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.

[ben_flugel]

Thanks for the update @Peter_W

I'm also happy to be involved in testing or investigating as needed.

I work in IT as my day job in this sort of field, so happy to help. 

[rainman2871]

This is to the EE support engineers I have just removed my 3rd party router and  have now connected.back to  your EE smart Hub Pro straight away page not responding page not displaying  so I  reset the hub  to get back in homepage rebooted my pc tried again worked for few mins then started again page loading  nothing  page not responding leave it for a few mins responds then page  loading again tried a speedtest .then failed  and also getting dns error

I will leave the smart hub.pro .on for 2 more hours then I will have to .swap back to 3rd party router as my wife works from.home and depends on.a good connection for teams and work  server  citrix where she logs in.to work remotely

Thought I let you know .hopefully the EE engineers are reading this I was told last week that you would rollback the firmware before this know issue happened please can you do this for the time being to help us all.until u find a solution to fix all issues

Forgot to say the the smart hub pro stock firmware it came installed with was working  ok until we all got the latest.2 firmwares remotely 

[AHarMan2]

Anyone with the issue noticed that this evening has been remarkedly improved ?

Smart Hub Pro is still on the same firmware however the issue is not occurring or is less noticeable compared to Yesterday when it was very evident.

[allamavortex]

@Peter_W 

Hello Peter,

Appreciate you chiming in, as I'm sure you can appreciate there's nothing worse than being a consumer and feeling like it's impossible to get your voice/concerns heard so it's nice to see that the thread has caught the correct type of attention.

I'm sure you're all ready aware but it is 100% related to the SH Pro. My service prior to the SH7 was just fine, and it's been rock solid in the last couple of days where I've moved to a Ubiquiti Dream Router 7.

[rainman2871]

Been testing using EE SMART HUB PRO

Still the same issues  connecting back to my 3rd party router

[rainman2871]

AHarMan2 same issues no changes 

I got a phone call today from EE Tech asking questions about there broadband service and getting more info from me asked if I could connect back the smart hub pro and test it out for a couple hours which I did , still the same issues no change so now re-connected my 3rd party router again back up and working again as it should 

[rainman2871]

I phoned EE TECH last week and told them the issues with there broadband service they were not looking on this forum site until I mentioned it to Andy the  EE Tech then he passed it over to all the EE team and think there were  few more on here from the forum site who also mentioned it as well

[Alex_H]

Hi all, 

Thank you for the continued feedback on the issue. 

@rainman2871 Yesterday our team put through some temporary changes to some devices yesterday, but if your hub was not online at the time it would not have been applied to yours. If it was online at the right time but you have since reset it, that would have overwritten the change also. 

I am going to send you a private message to help arrange some further testing. 

Has anyone else impacted seen any improvement since yesterday? 

Alex

[Appleaday]

Hi,

I am also impacted by this, I have only just seen this thread, my hub is always online, please involve me in any testing

[TraderTravel]

@Alex_H As you will know from one of the other mods, ever since wifi optimisation has been turned off on my account (in reality I never actually even switched it on as most 'optimisation' offerings even from 3rd party routers tend to cause problems IMHO), I've not seen a single wobble from the EE Smart Hub Pro in terms of dropped or delayed packets (which most users see via a DNS resolution error when browsing the internet).

I'm hoping that this fix has resolved the worst of the problems with the current kit.

My only observation is that I still find DNS queries to feel significantly snappier running off my Raspberry Pi rather than off the hub, and I do have a little data to prove that. That said, for the majority of users I doubt that is particularly significant, and perhaps more of a factor that the Pi has a faster processor than the Hub (even if the hub processor probably should have better hardware acceleration to support the networking stack).