Recuring problems with 150 fibre connection/BT hub 6

[karis6197]

I moved over to EE from BT on a 150 fibre package around 18 months ago. Things can bubble along fine for a few months & then I can get problems. I have an EE TV package, a Ring camera system a Nest thermostat & several Alexa enabled devices. What seems to happen is the BB connection is reset remotely, mostly this isn't a problem but, every so often, it can cause chaos. My TV's refuse to stream without resetting, my Ring system cameras mostly go off line & have to be manually reset locally, sometimes involving an hour or so's work. I recently had remote BB resets on two consecutive nights at 3AM but this time, my cameras refused to work & my laptop & phone Wi-Fi refused to reconnect for 24 hours (& yes, did restart the router & affected devices several times). I  was getting the messages "connected without internet" or "cannot get IP address" & had to run my laptop on my phone connection all day yesterday. Annoyingly, Alexa, my Nest thermostat & my wife's Ipad remained connected. Was out last night so left it all to it's own but, when I got up this morning, everything had reconnected & was working as if nothing had ever happened. I'm fairly tech savvy & usually manage to rectify most problems but this seems to defy any logic I can draw on. This causes me so much work & frustration when it happens, can anyone educate me as to what is going on &, more importantly, how I can stop it happening.

[JimM11]

@karis6197 What is the actual model of the Router, that you mention in the posting. Links to BT and EE below.

Different types of BT Hub | BT Help

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

[karis6197]

H iJim M11, thanks for response, my router is a BT Smart hub 2. When I switched to EE, they said to use my existing, 2 year old BT 2 router but I insisted that, as a new EE customer on an initial 2 year contract ,I wanted a new EE router 7 as I understood they have superior WiFi capability; but they just sent me another Smart hub 2. I decided to live with it but did change over to the newer hub keeping the old as a spare. I also forgot to mention I have a multiple room, Sonos speaker system which also stops working every time they reset my BB connection.

[JimM11]

@karis6197 As you have the BT Smarthub2 as your router, would go to the web manager on http://192.168.1.254 and would use a laptop/pc if possible, get 3 screens of information, status print to a pdf, advanced tech log print to a pdf, and events export that file, pick a time that is always suitable for you, do a soft reset on the router, clears the logs reset's the router and good to go, you can now check every couple of day's and there should be no forced reset's of any kind apart from maybe a FW upgrade, you will see that version history on the Status screen and as long as power is on, no forced reset's etc log will go on for ever, anything else will be spotted within those three logs....

This part i have never been able to get an answer too, so you are it, was reported that BT did a reset of the BT Smarthub2 router, to help the DV landline, personally cannot see it, and if it was and i was a customer with that would be complaining big time, not the right way to sort that out. Take it from there and see how it goes.

The sound of your error, is like the DHCP server in the BT did not want to play ball which can happen either local or getting on a bad IP to a BT server, but normally leave of for an hour, let the router find a new path...

[karis6197]

Hi JimM11, thanks for the input. First thing I see looking at the status log is that my hub had  FW update on December 16! It doesn't say what time but this probably coincides with the second, overnight reset I experienced (first one didn't cause any problems). So is this what caused my problems & has caused problems in the past? If so how, often do BT update hub FW as I seem forced to go through similar experiences every couple of months or so, I do also have a DV landline as we have no mobile signal here to speak of! As said, I'm fairly tech savvy so getting everything to work again is (usually) just a matter of my time & patience but how do plain old, ordinary folks get on, do they just leave it & hope everything comes good eventually? I'm also intrigued as to why this only seems to effect certain devices I have (mainly the EE TV mini hubs, Sonos speakers & Ring cameras)  where others will happily reconnect on their own; or is a possible indication of their flaky software! Is it worth me complaining/taking up with BT/EE customer services?  But god knows how I would connect with someone who even understands what I'm talking about!

[JimM11]

@karis6197 FW updates are or can be a pain, normally done to fix something but they never tell you what, and then you get the hassle of what fixed but messes with everything else. In practice now at least you know when happened, and you can watch out again, no way to avoid it pushed by BT and 2-3 months appears when, just waiting on my EE to update, so watch when i post up the resultant response.

[karis6197]

@JimM11 Thanks again for your input & it has helped my understanding. In my pre-retired life, I worked extensively with IT contractors proving operational specific software; unfortunately I never got to be capable of actually writing it, but that's another story! I know how unpredictable software & subsequent "fixes" can be but I worked with bespoke systems & would never have put a simple BB hub in the same category! But, thinking about it, there is almost certainly more going on with server integration than  I thought! Will look out for your update post on EE, It's people like you (& even me to a much lesser extent) they these guys hate, or maybe not. Thanks again.

[JimM11]

@karis6197 The BT Smarthub2, although i have never used it as in owning one, but have had in  a few occasions interfaced with one work travel related, is a pretty damn good router, and as i can compare as it is a close likeness to the EE Smarthub+ which newer spec wise con offset one against the other. The Smarthub+ has a few oops to say the least, they can be worked around, operational wise does about as good as any ISP supplied device, Whole object in life, connect and supply BB Internet with hopefully minimum user input as possible, some devices just take the HUMP at times, use your newly gained experience but sometimes you have to think outside left field, example wi-fi is weakest in the bathroom, why wall tiles, now covered with 10mm Marine Ply, heavy door etc, wife loves you tube on the phone, fix, Asus RE right outside and opposite the bathroom, her who must be obeyed will never raise that complaint ever again unless the RE packs in, with the retirement home wise, internet is normally streaming something or other, upped to FF 500 from fttc 40/10 split, got plenty head room, last one to sort out now is the stupid mobile of EE on wifi calling, as there supposed great 5g/4g no signal etc, but it just takes time!!! 

[karis6197]

My wife & I both have EE sims but we have to go in the garden when at home to get any sort of reliable mobile signal. I haven't even started to think about sorting that one yet but guess a cure may prove to be expensive! Most who regularly ring us know to use our DV line or call our mobiles using WhatsApp, which works fine for us here. I decided to retain the DV line for the present but, have to confess, it's hardly ever used except for making calls to mobiles from home; I was surprised to learn these are free on DV unlike the old copper lines.

[bobpullen]

@karis6197 - what smartphones do you have? The mobile issue seems like a prime example where Wi-Fi calling would help.