Dodgy EE Smart Hubs?

[GothonaBrompton]

Is there a history of dodgy firmware on some of the most recent hubs sent out?

Been with BT for years with no issue, but was offered the chance to upgrade to Full Fibre with EE as the BT contract would expire later this month. 

Openreach engineer came on Wednesday and installed the new ONT box.  All the lights on there indicate everything is okay.  But the router is stuck on the constant orange flashing light, despite a restart and reset of both the router and the ONT.

EE Engineer came this morning and plugged his laptop into the router, but said the PPP settings were missing (apparently that is what talks to the fibre line), and that the area in the management console where these can usually be changed is literally not there.  He suggested that the firmware on the router had not been installed properly.

I have seen reports elsewhere that these new black EE hubs are iffy compared to the old white ones, so just my luck if I have received an iffy one.

The engineer did not carry any spare hubs, so he has ordered a new one to be delivered early next week.

Its a bit of a pain as I was WFH all week and am back in the physical office next week, so thought this would be a good time for the switchover.

Thankfully I had the 4G BT Hybrid Connect on my Halo 3 broadband, so have that plugged into the BT router.  Been working off that since Wednesday lunchtime.  

The engineer did try plugging the red WAN cable into the BT router Port 4, but that didn't work either.

[XRaySpeX]

---

@GothonaBrompton wrote:

EE Engineer came this morning and plugged his laptop into the router, but said the PPP settings were missing (apparently that is what talks to the fibre line), and that the area in the management console where these can usually be changed is literally not there. 

---

If he is referring to the PPPoE BB creds here, they are always present, hard-coded & can't be changed:

What are the black & old white EE hubs you refer to? The black EE Smart Hub Plus predates the white EE Smart Hub Pro.

[JimM11]

@GothonaBrompton Not 100% that the BT Smarthub2 has updated enough to have the Auto Port 4 Wan switch operation, so was that checked, seems more that the EE have not activated the ONT takeover and settings correctly, and if the EE is stuck in orange it cannot authenticate itself on the Network correctly. What EE hub do you have, link below shows what is available.

https://ee.co.uk/help/broadband/getting-started/compare-our-range-of-broadband-hubs

This old link takes you to BT screen captures a few months ago.

BT Smarthub2 on a FTTC 40/10 split. - The EE Community

[GothonaBrompton]

It’s the SmartHub Plus.

Did some more tweaking with a guide on the phone just now, including trying the BT hub and switching on some Fibre setting in the Advanced section on that. No joy.

Also tried changing out the WAN cable for another one. Give him his dues, he did try every possible combination of boxes, cables etc to try and track down the fault. He seems to think it’s with Openreach rather than the hub, so I have a *third* engineer visit next week from them. But they are sending out another router just in case. If by some miracle I plug that in and it works, I can cancel the engineer. I’m not hopeful though.

In the meantime I am working off the BT Hybrid Connect.

Annoying though as I’ve had the various incarnations of BT broadband for years now and never had any issues at all. 

[JimM11]

@GothonaBrompton Is you BT Smarthub2 plugged into the phone socket at present to work? And also if it is, does the EE Smarthub+ they sent you have the DSL RJ11 port on it if so it would be the SH31B works on both copper/FF the SH32B is a FF only version with the modem taken out so NO RJ11 port on it?

ONT that OR fitted, power light green, los is green, lan flashes as the router tries to connect, PON is OUT no colour and NOT lit....

[GothonaBrompton]

There is no phone socket anymore, the big Openreach box was replaced with a smaller ONT one. The only reason the BT hub is even powered up is because the Hybrid Connect works off it. In theory it should also work off the SH32B but I don’t really want to unplug and lose the only connection I have right now.

i must have the SH32B as there is no RJ11 socket. The guide did ask me that.

On the ONT (which we did restart), I have steady green on Power, PON and LAN. Same result whether BT or Ee hub.

[GothonaBrompton]

Do Openreach need to flick a switch in the green cabinet or is that just for copper?

[JimM11]

@GothonaBrompton Are you sure that you have a connection without the BT hub plugged in to the Master Phone socket?

Sounds if you have Internet then you are using mobile data, and if so the Hybrid is working it all!

Can you say WHY the copper line was taken away before the Fibre was fully up and working with the transfer from the fttc to your fttp line, if the engineer did that he must have thought going to be no issues and that's the dumbest thing he could have done! 

[Mustrum]

@GothonaBrompton   with FTTP, there is no cabinet involved, your fibre goes all the way to the exchange.

@JimM11   you seem to getting confused, the Hybrid Connect uses its internal SIM and come into operation when the main circuit goews down, which it has since the copper circuit has been disconnected.

[JimM11]

@GothonaBrompton Did a few corrections and redirect's to try and get the correct information drawn out, but thinking i have managed to extract it all now, as you will see on the edited post!

Only concern just now would be the lan not pulsing as the EE Router tries to get the connection back to EE....