1.6Gbit connection new smart hub (white, small box) sporadic issues? DNS MITM?

[allamavortex]

Hello all,

So I recently changed my service from 900mbit to 1.6Gbit and that involved a change of router and obviously the OR ONT on the wall.

Ever since having it installed there seems to be an issue with (most likely DNS issues). Whatever is loaded/playing/game continue to work, but I have spells where NO further DNS requests seem to make it through.

I totally forgot to nslookup during one of these issues, but I will the next time it happens (it's pretty frequent and annoying). I can ping 8.8.8.8 (google) whilst being unable to load any webpages on any device/browser. Thus removing the possibility of it being localised to a single machine/device as some were using the router, some were set to DNS over HTTPS and some were using Google's 8.8.8.8 etc. 

It is very much like the router is playing the MITM and intercepting the requests and then slowly, or failing to process these requests at all for a period of time which ranges up to about 45 seconds.

As I said, cached requests, or those already in process are fine, but even something as trivial as trying to watch a YT video is met with 45 seconds of nothing, totally unable to look up ANY address, but established connections and new connections not requiring DNS all work fine.

I'm not really one for conspiracies but I really feel like this new router is intercepting (MITM), attempting to do something with, and failing the DNS requests. This behaviour is only been present since getting the new Smart Hub (the tall, thing white one).

I did a quick google and it seems I'm not alone with this - is anyone else noticing this type of behavior?

Mixture of wired and wireless devices, same behaviour.

[Osk1]

Yes I'm having exactly the same issue, web pages not loading and you tube randomly greyed out for a while. I'm on 1.6 gb with smart hub pro. Would be interested to know if anyone has a fix for this issue. I reconnected my old tplink router to see if this resolved the problem and there were no issues so it seems it's a smart hub pro issue.

[allamavortex]

Hello @JimM11  @Osk1 @XRaySpeX 

My investigation so far:

Running my own DNS and DHCP servers, the problem goes away. Zero issues.

I noticed in the default config where the router provides DHCP and DNS servers (as others likely will) you will see packetloss on the first hop in your network (the router) during problematic periods. For me it was from 2-25%, both numbers are huge problems.

If you wish to use something visual that you can also copy/paste into text or html I would suggest WinMTR @ https://winmtr.net/ It's a tool I've used for as long as I can remember where I need to provide data to people who might not be able to understand the output purely from a terminal or command prompt.

Disclaimer: That is not my website, I have used the tool for many, many years without problems, but I cannot guarantee it is safe, so you use it at your own discretion.

If you don't wish to download anything, you can open a command prompt in Windows and run "tracert google.co.uk" any *'s shown will be packetloss (please note some hosts do not respond to ICMP - pings)

What remains to be tested is (static IP set on the router, but still using the routers DNS server(s)). I will update accordingly.

04/08/2024 - 14:!4
My opinion at this point is that the hub, or it's firmware is at fault.

[10suraj10]

Yep same issue here, from reading elsewhere it could also be bufferbloat which has a lot of posts regarding the wifi 7 EE routers. The problem is so bad that i requested a downgrade back to the smart hub plus… but the problems of images/videos not loading is painful especially when i can speed test 800mb on my phone.

i will probably need to buy 3rd party equipment 

[allamavortex]

Well, it's almost 12am here now and I've had a non-problematic day due to disabling DHCP and running "Pi-Hole" on my local network, this removing any responsibility for network addresses and DNS lookups from the router.

It would seem that any device connected to my router (Smart Hub Pro) via DHCP and relying on it to provide a DNS server is the cause of my issues.

During the spells of time where something goes wrong I noticed the following behaviour (whilst being provided an IP via the hubs DHCP server and also being provided DNS servers by the hub).

Any existing connection states that are connected already, or that don't rely on DNS, or the DNS is cached work fine. Pinging 8.8.8.8 (google) or accessing a website via it's IP address was also fine.

During the minute or two where the hub seems to stop working, trying to traceroute whilst performing hostname lookups cause timeouts (packetloss) between that device and the router.

I'm going to assume that it's not just my Smart Hub that has this issue, however when support call me back, I will have them replace the router (just in case) and ask if there's somewhere that I can send my finding/logs for anyone higher than 1st line of the helpdesk to look at.

I saw some other posts online that suggested that the hub (at the end of 2024) was failing to assign DNS servers correctly when also giving the DHCP leases out. For some people it would only assign a single DNS server, normally this isn't an issue, as long as that server is responsive and isn't down, or being slammed with so many connections that it cannot cope.

The firmware really does need some love, it looks very much like the FW of old BT Smart Hubs and I'm guessing that's all they are inside a white box, and with slightly newer hardware for the wireless and a faster ethernet NIC (over 1Gbit). Some of the dynamic dns hosts don't even exist anymore.

They really need to fix whatever is going on, but also they need to allow a little more flexibility to the settings. I don't see the reason for locking down DNS so heavily, unless of course it's a useful source of information for you as you can quite easily see/record/save/sell DNS entries of your users, effectively telling you every site they've visited as the request will be tied to your IP address and EE/BT account.

If anyone else sees this and also has spells of 1-2 minutes MULTIPLE times per day, please hop on and make a reply here to raise awareness of the issue, because clearly it's not isolated to me.

[TraderTravel]

Also noticing some strange DNS madness on this setup. Full freeze this morning which took over 30 seconds to resolve.

I think with the other oddities of this ISP (see my post on the weird issues related to connecting apple equiptment to the extenders via LAN as well as another post on the strange backhaul issues) provided router and extender setup, I am now seriously considering going back to a 3rd party router setup.

I think I have also discovered another issue this morning with the 'compatible wifi' where some of my LIFX globes which are very sensitive to being on anything but the most basic of setups are failing to work. This is quickly going to push me back into a 3rd party setup.

[TraderTravel]

I've had more freezes this morning and it definitely looks like it is a DNS freeze. It seems to happen randomly throughout the day. The freeze seems to last anywhere from 15-45 seconds.

It's not an actual MITM issue, but literally the Hub's DNS capability falling over for a short period of time.

Hopefully EE will allow us to change DNS settings in the future, and also allow us to point DNS elsewhere although I am seriously thinking about changing the DHCP settings so I can hack my way around this problem.

[Ewan15]

I have the Smart Hub Pro and have had mine for about six moths now and noticed none of these issues on a 900mb connection. So I am wondering whether it is tied in with the 1.6gb connection as this uses a different setup which is why EE TV is not available. 

[allamavortex]

Hello, @TraderTravel 

It feels much like a MITM issue or some other interference/hub freezing up performing certain commands, which then cause subsequent requests to time out.

I've noticed that even when I run my own DHCP server and DNS server (or even manually set the IP address and DNS servers) and disable DHCP on the router that it still has this problem. I thought it had stopped it, but it just seems to happen less. It's really odd as well as I've noticed packet loss when this happens on the first hop (the hub) so it's like the router has just frozen, possibly because a process has frozen/is waiting for the timeout, who knows. The FW needs some love, that's for sure!

Anything in a connected state remains fine, and you can also ping just fine to an IP address that doesn't require a DNS lookup.

They're going to send a new router, and I'll test that.

I'm also going to use an old machine with PFSENSE or similar installed and manage the PPPOE connection through that, therefore bypassing the hub altogether to see if this issue goes away.

[allamavortex]

@Ewan15 possibly, although the fibre line was always capable of above 1Gbit, I suspect the limiting factor was likely a 1Gbit ethernet port on the openreach ONT previously. I don't remember the limit of the tech they're using, but it was well above and beyond 1Gbit, but less than 10gbit (iirc). Would have to lookup the specs.

[TraderTravel]

The DNS functionality was causing me so much grief today that I have decided to get turn off DHCP on the EE Smart Hub Pro and use a Raspberry Pi to act as my DNS and DHCP server.

The issue has totally solved my DNS issues and everything feels lightening fast. I've also pointed myself to Cloudflare's servers for both IPv4 and IPv6.

This confirms that DNS is broken on the EE side of the equation. Now my hub is literally acting as a router/firewall and wifi access point and nothing else.

Happy to share my dnsmasq setup details if anyone wants to know how I setup my own DHCP/DNS server. I totally realise this is for the more technical users out there rather than just home users, but after the shenanigans of finding the DNS was crapping itself every few minutes later this morning, I had no choice but to take matters in my own hands.

At some point I might put back in a 3rd party router, but we now have a small selection of Wifi 7 devices in our house and it would be nice to use them.