topic Re: EE Smart Hub 2-hourly reboot problem & solution in Broadband & Landline

EE Smart Hub 2-hourly reboot problem & solution

GazzF — Tue, 14 Jun 2022 14:10:36 GMT

The EE Smart Hub 2-Hourly Reboot Problem & Solution

The Problem

The BLACK EE Smart Hub (also called a “router”) loses Internet connectivity for a few minutes several times a day.

What’s actually happening is a software update on 24th May 2022 caused an issue that triggers this particular model of router to reboot every 2 hours. The result is Internet connectivity is lost for roughly 2 minutes while the router reboots.

You can verify if this is the cause of your current problem by logging into your router’s admin interface. Using a web browser on a device on the same network (LAN) as your router, go to http://192.168.1.254 or whatever IP address you may have changed it to. Log in using the password printed on the back of the router. Look for the “Admin password for Hub Manager”. This is not the same as your Wi-Fi password.

Go to Advanced Settings, then Technical Log. Click on the Event Log tab. You will see lots of entries listed. Filter it by clicking on Categories, scroll down the list and select BOOT. If you see dozens of entries starting with “Booting firmware…” and the time between each entry is exactly 2 hours (plus an extra 80 or so seconds) then your router is affected by this very issue. Your log may not go back as far as 24th May which is the fateful date EE customers in this forum agree the issue started.

How To Fix it

A fix can only come from EE, but at the time of writing (3 weeks into the problem) there’s no sign of any fix on the horizon. But don’t despair because using a completely different model of router is the quickest solution, but it could take a few days. If you’re lucky, the EE agent you speak to will recognise your issue and be willing to send you the latest WHITE EE Smart Router for free immediately. However, at the time of writing this is not the case and you will first need to go through several tedious hoops. The experience from most customers in this forum is as follows:

It’s important that you call EE’s broadband support to report the fault. Tell them the router reboots every 2 hours and you’ve read about it in the Community Forum. The agent you speak to should be aware of the problem as it’s been estimated that 20,000 customers have this issue.

EE’s standard process for dealing with issues is to send out one of their support guys who will have a poke around with your router and phone socket. When they realise they can’t fix it he might offer to give you a new router or get one posted out to you (they may not carry spare stock). If he does that then tell him you’ll only accept the latest WHITE EE Smart Router. Unless he can guarantee you a white one, you should refuse to save you the trouble of posting a black router back to them because it will have exactly the same issue.

The support guy will advise he needs to arrange for an Openreach engineer to visit you. (I advise you to call EE back to arrange your first Openreach visit in case the support guy doesn’t make this arrangement for you.) The Openreach engineer will check your master socket and replace it if it’s old or not looking good. He’ll check your extension wires too if you have any. He might change your port and/or line from the local street cabinet. This might appear at first to fix the problem, but about 6 hours later your router will start rebooting again.

Call EE back and they’ll send out another Openreach engineer who will either check everything all over again or roll his eyes and say a few choice words about EE knowing exactly what the problem is and wasting everybody’s time by sending engineers out for no good reason.

Once you’ve gone through these hoops, call EE and update them. At the time of writing this is the only point where an EE agent will be open to suggestions from you. (Try making the following suggestion the very first time you call EE as they may have updated their policy in light of this epic issue going on for so long.)

The Solution

Depending on your own preference, ask the EE agent to either…

Send you their latest WHITE EE Smart Router because it has been confirmed by several people in this forum that it works perfectly and is not impacted by the 2-hourly rebooting issue. It looks like this: https://www.eehomebroadband.com/Home/ProductsDesc/110
If they try to make you buy it or increase your fees then my advice is to refuse because they're providing a faulty service and it's up to them to pay for a solution.
or...
Refund you after you’ve bought your own 3rd party router. This gives you some choice in getting the router that best suits your needs, but do consider that EE may refuse a full refund if you buy an expensive model. A good router can be had for £35 to £60. EE may ask you to send them a receipt of your purchase so make sure you get one that can be emailed.

If you want to buy your own router then choose one that you know will work easily with EE broadband. It must support VDSL. Two models that customers in this forum have bought and confirmed to work perfectly are:

TP-Link VR400 (V3): £60 from Amazon and other retailers. Better Wi-Fi than EE’s black router and more features such as MU-MIMO and Mesh support. Its quick setup lets you select your ISP from a list (EE is listed) and it automatically configures itself. Job done.
TP-Link TD-W9970: £35 from Amazon and other retailers. A cheaper alternative, not as fast as the VR400 for Wi-Fi speed, but you won’t notice the difference as your EE broadband is probably limited to a maximum of 80mbps anyway. You’ll only notice the difference if you transfer lots of data between wireless devices on your LAN such copying files from your mobile phone to your laptop via Wi-Fi. I think this router’s chipset is slightly slower so if you enable advanced security features such as DoS protection, it may slow down your network speed more than the VR400 would.
BT Home Hub 6 or BT Smart Hub: Some users have found these work without issue, without even having to set the EE Broadband Username and password.

Before you unplug your black EE router for the last time, be sure to write down your broadband username. Go to Advanced Settings > Broadband. Look for your “Broadband Username” and password. You’ll need this and your password for setting up your new router.

It won’t let you see your password, but you can work it out from the Broadband Username. If your username looks like PRODUCTIONHQNUN123456@fs, your password will look like HQNPASS123456. Simply replace the numbers in the password, with the ones found in your username. For very old legacy users whose username doesn't look like this & you've forgotten what you choose way back, give EE a call and ask them nicely for it.

Lastly, when your new white EE router or 3rd party router arrives and you’ve set it up, you may notice it’s not giving you your full expected Internet speed. This is because your maximum speed was lowered by the Dynamic Line Management (DLM) at your local cabinet when it detected your previous EE router was frequently dropping the line.

Check your current speed by Googling “speed test” and then click on Run Speed Test. If it’s notably slower than what you used to get you’ll need to call EE and ask if they can get Openreach to do a DLM reset. The engineer will visit you but if you ask him at the door for a DLM reset they probably won’t even bother coming in and will get the job done for you within the hour.

I hope this guide has been useful.

Re: EE Smart Hub 2-hourly reboot problem & solution

PetrusMaximus — Sun, 29 May 2022 14:55:17 GMT

Since last Tuesday I find my smarthub rebooting several times a day. Contacting EE help, it seems this is a known problem affecting a large number of peoiple but so far without solution. Anyone heard about and know about a fix ?

Re: EE Smart Hub 2-hourly reboot problem & solution

XRaySpeX — Sun, 29 May 2022 15:15:20 GMT

Welcome to EE's Home Broadband Forum.

Is it the BB as a whole dropping or just the WiFi connections? Do Ethernet connected devices stay working? What colours are the light sequence when it happens?

If you would like help with your BB speed or connection issues, please would you carry out the following steps for starters, which will enable us to diagnose the problem and advise you further. Do not restart your router to do these tests:

1. Post your full router stats:

For a BrightBox: login and go to Advanced Settings > System > DSL Status. Also post 'System Uptime' from top of System Log page.
For a SmartHub: login and go to Advanced Settings > Technical Log > Information. Obscure your names & any numbers in the BB Username & also the SSIDs.

Full router stats are key to any speed & connection issues.

2. What does BT Wholesale Broadband Availability Checker estimate for your phone number? Post just the whole table and the line above it, blanking out your phone number. If it doesn't recognise your phone number or you don't have one, use the Address Checker, not the Postcode Checker.

Re: EE Smart Hub 2-hourly reboot problem & solution

PetrusMaximus — Sun, 29 May 2022 15:20:44 GMT

tech info as requested

EE Smart Hub Manager

Home

Advanced settings

Technical log

Information

Event log

This is a list of your EE Smart Hub settings and current statistics.

Product name:Smart Hub

Serial number:+EEH001

Firmware version:v0.05.02.04290-EE Firmware updated:Your Firmware has not been updated.

Board version:01

DSL uptime:0 Days, 0 Hours, 48 Mins, 49 Secs

Data rate:19.00 Mbps / 60.00 Mbps

Maximum data rate:25.59 Mbps / 81.13 Mbps

Noise margin (up/down):10.0 / 11.9

Line attenuation (up/down):13.3 / 12.6

Signal attenuation (up/down):13.4 / 12.6

Data sent / received:34.9 MB / 733.8 MB

Broadband username:

2.4 GHz wireless network name:

2.4 GHz wireless channel:Smart (Channel 11)

5 GHz wireless network name:

5 GHz wireless channel:Smart (Channel 48)

Wireless security:WPA2

Wireless mode:Mode 1

Firewall:Default

MAC address:

Software variant:-

Boot loader: 0.0.3-EE (Mon Dec 4 17:32:53 2017)

Re: EE Smart Hub 2-hourly reboot problem & solution

PetrusMaximus — Sun, 29 May 2022 15:34:04 GMT

and its the whole smarthub rebooting; not a simple wifi disconnect etc.

Re: EE Smart Hub 2-hourly reboot problem & solution

PetrusMaximus — Mon, 30 May 2022 10:44:34 GMT

anyone else having the same issue ?

Re: EE Smart Hub 2-hourly reboot problem & solution

Mustrum — Mon, 30 May 2022 11:12:18 GMT

@PetrusMaximus I have not seen any other posts with people reporting router problems.

Are you going to provide the rest of the information @XRaySpeX asked for?

Also, do you have a phone line, if so is it quiet - dial 17070 option 2?

Do you have another router that you could try? Is EE sending a new one?

Re: EE Smart Hub 2-hourly reboot problem & solution

PetrusMaximus — Mon, 30 May 2022 11:32:51 GMT

line is checked and is quiet. also tested by EE as no faults on line

a new router has been obtained and is giving the same issue.

what other tech info do you need ?

Re: EE Smart Hub 2-hourly reboot problem & solution

PetrusMaximus — Mon, 30 May 2022 11:36:47 GMT

router is rebooting from this command

12:20:01, 30 May. Booting firmware v0.06.01.08190-EE (Wed Aug 19 18:20:33 2020)
12:19:59, 30 May. System start Button press (PowerButton)
12:19:59, 30 May.

but where does it come from; no-one is physically pressing the power button

Re: EE Smart Hub 2-hourly reboot problem & solution

Mustrum — Mon, 30 May 2022 11:38:17 GMT

@PetrusMaximus from post 2:

2. What does BT Wholesale Broadband Availability Checker estimate for your phone number? Post just the whole table and the line above it, blanking out your phone number. If it doesn't recognise your phone number or you don't have one, use the Address Checker, not the Postcode Checker.

Re: EE Smart Hub 2-hourly reboot problem & solution

PetrusMaximus — Mon, 30 May 2022 11:45:26 GMT

Featured Products Downstream Line Rate(Mbps) Upstream Line Rate (Mbps) Downstream HandbackThreshold(Mbps) WBC FTTC Availability Date WBC SOGEA Availability Date Left in JumperHigh Low High Low VDSL Range A (Clean)

VDSL Range B (Impacted)

80	71.1	20	19	65.3	Available	Available	--
80	69.3	20	19	62.5	Available	Available	--

Featured Products Downstream Line Rate(Mbps) Upstream Line Rate (Mbps) Downstream Range (Mbps) Availability Date FTTP Install ProcessFTTP on Demand

330

Available

ADSL Products Downstream Line Rate (Mbps) Upstream Line Rate (Mbps) Downstream Range(Mbps) ADSL Availability Date Left in JumperWBC ADSL 2+WBC ADSL2+ Annex MADSL MaxWBC Fixed RateFixed Rate

Up to 2.5	--	1 to 4	Available	Yes
Up to 2.5	Up to 0.5	1 to 4	Available	Yes
Up to 2	--	1 to 3.5	Available	--
1	--	--	Available	Yes
1	--	--	Available	--

SOADSL Products Downstream Line Rate (Mbps) Upstream Line Rate (Mbps) Downstream Range(Mbps) WBC SOADSL Availability Date Left in JumperWBC SOADSL 2+SOADSL MaxSOADSL Fixed Rate

Up to 2.5	--	1 to 4	--	Yes
Up to 2	--	1 to 4	--	--
Up to 1	--	1 to 3.5	--	Yes

Observed Speeds VDSLMax Observed Downstream SpeedMax Observed Upstream SpeedObserved Date

59.99

2022-05-29

Other Offerings Availability DateVDSL MulticastADSL Multicast

Available

Premise Environment StatusBridge TapVRINTE FacePlateLast Test Date

15-05-2022

Exchange Product Restrictions StatusFTTP Priority ExchangeWLR WithdrawalSOADSL Restriction

The exchange is not in a current fibre priority programme

Re: EE Smart Hub 2-hourly reboot problem & solution

Mustrum — Mon, 30 May 2022 11:54:59 GMT

OK thanks.

So do you still have an open fault with the Broadband Care team?

Are they sending an engineer?

Have you been through plugging the router via the Test Socket?

Re: EE Smart Hub 2-hourly reboot problem & solution

PetrusMaximus — Mon, 30 May 2022 12:05:06 GMT

yes I have an open fault and they are not sending an engineer as their is nothing wrong at my side. router is plugged into test socket

seems this problem is quite widespread affecting routers on a random basis. started Tuesday 24th May

Re: EE Smart Hub 2-hourly reboot problem & solution

XRaySpeX — Mon, 30 May 2022 12:14:18 GMT

Also from post 2:

What colours are the light sequence when it happens?

Re: EE Smart Hub 2-hourly reboot problem & solution

XRaySpeX — Mon, 30 May 2022 12:18:02 GMT

Locate the hidden test socket that is revealed when you remove the bottom half of the split faceplate (2 screws or press tabs) of your master socket. Only do this if you have a split faceplate. Do you have any extension sockets in the home even if unused? Are there any wires connected to back of faceplate of master socket?

Try the BT Quiet Line Test (QLT), dial 17070 Opt 2, preferably with a corded phone, in the test socket with the router disconnected. If there is any noise, report it to your landline provider as a voice fault (don't mention Broadband). Often sorting out voice faults will fix the Broadband as well.

Reboot the router & plug it into the test socket. Post the full router stats & System Uptime when plugged into test socket.

Is the issue any better?

Re: EE Smart Hub 2-hourly reboot problem & solution

PetrusMaximus — Mon, 30 May 2022 12:18:40 GMT

I havent been able to watch the light sequence during reboots as these are random every few hours. But the log clearly shows its a full reboot.

Re: EE Smart Hub 2-hourly reboot problem & solution

PetrusMaximus — Mon, 30 May 2022 12:20:30 GMT

Only one DECT phone on the line. situation no better when plugged into test socket. The issue in my view are reboot commands coming from EE servers. its nothing to do with wiring or equipment at my seide

Re: EE Smart Hub 2-hourly reboot problem & solution

Nickl4 — Mon, 30 May 2022 15:58:06 GMT

I have exactly the same issues since last Tuesday. Today is been every 2 hours around 42/44 mins past the Hour. EE not been great on finding the root cause of the issue so far.

Re: EE Smart Hub 2-hourly reboot problem & solution

PetrusMaximus — Mon, 30 May 2022 16:38:38 GMT

Hi Nick14; good to know someone else has this issue. EE says it affects "a handful" of users. I have a call with them again tomorrow to see if they have found a solution. will keep you informed

Re: EE Smart Hub 2-hourly reboot problem & solution

Nickl4 — Mon, 30 May 2022 16:50:09 GMT

I have had mixed messages from EE. One person said is a common issue, then got told its not a common issue. Just gone back and asked for somebody to look at the router logs as the reboot command is happening every 2 hours today, but at other times is more random. Openreach coming out in the morning as well so will see what they can find, when line is up its working but seems to have dropped in speed slightly as well.