BT Home Hub 5 - Santa needed please

Hi,

First place to start is physically connect the devices to the router rather than using the Ethernet over mains devices and check to see whether that works - I see so many users with issues caused by them!

Cheers

Phil

Not much help,  but it's not just you.  Ditched my BT Router as my Linn couldn't connect although the NAS could. 

I have some experience here.... the chinese PSU that's shipped with the HH5 is a total pile of junk! The amount of mains noise it pelts out is horrendous. I see reports all the time from people with homeplug systems that used to work fine until they 'upgraded' to the HH5. Some people have taken the power supply from their old router (assuming it's the same voltage etc...) and then used it on their HH5 and that's sorted the problem. Other things that work are to use a proper mains filter strip (like the Tacima) or using mains passthrough homeplug devices with a filtered mains socket on the front. One guy plugged the psu for the HH5 into a mains strip and then using a big ferrite on the mains lead for the mains strip; that worked.

Mike-B posted:

Nothing wrong with the latest BT hubs,  the 4 & 5 is good.  

The later "B" HH3 was OK,  all before that were a crock of excrement.

Hi Mike,

Have to say that in my experience *NONE* of the BT HomeHubs are particularly good with respect to stability when things get busy ... our HH3 is dire, the HH5 of my dads drops WiFi regularly.

Mike-B posted:

They work well with audio provided you don't use them as a switch - all audio needs a proper switch & the switch be the LAN hub & the BT on a branch off that for app wireless duties.

 

Somewhat sweeping statement and might be taken wrongly so I think this needs to be cleared up...

Not sure how you can say that they work well with audio as long as you don't use them as a switch ... if you have "audio" going through them then they are - by definition - being used as a switch and if you can't use them as a switch then you can't use them for audio.

All the BT HomeHubs that I've come across basically get more unreliable the more traffic flows through them - this is a simple "cause and effect" relationship. Saying "all audio *NEEDS* a proper switch" is (albeit unintentionally) misleading - as though there's something special about audio data being sent via a network rather over any other data that means it cannot be sent through a router and you don't have to spend a fortune on a high-end cutting edge router either ... I have a NetGear EA6300 cable router here (£26 the last time I bought one) that works *BEAUTIFULLY* - autodiscovery works faultlessly, the WiFi is dual band and has decent range / coverage and it doesn't need to be used with a switch to work for audio.

If you find that you have to drop in a switch into your network to bypass your router to get your audio to stream reliably then this is not an indicator that to run audio you must use a switch - it's an indicator that in your network something isn't working right and that's most likely to be a router issue. Adding in a switch does not fix the problem, it only bypasses it but the problem is still there.  

All networks should be stable - to be stable a network has to be built on reliable hardware. I have a couple of "proper" switches here that I could drop into your network and they'd be unreliable for any kind of purpose let alone audio but you'd probably not notice unless you're streaming audio or video through them - this doesn't make them unsuitable for audio or unsuitable for streaming, just unreliable and therefore unsuitable for anything that you need to be reliable.

My experience with HomeHubs has generally been that they are OK for getting a family onto the internet but if you want a reliable network then the only place that they play is - at best - as a gateway to the internet from a decent cable router then BT can support their side of things up to and including their router and then you can support your own network and it's isolated from the HomeHub.

Mike-B posted:

As with all audio,  don't try to stream over wireless, BT are no better or worse ITR.

 

It's always good practice to try to minimise the amount of traffic over a wireless network due to bandwidth limitations and generally the rule of thumb is to hard wire anything that doesn't get moved and keep WiFi for portable devices and control, however, if you have a 'good' WiFi network then there's no problem with streaming over WiFi ... however most people do not have a good wireless network.

People generally don't understand how WiFi works and will often throw in WiFi repeaters (I cringe when I hear the phrase "booster") and additional access points like they are sewing seeds in a field not realising that they will interfere with each other and almost without question end up making things worse.

You can get WiFi to be reliable- you just need to have the right environment and the right kit and understand how that WiFi network is going to be used and how it is going to interact with its surroundings.

Mike-B posted:

The other thing is don't mess with them with fixed IP addresses especially if you go outside their IP licence range.  Set for DHCP & maybe (maybe) with some clients on fixed (static) IP addresses within the BT licence range.   

 

This one makes me shudder...

Having devices with fixed IP addresses on your network is not an issue. This is perfectly normal. Your router itself has a fixed IP address.

What you *MUST* be aware of is that any fixed IP addresses *MUST* be outside of the routers DHCP range but still inside the routers own subnet.

Your router itself has a fixed IP address (usually something like 192.168.0.1) and will then usually have a DHCP range of 192.168.0.2 to 192.168.0.254 so if you want to allocate static IP addresses on devices then you would need to restrict your DHCP range so that the DHCP server doesn't give out the addresses that you have already allocated as static addresses on devices. (I mean, do you really have 253 devices that come and go on your network on a regular basis? You can restrict your DHCP range without causing issues - I tend to have a DHCP pool of about 50 addresses and a lease expiry time of 8 hours.) You should *NEVER* set a static address directly on a device that is in the routers DHCP range.

Once you have a pool of addresses that aren't in your DHCP range then those addresses won't be handed out by the routers DHCP server and so you can allocate them as static IP addresses on devices. Be aware that if you then change your router to one that uses a different subnet then those static devices will no longer be visible from any network device that has had an IP address allocated by the new DHCP server.

If you don't want devices to move around on your network and you're not confident enough to understand static addressing and subnets then you can always *RESERVE* a DHCP address in the routers DHCP table so that the router always gives out the same address to the device and won't give it to anything else. In this case you reserve an address within the DHCP range on the router and leave the network device on DHCP.

Mike-B posted:

Magnum09,  have you checked that its all set for DHCP ????  It needs to be done.

Have you tried a systematic power cycle - turn it all off,  wait 15 minutes - then in the following order - turn on the BT & let it finish its start cycle,  then one at a time,  the powerline adaptors followed by each of the LAN devices.

 

As Solwise Steve has suggested (but from a slightly different perspective) I really think that your first port of call should be to wire everything to your router, check that it all works correctly and then work outwards. You've changed your router and you've changed your Ethernet Over Mains devices and so you have a number of new variables in there.

My recommendation is to get your network to a minimum working system, confirm that it works and then work outwards introducing kit one thing at a time until you start having issues and then you can gauge what is the cause of the problem ... the one thing that you can take from Steve's comment about the HH5 PSU though is that he's suggested that they can be so electrically noisy that they kill Ethernet Over Mains device transmissions but remember that anything else that you plug in can also do the same - do you really want to leave yourself this open to the possibility of something being randomly plugged in and taking down your network?

Cheers

Phil

Magnum09 posted:

Hi, please forgive me posting what to most of you must seem a silly question....

i used to have a netgear router and Devolo plug in powerline adaptors - and this easily allowed me to connect both my server with all music stored and connect to radio stations via the Internet.

The problem?

i recently switched to BT to allow access for BT sport and this meant I've replaced the netgear (which was getting on a bit anyway) with the latest BT HOME HUB 5 and all the related BT plugin powerline adaptors so can enjoy the BT TV sport etc.

sadly....

 

naim uniti no longer connects with either the server or the Internet.

My children enjoy the naim as much as I and I would dearly love to get it connecting through the powerline adaptors and the BT HOME HUB 5 with both my server and the Internet (both of which are linked in to the home hub 5 of course).

I want to keep the BT adaptors as they work so well with the BT HOME HUB 5 etc.

any help you could give Santa in getting this working would be appreciated.

(Sadly, Santa as you can see is not brilliant at technical stuff so please try to keep it simple if at all possible).

Thank you 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have BT home hub 5 with Devolo plugs -

my router is conntected into Devolo plug into the wall - the second plug is connected into switch - then connect Uniti into swtich also - also if you can contect your NAS directly into Uniti via switch, I found with NDX much better quality

i would then re set everything by  switching off router and Uniti - once done -

switch on Router First, wait until it has the blue light at bottom - then switch on Unti - it should get the IP address of router

I use a £20 switch which works, and no drop out

hope this helps

My thanks to everyone for help and advice given so far.

This is my first post (even though I've owned a uniti for some years) and am blown away by the fact so many of you are taking the time to try and help me with this.

Not having the uniti working right now just leaves the home feeling somehow incomplete - I'm sure you'll all understand what I mean by that - I've never had such a wonderful product before and really am missing it.

I've just got back home so will now try tackling this - I feel a bit out of my depth for sure though - but will try and take it a step at a time and will post back in due course.

Thank you once again.

A HUGE THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HELPED SANTA TODAY!!!

I've followed all the advice on this thread and am so excited to be able to say.......my naim uniti now works and connects perfectly with my BT Hub5, internet radio stations and all the tracks from our precious music server files.

I've been without the uniti working for the best part of six weeks as I gave up in the end trying - so right now Santa is in Naim Uniti heaven knowing my chilfren will be as excited as me to hear the beats from our uniti once again.

Thank you so much!