BT Home Hub and bad manners

Hey! It happens to me too but I hadn't thought about why the hub behaved badly! Thanks for the explanation and the advice, Jonathan.

Apart from the update - and I also wish there was at least a five-minute warning - I'm very pleased with the BT Home Hub. And the service is generally fast as well, great for downloading and not too bad for uploads compared to other ISPs. Or maybe I'm just lucky.

I think my experience with the BT HomeHub reaches new levels of customer dis-service.

I have Orange as my ISP and wanted BT Broadband Talk. Having been told this was no problem the equipment they sent me was incompatible with my Netgear router and to their credit they sent me a HomeHub as a replacement. I followed the simple instructions, entered my Orange user id and password and hey presto everything worked OK, and it has continued to work OK until yesterday when my internet connection disappeared.

Many hours later after having spoken to more people in India that their President I was finally let into their secret. My HomeHub was originally running software version 6.1.1.M until their secret raid on my kit on Sunday night, after which it now runs 6.2.2.6. It was then revealed that the latest version has been specifically written to prevent the HomeHub addressing any ISP other than BTBroadband. Added to which it is not possible to re-load an earlier release and it would be pointless anyway as every time they updated it I would lose my connection.

So with some instructions from a faceless individual who never has to stand and answer to the customer my kit was disabled. No letters or emails, no warnings or apologies, just dead. Their answer when asked what they were going to do about it......nothing. They aren't prepared to give me the necessary access and therefore have nothing to offer as a solution.

Had I been servicing a business with my Talk number or passed it out to many people I would have been very tempted to look for damages as a result of breach of contract. As it is I've just exercised my customer rights and cancelled the Talk contract.

I was a very contented customer and now I'm just really p..... off.

The only thing i hate about the Bt home hub is the fact that we have 3 computers connected to in and as soon as someone downloads they steal all my connection and i end up with 600+ ping on most servers and am kicked i have never had this with any other service, BT is the best i have had so far been with AOL, Tiscali, and Sobroadband i am never disconected like you guys, but as soon as anyone starts a download the rest of us have to wait for it to finish.

hi guys
can anyone please tell me what's the test speed result for the bt home hub,because my one reeds 900 kbs not even 1 mgb ,and i am paying for 8 mgb

This damn hub, i work during the day on weekends, so i like to come home, nab some tea, and settle down to some games with my friends, now this can go on till early in the morning, sometimes even 3AM, such as it was tonight.
i installed the damn thing today, in the middle of an online match, suddenly, "Disconected from server", the damn thing was updating, 10 mins later found all my friends had gone offline through impatience.
this is inconvinient, and sadly knocking on to the long que of complaints i have for BT, is there any way at all in which i can stop the damn updates, surely there must be an option so that i can update when i want to, like in the afternoon when i head out to work?

I agree it would be a nightmare to be logged off without warning, especially if you were in the middle of on-line banking or on-line ordering. I can't find in any of the above text, what sort of time the Hub does up-date. Is it early morning, early eving or what??

hi guys
can anyone please tell me what's the test speed result for the bt home hub,because my one reeds 900 kbs not even 1 mgb ,and i am paying for 8 mgb
thanks

thanks jonathan

well my Hub came on Saturday and the longest I've stayed connected is now 34 minutes but the norm is about 16! Now spent the last 3 days when I get home from work on the phone to the Indian tech support people who eventually told me that this is the norm and the the Hub is "learning" how to get the optimal config and will be like this for 10 days with intermittent outages. Intermittent is not every 16 fcuking minutes!!

Anyone else experience this sort of hehaviour with the hub? The wireless light stays on but the Broadband and internet lights just go out and only come back if I switch it off and on again at the mains.

V annoying!

Have had BT Broadband for 4 years, little to complain about. Just as I start to consider other options they call and offer me better service lower costs etc. The latest deal included Home Hub. Cool, I get to replace my Belkin wireless router modem (now 4 years old and getting a bit long in the tooth).

4 hours later, the HH has been ripped out, Belkin back in place.

I set the HH up with the wired server no problems, then tried to get my notebook with USB 802.11g attached. Could see the network >80%, but WEP key not correct (yes I did read it from the grey label on the back). I use the set up disk from BT (same result), I try the PC in my home office, It sees the network, accepts the key, detects proxy settings but no internet access.

Enough I do not need this.

Wife still wants to use it, any idea's?

Hi stacks

i'm really having trouble with mine also is a home hub,my one didn't even reach 1 meg speed test,they told me to wait for 10 days,still the same ,i have phoned again they told me another 3 days,still the same speed they told me to wait for another 2 days ,is still the same,i really think that this hub is a low quality components inside it .if you go to the web site called :www.2wire.com and click on speed test and let me know please.

Hi All,

Have been with BT Broadband for several years and generally very satisfied with uptimes, though speed is one area I'll never be 100% satisfied with, unless I move to a house next door to an exchange. I agree the people on the service desk read from scripts with no imagination and assume that everyone on the other end of the line is a total newbie.

Back to uptimes: I use a Vigor 2600 ADSL router - fantastic piece of kit but not a brilliant user interface. Last I checked the uptime was 31 days. Previously I've noted 60days plus and over. Therefore, your reports of limited uptime with the HH are worrying, as that is what I was considering going for to get the Talk option (though I may get-by with using the 220V - see below).

On to Speed: I've got a quoted 8Mb/s link, but then so has everyone else these days. My problem is that I'm near the end of the line and as far from the exchange as possible. Therefore, adslguide.org.uk (for example) reports my speed as 1.8Mb/s (best I've ever achieved even at 08:00 on a Sunday), though other sites have reported as low as 800Kb/s. It will never go above 1.8MB/s though, simply due to line length - even though BT's own speed capability check quotes the max I could possibly get is 4Mb/s. I've also checked the speeed using a BT Voyager 220V (capable of VOIP but not actually used for such) and get the same results.

I think the speeds quoted by previous respondents are, therefore, more likely to be related to line length and quality. Though I have to admit to confusion as to why it takes 10days for a piece of kit to 'determine the optimum settings'! I'll check with a colleague to see if he's had the same probs with his HH.

PS. The Voyager 220V also has given good uptimes. I know, since it was previously connected to a second line in the house.
PPS. To disconnect un-announced for downloads/upgrades is appalling! So much for always-on connections. I agree the upgrade time should be user selectable and I'll be pushing this point very strongly with any comms. I have with BT.

ive had speed issues ever since i started using the BThomehub.An engineer came out and tested my line at 3.4mb with his laptop and voyager router.However im getting less than 512kbps with 2 different bthomehubs(they sent out replacement).Ive now asked for a replacement voyager router.

hi there. im 14 years old and have a nintendo ds. i think i can use the home hub to play my games with other people across the world. i am asking if u know where i might find a WEP key. could you e-mail me at owain_davz_1992@hotmail.com plz. thanx

Im finding im loosing access to the internet but think like MSN still work , the only way to get back browsing working again is to turn off / on the hub then you get another few hours before browsing stop again. :|

Now spent average of 2 hours every night for the last 9 days on the phone to BT's technical departments in India and today they tell me they are sending out another Home Hub becuase they think that might be the problem. No one seems to able to do a standard line check or to send an engineer round to check things out. Might still be in the same situation in 5 days time when the new one arrives!! The connection now only stays alive for about 5 minutes befire I have to restart the Hub.

loosing connection as well. the HH looses internet access, though msn messenger stays connected. switching the hub on and of helps, but a few hours later it does the same. I have a feeling it has something to do with the DNS Cache being overloaded or something like that, and it can be reset through the ipconfig/flushdns

We have a BT Homehub that randomly cuts off too. Also it won't give a ping higher than about 400ms for online gaming. Typically it's around 1000ms. Yes, that's right - a one second ping. I may as well send my keystrokes by mail... Any one got some configuration tips for this piece'o'crap?

Hi Jonahtan,

Thanks for this wonderful site, it gives loads of information. My situations seems to be different. I just subscribe to BT Broadband option 2, I tried to set up the broadband as per their instructions, BUT....only the wireless light is switch on, despite so many times i tried to do it all over again, pressing the button at the back, disconnect cables, change filters, etc, still it does not work....am still struggling how to make this work....the customer service was of no help as well, I was told that they will send me a new hub, which, hopefully will enable me to access the net, for now, am still using dial up while waiting for this broadband to fully work out....needless to say, the line has been activated several days already, it's just the hub does not work properly. Hope you can help and/or share some inputs.....thanks...

Just a quick one. I have a speed problem with my BT home hub ever since BT Vision has been installed (although I think its more to do with resiting the hub than the Vision box). Basically I'm getting download speeds of around 240k whereas I have always had (since the hub went in last year) speeds between 4mb and 8mb. I need to call BT about it...

But on the subject of disconnecting from the net...I have experienced a problem using a Belkin 'dongle' type wireless receiver for my PC in that it drops for seemingly no reason sometimes and takes ages to detect the internet connection at times. My laptop using a Belkin PC card never has ANY problems connecting to the net via the hub. After speaking to my father who is with another ISP but has the same issues with the Belkin dongle, I am looking to replace it with a BT dongle (which their engineer gave me free). Could be an idea if anyone is having problems

got my 2nd Home Hub through in the post on Saturday and to my amazement it actually works!! Have not had a single dropped connection for over 48 hours now and although the speed is nowhere near 8meg it is normally gets up to between 3-5.

Sent a stroppy letter to the Director of Customer Service at BT asking for a refund of costs during my down time and a refund of the cost of me spending many many hours on an 0845 number to the nice people in India but got nothing back from them yet. I suppose I will have to wait for my next bill before I get on the complaints trail again!

It seems from the reading I've done and my experience that the Hub is very unreliable. If mine goes wrong again I will just go out and buy a different one rather than having to go through all this again, it's just too much hassle.

I have given up with my Home Hub Box and gone back to my orginal Netgear Box. I have just purchased a Linksys PAP2 Box which I am using for my Broadband Talk Connection. I am still expirencing problems with the service dropping out every 9 mins or so. I have to then reconnect the box and get a Dialtone.

Has anyone been having similar problems with either the Home Hub or Sofphone??

Had my BT Homehub on the 6th not managed to get any apeed out of it. Just to make the point, I am less than 100m from my local exchange! I'm sorry I ever upgraded. The Homehub is useless so BT suggested I go back to using my Voyager 2091! Surely a sign of a major weakness in the new system. Still wondering where all the speed has gone, connecting slower than a 56K modem. Upgrade, worst decision I've ever made!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJvcgyIhzmI

HH went in today, seemed ok until we started using the Voip phone. As soon as the call was put through the internet stopped. If I could get it to work I would check the speed (but she's still on the phone).

Have read much of above. My main concern is that as we are at the end of the line our speeds are going to be low. This 8M broadband was supposed to improve on the other 1MB and provide the voip phone. I recall from the original sales call that I could cancel the package up to the point the line went live (or rather before I could test it) and not after.

Not thinking that it would be totally useless I believe I may now have signed up for year for a package that's worse than the one it's replaced.

Not looking good....

hi weve just been told we are getting our hh number 4!
nothing but trouble since we first installed it
have spent hours on phone but keep being treated like one knows nothing..
every time unplug trhis plug in this reset cmd ping! ect....
i think we should all send them back and sue for misrep on tv..
but don't forget first you must report to india bt , them bt engineer to be given the important uk engineer... and a nice new hub! thinking of giving them to people that upset me as presents..

The Home Hub appears to be the worst mistake BT ever made! Have been a loyal BT customer for many years, using the voyager etc... but after spending the last 4 months battling with the HH, I have given up and will be switching over to a Belkin.
The down time has been ridiculous and has caused endless problems with 2 laptops and a desktop being used in the home at the same time.

Hi there, I figured i would post here and play a little devil's advocate (appologies in advance).

I've been with BT for 7 years now for broadband and i have to say that i have had very little by way of problems with them. Their customer service has been excelent all the way through and i use them because you have the option of ignoreing all the extras like Yahoo! and only using the connection. This is fine for me as i'm an internet computing studdent.

on the flipside, i have had a few small problems (more annoyensies) with the BT Home Hub. First the restart>upgrade thing, but more importantly the software on the hub itself. a couple of moths ago i accessed the hub to set the routing for my webserver and found i couln't navigate the system because all the software had changed. the menus, icons everything. i had to learn it all over again.

for those of you that have commented on the internals of the box, it is actually a custom built Thompson Speedtouch router-modem, since Thompson is pretty much the industry standard inthe UK for router modems, i can't see there being any problem by way of this.

However, the system software is built and released by BT themselves, this is evident simply by the level of customisation and branding within the software itself.

Perhaps instead of complaining to bt as indaviduals we should try to find out what department is responsible for writing the firmware and form a pressure-group to make them program in the features that would be most useful to us and accept our feedback to fix bugs etc...

Change can be forced by numbers - Start a revoloution! :D

never had the disconnection problem. however did have the uploaded software crash my home hub. It took me 5 mins to find the disk go through it find the upgrade wizard run it and back up again. ten days to get a stable connection very strange it took no time at all for me. however the problem i am having is that now (after i ran the upgrade wizard) my phones connected through the hub no longer ring. Yes i know that there is a setting in my hub to stop phones connect to it from ringing, however i cannot now connect to the hub (though internet still works.) The home hub help program cannot connect to the hub and i cannot see it in internet connections. This one looks like it has got the better of me. So looks like the only option is to forget my talk line (no probs there) go get an old fashioned phone and plug it back into the hole in the wall. Unless someone else knows better. :)

Hi all, well I had a problem with the WEP key. I rang BT Support (India). The guy asked me to uninstall IE7!!then reinstall since then and for the last 4 days I have had total hassle. Whilst my internet connection is OK and the speed is excellent, I have lost access to Internet Options thro Tools or thro Control Panel. I cannot print my e-mail or open attachments. i cannot print off the internet or download - for eg yahoo toolbar. My delete button is not recognised on the internet.

Four days and they still cannot resolve the issue.
An absolute disgrace - think i will go back to broadband and my voyager router!

Got BT Home Hub set up on 1st feb since then had nothing but problems. A friend of mine who is very computer literate came round and spent hours to try and get the router installed had loads of problems. In the end the broadband wasn't staying on. So in the end we had to get a BT Engineer to come and set it up and the cost of ££££'s and even then he had to get outside help as he couln't set up correctly. Everything now is set up on wireless, but every now and then all the lights go out on the router box and I have to wait some times for hours to connect back to the internet. And some times to re-connect I have to disable the wireless and re-enable it. Even though the wireless is showing very good signal strenth. The extra phone what I have plugged into the box can sometimes cut of completly when I'm using it. This is all very annoying as I use ebay alot and when the HH cuts outs its annoying as sometimes I loose the items I'm preparing to bid on as the internet connection has gone down !! The call centre which must be from India can be a painful experiance as sometimes they don't know what you trying to explain to them. I would definatly not recommend BT HH Broadband to anyone cause even thought the broadband is quite fast the router you get is terrible.

hi there people of bt s madness on the homehub for the past 2 days I spent trying to get a friends homehub up and running on a new comp running windows vista.....despite frequent calls to India today the guy told me he wasnt competent onwindows vista and that an engineer would call tomorrow, so I have to be at my friends house for 9am not that I mind Id say Im very competent on a pc......however I keep getting an error code 814 no network adapter installed yet the nic is plugged in and light up also tried using the usb connection to no avail went and downloaded vista drivers from www.btyahoo.com/drivers installed still same problem however we now have all lights on home hub light up.....also I can get the laptop connected to the net but not the tower has anyone came across 814 before and can they assist please

yes i have read all of the above comments and not found anything i cant relate to.. well except the indian tech support... as i have been wound up too much to talk to them i insist on talking to the supervisor well
BT TECH "how may i help you"
MARTIN "by putting me through to somebody i can understand"

(i know it sounds racist but i have a hearing problem and its bad enough trying to understand somebody with a queen's english accent)

but yes i agree where you all come from between 00:55 and 01:15 my internet cuts out... i refuse to put up with it and just unplug it from the mains... i work nights 4 nights a week and the rest of the week i have trouble sleeping so i come and have a chat or a game.. its damn right inconvienient when your internet connection drops out after writing a post in a forum (the length of this one) and then you click ok and it says "your bt homehub is not connected to a broadband line" pain in the AR$E if you ask me! so 15 days ago...... i replaced the bt homehub with a crappy horrible belkin wireless router.... it may be crappy, horrible, dusty and unused.... BUT IT HAS CUT OUT TWICE IN 15 DAYS! much better than twice a day! as for the whole 3 pcs switch a download on yada yada... it still happens... but its bt not the router... as if i have a bittorrent client running on more than one machine it kicks the adsl connection.. (EG light starts blinking rather than static) if this happens much longer i will be reading the TOS and finding some loophole how to end the contract early due to their incompetence! FYI i have copied this message... just incase... although i dont need to with a BELKIN???!!! router.... surely bt have got to be better than belkin... b0110x!

hi guys well ive just got the hub the speeds where fine at the start ,but it kept cutting out somtimes,and now the last few days my speed is 135kbps spent 2 and a half hours on the phone with india today as my speed is supposed to be 4.5 mb .Im using it wireless ,tried using the ethernet cables no use,keep getting kicked from online games to high ping have to phone india tomorrow again phewwwwwww anybody got advice .thanks

Does the Home Hub work with 3rd party ISP's? The BT India say no and BT UK say yes i.e you have change settings in hub manager....

They wernt clear to be honest?????

As a long-term (and ignored) 2 Meg BT broadband user, when I threatened to leave I was offereda good deal on 8 Megs and a free HomeHub and Hubphone etc. But, I found the HomeHub quirky and went back to my trusty Voyager 2091 - quite painless and easier to configure, for an old techie like me. That meant I couldn't use the newly supplied Hubphone, but I got around that by 'associating' the Hubphone account and extra phone number with BT Broadband Talk Softphone - so now my laptop has a built-in wireless BT phone, with its own number.....!

I notice the Hubphones sell for a reasonable price on ebay, but the HomeHubs are literally given away, whereas the old Voyagers still sell for a decent price. Not surprising. I live in the depths of Dorset, miles from the exchange, and really old BT cabling, but the Voyager chunters along happily at 7 Megs, whereas the HomeHub struggled to get past 5 Megs for the short time I used it - once BT remembered to take off the old 2 Meg limit......(sigh)

Is it a coincidence that the HomeHub is shaped like a small tombstone ?

Regards, Alan.

Hi there,

I've had the HUB for the past few months wiht no problems. However, since receiving a new desktop Dell PC with Vista (I used XP before) the connection to my PC keeps falling at least 20 times a day. I don't think that there is a problem with the actual HUB as my wireless on a laptop is fine, but the desktop's connection just cuts off. I've spoken to both BT (was asked to restart the HUB) and to Dell (was asked to talk to BT as maybe the HUB is not Vista compatible??) but no luck with sorting this problem out yet. Does anyone have any idea?? I'm starting to get pretty fed up with coming home every night and hearing my brother moan about this problem...

Many thanks

Marcela

Got my HH last Tuesday, had 30 seconds of tediously slow internet access since, my Belkin Wireless PCI card very rarely sees the HH.

Going to try it wired tonight and change the default channel (1) on which the HH works, to see if this helps.

If not, im not ringing India, I will go back to my old BT router, and be happy that my new deal is saving me a fiver each month.

Dave - IT Manager (Nottm)

Ive had enough, I just want my Mac to work again. If I go back to using my Voyager 1250 can I still use the internet phone that BT have provided? I only changed (upgraded!! huh!) because the wife wanted the phone facility. I have spent more time trying to get this home hub thingy to work than it would have taken with a dial up connection. I dont earn any money when I am on the phone trying to rectify problems I should'nt have, I upgraded because I was led to believe it would be easy and I would save money, the total reverse is true, its difficult and costs a fortune in phone calls and lost productive hours. Can anyone help? will my old voyager 1250 work with the new phone?
I am a relative dunce when it comes to computer jargon, so if answers could be kept to a level I might understand I would be gratefull.
Many thanks
Robbie on-the-phone-to-india-again

Argh! BT Home Hub is a swear word on my house. Never have I had so much trouble. I am sick of it and it is going in the bin tonight. It was a huge step backwards from a 3 yr old Linsys wireless router - but by the time I discovered this, i had sold the router on eBay :-(

as per my previous comment
"yes i have read all of the above comments and not found anything i cant relate to.. well except the indian tech support... as i have been wound up too much to talk to them i insist on talking to the supervisor well
BT TECH "how may i help you"
MARTIN "by putting me through to somebody i can understand"

(i know it sounds racist but i have a hearing problem and its bad enough trying to understand somebody with a queen's english accent)

but yes i agree where you all come from between 00:55 and 01:15 my internet cuts out... i refuse to put up with it and just unplug it from the mains... i work nights 4 nights a week and the rest of the week i have trouble sleeping so i come and have a chat or a game.. its damn right inconvienient when your internet connection drops out after writing a post in a forum (the length of this one) and then you click ok and it says "your bt homehub is not connected to a broadband line" pain in the AR$E if you ask me! so 15 days ago...... i replaced the bt homehub with a crappy horrible belkin wireless router.... it may be crappy, horrible, dusty and unused.... BUT IT HAS CUT OUT TWICE IN 15 DAYS! much better than twice a day! as for the whole 3 pcs switch a download on yada yada... it still happens... but its bt not the router... as if i have a bittorrent client running on more than one machine it kicks the adsl connection.. (EG light starts blinking rather than static) if this happens much longer i will be reading the TOS and finding some loophole how to end the contract early due to their incompetence! FYI i have copied this message... just incase... although i dont need to with a BELKIN???!!! router.... surely bt have got to be better than belkin... b0110x!"

nope the belkin kept cutting out too.... not as often but it did... infact it was weird because sometimes the router would not respond.... so much as to give my PC a bad IP address making have "limited connectivity" now, i have used that router on a freeserve and a sky internet connection so why is bt F(luffing) it up?? answer... they suck huge chunks of posteria!

well now successfully using an origo ASR8400 (no wireless but it works!) been connected for 28 hours now with no hiccups.. i think i'm going to call bt and no-doubt i'll be transferred to someone who can't speak english! but either way i'm geting fed up with them. i left NTL because of poor connection quality(that and they couldnt get an engineer out to fix faulty equipment (by faulty equipment i mean CABLEMODEM CAUGHT FIRE... lightning hit the exchange) for 3 weeks... AND THEN HE DIDNT SHOW!

but go origo/safecom/whoever you call yourself now.... its old equipment BUT IT WORKS A DREAM!

Hi, i've installed the home hub and my wireless adapter, but when installing the BT software CD, when checking my WEP it fails on my laptop, it worked on my pc..What do i do?? Help

thanks

I have tried HH and failed miserably, stuck it in the bin and went back to my voyager.
BT helpdesk is a waste of time and money.

After a friend at work asked me a question about the BT Home Hub, I stumbled across this site in search of an answer. It also answered some of my questions as to why I keep getting disconnected (which up to this point I thought was something to do with my PC) Performed a speed test at speedtest.net and was gobsmacked to see I wasnt even making 512kb/s So after coming to the conclusion that the Home Hub is a complete pile of Donkey Shit, I spent ages hunting around for my old voyager 2091 and set that up again. Have no time or desire to fanny about with discussing the issue with overseas call centres, who I am sure do not/will not recognise that there are fundamental technical and user issues with the hub.

Why not just change the time setting manually within the hub manager software back a few hours? That way the update will take place later.

It's not an ideal solution, but it's not as if the internal clock on the homehub has any other use.

I am giving up on my HomeHub and going back to my trusty ZyXEL router. I would still like to use Broadband Talk though and want to use the Home hub as a 'slave' router, purely for the Broadband Talk capability. Has anyone else tried this? Thanks.

The BT Home Hub is complete garbage. You would think that a router designed specifically for use with BT Broadband would actually be able to cope with it reasonably well - not so! We plugged ours in the other night, and (as well as being subjectively 'slower' when web browsing) our connection speed (to the internet, not to the router) was 2.7Mbps. When we reinstated our US Robotics USR9110, the connection speed went UP by about half a meg.

Being BT's official router, it must be really bad to get a slower speed on BT's broadband service than a year-and-a-half-old third party one!

Hi, I have a VPN phone from work - this stopped working with the Hub at xmas since the upgrade to 6.2.2.6.
This has happened to several users in my office, but more recently newer users have not had the problem.
I have missplaced by CD but it had old software anyway.
Does anyone have newer software than 6.2.2.6 or would they be interested in sharing the cd files if they got their Homehub in the last couple of months?

By way of trade... i had the my laptop was WEP/ connecting problems - it was given to me by a relative - I reinstalled genuine XP and my wireless card driver and never looked back.
Also upgrading to IE7 was an issue when it was a beta - it was better with FFox - noW its ok with the release of 7 in production.
Chin up all!

Thanks Jonathan - anytime is fine - appreciate the assist.

Hi,I am having a problem connecting to wireless on my home hub, Everything seems to be ok, all the green lights on the hub or steady. but when i go to wireless network connections and connect on my wireless conection it tells me it cannot connect to the home hub. maybe i'm being thick but i have not managed to go wireless yet and its driving me mad. help please. thanks jon

Hi Jonathan, thanks for the reply. I have never gone wireless before on my laptop so its all new to me. When i go to my bt wireless connecting manager my connection is there with the home hub serial number also but when i try to connect it says unable to connect to home hub and serial number. Also when i turn my computer on a box comes up to connect my home hub phone, so i put my phone number in and my password and just keeps saying unable to connect please try again later, but keep trying and no luck at all.
Jon

Sorry - should have said - may I have the Windows please - cheers and Happy Easter

Listen people... The homehub it Really Crap, cut out,etc. And I say that from experience... There are no tweaks that you can perform... there is no tweaks, and that is that... you can try to get it to work on torrent sites...you can try to get it to work on normal D/Loads...BUT...it is a SHIT router. That is That. So stop spending your time on something that isn't going to give you what you're looking for...You noobs keep saying that i am getting such and such speeds and it's not what i should be getting...well, consider this... time of day. I get 600+kB/s after 01:20am every night,until 10:20am every morning...thats on a so-called 8meg connection. It drops to 6kB/s after 12 noon. That's called isp FUP(Fair Usage Policy) They dont advertise it when you sign up to their package but its there.All isp's are now using this FUP as a way of controlling your download quota. Even though you signed up for unlimited your bandwidth will still be restricted by the FUP. So stop moaning!!! Your lucky to be able to downloads at speeds in excess of the 2meg connectiion that we all had 3 years ago!!! You're downloads will come in eventually, but stop being so impatient!!! Technology is still in it's infant days..! SO BE PATIENT!!!

Please bare in mind also...BT is still in the hands of the UK government...it might have been privatised and all that shit...BUT...it is still in government hands. They are still subsurdised on the gov'ment payroll and as such will always be an agent of their employers! In this day of corporate control...do you really trust an agent of the gov'ment to be your B/Band ISP? Especially a tinpot Gov'ment like the Labour Party? THINK AGAIN...

would some kind guy please tell me the linksys pap2t internet voice adaptor settings that will operate with broadbandtalk

I'm connected to a home hub wirelessly but every time I turn my p.c off and back on it won't connect, however when I reinstall it it works fine, anyone else had the same problem and do you kno how to fix it

Thanks

i am on a so-called 4.5mb connection. but that's maximum, it can drop to just over 2.5 most all day long. in terms of download speed, i can get in excess of 200k per second any time. now, anything over 200k i am satified with. i struggle to think where some of you people are downloading stuff from which would enable you to utilise these kinds of speeds anyway? i'm more concerned with upload, since i'm using bittorrent. we all know the upload is less than 10% of your download speed anyway with these phone lines that were never intended for use with this kind of technology.

anyway, throughout the day bittorent and other file sharing networks chuggs along at dial up speeds. just after 1.20am (like you said), it all runs as it should do. whether this is because the lines are not as busy, because people have gone to bed, i do not know? so basically, i can only download properly off bittorrent at night.

but what i will say is that at the moment i've noticed all file sharing networks are virtually useless to me from the hours of 10.30am to 1.20am. it never used to be like this! and this is since i've gone to the bt home hub. i've tried going back to the voyager 100 usb modem and disabling all firewalls and still no joy. i really can't understand it at all. and it's really pissing me off. because when you log onto ares and there's an extremely popular movie with hundreds of users, you know there's something wrong when it won't even connect at all...

Oh MY

I got my HH today, after using a netgear router solidly for the last 12 months, and allready i am getting kicked. hence why I am here, I only get 512 as I am 6 miles from exchange, BT refuse to send an engineer out as they feel I should not be getting broadband at all....

the thing is I only want it for the damn phone, I would love to go back to old bessy (netgear) but is there a way to get the phone to work on any other router other than the white slab of crap....

Karl

i have just got a home hub and each time i turn off the lap top the broadband light goes out on the hub and the only way to get it back is to turn the unit off and on again

any advice
cheers

Hi,

I have a bt HH and my speeds on utorrent will not go higher than 12kbs, it will start at 700+kbs which is the speed i have been getting since i've had the HH for about 4-5 months but after a couple of minutes it will drop to 12kbs, I have opened ports, i do not use a firewall and my torrent status is green. This is so frustrating.....any ideas anyone?
This started about 2 weeks ago.

Hi, how about getting some dates on these posts?

I've had the BT Home Hub for about 2 weeks. I do have the disconnect issues as the Hub keeps resetting itself (Usually after I have gone to bed and set the PC and software for an all night download! :-()
I moved from Demon to BT option 3 (Unlimited downloads...to a degree!) as Demon have a 40gb 'fair usage limit' and thats not enough for me.

I shall try the firmware update as suggested. No point in anyone quoting their DL/UL speeds as there all gonna be different and as someone mentioned, speed it determined by quality of line and distance to exchange (amongst other things as well). So just because someone gets 8.2mb connection doesn't mean you will!. I get a 7.6mb connection and it was exactly the same when I was with Demon (and not Hub/router related).

I'm afraid the 'ol' India support lines are evident with BT as they were with Demon. It seems most of the time you know more then they do!. I have to constantly interrupt and say things like "yea TC/IP properties...yea I'm already there..while the tech is still telling me to to go into control panel (then network connections, then local area connection then TC/IP properties etc etc)??

I know they have to explain it all step by step for the novices etc but it's just so frustrating.
On top of that there is a communication problem. Not there fault but sometimes it's hard to make out what there saying! (depending on how strong their indian native language comes through the english!). Of course as mentioned, there also reading from a script. They have to navigate through that script according to what answers you give them. The answer they give is just one of a number of suggested answers as given by the script dependant on what information you provided. Sometimes it works and sometimes not!.

I went from a Voyager 205 ADSL router to the HomeHub. I found my Voyager would 'roller coaster' my bandwith up & down (when downloading) from practically zero bandwith to up semi-high. My BTHH doesn't and I'm downloading & uploading at decent speeds!. I do get the disconnect or hub reset problems but I'm hoping that will be sorted at some point (am I hoping too much?!).

I find that when it does happen, it's really frustrating that there is no hub reset switch (or even an on/off!). I have to unplug the power lead for a few seconds to get the hub to restart!. Software restart from the Hub manager software doesn't work when the connection is lost after the hub has it's reset or disconnection problem!. The fact that it happens not long after I've gone to bed is really annoying as I had set the PC & software up to do a long download session! ARRRGGHH

Anyway, I'd thought I would share my experiences.

This link is for those who have had a 'Bricked' BT Hub (and maybe you dont want to have to wait for 'another' replacement!!)

Dont attempt unless your reasonably familiar with PC's, associated hardware and firmware/Bios updates.

http://www.davidmillington.net/news/index.php/2006/08/28/bt_home_hub_manual_bios_update_guide

Tattybyes

Taz

In Ref to the chappies (and chapesses!) who are having problem with Utorrent on their BT HomeHub
Have you tried the Utorrent tweak guides?. Settings and advice to get the best out of your Utorrent software and download sessions

http://www.johntp.com/2006/04/19/how-to-increase-download-speeds-of-utorrent/

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=3912

This next link is very useful for Router/adsl related posts inc BT Home Hub

http://www.the-scream.co.uk

and this additional link for people who want to use the BTHH on another ISP!! (or try..lol)

http://www.the-scream.co.uk/forums/t22917.html?

P.s Ref to my previous post. I didn't mention the switch on the back of the HomeHub 'Wireless Association' which doubles up as a reset switch...sorry...just found out myself!)

Latest Firmware for the BT Home Hub is 6.2.2.6 (started 2 January 2007)

They reckon it should upgrade automatically on it's own!

* ---------- Quote ---------- *
"The rollout of the BT Home Hub firmware version 6.2.2.6 started on 2 January 2007. It can take one month before all BT Home Hubs are upgraded to a new version of the firmware, so please be patient.

The upgrade is done automatically overnight and there is no need to call the helpdesk to receive the upgrade.

If your Home Hub hasn’t yet been upgraded after one month, the following advice will help you to receive the upgrade as quickly as possible:

* Leave your Hub switched-on, including at night
* If you have set up the DMZ / 'Assign public IP address to Hub' feature in the Games & Application Sharing section of the Hub Manager, your Home Hub will not be automatically upgraded. To receive an upgrade, disable the feature and leave your Hub switched on. The feature can be re-enabled after the Home Hub has been upgraded.

Your BT Home Hub should then be upgraded within the next 7 days."
* ---------- Unquote ---------- *

These are the Happy BTHH customers!..lol

http://www.shop.bt.com/invt/car121?htxt=NuTMOeMqF7ge4EnAjV3FS2kbhrORZXsOc4ba464Y4dcFIaAinWQ1hJNt2jMgebi5KCTQyMZWC%2BBz%0AVRH9F0MCEg%3D%3D

Easy to show all the happy people!. (saying that though, I'm reasonably happy so far!)

BT Home Hub Facts & Figures:
"The BT Home Hub is slowly invading homes up and down the country... but just what is it?
This page takes a closer look at BT's Home Hub, provides some information on the features, and offers pointers for those looking for help or advice on using the Home Hub".

http://www.frequencycast.co.uk/homehub.html

Hope there is some helpful info in there!

Sorry to invade with all this BTHH blanket of Info. As I'm finding it...I'm posting it so that many other people wont have to 'trawl the net' looking for it.
I shall probably do the firmware update myself tomorrow, unless the Hub magically updates itself over night!. I cant see this happening as the new firmware has been out for 4-5 months now and mine still says '6.1.1.R'
Let you know my progress (If I dont get back fairly soon, you'll know I bricked my BT Home hub!..lol)
I'm not recommending this to anyone but because I've done loads of Bios updates on my own PC's (motherboard Bios updates, CD/DVD drive Bios/firmware updates), I'll have a go on the Hub (Even hacked my PSP!)

I read an article on how someone managed to stop the auto updates to the hub.
PM me for more info on that.

So Jonathan, your reason for not having the hub?
Changed ISP, Router ?
and wasthat chang related to the 'update problem'?
Thanks

p.s. I ended up downgrading my firmware! lol

So, read through all the above, now regretting to change to BT (completely happy with Orange, but personal/business circumstances were, I had to change, wish I'd gone with what I knew, hay ho!), however, please guide me through the problems with wireless??? my Dell laptop can see the HH but says the WEP key is incorrect . . . any help? (laymans terms!)

i am generally enjoying the home hub i have not had a problem it was so easy to use i just plug in each computer over ethernet and it did the the rest i plugged in my xbxo 360 through ethernet and no problem. i then got a psp and only had problems with working out how to setup for wireless but that was simple in entering the corrct code in the right place.
but then came the nigtmare suddenly my internet is being dropped while im online using msn or web browsing and i then check connection but it still there apparently but my hub is lieing once again.
as for bt they are not going to release a patch to set up auto update as this could lead to people back dating telling the hub not to update and then changing isp and bt do not want this.
but over all bt are the best broadband provider around i think especially if you compare them to talk talk broadband god the nightmare with them

I've been using BT voyager router 2091 but over the last 2 months my 8mb/s line speed has been dropping to below 4mb/s. I live about 200 yards from the exchange so would expect a fast speed. I've spent hours on the phone to India but no joy & had 2 BT engineers to our house who now say its the router at fault they have sent a home hub but after reading above not sure if i should bother to install it. I'm just looking for ideas or if anybody else has had the same problem. I have found if I unplug the DSL cable then plug back in I have 8mb/s for about a min before the line drops & then reconnects @ 4mb/s, if anybody could help this would help sanity.
PS did you know that if you ring BT in India you can ask them to transfer you to BT tech UK which is in Dublin, they say they can't do it but they can, just ask to talk to there supervisior if they say no & after reporting fault ask for PIN number & direct 0800 number.

I'v taken time out to reach each comment, Jesus what am I getting my selfinto with this home hub LOL! Iv been with BT option 3 since it came out, untill now through a discount I accepted their offer with a discount. Iv always used the BT Voyager 210 router with no problems what so ever, constant stable connection with no loss of connection. It equipment is arriving next week and nodoubt I will return with msg's for "...HELP" LOL Ps iv gone for the option 3 again, with their new TV Service.

Ps good blog you have going here mate, pleased I clicked yours via google. Dean

Wow. You just saved me a lot of trouble.

I currently have the BT Home Hub at home, and I use an HP laptop to download upload large amounts of media and graphics, and most of the time I leave my workstation at it through the night.

Waking up I see that the hub is either:

a.) Connected and still working.
b.) The broadband light is on, but the internet isn't.

My laptop runs on Vista Home Premium, and has a switch to enable/disable the wireless. Unfortunately, my laptop (or this maybe Vista) does not reconnect automatically when the connection goes down, so I do either one or all of these things:

a.) Flip the switch for my wireless connection on my laptop.
b.) Power down, then power up the hub.
c.) Diagnose and Repair, Request new IP from hub (Which I do now every time the hub resets itself).

I have now reached the point where in the disappointment has left me feeling numb. At first it was very aggravating. Imagine setting up your FTP client before going to sleep with several GB's worth of HTML/IMAGES/MUSIC/ANIMS and waking up not knowing which of which got uploaded and having to redo it again while having breakfast only to come back and see that the hub reset itself again. Good lord.

Some people might go postal over this!

I am now seeking for these solutions, which I hope somebody here can help me with.

a.) Have my computer automatically request new IP settings to get reconnected to the hub, after it reset itself.
b.) Have the router not reset itself 10 times a day.

Thanks guys!

my home hub is still stuck on 6.1.1.R too, i even got given somebody elses old hub too, but theirs doesnt seem to update either.

I tried the BT Home Hub Upgrader software with the 6.2.2... firmware but it messes up at around 13-14% with "your BT homehub can not be accessed anymore"

have tried talking to india but their manuals don't seem to cover this...

anyone have a solution?

Does anyone know how to configure another router other that the home hub?
I want to use a Zyxel, however, there is not an option to set it up without a user and password, the homehub does not use a user or pword as it works on CLI.
Any ideas or help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Bruce

The homehub is rubbish, likewise the support in India. BT puts these poor call centre workers in an intolerable position. Very few speak English as it is spoken here in the UK. They gabble and their vocab is limited. One on Monday did not know the International code for the alphabet and giving a URL accurately was almost impossible. All they can do is to read a script. You do not speak to the same person and they do not appear to record what they have told you or what you have said.
Beware the engineers visit as it will cost £100 and they can either do a line check or a PC type check but not both .... so could cost £200.
I think BT is taking my money under false pretences. BT needs investigating.

Home Hub arrived on the 1st and iv been using it for a couple of days now, one annoying prog that pops up when i turn PC on and its that bloody BT Soft phone, there is no options to preference of starting it up at start up or not. I could uninstall it however im not sure if im actually uninstalling the phone too as iv gone for the option of phone and vision with option 3. any idea's?

I called india and frankly I may have been banging my head off the brick wall, I hung up twice on them, got fed up of repeating my self. I timed my self each call and it averaged out been on the phone for 45 minutes. I called 150 and pressed option one or two, dont remember which one and explained, iv been put through to India twice, firstly I paid for both calls and ended up hanging up, I then went on to say you either put me through to the UK call Centre for BB help or im canceling my phone and connection. I was firm however not nasty. Everyone has issues with BT Indian Customer Services but you have rights and thats why they also have a uk call centre.....INSIST

please guide me through the problems with wireless??? my Dell laptop can see the HH but says the WEP key is incorrect . . . any help? (laymans terms!)

I also had this problem. I got around it by connecting the laptops to the hub with cable. Then it somehow works wirelessly. I am still having problems with laptops losing their connection and then not being able to reconnect until I repeat the process.

The support line was terrible - I kept asking why I had to do this and they just couldn't explain it at all. I insisted on an explanation and they eventually said that a rep would call back within an hour. The call never came. 4 days on BT and I am already fed up and frustrated and I'm a software engineer. I can't imagine how awfule this is for non tech types.

I spoke too soon, continued freezing of the Home Hub, Its annoying now and getting to the point where im going to call BT. I'm on the internet for around 20minutes and the connection just freezers, my pc works ok just the connection freezers then i have to unplug the Home Hub and turn back on and it works fine. Anyone else had these issues if so did you get it resolved?

Hey Guys

OK, Time to give you all a bit of hope, BT have released me from my contract, after only 3 months!! YIPEE

Here is what I did.

use speedtest.net, this is your friend, be prepared to use it a lot!!

ok, first off email the support and complain about speeds, they will send you the usual crap reply, check this etc, you must tell them you have done all these checks. now on there email will be a reply section, all I did was for 2 weeks I kept emailing with my speed results, at one point I was getting 49kbps downstream, even the call center agreed this was totally unacceptable.

you will start getting lots of calls, asking you to check this, they will also keep telling you there is a line fault. DO NOT stop sending the speed results from the website, this is crucial.

at some point through the first week, I told them they were in breach of their contract, as they advertise (on my home hub) 2MB, but i was nowehere near that, and they had 7 days to remedy it, or I will be leaving..

NOTE: I got a phone call within 10 mins of sending that email :) so I knew I was onto something.

Ok after 3 weeks or so, ring up the MAC code dept, do not start spilling off all ur problems yet, simply ask for your MAC code. (Be Nice) charming even, if you piss them off they wont help.

There responce will be "you are in contract period etc" then explain to them NICELY all the problems you have been having, and that the service you are receiving is completely unacceptable, they cannot make a decision, however ask to have it raised to a manager for a decision... they will tell you 2 days..

now the typical BT crap...

I got no phonecall, yet yesterday I went downstairs, and had no BB, and I phoned them up and India call center told me that I had cancelled.

and because of that I hade to wait for 10 days for line to become free before I could join another supplier, I was mad as hell, not because they cancelled but because I now have no BB for a few weeks...

However I said that was unacceptable, and they should of giving me a MAC code so I could of got switched, but they refused... but I was shot of BT so I was not that mad :)

Anyway I couldn't join another supplier, because technically my line was not free yet, so I phoned Virgin (the chosen supplier to replace BT) and was telling them about my issuse, and they gave me this number

08001690934 these guys are a independant company, and I spoke to them and they look at it, and told me how long BT have to clear the line, and then a hour later my line was freed (I reckon they phoned BT and give them a Kicking).

so in closing I have no broadband for a week, but I got shot of BT, and look out for my Hub and phone on Ebay :)

Sorry for the wall of text!!!

Karl

PS if you try this and succeed, make sure you ring up once they cancel your internet and get a ref number for that decision.

what does opening ports mean i use bittornado and it always stays yellow n takes donkeys. my mate said summert bout opening port ????????????

Hi, folks - has anyone found a fix for the problem where DNS stops working on all PCs until you turn the router on and off? (uTorrent / MSN works but email / internet doesn't)

Strangely it's also impossible at these times to connect to the homehub control panel (192.168.1.254) in Firefox/Explorer7 even though the files are local and no DNS is needed.

It's been suggested that I reduce the number of bittorrent connections but that shouldn't be necessary in the first place.

Hi Guys , newbie here , anyone help with this one ? I moved to a new build property last month and fancied the BT HH . It duley arrived , and remember its a new house , the builders contractors made my phone extension sockets live .
Day one .. no joy on the wireless , phoned India and eventually someone suggested that I remove the bottom half of the main phone socket face plate and use the test socket .
This worked and although I have signed up for 8meg It only gives around 0.5m . Anyway wireless working -- kids happy . Only thing is that when I take it out of test socket and put faceplate back on , it wont work ( one light ) , back into test socket and its o.k again .
The funny thing is that the house phone works off the face plate proper . I have been back on the phone to India and they have given conflicting reasons , tests show that there is no line fault ( I agree as it is working off test socket ) and an engineer is the next step @ possibly £ 200 all in ... any thoughts .. might it be a corrupt face plate ( wishful thinking ) Deeks

Deeks67, hi! are you connecting onto the face plate using the ADSL filter too? I seem to remember that you don't need to do that when the router is connected straight to the test socket. But when the face plate is on for some reason you have to use the ADSL filter (included in the homehub box).

Yes, sorry about the n00b suggestion. I think with only 0.5MB downspeed there has to be something pretty wrong with ... something else anyway, I'm not sure what.

Threaten to change provider if you get no joy. That always concentrates their minds.

Aye , I might do that ..... so frustrating !!!!!!!!!

i have the home hub i use bit torrent and my download speed is around 5kb/s why ?

I posted a while ago with some problems I had with losing connections and after I finally got a replacement hub all was well until last night. Now my laptop cannot see the BT Home Hub wirelessly, it can see next doors router and some others down the road but it cannot see the Home Hub. I've done all the usual reboots, restarts & reinstall of software but no luck. It does stil work if I hook it up via ethernet.

So before I spend the next 2 weeks of my life on the phome to BT in India trying to get this resolved does anyone have any suggestions (apart from binning the effing thing!).

the bt home hub looks good, but is not!
It needs to be plugged in and reset again like every 3-4 days. Otherwise the lights stay on, but the connection just goes! BT HATRED RISING!

An interesting note, because of the up take of BT broadband, BT are now having severe problems with their network and line attenuation. They have recently withdrawn support to to other ISP's with network problems on their network due to the increase of work load BT is now handling.

Overall i have found BT a faceless organisation with supposed qualified Techinal call centre (in India), Although I couldn't get a clear answer on what the qualifications were and to be honest the people I have spoken too did not know very much.

The bad news is other ISP's will not get any better as they use the BT infrastructure and problems will only get worse for all until the infrastructure has been upgraded...whenever that will be.

As for the BT Home Hub..... that little peice of equipment is a mystery the black box that doesn't allow you to do much unless you have found the way to get superuser access. or now we have to keep doing the turn off for 10 seconds and all will be fine, at least I have had the set the settings to the factory default and bring my whole LAN down.

For those of you that want port forwarding etc.... here is a nice place that helps with a multitude of different routers http://portforward.com/ wll worth a visit.

PS. Stacks I have been having a similar problem with my laptop but then its a Dell so its difficut to see where the problem is, I do have a strong suspicion its the laptop at fault.

If you want a new HH because yours needs unplugging and replugging just call BT Sales and tell them a chap in India told you to call them and ask for a replacement.
I think the number to call is 0800-800-150
I like the idea in the earlier posts of installing the original Thompson firmware...

I got the BT home Hub 8 mb and its running half the speed it should downloading upload is about 300k , and i live about half a mile from exchange . i did have NTL now virgin media 10 MB. i can say the cable virgin media is better. now they do 20 mb line as well . the thing with cable is u get what they say u get. it dont matter how far u are from exchanges

the BT line did run at almost 8 mb when i got it now its slower

the cable is full speed all the time the routers a bit crap so it didnt deal with joiners to my server that well even though the upload was 512k , the bt home hub does joiners better and i think its cos the router i.e the home hub , home hubs a good bit of kit

in battlefeild 2 online game on cable my ping was 11 on BT my pings like 30
most likley cos of the exchange...

for people who want the full speeds and always full speed go for cable if its in your area

BT is only better if u play aliens versus predator 2 and want to host a server without mega joiner lag lol

go cable :P ive had both . but i ow cable people money ;(

oh btw guys if BT 's people call line is in india u mite as well get BE 24 MB internet .. cheaper faster and calls in india as well lol

i hope i helped someone... with these posts
peace out

OK, here goes,

firstly soory guys for being a noob, if this question has already been answered, but there is just too much on this thread to read, cos at the moment i'am at work.

My problem, like so many other people comes from disconections. I have a stressfull job at best and the way I unwind is through internet gaming, along with other family members. Our game of choice is the dreaded World of Warcraft (WoW). As you can imagine it's not ideal being disconnected from the internet while you are playing games, but amplify that when you are in a 5, 10 20 man raid where everyone else relies on you being there, things can get nasty. We have already been dropped from several instances becuase people dont want to play with us. Evert time we log back in we end up dead, whcih costs money (gold) albeit virtual.

Any way I started to keep a log of when this happened, and after many many calls to india, which didnt help at all, and destroyed my setup both hardware and software wise I have hit a brick wall. The disconects seem to be mostly at night time during the week, at about 8pm on wards, and at the weekends they are even worse, sometimes disconnecting up to 20 times and hour, and even more sometimes.

I have tried everything going, filters software you name it, and I am no further forward. I live about 350m from the exchange as the crow flies so it should nt be a problem. I bought the crappy voip phone which has only made one call, what a joke.

I am now looking to by a new hub and modem, can anyone recommend a decent one to use with my bt line ?

If i dont sort this out soon, my kids are going to go mad and I am going to doing something unpleasent to the next BT van I see driving past

I supply lots of wireless routers. I've not had a problem with the Sweex type which is about £31 plus VAT.
Set it up with the Windows XP wireless connection software (as I'd suggest with any commercial kit) rather than the proprietary stuff which can be a bit buggy when first released.
The latest Sweex router comes preloaded with standard UK ISP details including BT.

I'd like to load Thomson firmware for my BT Homehub though as I now have several. I think that should fix the line dropping but haven't found the relevant BIN file yet.
Can anyone suggest a source?

BT Home Hub problems are compounded by a truly awful help desk. The custom service only starts if you make a complaint.

http://help.btinternet.com/yahoo/helpnb/contactus/0,,Complaints-nb,.html

Dear Oh Dear Oh Dear,

I just started using a BT Home Hub yesterday...and after reading all the 'horror stories', I'm starting to wish I hadn't. I was using a BT Voyager 220V Router for about a month and had no problems with that whatsoever, then decided to upgrade to BT Total Broadband Option 3.

I had been using the Home Hub for about an hour, and speed was down to a pathetic 0.194Mbps, Customer "Service" told me that the unit goes through regular configuration updates, and if speeds were still sluggish after 10 days, they would investigate it further.

I'm (sort of) happy to report that today www.speedtester.bt.com reported 2.598Mbps. Is this the best I can hope for? What is a common 'actual' speed when speeds are supposed to be 'up to' 8Mb?

Hi Looking at all the comments you guys are posting it looks like you know a lot more than me can anyone help.
I had loaded the BT software on my laptop it conflicted with m windows software so the gents in India logged on remotely and removed it and everything worked fine.
However now when ever i try to connect to any another wireless hub it appears to connect but I can never get a website as it picks up the data from the hub but my machine thinks it is my home hub still The people at BT openzone have been very helpful ( I have been on the phone for over 15hours with various assistants)but they cant do anything. they think that the BT software has somehow locked my DNS onto just the home hub.
help please

fgbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

My Homehub decided to cut me off from the Internet last night at 10pm. I did the usual unplug the power and replug the power and shortly afterwards a new Help program downloaded itself. At 11pm I was cut off again and I was automatically directed to the new Help program... the Homehub lights flashed a lot and Help said it was checking this and that... but eventually it reported that all was lost and it could help no more.. my ethernet was now defunct also, with no communication either to the hub or anything..
I unplugged and replugged the power and was then directed to an online chat with a gentleman called radhikap (HCL). I asked him some simple questions which he totally ignored and after waiting for a long time getting absolutely nowhere... you guessed it.. my Homehub lost contact with India. I replugged the power once again and radhikap had b******d off and Anand Ganti had taken his place. I asked some more questions and got precisely nowhere...
below is the transcript.. what do you make of it?
Allan (22:41 14/07/2007): Several times today my BT Homehub has lost its connection. The only way I was able to restore service was by unplugging the power cable and replugging it. This is a new Homehub which I got because the old one kept doing the same thing. When the new Help Program had finished messing around, my Ethernet connection to the hib was showing a problem, but prior to the Help Program running, my Ethernet was working OK. I don't believe the problem is in my computer, I believe the Homehub firmware is bad. I am a computer engineer. What do you say?
BT Broadband Desktop Help Server (22:41 14/07/2007): Thank you. Your question has been received by our Helpdesk and will be allocated to the next available member of staff.
BT Broadband Desktop Help Server (22:41 14/07/2007): radhikap(HCL) has been assigned to your request.
Allan (22:42 14/07/2007): Well?
radhikap(HCL) (22:42 14/07/2007): Thank you for contacting the BT Total Broadband online assistance team, my name is radhikap and I have been assigned to your query. I would first like to apologise for any inconvenience caused and assure you of my assistance.
Allan (22:43 14/07/2007): Is the latest Homehub firmware known to be bad?
radhikap(HCL) (22:44 14/07/2007): Please let me know whether you are able to access emails through BT Yahoo! Browser.
Allan (22:44 14/07/2007): When the Homehub power has been unplugged and replugged email is ok
radhikap(HCL) (22:47 14/07/2007): I understand that your BT Broadband Desktop Help is a causing issues.Am I correct? Do you get any error messages when trying to access the emails.
Allan (22:49 14/07/2007): When I lose my connection the Internet light flashes at a constant rate as if the firmware has locked up. I use the Help feature because it is new. It doesn't help at all however and when it has finished my Ethernet is no longer usable until the power has been unplugged and replugged.
Allan (22:50 14/07/2007): The email error message is the usual one you get when there is no Internet connection is available
Allan (22:51 14/07/2007): The Ethernet "repair" function does not work until the Homehub is disconnected etc
radhikap(HCL) (22:52 14/07/2007): Please let me know the light status on your router and mode of connection from router to computer.
Allan (22:53 14/07/2007): As the Internet is working OK all lights are OK. The connection is via Ethernet
radhikap(HCL) (22:56 14/07/2007): Please let me know whether you have installed any software recently.
Allan (22:58 14/07/2007): No. Only the new Help routine which loaded by itself. This is the third router I've had. This one is the worst so far. The firmware is 6.2.2.6
radhikap(HCL) (22:59 14/07/2007): Do you get any error message with that.
Allan (23:01 14/07/2007): When I use Help it works correctly except when it finishes my Ethernet has an exclamation mark on yellow background. Help tells me it can't help.
As I said I have to unplug and replug power. The connection time is about 5 hours so this happened last 5 hours ago. Before this i lost connection about 3 times.
Allan (23:03 14/07/2007): When fault occurs the ADSL light is lit but the Internet light is flashing at one flash per second.
Allan (23:04 14/07/2007): Does 6.2.2.6 have any lockup problems?
Allan (23:10 14/07/2007): Help is version 5.8.1.6508
Does this have any known issues?
Allan (23:11 14/07/2007): Are you still there radhiKap?
Allan (23:14 14/07/2007): I think my connection has failed again
Allan (23:17 14/07/2007): I've unplugged and replugged my Homehub... see if it starts OK? Boot sequence nearly finished...
radhikap(HCL) (23:17 14/07/2007): Please respond as a delay would cause disconnection of our chat session.
radhikap(HCL) (23:17 14/07/2007): Your request for assistance is important to us. Please respond to this message so that we can continue to provide you with support.
Motive Server (23:17 14/07/2007): Your request for assistance is important to us. Please respond to this message so that we can continue to provide you support.
Allan (23:18 14/07/2007): Sorry my Homehub failed
BT Broadband Desktop Help Server (23:18 14/07/2007): Anand Ganti has been assigned to your request.
Anand Ganti (23:18 14/07/2007): Hello, my name is Anand Ganti and I have been assigned to your on-going support request. I would like to thank you in advance for your patience while I read through the previous notes in order to provide you with the most accurate fix for your issue.
Allan (23:18 14/07/2007): I was talking to radhikap(HCL) but my connection failed AGAIN
Allan (23:20 14/07/2007): Am I still connected?
Anand Ganti (23:21 14/07/2007): Please give me a moment to retrieve the relevant information.
Allan (23:21 14/07/2007): OK
Anand Ganti (23:23 14/07/2007): Thank you for waiting. Please connect the router cable directly to the master socket using the microfilter for 24 hours to check the status of the BT Home Hub and let me know the result.
Allan (23:27 14/07/2007): I turn my mains power off each night. The hub is connected to the master socket via a microfilter. Each day the homehub loses its connection to my computer but the broadband light is on. This happens lots of times and at a random interval. It looks like a lockup in the firmware but this is the 3rd homehub i've had and they are all the same.
Allan (23:29 14/07/2007): Can I get a BIN file from Thomson, the manufacturer of the Homehub? If so where from exactly?
Allan (23:29 14/07/2007): Am I still connected?
Anand Ganti (23:31 14/07/2007): Please give me a moment to retrieve the relevant information.
Allan (23:32 14/07/2007): Should I advise BT that this replacement Homehub is faulty and ask for another?
Allan (23:35 14/07/2007): I shall soon have been talking to helpdesk for an hour and none of my questions has been answered
Allan (23:37 14/07/2007): I have recorded this conversation and will be making a formal complaint to BT
Allan (23:39 14/07/2007): Will you acknowledge please
Allan (23:40 14/07/2007): I have not received a reply for about ten minutes so will sign off
Anand Ganti (23:42 14/07/2007): I apologise for the inconvenience. Please let me confirm again whether you have tried to replace the existing microfilter with the extra microfilter provided by BT Total Broadband service to check the status of the connection.
Anand Ganti (23:42 14/07/2007): Thank you for waiting. I apologise for the inconvenience. Please let me confirm again whether you have tried to replace the existing microfilter with the extra microfilter provided by BT Total Broadband service to check the status of the connection.
Allan (23:46 14/07/2007): Are you still there? I assumed you'd gone away. I am using a BT ADSL filter type MF50 but I've now fitted one marked DSL 4132005 (NA30513)
Allan (23:48 14/07/2007): How can the filter cause the Help Program make my Ethernet connection fail?
Anand Ganti (23:50 14/07/2007): 1. Please check the status of the BT Home Hub connection for a certain period of time frame (30 minutes) and let us know the result.
2. Please let me know whether you are mentioning about the BT Broadband Desktop Help software.
Anand Ganti (23:55 14/07/2007): Please respond as a delay would cause disconnection of our chat session.
Allan (23:55 14/07/2007): Yes the new broadband help program. This was automatically laded a couple of days ago. It checks the hub when it has failed to connect and tells me it cannot help. At this point my Ethernet connection, which is to an ethernet hub with other computers as well as the homehub fails. The ethernet port on my computer only corrects if the homehub power is diconnected then reconnected. I thgink there is a problem either with the Homehub firmware or the help program. As i said these are versions 6.2.2.6 and 5.8.1.6508 respectively. I cannot stay on line all night.
Anand Ganti (23:58 14/07/2007): I would request you to wait for 30 minutes to check the status of your broadband connection as you have changed the microfilter and let us know the result to help you with further. In the meantime, shall I place you in the queue?
Anand Ganti (00:01 15/07/2007): Please respond as a delay would cause disconnection of our chat session.
Allan (00:01 15/07/2007): sometimes i do not lose my connection for 5 hours. sometimes it is lost after a few minutes
Anand Ganti (00:03 15/07/2007): Thank you. In the meantime, shall I place you in the queue?
Allan (00:03 15/07/2007): i must sign now as i've used too much time already
I shall call tomorrow if i have a problem
thanks
Anand Ganti (00:04 15/07/2007): Thank you.
Anand Ganti (00:04 15/07/2007): This case will automatically close in 72 hours. Please ignore the automated reminders until you are ready to continue. Thank you.
Motive Server (00:04 15/07/2007): Your request for assistance is important to us. Please respond to this message so that we can continue to provide you support.
BT Broadband Desktop Help Server (08:52 15/07/2007): ganeshv(HCL) has been assigned to your request.
ganeshv(HCL) (08:52 15/07/2007): Hello, my name is ganeshv and I have been assigned to your on-going support request. I would like to thank you in advance for your patience while I read through the previous notes in order to provide you with the most accurate fix for your issue.
ganeshv(HCL) (08:53 15/07/2007): Please give me a few moments to review the information you have provided.
ganeshv(HCL) (08:56 15/07/2007): Allan, thank you for waiting.
ganeshv(HCL) (08:56 15/07/2007): Could you please confirm whether you have tried changing the microfilter as suggested by the previous advisor?
ganeshv(HCL) (09:00 15/07/2007): Please respond as this will help us to assist you further.
ganeshv(HCL) (09:03 15/07/2007): Your request for assistance is important to us. Please respond to this message so that we can continue to provide you with support.
Motive Server (09:03 15/07/2007): Your request for assistance is important to us. Please respond to this message so that we can continue to provide you support.
Allan (09:04 15/07/2007): I have changed the microfilter. Was the older BT microfilter type MF50 a known problem?
BT Broadband Desktop Help Server (09:05 15/07/2007): ganeshv(HCL) has been assigned to your request.
ganeshv(HCL) (09:05 15/07/2007): Welcome back.
Allan (09:06 15/07/2007): When I ask a question on this helpdesk it is never answered.
Allan (09:08 15/07/2007): The Homehub has been on since midnight last night but shows only 43 minutes connection time.
ganeshv(HCL) (09:09 15/07/2007): Allan, I apologise for the inconvenience. Since, you have tried changing the microfilter, I would suggest you to check for the below steps which causes intermittent connection.

1. Placing your BT Home Hub near any of the devices listed below. The BT Home Hub should be at least 3 feet away from any such devices. Check that the telephone cable goes directly from the wall-mounted filter to the BT Home Hub and that it is not tangled in any other cables or power cords.
2. Halogen desk lamps near the BT Home Hub or telephone line, especially those with dimmers.
3. Any electrical dimmer switch.
4. Electronic devices, such as stereo speakers, PC speakers, televisions, monitors, microwave ovens, etc.
5. Routing the telephone line parallel to an AC power cord for more than a few inches.
6. Electronic insect electrocution devices (bug zappers).
7. Low quality 900 MHz cordless telephones.
8. Any other emitter of high frequency electromagnetic radiation.
9. Move BT Home Hub away from EMI sources.
10. The BT Home Hub should be placed on the wooden table.

Please let me know the results after checking for all these.
Allan (09:13 15/07/2007): I can confirm that the position of my Homehub meets all your recommendations.
ganeshv(HCL) (09:14 15/07/2007): Allan, thank you for the confirmation.
ganeshv(HCL) (09:14 15/07/2007): I understand your problem, I suggest you connect the router directly to the master socket with the telephone cable and check for the connection for the next 24 hours and contact us with the connection status. Note: Unplug the telephone cable and try connecting one end to the router and the other end to the master socket.
Allan (09:15 15/07/2007): do you mean without the filter?
ganeshv(HCL) (09:16 15/07/2007): Yes, Allan.
Allan (09:18 15/07/2007): the plug will not fit the bt socket, only the socket in the filter
ganeshv(HCL) (09:20 15/07/2007): Allan, please be informed that you should use the normal telephone cable. The flat end of the cable should be connected to the master socket, while the other end goes to the BT Home Hub.
Allan (09:22 15/07/2007): Do you mean a low speed dial up modem cable with a twist in the wires or a straight one to one connected cable?
ganeshv(HCL) (09:26 15/07/2007): Allan, please connect with the normal telephone cable, where the one end(PBX type) should be connected to the master socket, whereas the other end(RJ11) should be connected to the BT Home Hub.
Allan (09:28 15/07/2007): if I can find one I'll try it and let you know. Will my connection be troubled by phone calls without the filter, and also I will get noise on my phone calls?
Allan (09:30 15/07/2007): what is the purpose of this test?
ganeshv(HCL) (09:31 15/07/2007): Allan, I am sorry to inform that it is not possible to use the phone line till you complete the test.
ganeshv(HCL) (09:32 15/07/2007): Allan, connecting directly to the master socket is to ensure, whether there is any fault in the broadband line.
Allan (09:32 15/07/2007): I will find it impossible to do this test as I am sure people will be calliokong me today. As I use my phone for business it will be very inconvenient also.
ganeshv(HCL) (09:33 15/07/2007): Meanwhile shall I leave this case open and place you on the queue? Please let me know.
Allan (09:34 15/07/2007): ok
ganeshv(HCL) (09:35 15/07/2007): Allan, I understand your concern. Please note that connecting directly to the master socket is essential to narrow down the possible cause of the issue.
Allan (09:36 15/07/2007): ok but do not send messages until I call back as I get lots of pop ups from the helpdesk
ganeshv(HCL) (09:38 15/07/2007): Allan, I apologise for the inconvenience this has caused. Please ignore the automatic reminders, until you are ready to continue. I shall place you in the queue now.
ganeshv(HCL) (09:38 15/07/2007): If you would like to continue, you can send us a response. This will help us assist you further on your query.

Finally had enough last night. Got disconnected every 10 seconds for about 20 mins, so I ripped the hub from the connections and smashed it against the wall, what a pile of crap. I have gone back to using my lynxis wich hasn't let me down yet.

BT = Bloody Terrible.

I read that the Homehub Firmware version 6.2.2.6 was bad and the same chap gave a link to the old version. I downloaded it and installed it as a "downgrade". Near the end of the procedure, communication with the Homehub was lost and nothing I did would restore it.
The Help program gave me a long code number 5712 0030 7688 0000 and told me to ring 0845 600 7030, whereupon a nice Indian chap told me to do all sorts of tests including holding the wireless association button for 20 seconds then unplugging everything.
At the end of an hour we had got no further so he ordered me a new Homehub. That will make 4 all told. I wonder how many I can actually get? Why stop at 4....
I once heard of someone that made a garden wall from old marble clocks... maybe I could do the same with Homehubs?

I can see how annoying the automatic updates must be, but they can be disabled by a few simple commands in telnet, it's all out there on the internet. I get blazingly fast speeds on TalkTalk, better even than the current TalkTalk modem which is very good. The hub's based on a Broadcom chipset, which as far as I know is still the best. Two general rules: 1: don't load the software off the CD; 2: if you need to call support, tell first line support what they want to hear to make them happy, you'll only get sense when you prove you can make sense!

It is all true...BT suck...they have no idea out in india at their little call centers and trying to get across the pot that although according to thier checks i should have 7mbs constant down speed is just a lie.They do their checks and say it must be my line...I tell them it was fine when i had other ISP running through it...They say "oh"...I tell the that crushing my bandwidth at peak times down to 1mbs or less! is not part of the contract and they maybe in breach of said contract causes them to normally say....Hold on one moment please....The put you on hold and go ask the boss...I assume this isn't in their script...I could go on and on and on.....I won't.....BT really should be monitored by trading standards...The service offer doesn't match what the consumer gets not nearly at all....HEED MY WARNING......STAY AWAY FROM BT IF YOU LIKE THE INTERNET....THEY EITHER CAN'T FIX IT OR WON'T FIX IT....WE'VE ALL BEEN HAD....BITES TO BE A BT CUSTOMER...DON'T FIGHT IT....IT'LL TAKE YOU FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER....AND YOU STILL WON'T GET WHAT THEY SAID....BT KNOW HEY ARE DOING THIS....THE CALL CENTERS AND SO CALLED HELP LINES DON'T....PUT IT DOWN TO EXPERIENCE....WAIT FOR YOUR CONTRSCT TO END OR PAY THEM TO CANCEL IT AND GO ELSEWHERE...SORRY PEEPS....THE BIG CHEESES HAVE WON.

helpful sites

start logging all your bandwidths before you call....this will only serve to arm you with proof....

http://www.speedtest.bbmax.co.uk/

this is an independant site to check your bandwidth....log different speeds from all times of days then hit those bitches at BT india call centers with knowledge before the ask you to do it anyway with their shitty software..

what u lot moanin bout my home hub never fooks up dounloads at 7775kbs

can any1 please help i wanna get a network game of football manager 07 goin but it wont let me connect to server or summert ive downloaded hamachi or summert but it weird

IMPORTANT INFO ABOUT SOFTWARE FOR BT-HOMEHUB

Hello All.
I have used BT for several months now. And like a lot of you, I have had problems.
Here are a couple of points that some other users may find useful. They have helped me.

Ffirstly, BT insist on everyone using their software, they dont give you much choice on what to download and what not to download. however... Once you have fully installed ALL of the BT software including Norton, (if you want/need it) I would advise goint into Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel, and remove ALL software installed except for the bits you need. I only keep Messenger and Norton.

DONT USE BT WIRELESS MANAGER. go to wireless settings in Control Panel and let "windows configure wireless"

This may help some of you. also, by UNinstalling Hub Manager I don't think it will update the hub. Mine doesn't and i don't need it too.

Lastly, many of you will use the Hub for Gaming? I do, and to get the best performance ring BT and ask them to remove "Interleaving"

Interleaving is BT's way of protecting there lines by sending information over the internet in "packets" instead of a single constant connection. If they turn this off, you will get less hangups and disconnects.

Hope this helps.

Matilda.cs@btinternet.com

I have BT voyager 220V and Belkin router. Is there any way I can use these together? BT say I must have their hub but there must be a way to configure??? Can anyone explain how to do this in very basic terms? CHEERS!!

After reading alot of the comments above about the BT HomeHub.... like all tech equipment there will be problems from time to time etc... I have had BT homehub since the beginning and I cannot say I have had problems the set-up is a PC with ethernet connection 2 x laptops with wireless connections and a printer shared with these devices via ethernet port no problems whats so ever.... speed does go up and down but that all depends where you live how busy your exchange is and the distance you live from it ... I have recently moved and at my old address which was on limit of the exchange the best I could achieve was 1Mb - 2Mb if I was lucky now where I live 1/2 mile from the exchange my speed is constant and getting 6Mb to 8Mb no problems my hub is left on and my signal has never dropped... personally what I have seen on the market the BT HomeHub can't be beaten... BT can't be doing much wrong this week they connected their 4Million customer which can't be bad so their service they provide can't be that bad...

Hi
I am a bt openreach Eng, and have been working on b/b faults for over 2 years now.
first of all, make sure your dsl, adsl light is on, a lot of people get confused start messing with there computer, on the home hub and most powered routers this is your first check. If you are getting intermittent sync problems this is going to be either faulty hub, (try other router etc, a line fault, listen for noise on line, ( plug a corded phone into master socket with front plate removed and clear dial tone by pressing 1) the line should be clear no humming no crackle) card fault at exch, the other problem is normally caused by customer own ext, even when wired correctly,
This is not what u have plugged into them but the cable it self.
So try plugging your modem/router into master socket with front plate removed. A proper master socket is the size of a light switch with a line just below half way, your ext should be attached to the front plate so when that is removed you are checking the bt line and not your ext. There are 2 types of front plate that may help you 1.s.s.f.p. (service specific front plate) also known as broadband front plate, this will isolate the b/b from the ext, but the only place you will get b/b is in the front of the master socket b/b will not work on the ext , S.s.f.p includes a filter so other filters are no longer required. The other plate is called a bell wire front plate although I bet there are a lot of other names for these. you can get these out side of B.T. There are no hard and fast rules for the bell wire front plate as fitting sometimes makes no difference at all. no sync faults can also come from faulty or incompatible electric items. including microwave ovens, baby alarms, modem, modem power packs faulty lights etc, including neighbour up to 200m away. if you and a few people near you lose b/b you can try to isolate were the problem is coming from (turn off ring main to see if problem goes)of course this could be an EXCH PROBLEM.
It is true that the further you are from the exch the weaker the signal but this is also Dependant on size and type of cable, thick copper being better than ally, If when you pick up your phone you get a connection this is normally due to a h/r joint (high residence) you will need to get a job raised, to get an Eng out, and thats not easy. next check you have an Internet light (home hub) this should come on about 2 mins after adsl light has gone steady. if this does not light, go into hub menu, on the first page click on home hub logo near top of the page, on the next page there is a button that says connect press that, if it already says disconnect it already ok.
If you have a connection but slow speed. Don t forget b/b is a bit like a train as i cannot go any faster than the slowest carriage, If you connect to a site that is still on dial up ( and yes there are a few) your speed getting information will suck. When using bit torrent sites the program you use and the way your pc is set up can make a huge difference. even when there are multi peers and seeds if they have a cap on there upload speed this will also hold down the download speed.
Go to a good speed test site like speedtest.net,
check your connection speed to your computer, check if you are getting any crc errors or hec errors, any errors over ten is either caused by ext or line problems or exch. and need to be sorted. Errors will slow your line as ADSL max is rate adaptive and will slow the line to stop errors. if you are a game player check with your isp that interleaving is off or you will get a delay when playing. if your connection speed is high say 8meg and you are only getting 2meg speed test and the line is not erroring you need to talk to your s/p as they have probably throttled your line, and they are the only ones who can adjust that, not all s/p are the same sometimes you get what you pay for. check out your s/p contention ratio, some are not so good, some s/p are over subscribed and at peek times 16.30 to 23.00 and weekends will slow down a lot. there also better routers, there is a ratio of singnal to noise (snr) some routers will connect as low as 3snr most wont or when they do keep dropping the connection. If yyou are on a long line do all you can to get the snr up this way you whil;e have a better speed and dropping the connection wil be much less.
this is the very short version.
Hope this is of some help.
Sorry for any typos
Bob

Bob
The above makes absolute sense and interesting reading.
In the perfect world, how would you recommend a 100% BT connection to HH?
I have no other phones than the hub phones, using VOIP for all calls except 999 calls.
I have heard that it is good practice to disconnect the terminal 3 (ringer) wire on the master socket to stop interference http://www.jarviser.co.uk/jarviser/broadbandspeed.html but what is your opinion?

ARGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGGHGHHGHGHGHGHGGHGH!!!!!

POSTAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!POSTAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

GOD WHAT A PILE OF SHITE BT IS IS!!!!!!!!!

MUST........FIND.......HAMMER.......NOW!!!

GOING POSTAL GOING POSTAL GOING POSTAL....

Hi, my BtHomeHub is only 2 day old. I have to say im very confused at the moment. I have installed my hub via an ethernet to the pc. i had problems installing it but eventually i did. i was told i should receive up to 5meg service on my line but the download speed drops very low the fastest speed ive had is 3meg. how can i sort my problem. its doing my head in. thanks. i trust my previous modem this new 1 is hard to get used to. how can i keep up the speed high? im using windows xp.

i have BTHomeHub-E08c and i dont no my network key can anyone ghet it for me please

Hi Paul
sorry for the delay in this reply,
Getting 100% connection? Not sure what you mean by that.
Having phones makes no difference unless of course they are faulty and causing a problem, The real problem is the extension wire, you are correct that disconnecting the bell wire can help, on long lines this can be a great help. but if your not using your other sockets why not disconnect all of them?. If you are close to an exch this is unlikely to make much difference.
Something I forgot to put in on the previous post, If you are on adsl max your snr works in increments from 6 to 16, 6 being the best if your on 16 it probably means there is a problem with the line or B/B, on fixed rate 1/2 meg 1meg etc the higher the snr is the better.

Had BT Internet since March. Fine with the BT router, never went off once. Got BT Home Hub in Sept and keeps dropping the Internet connection. We don't download at all. Just surf the web. So annoying. Have to unplug it, wait a minute and plug it back in. Then it's fine. Sometimes not until we reboot the pc though.

exactly the same problem as Chris, London.
It just dies, no sites will connect, have to power off the homecack and start again, its happened 4 times today

Hi folks,

Just stumbled on this forum by mistake, but it makes very interesting reading.

I don't want to upset anyone, but I have been with BT since broadband became available in my area, I live about 2 miles from the exchange, and get an average download speed of 3.8GB.

I changed to option 3 and installed a homehub some months ago, and at the risk of dissapointing anyone, it has been working perfectly.

The hub has my desktop pc connected via cable, I have my laptop, my wifes laptop, daughters laptop, son's pc (Vista), a ps3, 2 xbox's, a Wii, 3psp's and a Nokia N95 and N80 mobile phone all connected wirelessly, and not once have any of these machines lost connectivity (as far as I am aware).

On the one occasion I have had to ring bt with regard to my broadband talk service, they were very helpful and sorted the problem out immidiatly.

Best wishes to all.

Er. No Actually. Still, if the price was right....

(By the way, did I say an average speed of 3.8GB. I meant MB of course, slight slip of the keyboard)

Have a nice day.

I have had Bt HH on option 3 for about 4 months and i'll be honest the first 3 months were amazing.. 700K down pretty much constantly. Then one day i found i had no internet and the hub wasn't responding to anything. Rebooted it and yay internet was back but at best i was getting 60k.
Now one month on it depends on what time of day, the weather, my own mood and any other god given factors that might have anything to do with nothing.
My friend who worked for NTL and was sure the Exchange is overloaded and it seems possible as i have tried other routers and direct cards with little difference.
I tried to call bt but got through to someone in india who thought that my line rating speed was infact the speed i was getting and the throughput was my upload speed. I can't repeat what i called him but it had something to do with you are too dumb to do your job.
I have since given up and will be moving to another provider as soon as i am out of contract.

I cannot connect my laptop wirelessly to the Home Hub .It will detect it but says unable to connect.The laptop is fine at work.The Home Hub was working fine until a couple of weeks ago and the had to contact helpline and got it sorted by Remote Access eventually.Another computer with a belkin adapter stick is fine
any ideas please?

Hello all, this is my first post

Like most of you, my home hub sucks too. Got a 8 meg line and everyday at about 1700 pm the bloody thing clicks, then shuts down for re-boot. Whilst this is annoying, sometimes i have to do a hard restart of the hub and pc. This is very irritating and if it carries on, i will be putting my foot through it after my fish have had it in the tank swimming with them.

I know what call centres are like and had alot of dealings with orange (Based in korea) due a problem my friend had. But i would rate british telecrap only slightly higher than them because i can understand them when i have to call but they are useless with tech knowledge. All they normally say is that there is a conflict caused by software running on my system, however the code produced for the homehub appears to be basic and untested before release. Even tried a fresh H/D with XP SP2 only upon it and they said the same. So are they making software for XP, or just confusing themselves by writing it for a lets face it.....A OPERATING SYSTEM! ?

Anyway Back to the main point:

Any guesses on the main cause of this problem please?, as the firmware / software version does not appear to change on my router and got a fresh system ready on new H/D.

Many Thanks For Reading

Maverick

Bt homehub keeps loosing its wireless signal.
I am fed up with talking to the so called engineers in India, as all they do is log on and change the channel. At least once a day I have to connect my laptop via the ethernet connection go into the home hub settings change channel so that i dont have to sit about 3 feet away connected via the ethernet cable.
can anyone help as im pulling my hair out
cheers Mark

Just went into my hub to check a couple of things and had to insert my hub serial number and chose a new password
fine I thought until I tried to get into advanced settings.
The usual Admin/Admin was blanked when I ok'ed it so what do I use now ??? anyone know

Thanks

UR:admin
PW:*******(password u have set)

Hi Jonathan,

Very interested to hear some firsthand experiences from a Mac user. I'm interested in switching to BT Broadband - but worried about that Home Hub updating business.

I wonder if you could help me with a couple of questions:

1. Once you restored the corrupt Home Hub firmware, does it still continue to update the firmware on a regular basis? How often does it try to do this? Did you ever work out a way of manually updating the firmware at a time that suited you?

2. Not sure whether you can answer this - but maybe. My current ISP 9Tesco) allows me to retrieve and send e-mail using a non Tesco address. I use Entourage and receive my work e-mail at home and then use the tesco.mail.net smtp server to send mail from my university account. Can you do this sort of thing with BT Broadband?

Thanks for any suggestions!

Sean

Hi,

Thanks a lot for the instructions, I had to reinstall from the installation CD recently, real lifesaver, thanks again. ( I had to browse the internet on my mobile to find a fix)

Happy New Year!

hi jonathan i have a question regarding installing the hub.

first i had a connection at bt and a former hub but one day my hub broke down in the case that it needs to be replace. bt replaced my hub so i dont have a problem with that but when im installing now the new hub. i cant click the continue button at the installation how's this happen? does any of you have idea how to fix this?

I have a problem with disconnecting during the night but it isn't always 1am it changes so i can never be prepared for it going offline. I tried making a call and that failed to do anything. It is very annoying when trying to stream tv that I can't do it halfway through a program.

Hi Jonathan

Just wondering if you have ever heard of anyone having any health problems regarding the homehub. I may just be imagining it (issues with wireless networks and schools have been in the news in the past) but I have been experiencing lots of headaches recently. These headaches seem to coincide with me spending time in my lounge - where the HH is situated. my partner has also started complaining of headaches.

Any comments/thoughts?

Hello Jonathan,

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE can someone help me connect my Laptop to my BT Hub? I'm, literally, beyond the end of my tether with this. (Picture a goat on a tether, with severel USB extention cables added, more on that later!) It all began... screen goes all wavey as the mists of time take us back to May 2005...

With some of my Bursary (I'm now post-grad, PGCE - PCET, qualified 1-2-1 Teacher in the FE sector), I bought a laptop (fujitsu-siemens). Unfortunately, I got it just before some bright spark decided to build in the 'wireless' hardware. As I was with... YES, I KNOW! So don't even dare giggle... AOL (covers face to disguise embarrassment), I thought it a good idea to try to activate the pre-installed AOL program on my laptop. Well, I needed software. Belkin had to be returned because it wasn't 'compatable' with AOL, instead only Netgear was publicised as being the workable option. £80 lighter, I tried again. It worked first time! And the second time! And then, on the third attempt? Nothing, nada, zilch! I re-installed everything and worked fine. But...

Yes, that's right, I was moving home. Not moving far, not moving to the next county, I moved a few streets away. So far so good, until I tried to get my laptop to re-connect with AOL. Once again, it worked twice. I realised drastic action was called for. I quit my AOL contract and moved to BT Total Broadband. (As a treat Dad gave me £30, for Christmas 2007, to buy the BT Hub). "YES", I thought, "now my Laptop will work once again. I'll add the Netgear USB stick and all will be right with the world!" Err, no. It refused. The blue light came on but that's where the story runs cold.

The house PC is great, when no one else is around, but when I need to do my lesson plans etc, I don't want to have to set-up my laptop next to the desktop PC to surf the Internet. Setting up the BT Hub was fairly easy, though the 'plug in and go' line is a lie. I plugged in and had to go make a cuppa. It did, however, allow me to connect my laptop to it (via ten feet of several USB connection cables - something I'd been able to do before purchasing the BT Hub) but linking via wireless? Not a chance. I loaded the BT software onto my laptop, re-installed the Netgear software and... screen goes wavey as we return to present day England...

And so, my question is this: "Without buying a new laptop, how can I get my nice new gleaming white BT Hub to 'detect' my laptop?" I'll happily fork out another £20 or so for a plug-in or a USB wireless adapter, if some one can promise me it will work. But, what kit, if any, should I get? And, if it's not new kit I need, what happens next?

John.

PS.

I'm also losing connectivity for no reason. Yes, I'll be typing away and suddenly look up to see that the website I'm on is 'not responding'. Then the whole screen/mouse/keyboard goes into 'lock-down'. Everything freezes and, unless I'm lucky enough to have keyboard access for 'control alt & delete', I have no alternative but to switch off the power and start all over again. It's only ever on the two sites I use the most. It used to happen on other sites but I stopped using them because I found better sites (the two I now use most often). Also, simply typing in this information, this evening, has proven to be ridiculously slow. I was at the end of a sentence before the rest of the text loaded.

Any suggestions? I've Defragmented my PC and so, now, I don't know what else to consider. My good friend Mark is still with AOL, he's in a worse mess than me. He's got two friends working hard to diagnose why, after defragging and numerous other attempts to correct the problem, his PC is getting slower and slower. He's removed everything except 'Word' and 'Internet' but it's still doing getting slower.

John.

Hi, im running bt home hub disk on vista i run with admin get to the screen were the women says make sure the sound is turned up on ur pc theres a continue button but i click iT and nithing loads up or anything? can someone please help?. thanks.

I work for a *major* dsl provider for the UK. I have read through most of the messages here. I would say that at least 80% of the issues that i deal with are solely down to physical setup (and by that i mean the manner in which every single telephony device is connected to each telephone socket in your house). DSL is a very sensitive technology. to make matters worse, most of the bt telephone network predates WW1, which means COPPER WIRING. copper wiring is fantastic at picking up any kind of interferance which will mess up the dsl signal. obviously distance from exchange is critical too. In essence, the only way to make sure you have a full-speed (distance and line quality permitting) and stable connection is:

Never use anything other than the telephone cable provided with the router to connect it to the master socket - no extension cables at all, no matter what material they are made out of. And do notice i did say MASTER SOCKET - not secondary socket in the bedroom or kitchen - its usually in the hallway of the house, or at the front closest to the street. many master sockets can be identified by having a horizontal line across the middle of the faceplate, as though the faceplate is in 2 parts...which it is. removing the lower half reveals a test socket which you can connect your router to through a filter if you suspect the master socket itself may be interfering with your connection stability/speed. Also, i notice a lot of people will connect their sky digibox cable to the phone socket, then use the doble adaptor on it to receive the microfilter...remember, microfilter first, then all devices connect through the filter.

IF any of you are thinking of buying one of those extension cables that are supposedly designed for broadband then forget about it. a few feet of extra cabling between the master socket and the router is all you need to destabalise your connection. there are some other details, which i will not include because i have to sleep now and get up for work tomorrow and tell about 40 EU's exactly what i have written here. maybe this advice will help many of you.

if you have any questions about this il check up again in a day or two to follow up.

bt home hub sucks...i cannot download anything through wireless; it cuts off several times no matter how big the file size you are downloading.after a quick research i found out that this might be due to the onboard firewall on the router. this is such an annoying unacrobatic flip...i had to download an important windows update at my friends!!!girrrrrrrrrr

Question for 'the barbarian':

How many wireless networks are in your network list where you are? If there is more than 1 (ie your own) there is a chance that your wireless broadcast from your router could be broadcasting on the same channel as a neighbour's. there are only 13 channels and therefore a pretty good chance of a clash. as a rule of thumb, any problems with wireless are usually resolved after changing to a different wireless channel.

let me know if it works out for you.

Ay-up Jonathan,

To answer your question, I'm in South Yorkshire and work in a College.

Thanks for the technical support, I'll read through it and update you when I get a spare five minutes.