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

allamavortex
Established Contributor
Established Contributor

‎27-07-2025 08:46 PM - edited ‎27-07-2025 08:48 PM

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.

367 REPLIES 367
TraderTravel
Established Contributor
Established Contributor
In response to TraderTravel

‎24-08-2025 02:41 PM

A further update and perhaps correction.

After a little more testing on Linux, it might actually just be the DNS server queries running on the EE Smart Hub Pro as my webpulls in Linux are getting returned without delays, although they have to wait until the DNS query is executed first. I suspect this might be down to the way that Windows scripts run and get timed where one query can impact on the timing of another query. I'm also a little more comfortable with a bash script than Windows PowerShell scripts.

So yes, the DNS query is delaying other TCP/UDP traffic, but once that query has been completed everything else runs at full speed. Hopefully that makes sense to some of the more technical users involved in this thread.

2025-08-24 14:22:04 - DNS query to 192.168.1.254 resolved www.ee.co.uk in 0 ms
2025-08-24 14:22:04 - Webpage fetch from www.ee.co.uk completed in 52 ms
2025-08-24 14:22:05 - DNS query to 192.168.1.254 resolved www.ee.co.uk in 0 ms
2025-08-24 14:22:05 - Webpage fetch from www.ee.co.uk completed in 51 ms
2025-08-24 14:22:06 - DNS query to 192.168.1.254 resolved www.ee.co.uk in 0 ms
2025-08-24 14:22:06 - Webpage fetch from www.ee.co.uk completed in 59 ms
2025-08-24 14:22:07 - DNS query to 192.168.1.254 resolved www.ee.co.uk in 0 ms
2025-08-24 14:22:07 - Webpage fetch from www.ee.co.uk completed in 67 ms
2025-08-24 14:22:08 - DNS query to 192.168.1.254 resolved www.ee.co.uk in 0 ms
2025-08-24 14:22:08 - Webpage fetch from www.ee.co.uk completed in 50 ms
2025-08-24 14:22:09 - DNS query to 192.168.1.254 resolved www.ee.co.uk in 4111 ms
2025-08-24 14:22:09 - Webpage fetch from www.ee.co.uk completed in 70 ms
2025-08-24 14:22:20 - DNS query to 192.168.1.254 resolved www.ee.co.uk in 0 ms
2025-08-24 14:22:20 - Webpage fetch from www.ee.co.uk completed in 75 ms
2025-08-24 14:22:21 - DNS query to 192.168.1.254 resolved www.ee.co.uk in 0 ms
2025-08-24 14:22:21 - Webpage fetch from www.ee.co.uk completed in 68 ms
2025-08-24 14:22:22 - DNS query to 192.168.1.254 resolved www.ee.co.uk in 3 ms
2025-08-24 14:22:22 - Webpage fetch from www.ee.co.uk completed in 74 ms

In the snippet above, I have queries running every second (a DNS and a Webpage fetch). You can see the DNS query to the EE Hub for www.ee.co.uk comes back 4111ms later, then the webpage fetch to the same address executes in an expected 75ms (whereas my script in windows also shows delays to the webpage fetch), however that all delays the next DNS query and webpage fetch to pick up 11 seconds later.

Again I will stress that I doubt this will probably really impact normal users very much, but gamers seeing these latency spikes will definitely be negatively impacted.

JimM11
Community Hero
Community Hero
In response to TraderTravel

‎24-08-2025 02:56 PM

@TraderTravel The 11 second timing gap also confirms something got real busy on the Router or downstream!

0 Helpful
TraderTravel
Established Contributor
Established Contributor
In response to JimM11

‎24-08-2025 05:28 PM

@JimM11 

I only wish I had command line access into the router and could see the processes running at the time.

0 Helpful
JimM11
Community Hero
Community Hero
In response to TraderTravel

‎24-08-2025 06:17 PM - edited ‎24-08-2025 06:20 PM

@TraderTravel Honestly would be surprised if it is Router issue, they have the system so tight to account and interfaced through the EE DNS and other no doubt methods would surprised that the app has triggered some future feature and sending it off into confused state with a timeout return, that would be why EE Manage to get hold and track what was happening from the Tech Team side! But as you are seeing other inherent issues, the long timeout has been hidden and well reported back over a year ago! 

You just have to look, ooh my parental controls are not/stopped working and now the system has locked out and i cannot get the schedular to release, oh it's started working again few day's later duh!

0 Helpful
TraderTravel
Established Contributor
Established Contributor
In response to JimM11

‎24-08-2025 06:56 PM - edited ‎24-08-2025 07:18 PM

@JimM11 You are right. Considering the wifi optimisation seemed to be the primary reason for the dropped packets, the underlying reason for the odd delays I am seeing could well be something else. Without an end of end view of what is happening and how the routers work with the EE backend servers, it is very hard to say.

Strangely I have not seen any more of this behaviour this afternoon. Nothing for the last 4 hours has shown up in either Windows or Linux. Usually I can get strong correlations between the two machines as well, and I doubt anyone at EE CS is working on this issue right now. Although if one was bored covering the helpdesk for the weekend, maybe this is not a bad problem to be working on...

 

edit: The issue is back - I spoke way too soon! :

2025-08-24 18:54:21 - DNS query to 192.168.1.254 resolved www.ee.co.uk in 3 ms
2025-08-24 18:54:21 - Webpage fetch from www.ee.co.uk completed in 67 ms
2025-08-24 18:54:22 - DNS query to 192.168.1.254 resolved www.ee.co.uk in 3 ms
2025-08-24 18:54:22 - Webpage fetch from www.ee.co.uk completed in 52 ms
2025-08-24 18:54:23 - DNS query to 192.168.1.254 resolved www.ee.co.uk in 851 ms
2025-08-24 18:54:23 - Webpage fetch from www.ee.co.uk completed in 72 ms
2025-08-24 18:54:35 - DNS query to 192.168.1.254 resolved www.ee.co.uk in 0 ms
2025-08-24 18:54:35 - Webpage fetch from www.ee.co.uk completed in 97 ms
2025-08-24 18:54:36 - DNS query to 192.168.1.254 resolved www.ee.co.uk in 0 ms
2025-08-24 18:54:36 - Webpage fetch from www.ee.co.uk completed in 55 ms
2025-08-24 18:54:37 - DNS query to 192.168.1.254 resolved www.ee.co.uk in 3 ms
2025-08-24 18:52:38 | DNS(192.168.1.254)=True | DNS(1.1.1.1)=True | DNS(192.168.1.1)=True | DNS(192.168.1.254 Time)=205.4 ms | DNS(192.168.1.1 Time)=199.21 ms | PingEE=0 ms (loss=0%, avg=0) | PingRouter=0 ms (loss=0%, avg=0) | WebTest=122.41 ms (success=True)
2025-08-24 18:53:07 | DNS(192.168.1.254)=True | DNS(1.1.1.1)=True | DNS(192.168.1.1)=True | DNS(192.168.1.254 Time)=200.52 ms | DNS(192.168.1.1 Time)=198.05 ms | PingEE=0 ms (loss=0%, avg=0) | PingRouter=0 ms (loss=0%, avg=0) | WebTest=126.84 ms (success=True)
2025-08-24 18:53:35 | DNS(192.168.1.254)=True | DNS(1.1.1.1)=True | DNS(192.168.1.1)=True | DNS(192.168.1.254 Time)=203.69 ms | DNS(192.168.1.1 Time)=202.72 ms | PingEE=0 ms (loss=0%, avg=0) | PingRouter=0 ms (loss=0%, avg=0) | WebTest=120.41 ms (success=True)
2025-08-24 18:54:04 | DNS(192.168.1.254)=True | DNS(1.1.1.1)=True | DNS(192.168.1.1)=True | DNS(192.168.1.254 Time)=202.96 ms | DNS(192.168.1.1 Time)=199.02 ms | PingEE=0 ms (loss=0%, avg=0) | PingRouter=0 ms (loss=0%, avg=0) | WebTest=121.5 ms (success=True)
2025-08-24 18:54:32 | DNS(192.168.1.254)=True | DNS(1.1.1.1)=True | DNS(192.168.1.1)=True | DNS(192.168.1.254 Time)=2907.84 ms | DNS(192.168.1.1 Time)=197.98 ms | PingEE=0 ms (loss=0%, avg=0) | PingRouter=0 ms (loss=0%, avg=0) | WebTest=2482.98 ms (success=True)
2025-08-24 18:55:01 | DNS(192.168.1.254)=True | DNS(1.1.1.1)=True | DNS(192.168.1.1)=True | DNS(192.168.1.254 Time)=200.22 ms | DNS(192.168.1.1 Time)=198.44 ms | PingEE=0 ms (loss=0%, avg=0) | PingRouter=0 ms (loss=0%, avg=0) | WebTest=121.02 ms (success=True)
2025-08-24 18:55:29 | DNS(192.168.1.254)=True | DNS(1.1.1.1)=True | DNS(192.168.1.1)=True | DNS(192.168.1.254 Time)=198.31 ms | DNS(192.168.1.1 Time)=197.11 ms | PingEE=0 ms (loss=0%, avg=0) | PingRouter=0 ms (loss=0%, avg=0) | WebTest=125 ms (success=True)
2025-08-24 18:55:58 | DNS(192.168.1.254)=True | DNS(1.1.1.1)=True | DNS(192.168.1.1)=True | DNS(192.168.1.254 Time)=204.67 ms | DNS(192.168.1.1 Time)=210.21 ms | PingEE=0 ms (loss=0%, avg=0) | PingRouter=0 ms (loss=0%, avg=0) | WebTest=120.53 ms (success=True)
2025-08-24 18:56:26 | DNS(192.168.1.254)=True | DNS(1.1.1.1)=True | DNS(192.168.1.1)=True | DNS(192.168.1.254 Time)=197.42 ms | DNS(192.168.1.1 Time)=192.76 ms | PingEE=0 ms (loss=0%, avg=0) | PingRouter=0 ms (loss=0%, avg=0) | WebTest=119.05 ms (success=True)

 

Mason1978
Investigator
Investigator

‎24-08-2025 07:30 PM

Hi all, just found this thread due a post I was reading earlier.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2025/08/router-connectivity-woes-strike-some-of-ees-1-6gbps-uk...

I also have been suffering the same issues since I upgraded to the 1.6Gbit service on the 31st July. I have been away a few days but haven't recieved any texts from EE apart from the one they are aware of the issues and are working on them.

Due to working from home, and suffering the constant dropouts I was advised to use my old hub which I don't experience any dropouts but limited to 910Mbps.

Do you think it's worth plugging the Shart Hub Pro back in, to check whether it's working again or wait until a more robust fix is implemented ?

0 Helpful
JimM11
Community Hero
Community Hero
In response to Mason1978

‎24-08-2025 07:54 PM

@Mason1978 The fixes EE applied there end have dramatically improved the response and for sure it would be well worth having your Pro back on but you do have to consider your WFH state, no doubt you can quickly switch back and get the other system up within 5 minutes! The more the merrier flagging anything and looking like 10-12 second lapse time but fairly intermittent operation wise and you just may not spot anything at all!

0 Helpful
Mason1978
Investigator
Investigator
In response to JimM11

‎24-08-2025 07:58 PM

Thanks, I will try to persude the youngster to come off Roblox for a few minutes and switch the old hub out. I will report back with any isssues. Been driving me made for weeks, I've had a new hub and a openreach engineers out before they finally admitted something was wrong.

0 Helpful
JimM11
Community Hero
Community Hero
In response to Mason1978

‎24-08-2025 08:05 PM

@Mason1978 Saw the writing on the wall way back in Feb when the killed the Plus in a one night FW update, was gone by mid March! There are some great features will come out off it all, but just not for me network is far to important to be fighting it on a daily basis!

0 Helpful
Mason1978
Investigator
Investigator

‎24-08-2025 09:59 PM

@JimM11  Nearly 2hrs since I plugged the Smart Hub Pro back in, it seems to be stable for me at last. Will know better when in Zoom calls when back at work on Tuesday.

Also the son hasn't complained about getting booted from any games.

Guess I'll see how the next 48hrs go.

Thanks for the help/replies