Hi, I have just taken delivery of the smart hub plus and several other devices, I have been a customer for quite a while, but I originally binned a very old bt hub (because it was very naff) and I replaced with a DrayTek wireless router, which worked well, but unfortunately it failed. As I have had it several years, I thought I would upgrade to the EE/BT latest hubs etc, which I thought it must have improved a lot over that time, of course the sales guy said it was much improved. There was also a visit from a so called expert technician to set it all up, I thought I could get some useful technical input, especially as when I searched for a detailed user guide, there wasn’t one!!! Well the chap arrived, I quickly realised this guy was just here to plug in some stuff and push a couple of buttons, he knew absolutely nothing. I asked how I could configure things for my existing network, he just said I don’t know about any of that. Then said there are guides online, which there isn’t. So he left, I proceeded to tackle it myself. In my working life I was a lead solution architect, so I have good IT skills. I quickly realised this so called smart hub plus, is quite the opposite. I attempted to configure the DHCP settings, which quite honestly is not fit for purpose, how this is released to consumers is surprising. I tried to use the custom configuration option, basically it doesn’t save, so the configuration just flips back to what it had before. I also amended the tcp/ip address of the hub and the subnet mask, if you ever dare to select one of the DHCP tcp/ip preset allocation ranges, this also changes the tcp/ip address and subnet mask, which seriously screws you up. There is no capability to configure any DHCP variables. With these initial limitations, I proceeded to call the so called technical support, well they haven’t a clue either, the first chap didn’t even know what DHCP was!! He proceeded to talk to others there, who equally had no idea, they are basically trained in very simple broadband connection issues, speed tests etc and that is it!! I asked don’t you have a 3rd line or 4th line support and he didnt know what that was and said there is no other further technical support!! Somewhat shocked at this, I asked to speak to his manager, who was nearly as clueless, but did elude to another technical group, they would only look at a problem or issue, if the order was fully complete which apparently mine wasn’t, I am almost speechless with the apparent lack of proper support and the quality of the product, which has no proper user guide. So realising the support people knew nothing and really were unable to help at all, I said I would attempt to get back to their other technical group, which is probably their 3rd or 4th line support (we hope). I have looked at some of the other configuration of the hub and tried to work round some of its limitations, my view is they shouldn’t call this a smart hub, it has some of the most primitive capabilities, if you have a very simple home network, with very little in it, this hub maybe ok, i certainly wouldn’t recommend it for anything else, most configuration facilities are dumbed down, i didn’t see any proper firewall configuration, the is no local dns, you can’t add any meaningful labels to anything, there is no syslog configuration, you can’t independently configure the SID names for 2.4ghz and 5ghz, they have to be same ( I have three other devices and they all can be configured independently if you choose) the dhcp configuration is terrible, basically all the things a decent smart wireless router would have, I am in two minds if I attempt to try work round it, or throw it out.
