Smart Hub SH31B needing regular power cycles to maintain connection

[Mozza76]

We've been with EE full fibre with the back-up hybrid connect 4G router system for around 4 months and while the service is good when the router's connected, it feels clunky to have to manually restart the Smart Hub router every couple of weeks to reconnect to the service after the connection is dropped.

I know that in the greater scheme of things a weekly router reset is a small price to pay for an otherwise good service, but there does seem to be something up with the SH31B router/firmware/software. Connecting to the router's home page through a browser can be a painfully slow process, often taking 20 seconds or more to log in to the home screen, before getting a "We experienced difficulty getting the data. Could you kindly reload the page? [CHOP3-800]" error. This usually happens before it stops letting you log in entirely and forces you to power cycle it.

After a router restart this log in speeds back up to 5 seconds, doesn't get the CHOP3-800 error and everything's fine and dandy again. It's as though the longer the router stays up, the more errors it develops before it falls over again.

It would also be good if the router's error log kept all the errors BEFORE the router restart, so you can see what happened as it fell over. As it stands the log appears to be wiped after every reboot, so is as good as useless to troubleshoot from. Especially seeing as just before a reboot is needed, the router often doesn't let you log in at all, just timing out on the EE logo/spinning balls screen.

I'd swap it out with an alternative router, but we're tied into the EE smart hub because we wanted to keep our landline phone number and the 4g hybrid back up system, two services which I'm not sure third part routers would support.

Is anyone else having similar issues? 

Thanks
(The smart hub is running App 1.11.0 and firmware version: r1.29.0-R-950306-PROD-83002. My home set up is the SH31B with its WIFI capabilities switched off, and a TP link Deco system handling the wifi duties through the house, each post connected individually via ethernet to the back of the SH31B.)

[XRaySpeX]

We all get the  [CHOP3-800] error but it still gets to the right page. It's so damned slow1

[Profile closed]

I went back to using the Smart Hub 2 until the interns who coded the SH+ firmware figure out how to fix it.

• Memory leaks
• Devices taking too long to connect and establish and internet connection
• VOIP not connecting, multiple reboots or factory resets for it to connect to your number

[XRaySpeX]

My SH+'s firmware has been languishing for ages at:

App version: 1.9.0

Firmware version: r1.21.0-R-910349-PROD-83002

cuz I don't really use it & just keep it for reference.

So I decided to let it catch up over the long Easter w/end by connecting it to the BB. Not a sausage over the whole w/end but finally at 4 AM this morning it updated to:

App version: 1.13.1

Firmware version: r1.34.0-R-994210-PROD-83002

As far I can see there has been not any change to the GUI. It's just as slow but no spurious CHOP3-800 errors have yet appeared. All my personal settings have been retained.

[AHarMan2]

New EE broadband customer here, and I can confirm the SH31B they send out with the up to 1.6 / 1.8 Gbps service (assume its the same router) works fine for a week or two, then as others have reported, I find my speed to regular tests drops gradually over a few days then, when I try logging into the router, its incredibly slow and page loading times out.

To be fair, after a reboot, it comes back to life, interestingly I find it takes up to 24 hours after a reboot for full speed to return. Ie before a reboot, testing normally to Vodafone Bracknell, I will see 1650Mbps dropping to 1300 / 1200 when the router starts bogging down / encountering issues.

After a reboot top speed is 950Mbps, then 24 hours later will be back to 1650Mbps.

I have decided to pickup a new WIFI 7 router (Asus GT-BE98) and will update again however I suspect the Asus router will cope a lot better.

Its a shame because when it works the router actually has decent distance / drop off, but memory leaks / slow admin pages is not on really.

[AHarMan2]

The hub provided is really bad im sorry to say.

I've had it a few weeks now with the up to 1.6 / 1.8Gbps service and to be fair over WIFI 6 connecting to Vodafone Bracknell on speedtest.net i do see ~1650Mbps down / 110 Mbps up.

However roll on a week and the speed will start to drop and, going into the admin pages I see the CHOP3-800 error.

If I reboot and leave it, then after 24 hours its back to normal.

Im not surprised its likely a memory leak with the router which cant cope with higher speed packages (im saying this based on what Asus put into their routers such as the AXE-16000 for example to maintain 2.5Gbps traffic.)

[BrianLN3]

I thought I was alone in the world arguing with EE Tech support over the same issue.   In my case, arguing about why my new EE Smart Hub was continually going into "huff mode" and refusing to talk to my somewhat older BT Digital Landline Phone and Yale Smart Alarm Hub.   The issue with the Yale Hub was "unbelievable"!   There have been times when I have been checking its status, standing looking at the green "connected" light on the Yale Hub and watched it - with my own eyes - suddenly turn off for no apparent reason only later to turn on again, also for no apparent reason.  

My last argument (after holding on to a telephone call for around 40 mins to speak to a real human voice instead of EE's "charming" but dismissive bot voice) ended with me being told it wasn't EE's fault - it was my fault because I hadn't followed the maintenance instructions (which DON'T appear in the instruction manual) and regularly - ie: every 2 weeks - reset the EE hub by powering off and on again to clear out accumulated activity logs.

I'm quite "long in the tooth" now - I'm not an IT guru, but I've been working with computers since they were "powered by clockwork" and the university computer had less power than my mobile phone has now.   So how EE can call its new hub/router "Smart" beggars belief.    It can't automatically clear out old logs when the memory gets filled up ???!!!    So it keeps loosing connections and needs to be rebooted???!!!   Logging in to check its status  takes long enough to go and make a cup of tea ????!!!!    And it doesn't update in real time - ie: you have to refresh the screen (and go and make another cup of tea) to see whether the status of connected devices has changed (ie: a printer switched on, or whether my Yale hub is - or is no longer - connected).

So if you are new to this content because you have the same problem, "Join the Club".   One can be forgiven for thinking that "Smart" is the modern IT euphemism/acronym for Shoddily Made And Rarely Tested !
I agree with one of the other comments - the only reason why I'm resisting the temptation to throw it in the bin is the hassle of having to find a replacement which is NOT "Smart" and, therefore, likely to function more reliably.

[Mozza76 · Accepted solution]

Just checking back in, five months after I first started this thread.

Went through many different routes in an attempt to sort out my issue, culminating in selling my TP-link Deco posts on, thinking that their incompatibility with the EE Smart Hub might have been at the root of the issue  (when they weren't connected and I was simply using the main EE Smart Hub Wifi, the router behaved itself).

I attempted to upgrade my EE subscription to the full package that included EE's own Wifi booster system but, after a month of EE not sending the Wifi boosters to me (another story for another time) I gave up and looked to try another Mesh system that might play nicely with the Smart Hub.

I ended up getting a newer set of TP-Link Deco posts (X20 AX1800). But - and I think this may be the important bit - before I set them up I found a page, hidden away on TP-Link's support pages that explaining something called Ethernet Backhaul which appeared to match the configuration that I was attempting to set up.
https://www.tp-link.com/uk/support/faq/1794/

My home network is mainly wired between the three floors of my property, but I wanted a Wifi mesh post on each floor, connected to this wired network, which would broadcast this strong wired signal over Wifi. In order to do this, I had to initially connect each of the Deco posts together by an ethernet cable connected directly to the SmartHub until they registered the Backhaul mode (or something), then disconnect them once they'd gone into this mode and then reconnect them to the wired network via network switches on each floor. When I looked at the network diagram on the Deco app on my phone, each post then showed as being directly wired to the main network and were all broadcasting a strong signal via wifi. The main takeaway from all this is that the SmartHub stopped falling over and I haven't had to restart it since.

This probably means that my original set of TP-Link posts would have probably worked fine if I'd have seen how to set them up properly in this way. Ah well, sometimes you have to go round the houses to get back to where you need to be.

To confuse issues slightly, while I was troubleshooting the original issue, EE support did set me up on some new SmartHub firmware. However, I don't think it was solely this that fixed the problem I was experiencing. I think it was setting up the backhaul mode on the TP Link Mesh system that made everything tickedy-boo.