EE Smart Hub 2-hourly reboot problem & solution

[GazzF]

The EE Smart Hub 2-Hourly Reboot Problem & Solution

The Problem

The BLACK EE Smart Hub (also called a “router”) loses Internet connectivity for a few minutes several times a day.

What’s actually happening is a software update on 24th May 2022 caused an issue that triggers this particular model of router to reboot every 2 hours. The result is Internet connectivity is lost for roughly 2 minutes while the router reboots.

You can verify if this is the cause of your current problem by logging into your router’s admin interface. Using a web browser on a device on the same network (LAN) as your router, go to http://192.168.1.254 or whatever IP address you may have changed it to. Log in using the password printed on the back of the router. Look for the “Admin password for Hub Manager”. This is not the same as your Wi-Fi password.

Go to Advanced Settings, then Technical Log. Click on the Event Log tab. You will see lots of entries listed. Filter it by clicking on Categories, scroll down the list and select BOOT. If you see dozens of entries starting with “Booting firmware…” and the time between each entry is exactly 2 hours (plus an extra 80 or so seconds) then your router is affected by this very issue. Your log may not go back as far as 24th May which is the fateful date EE customers in this forum agree the issue started.

How To Fix it

A fix can only come from EE, but at the time of writing (3 weeks into the problem) there’s no sign of any fix on the horizon. But don’t despair because using a completely different model of router is the quickest solution, but it could take a few days. If you’re lucky, the EE agent you speak to will recognise your issue and be willing to send you the latest WHITE EE Smart Router for free immediately. However, at the time of writing this is not the case and you will first need to go through several tedious hoops. The experience from most customers in this forum is as follows:

It’s important that you call EE’s broadband support to report the fault. Tell them the router reboots every 2 hours and you’ve read about it in the Community Forum. The agent you speak to should be aware of the problem as it’s been estimated that 20,000 customers have this issue.

EE’s standard process for dealing with issues is to send out one of their support guys who will have a poke around with your router and phone socket. When they realise they can’t fix it he might offer to give you a new router or get one posted out to you (they may not carry spare stock). If he does that then tell him you’ll only accept the latest WHITE EE Smart Router. Unless he can guarantee you a white one, you should refuse to save you the trouble of posting a black router back to them because it will have exactly the same issue.

The support guy will advise he needs to arrange for an Openreach engineer to visit you. (I advise you to call EE back to arrange your first Openreach visit in case the support guy doesn’t make this arrangement for you.) The Openreach engineer will check your master socket and replace it if it’s old or not looking good. He’ll check your extension wires too if you have any. He might change your port and/or line from the local street cabinet. This might appear at first to fix the problem, but about 6 hours later your router will start rebooting again.

Call EE back and they’ll send out another Openreach engineer who will either check everything all over again or roll his eyes and say a few choice words about EE knowing exactly what the problem is and wasting everybody’s time by sending engineers out for no good reason.

Once you’ve gone through these hoops, call EE and update them. At the time of writing this is the only point where an EE agent will be open to suggestions from you. (Try making the following suggestion the very first time you call EE as they may have updated their policy in light of this epic issue going on for so long.)

The Solution

 Depending on your own preference, ask the EE agent to either…

1. Send you their latest WHITE EE Smart Router because it has been confirmed by several people in this forum that it works perfectly and is not impacted by the 2-hourly rebooting issue. It looks like this: https://www.eehomebroadband.com/Home/ProductsDesc/110
   If they try to make you buy it or increase your fees then my advice is to refuse because they're providing a faulty service and it's up to them to pay for a solution.
   or...
2. Refund you after you’ve bought your own 3rd party router. This gives you some choice in getting the router that best suits your needs, but do consider that EE may refuse a full refund if you buy an expensive model. A good router can be had for £35 to £60. EE may ask you to send them a receipt of your purchase so make sure you get one that can be emailed.

If you want to buy your own router then choose one that you know will work easily with EE broadband. It must support VDSL. Two models that customers in this forum have bought and confirmed to work perfectly are:

• TP-Link VR400 (V3): £60 from Amazon and other retailers. Better Wi-Fi than EE’s black router and more features such as MU-MIMO and Mesh support. Its quick setup lets you select your ISP from a list (EE is listed) and it automatically configures itself. Job done.
• TP-Link TD-W9970: £35 from Amazon and other retailers. A cheaper alternative, not as fast as the VR400 for Wi-Fi speed, but you won’t notice the difference as your EE broadband is probably limited to a maximum of 80mbps anyway. You’ll only notice the difference if you transfer lots of data between wireless devices on your LAN such copying files from your mobile phone to your laptop via Wi-Fi. I think this router’s chipset is slightly slower so if you enable advanced security features such as DoS protection, it may slow down your network speed more than the VR400 would.
• BT Home Hub 6 or BT Smart Hub: Some users have found these work without issue, without even having to set the EE Broadband Username and password.

Before you unplug your black EE router for the last time, be sure to write down your broadband username. Go to Advanced Settings > Broadband. Look for your “Broadband Username” and password. You’ll need this and your password for setting up your new router. 

It won’t let you see your password, but you can work it out from the Broadband Username. If your username looks like PRODUCTIONHQNUN123456@fs, your password will look like HQNPASS123456. Simply replace the numbers in the password, with the ones found in your username. For very old legacy users whose username doesn't look like this & you've forgotten what you choose way back, give EE a call and ask them nicely for it.

Lastly, when your new white EE router or 3rd party router arrives and you’ve set it up, you may notice it’s not giving you your full expected Internet speed. This is because your maximum speed was lowered by the Dynamic Line Management (DLM) at your local cabinet when it detected your previous EE router was frequently dropping the line.

Check your current speed by Googling “speed test” and then click on Run Speed Test. If it’s notably slower than what you used to get you’ll need to call EE and ask if they can get Openreach to do a DLM reset. The engineer will visit you but if you ask him at the door for a DLM reset they probably won’t even bother coming in and will get the job done for you within the hour.

I hope this guide has been useful.

[LauWR]

I'm probably not going to be much help here, but I'll say what my setup has finished up as.

Back in 2021 I discovered that my Powerline extenders were no longer working very well, as I believe several neighbours were now using such devices - and hence we were all sharing the available bandwidth back to wherever the nearest transformer might be.

In July 2021, I bought a 4-pack of Mercusys Halo S12 AC1200  mesh boxes for £59.99 - which worked fine.

I think I stopped using them when the problems with the EE reboots started and went back to the Powerline setup - before I found out what the true problem was.

Once I had the VR400, I thought I'd see if the Mercusys devices would work again. They did, but I had some troubles with DHCP, IIRC, centering around what appears to be similar problems to yours. I finished up using the VR400 as just a modem and everything has been good since then. At this moment I have 23 devices online, some of which are fixed IP addresses.

The Mercusys boxes ... I think I caught them on a special offer ... they now cost £67.98 ... for which you only get three. Ho hum.