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.

[Huggons1]

Latest firmware update 7/02/2025 

r2.64.7-R-1303938-PROD-1

Surprised that the hud hasn't received any updates in all this time. 

[JimM11]

@Huggons1 It won't if EE consider that there is not much seriously off with the general Router operation!

[tnj]

They have told me there are issues that need resolving with a firmware update and my hub and extenders are not performing as advertised. They also said in this community two days ago there would be a firmware update either that day or the day after. Maybe the intern that writes the firmware is on holiday.

[bobpullen]

@tnj - where has it been said that there was going to be a firmware update? I saw some relayed info from the helpdesk about a firmware rollback (that didn't happen), but nothing about any promise of an imminent firmware upgrade? Although given the amount of time that's passed since the last one, I can't imagine it's too far away.

Back to the topic at hand: seems we're yet to hear from anybody suffering the original problem since EE made their changes? 

[tnj]

I was referring to the text message from EE that was pasted into a post in this thread by Baldwins1754 at 21-08-2025 03:02 PM.

My hub has been running fine for LAN clients for the past few days.

[JimM11]

@tnj There are a few slight issues with the general operation off the Router and Smart wireless but they are NOT major, FW updates can be, just do not get shoved out willy nilly and will be well planned so as to not cause serious problems further down the line! Could be holiday just do not hope that you are going to get anything quickly, not going to happen!

Update was applied but the text is nothing to do with anything that required a FW fix!

[tnj]

I would say that with the Smart Hub Pro being advertised as being able to connect to 190 devices at once and falling over at around 40 devices is major. I currently have 96 devices connected to my BT Smarthub 2.

[JimM11]

@tnj Got it, implied that the Pro can do it and falling over as you were adding them all to the Router! 

[bobpullen]

@tnj - it definitely can do > 40. I’m living proof of that. They’re not all 2.4GHz though, which I recall yours were?

[TraderTravel]

I've been doing a lot more testing over the weekend and my results are as follows:

1. The dropped packet issue is no more. This means we no longer see the dreaded DNS resolution error messages appearing on our browsers and the freezing every few minutes.
2. I am however still seeing the occasional delay with TCP and UDP based traffic (e.g. a DNS query or a pull down of a web page). Ping (ICMP) based traffic does not appear to be impacted by these delays. I don't think what I am seeing will impact normal users browing the internet, although if I were a gamer, I would probably be annoyed as the latency can jump up to the thousands of milliseconds for a short period of time. It can happen every 10 mins to 2 hours. There is no regular interval that these delays will show up, so I don't have anything specific to go on.

I have been able to replicate this across different machines and platforms (and different networking hardware).

All in all this shows we are in a better place, but the issue overall has not been put completely to bed.

Curious to see if anyone else who has been impacted with the service issues being discussed in this thread (i..e. 1.6gbps customers) are also seeing these stutters? For the record, I don't think most users will notice this - it definitely requires testing using a script in either Windows or Linux. I also think this is an issue that will most impact gamers.