BT Hub 5 and IP address changing

Bob, there is no issue at all replacing your BT HomeHub if you now what you are doing.

But be cautious if you use a high speed connection or you are 2km or more from the exchange, this is where the ADSL protocol starts to work hard and the issues can arise.

With BT, prior to 21CN with the older DSLAM based technology the overall ADSL speeds were slower ands overall reliability less in many conditions  but interoperability was greater. When they began migrating to 21CN about 2 years ago which most of the UK (although not all) is at now the DSLAMs were replaced MSANs and in turn these provide a multi service platform using higher speed more reliable ADSL protocols (amongst other things). This has meant many vendors such as Cisco and Netgear (two I am personally aware of ) having to optimise their firmware to work with the latest spec ADSL protocols used on the BT network.

Now unfortunately sometimes the limitations have been at the hardware codec level of the modem router and so can't fully take advantage of the newer speeds/reliability - whilst others have been able to be fully software upgraded.

I have come across many Netgear devices for example that struggle on 21CN where long lines are concerned. (Over 2km). You can ask BT to rate limit your ADSL connection line to very slow speeds for increased reliability  - and for some apps like cash machines and the like that is fine - but for consumers it is probably not acceptable

The latest HomeHubs (significantly improved over the earlier models) will be optimised to work over the widest range of conditions on the BT network - but if you are confident your alternate vendor is suitably optimised or perhaps even better optimised you can swap out the Broadband modem router as appropriate - but at your own risk in terms of support - hence why I say you need to know what you are doing.

PS I believe BSkyB also use their own ADSL optimisations specific to their network as well - and this has been introduced recently.

Simon

Thanks Garyl, Jude for your helpful comments

Simon thanks again for your support - very helpful although, as I am sure you have realised, I am not tech savy and definitely not someone "who knows what he is doing"  with the intricacies of network connections and devices. I am quite close to the exchange but in a small rural town without high speed broadband

I will try again to get some joy from BT and persevere to get beyond the overseas call centres to a home-based engineer and try and get a replacement HH from the latest generation.  If BT won't replace the HH I am tempted to try a new modem router (perhaps the Assus DSL-N55U N600 dual band modem router). If I get any broadband problems I can always switch back the HH before phoning BT.  

These problems have also convinced me not to go anywhere near streaming for the time being so I will stick with the Naim Dac fed by Mac Mini and CD transport and perhaps upgrade the XPS to a 555ps eventually.

Bob,  I had a number of years of nuisance drop outs with BT HH2.  Sometimes it was OK for weeks,  other times number of times per day.   I guess I have been thru about 5 replacment units in about 3 years.  

The last episode ended up with me cancelling my BT contract, in an effort to save this the call centre peeps hooked me up with the call centre technical people who carried out a lot of line & other testing that the normal call centre front desks don't do.  They for sure were helpful & agreed to send an engineer who confirmed the suspected wiring to the exchange was OK & that the in house stuff was good.  

Once the line testing was done the engineer said the first thing he would do is swap the HH2 for a HH3,  I said to him that I had read bad things on www about HH2,  to which he replied he couldn't possibly comment but he doubted very much that he will be back.   Since then  zero drop outs since 4 months.

Its a pity BT don't apply that kind of diagnosis to all repeat problem cases.  Also a pity they do not admit the HH2 is a crock of pooh & swap them out for a later model without the grief I went thru.

Mike

A very similar experience to mine - we were fine for a year or two but as the number of phones,tablets, apple tv, sonos etc were connected the more the drop outs came.  It often seems to be triggered by the introduction of a new Apple laptop - first my wife's Macbook Air and then my daughter came home for Christmas bringing her Macbook Pro.  When I look at the connections on the Fring app it is interesting to see which devices are not connected.

Bob 

Bob, don't be put off from streaming - you don't actually need an internet connection to stream at home - streaming can be as simple as an alternate CD transport. I guess one thing is that streaming can expose other problems elsewhere in your home network setup - which I am sure most people don't really think about and take for granted.

Its bit like mains quality - most people don't give two figs - as long as the lights come on - but as soon as you use something that exposes shortcomings in the mains like quality audio gear - then these deficiencies matter.

Simon

Looking around bts own forums the general consensus is using your won router is fine assuming it does pppoe connections, which in my experience every dsl one has. So my advice remains, ditch the bts router and get a decent one, (assuming you have the separate bt modem) you will be glad you did.

Gary - PPPoverEthernet is the link layer framing - and again is a higher level as this is digital data .  BTW most  DSL MSANs and DSLAMs I come across initiate links using ATM encapsulation as it has slightly less overhead and more optimum frame sizes than Ethernet for this application - so you would need to have PPPoverATM and PPPoverEthernet would fail if that was all you supported. Remember it is not so much the router part we are interested in for  for optimum DSL interoperability/reliability,  it is the NTE physical layer - that is the modem part, just like back in the days of telephone dialup....

Simon

Simon, I am certain on a higher level, up there where clever people understand what you are on about, this all means something.

Here, back on earth, in my experience, and many others is the free supplied router is usually a piece of crap and replacing it with something better is always a good thing.

Sorry, I do not understand three quarters of the letters you put in your posts what I do know is that using the best routers is essential in getting the best from your home connection, this is not supplied FOC from your ISP. Infact throughout my experience from straight ADSL through to cable broadband, the latest router available on line always knocks the arse out of what the ISP supplies, frankly google agrees with me.

My advice remains, to anyone who has spent thousands on naim equipment or other, do not hobble your home network with a crap router supplied form your ISP.

Gary no worries - if you have a good broadband speed and reliability then all is fine.. if not then you need to consider the points I raise - or go with the current ISP provided broadband router and let them resolve any technical difficulties no matter how frustrating the process may be.

The abbreviations I raise are the fundamental protocols your device uses over the ADSL link. If you don't really understand these you are in the lap of the gods if things don't quite work out as you intend if you go off-piste.

Simon

Well I spoke again to BT on Monday and got a very helpful lady in the offshore team who eventually offered to upgrade my HH2 to a HH4 (no chance of HH5/Infinity as we are in rural area with no fibre optics).  The HH4 came today and is now working well - time will tell but I'm hoping my previously mentioned problems are behind me now.  Thanks again for all the helpful comments

Bob 

Shropshire, in the setup utility for Apple Airport products, there is an option to disable the router function.  This is how this type of setup is accomplished.  The Airport is put into "Bridge mode" which turns off its router functions so as to avoid the problem you mentioned.

I've been doing this for a while with Apple products, but yesterday splurged and ordered a new top of the line Linksys/Cisco EA6900 and its companion range extender.  Linksys has a good return policy, so if I don't like it better than what I have now I'll return them.

Hi Bart -

Splurge?  More likely a wise investment!  I'll be interested to hear how the new router and range extender work out for you. I've used the E4200 for a couple of years, and it has been rock-solid. On paper, the new EA6900 looks like quite a nice upgrade!

ATB.

Hook

PS - I read recently that Cisco sold LinkSys to Belkin. This will probably be a better fit, as both are consumer-oriented, whereas Cisco has always been focused on corporate sales.

 I might just mention the final (I hope its final) outcome to my HH2 grief

After the Call Centre engineering people said they will send an engineer & he found the 5-10 month old HH2 was the problem & he swapped it for a HH3 - I got the bill on Monday !!!

Needless to say I was straight on the phone & yet again the crap customer service kicked in & it took until yesterday for them to find the records & admit it was they who called the engineer & the charge was withdrawn - it was wrapped up with the excuse that the engineer did not follow procedures.   

It seems irrespective of the age or model of the Home Hub,  its guarantee only runs for 1 year from the date of the 1st install contract,  after that its your property & responsibility

Very hard to find that in the small print,  but it is there, just.

Its just a shame the UK's "national" phone service can't do better on the customer SERVICE side. 

Gary, just a quick note - I think I might have mis understood what you were saying earlier - specifically I thought you were referring to  PPPoE over the DSL link - where as I suspect on reflection you were referring to using PPPoE on the ethernet link between the router and the NTE/DSL modem - so you can do all the layer 3 stuff on your main router. In which case this is clearly perfect assuming your router suoorts PPPoE as you rightly say and  you can adjust the MTU sizes on the router and the ethernet link carrying the PPP has no issue with headroom if you are connecting ultimately to a DSL link via the NTE/modem.

Simon

Glad it's sorted.  I am awaiting with bated breath as to whether BT will provide me with a modem rather than their combined router and modem when I upgrade to Infinity.  I am sure folks know,  but there is a detailed list of exchanges that to be switched over between now and June 2014 on the Openreach site.

Jude 

Actually its a myth that the consumer guarantees expires after a year. If it breaks and the equipment is at fault - and you can demonstrate its at fault and you did not damage it - quite easy for a broadband router then the guarantee is potentially considerably longer. Its about the goods being fit for purpose.

Simon

Agree with this.  Renewed by BT broadband contract yesterday and was told as long I use a BT modem and was in contract, then the modem would be replaced without an issue. 

Hi Simon, yea I think thats what I meant! At least in my experience as long as you have a proper 'modem' connected to WAN, then you just want a good router off of this. For instance the Asus RTN66u or AC68U etc. Which all support the connection type, i.e. plug it in and you get internet.

As I say, virgin out and out support this with modem only mode for their free supplied superhub, so you can hook your own router on.

The only caveat I am aware of is they will kind of blag out of helping when things go wrong by blaming the router before the modem.

Simon,  you might well be right, in law.  But unlike yourself,  as a mere member of the public we have to face the formidable BT bill complaints dept & rest assured they do an exception job of saying NO

The BT www statement says you may be able to get a free replacement if you renew or extend your broadband contract.  When I pointed out to them that my contract had been extended they said it could be only done with an option upgrade & fell back to the original contract start date 12 month period for equipment guarantee.  

The way they handle these cases seems to me to be an in-house policy & not strictly to the T&C where I cannot find terms specific to HH , 

I got the impression that if they worked as they do it would take a brave soul to take it further – i.e. they win most disputes thru simple belligerence. 

Apologies if I am diverting the thread slightly but have a similar issue which I wonder if any of the more technical forumites could possibly help with?

I have moved from Virgin Media BB to BT Infinity when we moved address and have a BT Hub 5. 

Under my old system, I think my NAS must have had a fixed IP address of 192.168.0.4 but the BT Hub is allocating addresses in the 192.168.1.xxx range so cant address my NAS. I have a Mac and can see the drive listed but cant access it.

Any ideas of how I can get the BT Hub to use the .0 addresses or preferably get to the NAS to instruct it to use DHCP? Its a ReadyNas Duo v1. I dont have the VM router anymore

Thanks,

Wayne 

You can just get the new router to give the NAS a new fixed address, by entering the address you want for the mac number for the NAS. Not sure how you do it in the bt hub, but that's what you need to do.

Hungryhalibuts suggestion wont help at all if you had a fixed IP, as this is set on the nas.

What kind of nas is it? For instance QNAP has a little app you can download that 'finds' the nas regardless of the IP address. so to does netgear, pretty much exactly for these scenarios.

Mike - thanks - not sure what I am if not also a mere member of the public also... but to your point of needing to sometimes challenge a retailer on the 12 month guarantee thing - unfortunately you do need to stand your ground - and ultimately I guess the small claim court is where it could theoretically end if you could be bothered - but I'd be surprised if it ever gets that far for an established retailer  if they want your repeat business and it looks highly probable that it is equipment failure.

Apparently in UK law the key legal time is 6 months after purchase- at this point the onus switches from the retailer to the consumer to demonstrate the the fault is caused by the goods themselves and not the consumer.

But in truth its worked for me both ways within 2 years - and the one time it didn't I discovered a failure to a MacBook Air had been caused by liquid ingress (still have no idea how it happened  - but the evidence was clear) and so that became an insurance job.

Simon

When I fixed my IP address for the NAS, it was done via the router, hence the assumption that you'd change it via the router. 

You reserved an IP from your router, you fix IP's from the devices themselves.