EE Smart Hub Pro - Great Piece of Kit - Access Point

[Resurg3nt]

I can confirm that I bought an EE Smart Hub Pro recently from eBay. What a fantastic piece of kit this is.

Turned it into a wireless access point. Basically, turned off the DHCP server in advanced settings -> IPv4 Configuration, and then connected a LAN cable to LAN Port 1 and then connected it to my fibre router (from another provider). Configured the wireless with a different name and off I went.

Getting between 700 - 900 Mbps on 5GHz on download speeds on a 910 Mbps service, haven't got anything bad to say about the router save for the following: The router has the option to switch off the status light, but this doesn't work when its setup like this. The status light on the front (the key hole on the front), continues to blink orange forever. Basically had to apply an adhesive label over the front to hide this.

But £45 for a WiFi 7 router that I can turn in to an Access Point? What a fantastic piece of kit EE produced. Shame the UI is locked down as much as it is, because this is a seriously good piece of kit. 

Can however confirm this config works for anyone who is interested.

[Lesley_W]

Hi @Resurg3nt 

Welcome to our community.

Thanks for taking the time to share your experience, I'm pleased it's been a positive one 🙂

Lesley

[Itraxed]

This fantastic news.  I'd like to use an OPNSense router directly connected to my Fibre ONT using ethernet with the correct PPPoE credentials and then just use the SH Pro as a WiFi 7 access point and this looks like exactly the same as what I am trying to achieve once my new OPNSense kit arrives

I don't suppose that you (or anyone else) can confirm if the extenders will continue to work as a mesh with this configuration too?  I have 2 additional SH Pro extenders as well as the router. 

Thanks

Eddie

[tnj]

You can use the Smart Hub Pro with extenders as a wireless mesh network with another router connected to your ONT. I have done this with a BT SmartHub2 and the opposite way around.

At the moment I am using the old BT SmartHub2  and its extenders as a network for the WiFi and the Smart Hub Pro as the router as the Smart Hub Pro has significant WiFi problems even with the latest firmware. I am using an independent DHCP/DNS server.

The Smart Hub Pro will not lock to a WiFi channel, it smart sets the channel whatever settings you use and it will also not support more than around 30-40 WiFi connections without dropouts when it is claimed that it will support up to 190.

Prior to the last firmware update the Smart Hub Pro had major issues with the connections to the extenders and the passing on of connections between nodes. If you do not have a direct WAN connection to your Smart Hub Pro you will not receive firmware updates.

[Itraxed]

Thanks for the information, I’ll watch out for that. Fingers crossed I’ve had no problems with the Pro or its extenders thus far, either for stability or for the number of connections (I’m hovering around the 80 mark).  Similar to you I am going to use the 3rd party router for DHCP plus another separate Omada WiFi 6 AP to allow me to VLAN off IoT and other devices from the regular user traffic.  This should help keep the number of connections lower as I will be using a different network on the Omada AP. I haven’t found a way to mesh the EE with the AP so they will have to remain on different SSID’s - if anyone knows if this can be done that would awesome 😃

I’d overlooked the lack of OTA firmware updates so I will probably make sure the latest is on there before making the switch. Then try to look out for anything afterwards and perform a quick flip back to native if it’s anything major or security related. 

I’ll send a quick update to the thread once I’m in receipt of my SSD drive that I need to finish the OPNsense build to let you know how I get on!

Cheers all for the help, Eddie