• BT have told users to switch off 5Ghz wifi as a workaround which is ridiculous and could severely limit the usability of their network.
• BT lock down the Smart Hub 2 so users have very little control over it and can't configure how they want - for example splitting the SSIDs for the two wifi networks cannot be done!
• BT have access the to Smart Hub 2 remotely and can see what devices you have connected, tamper with the settings
• The Smart Hub 2 has a widely reported upstream throttling bug that still isn't fixed

fifthofwhisky

matelodave said:

fifthofwhisky said:

matelodave said:

BT's FTTP (and I guess other ISP who uses Openreach) is presented as a Gigbit ethernet port at the output of the Optical Network Terminal so I suspect that any router or wif router could be connected (not tried it myself) as I'm quite happy with the BT Smart Hub which I prefer to their later Smart Hub 2.

Thanks, I also heard the earlier Smart Hub is the better product.

not sure its a better product but it does have the advantage that you can set up separate 2.4 and 5 ghz wifi ssid's which you cant do with the Smart hub 2.

I've got a couple of items that have a problem deciding which one to use and and so keep disconnecting whereas the older SmartHub is rock solid with everything.

It's also got sufficient range (even with 5ghz) to give wifi out into our garden and even into the caravan which is parked on the drive. It laso works to a 2.4ghz wifi surveillance camera in the shed.

Sitting in my lounge on 5ghz I'm presently getting 76down, 20 up with a ping of 8ms (we have FTTP) however it drops to around 46mbits down and 10 up with a ping of 25ms at 2.4ghz.
If I use wifi analyser I can see around 8 networks at 2.4 which are nearly the same level as mine whereas my 5ghz channel is around 35db higher than anyone elses

Can you adjust the power for each band's transceiver (to affect signal coverage, power use, etc.) with the Smart Hub?

matelodave

not as far as I know.Although the Smart Hub does what I want it to, it's nowhere near as flexible or feature rich as a decent non-ISP provided one.
BT have limited it's functions (assuming that it had any in the first place) to suit your average broadband customer who just want to turn it on and go so if you want a bit of flexibility or are a bit of a tweaker then avoid it.

fifthofwhisky

matelodave said:

not as far as I know.Although the Smart Hub does what I want it to, it's nowhere near as flexible or feature rich as a decent non-ISP provided one.
BT have limited it's functions (assuming that it had any in the first place) to suit your average broadband customer who just want to turn it on and go so if you want a bit of flexibility or are a bit of a tweaker then avoid it.

I'm using an Asus router at the moment with custom firmware and got used to the tweaks.