BT Smart Hub

BLee posted:

Hello, just thought I would let you know (in case you are thinking of moving to the 6) that I have just had my fifth six delivered after the last one died the green death a few days ago.  Unlike posters above, I've never had a problem getting it replaced quickly, just a problem keeping it working (it is good when it does though).  Latest one came with the assurance from India that this is a new improved unit and the old problems should have been solved.  Not had the motivation to set it up yet as the old hub 3 works fine and I'm dreading seeing that green glow again.

I was told the same story about my HH6 coming from new stock but it didn't stop it dying in around a week. I complained this time to executive level complaints in Newcastle and was given a refund without asking. After 6 HH6s I decided that enough was enough and went for a Vigor 2860. Configuring this took around 10 minutes - it's still rock solid and the wireless signal is better than the not-so-smart hub

Lets hope it continues

Oh and by the way I was also told by India that HH6s don't work on copper (wrong!) and that they would send a HH4. I've also been advised that I need to renew my BT contract and their deal includes a HH4! NO THANKS!

My HH6 has been 100% fine since I got it in January. I did have occasional discovery issues over the years with HH3 HH5 and HH6 but switching from a £15 Tenga switch to a Cisco 2960 has completely cured them and it is now rock solid (he says, jinxing himself). Can't think why a switch made such a difference but it definitely has.

Pev, I won't bore you with the details but discovery issues are almost entirely down to the type of network switch used and it's capability. 

I have occasional discovery issues and I have a Cisco 2960 switch which goes straight into a HH5 and the US and NDS go into the 2960. Simon, would an additional switch between the 2960 and the HH5 solve my discovery issues as Pev has done?

Harry posted:

It does beggar any notion of good levels of service but unfortunately it does not beggar belief. Pretty basic stuff, costed to the bone and knocked out by the thousand. If it doesn't work then chuck it and send out another. I had this with HH4. So far so good on the Smart Hub.

Clearly BT don't appear the factor in the 'cost' of pi**ing off so many customers!

Nigel, I can't think it would.. what about your wifi... that is they key component in that discovery chain... do you use a wifi access point into your 2960? Naim have improved IGMP group interoperability, but their implementation  it's not perfect in my opinion.

Ummm...my wifi access point, if I understand you, is my HH5. Can this arrangement be improved to avoid discovery issues? BTW, regarding disabling IGMP snooping, this cannot be done with a BT Home Hub.

Hence separate switch and wifi access point. By using a basic dumb switch like a basic Netgear  you are effectively disabling IGMPsnooping. To disable IGMP snooping on your wifi which might be crucial you will need a separate wifi access point 

I suppose I have unwittingly enabled IGMP snooping (whatever that is) by substituting my Netgear switch with the Cisco 2960. When I asked Naim Customer Support about the discovery issues I occasionally suffered, they recommended a router be inserted between my HH5 and my 2960. Would this router then act as the 'separate wifi access point' you refer to? Please excuse the technical illiteracy - I am still learning.

Just 10 houses down my lane  and 1.3 miles from a fiber to cabinet green box. Quiet line and the Vigor is rock solid. Perhaps the HH6 is designed for the lucky majority with kilotonnes of download speed but I'm glad I'm rid of the thing. Looks nice but useless as far as my experience with it goes.

Hi Nigel, IGMP snooping is a method where by devices listen or snoop on the multicast protocol being sent over specific switch ports to ascertain whether devices connected on a particular switch port need to receive specific addresses or groups of multicast data. If the devices on the port are not subscribing to particular multicast address group then the data is pruned from that port. This is for network loading and efficiency reasons and is usually quite important for wifi, since multicast data is otherwise sent to all clients on a network  like broadcast data. 

UPnP Simple Servive Discovery Protocol uses multicast address of 239.255.255.250, and for discovery to work that address needs to be received by all devices on the network. Now devices participating in the discovery will join that address group or multicast group by using SSDP IGMP discovery messages. A dumb basic switch like a little Netgear ignores this and sends the discovery data to clients whether they want it or not. Devices operating IGMP snooping will only send the discovery data to devices that have requested to to be part of Simple Services Discovery Protocol group ( i.e. Participating with the 239.255.255.250 multicast address). Hopefully you can now see why if something goes wrong with a devices IGMP group request and the snooper that a device will not become discoverable even though it's unicast IP address works fine on the network. The Naim devices and the UPnP media server will be effectively issuing and responding with discovery group messages .

An IGMP querier is simply a method of actively forcing devices to respond if they are part of a multicast group so the data can be more accurately snooped, and so multicast group addressed data like SSDP becomes more responsive .. in other words my Naim app becomes very responsive to all valid devices on the network.

With regard to the advice given to you.. I don't understand it as stated as you definitely don't want to add a router as you suggest.. the network won't work, but you might want to add a wifi access point like a little Apple Airport Express off the 2960 switch, or perhaps you can get your old non BT broadband router simply to act as a wifi access point... perhaps referred to as a wifi bridge?

Nigel, I forgot to say, yes by default the Cisco2960 has IGMP snooping enabled, but works well with all fairly recent Naim firmware as far as I have seen. I suspect it's at the wifi level where discovery data is being pruned... try that alternate access point, hang off the 2960 and you should hopefully  be fine.

You may find in that setup your HH6 is then helping you by acting as a  mcast router sending query messages for you.. I am afraid I don't have a HH6 to hand so can't confirm. Given Mike on this forum has great success with the HH6 and he tells us his Naim app is extremely responsive with no delay of UPnP servers appearing and he doesn't (knowingly) use a querier  I suspect this possibly might be the case.

Simon, thanks for the explanation and advice. In fact I have a HH5 (not HH6) but I am sure the advice is the same.

At the moment my discovery issues are random and infrequent and resolve themselves (by switching devices off and on) so I will not meddle unless things get worse.

Cheers

Nigel,  a while back BT confirmed to me their Home Hubs (up to HH5 at that point)  have IGMP automatically enabled.  Whatever there is no option to enable/disable it in the hub manager.  Prior to HH6 I had a HH5 & it normally did not have a discovery problem, but once in a while it did & my usual solution was to kill the app & start again;  so it might not have been BT but the Naim app that got its knickers in a twist.    So far my HH6 has not been a problem, although last Friday it did get into a Find Rooms problem,  but again I'm pretty convinced it was an app problem.     As a beta tester I've changed apps a lot over the last months & discovery does seem to be a variable;  I'm not convinced Naim have got this feature optimised just yet.

Intersting Mike. Another reason for me to hold fire before I jump to the wrong solution. My discovery problems are exactly as you describe so it might just be app related.

Thanks for the heads up.

nigelb posted:

Simon, thanks for the explanation and advice. In fact I have a HH5 (not HH6) but I am sure the advice is the same.

At the moment my discovery issues are random and infrequent and resolve themselves (by switching devices off and on) so I will not meddle unless things get worse.

Cheers

Good, if you are resolving by switching on and off it's almost certainly discovery IGMP related on your broadband router, possibly with the wifi bridge.. ... if it's infrequent and you don't mind switching on and off occasionally then that is probably best. My suggestion should make it rock solid.. but then I am just fussy. 

I have now no discovery issues what so ever with any beta or production version of the Naim app or with any non Naim discovery application

My BT HH6 has gone thru an abnormal number of power cycles in the last days.  8 hour power failure,  men came & dug a big hole & replaced a Y junction & a 20m section of cable.   A few days later I powered off to change the BT supplied SMPS to my iFi iPower unit.  I then powered off while overseas & back on again when returned.  A few hours later power off to go farming in Somerset & finally powered up late night.  It worked perfectly (just like the old HH5)      It just works as intended so why am I surprised,  I'm not surprised in the slightest TBH but after reading the doom & disasters in this thread I think I owe it to the forum to report what my HH6 has been going through.  

One 'doh' moment in the wee small hours, after HH6 was powered up followed by NAS & NDX,  I ripped some CD's into laptop & uploaded to NAS, this was while playing iRadio on NDX.  Then I tried to open UPnP & nothing happened !!!  No matter what I tried, NDX & NAS would not talk to each other.   So the ol' IT when nothing else wurx fallback,  powered NDX & NAS off & (one at a time) powered first NAS followed by NDX, success !!!    All I can think of is I powered up NDX before NAS had completed its start & network discovery sequence.

Mike, I am sure your experience is as unremarkable as to the millions of other HomeHubs out there... glad its working for you and you can enjoy your tunes.....

I don't doubt what so ever the issues that some have... but either they are very unlucky .. and there has to be a tail on that Gaussian distribution somewhere.. or there are other factors at play

...... methinks .......  'other factors at play'

plugged in lastest home hub  months ago no issues at all

I have had a couple of (non) discovery issues recently but before the usual switching off and on frenzy, I checked the wifi connection on my iPad. On each discovery issue occasion, I found my iPad had mysteriously connected to my Printer's wifi which has no Ethernet connection to my network. As soon as I reassigned the iPads wifi connection to the HH5, hey presto.

What Mike might call a d'oh moment. It indeed is possible that some of the issues that are assumed to lie with BT HHs, might not. I also suspect some are indeed the fault of the good old HH (that is HomeHub and not our esteemed forumite of course!)

I'm so pleased I went for a Draytek Vigor2860 after 6 failed HH6s. Rock solid from the outset and no discovery issues. Where's that proverbial touching wood? Even the wireless performance beats the HH6.