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.

[JimM11]

@GothonaBrompton No longer an EE customer, they dropped the ball with the FW update to the hub late Feb, and by march i was gone, the EE Smarthub+ although a ISP hub was decent enough with a few flaws, 

If you are really wanting to push it, you can setup your laptop on a direct pppoe connection plug it into the ONT and get connected, plenty off examples on how to do it online, always a good backup plan just like your Hybrid. EE will throw the router out to you, just plug it in and stand back, if it does connect and goes aqua leave it alone for a couple off hours, let it do any FW updates so may drop the connection again but should recover fine and go from there.

[bobpullen]

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@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.  He suggested that the firmware on the router had not been installed properly.

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This is completely normal. There is nowhere to edit the PPP credentials on the newer EE Smart Hubs. The broadband username is hardcoded and cannot be changed. I would see exactly the same if I were to pull the WAN cable from my (working) EE Smart Hub.

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@GothonaBrompton wrote:

... when we tried the BT router and accessed the setting on that one to switch over to Fibre, which didn't work. 

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So, we can read from this that the BT Smart Hub (2?) didn't work either. There is no reason why it shouldn't if it has been configured for FTTP use, which is exactly what the Helpdesk talked you through by the sounds of things.

@GothonaBrompton wrote:

BTW is there any weirdness associated with the fact that any log dates on the EE hub are all in 2024? Or is it just the case that is when it was manufactured/firmware installed, and it has not been able to connect to the time server to update itself?

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Correct. This is completely expected and will update once the hub can contact the NTP server.

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@GothonaBrompton wrote:

I just got a text that they are sending a new hub so in case it is something there, fingers crossed.

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I'm extremely doubtful.

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@JimM11 wrote:

If you are really wanting to push it, you can setup your laptop on a direct pppoe connection plug it into the ONT and get connected...

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They can try but I personally wouldn't waste the effort based on the fact that OP has both a BT and EE hub and neither will  authenticate with the network. I'd be massively surprised if it got them anywhere.

@GothonaBrompton - I'm not clear about where you have your Hybrid connected, I get the impression you're using it with the BT hub? If so, you can use it with the EE hub if you prefer. You would need to factory reset the Hybrid unit by inserting something into the reset pinhole and holding for 15 seconds or so. When it comes back up, you would then need to go through the repairing process using the EE hub. That said, if it's working for you at the moment, then probably not worth adding more complication to matters at this stage.

In short: my money is on this being a botched FTTP provision, or some remote network configuration that's broken.

[GothonaBrompton]

Thanks Bob.

You are correct, the BT Hybrid Connect is the only connection I have right now, to be fair, its working well, with no noticeable lag or any buffering when I watch TV on my Firestick. All my smart devices continue to work.  I'm reluctant to unpair it from the BT hub and pair with the EE hub given it's my only connection right now.

Ironically I work in IT for one of BT/Openreach's tech partners,  I saw the lead on the BT account yesterday and he said the same thing as you above. He also said the Openreach guy on Friday will probably double check the ONT device in case.

I'm providing quite an amusing case scenario in the office, being PA to the big boss of an IT consultancy, fighting with multiple points of failure on a connection issue 😉

[SHF1]

Got an engineer coming today to sort out this same issue, ONT is all good so wondering whether it’s the router or some other thing