BT Hub – Rubbish Wifi & Headless Pi 3A+

[Ed P]

I know I should get rid of my rubbish BT HomeHub5 and buy a decent router/wifi, but there are other calls on cash that come first. As a result I was being driven mad by the constant wifi drop-outs by the Hub, which left the Pi hanging with no connections to reboot or troubleshoot.

Although I had searched the web before I had missed the one post that cures BT Wi-Fi problems, just switch off the 5GHz transmitter on the Hub. There is obviously either a firmware or microcode bug that causes a race when both are operational. I switched off 5GHz three days ago and have had zero drop-outs since. (It would normally crash at least every couple of hours, but always at 11pm each night!)

[Dave Rice]

<p style=”text-align: center;”>It may be its attempts at bandwidth steering. 5ghz is over hyped any way. Headline speeds are impossible to achieve without the corresponding hardware at the client end and range is less.</p>
For pubs and clubs I always put in 300N. Everything can understand that. The ISP is always the bottle neck in any case.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

I  noticed on my statement two weeks ago that I was paying Talk Talk £36 a month for broadband+TV which I never watch. I phoned them up last week to see to see if I could get a better deal and spoke to some snooty bint who said the best she could do was to cancel the TV for £29 so I did that.

Yesterday I saw Talk Talk advertising Fiber for new customers for less than I was paying for broadband so I phoned them up In a fit intending to leave.

It didn’t happen like that though because as soon as I questioned whether I was was still under contract I got put through to the customer retention unit.

The upshot is I will soon have Faster Fiber plus TV plus a £50 voucher plus their new router for £22.50 a month.

So on to my real question. Is their new router any good because the one they gave me last time is rubbish.

[Dave Rice]

It’s pretty rubbish. The WiFi is better but I found it still dropped the fibre connection a lot. Replaced it with a draytek (so I could learn how they work) and haven’t looked back since.

I would give it a go before spending any money on a replacement, it may be fine.

[Tippon]

Wheels-Of-Fire wrote:

So on to my real question. Is their new router any good because the one they gave me last time is rubbish.

Mine appears to be the source of at least a few of my problems. My fibre speed with Vodafone was 13 Mbps pretty consistently, and with TalkTalk it’s dropped to about 10 Mbps on a good day. The routers seem to be the same, but the TalkTalk router has had most of the settings removed. Changing the DHCP pool for my fixed IP devices took about three days of trial and error as the router page would just refresh, or not save the settings. Once they did save they were rock solid though.

It won’t connect to my smart bulb, no matter what I do. I tried an old Asus N 150 Mbps router and it connected first time.

 

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

Well thats disappointing to hear.

I have been promised a minimum of 35Mbs and a line check estimated 45Mbs.

I have also read some reviews now and they all seem to give 4 out of 5 stars.

Suck it and see when it arrives on the 26th I suppose.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

We are talking about the same model arnt we. The one with the single white light on the front ?

[Tippon]

From the setup page, mine is

TalkTalk Wi-Fi Hub
version SG4K10001E00t

I’m hoping that mine is just dodgy though. I haven’t had a chance to get onto TalkTalk about it yet, other than the standard ‘My internet is slow’ troubleshooting.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

Same model then Tippon

Thats the firmware version and it is the latest one.

Seems to have caused some people trouble when it was pushed out at the end of Jan.

[Tippon]

I’ve ordered a cheap ADSL2 router to replace it and see how it goes. I’ll let you know if it makes a difference. It won’t be here until at least the middle of next week due to the bank holidays though.

[Author]

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