Fix for 5GEE WiFi Hub IPv6 internet issues over ethernet [Solved]

[dan-giddins]

The Problem:
I have just bought the 5GEE WiFi Hub. On WiFi everything seemed to be working fine, but as soon as I tried to use ethernet, various little things stopped being able to connect to the internet. I could log in to a game called League of Legends, but as soon I as logged in the game client would tell me that the connection to the servers had timed out. I could make and receive audio calls on Microsoft Teams, and I could here the other person, but they couldn't hear me (the call would also seem to 'time out' and hang up after a few seconds). Bear in mind that this was ONLY happening over ethernet. Strangely, trying to connect to the Forticlient VPN caused Windows to crash (BSOD) on both Ethernet and WiFi!

The Solution:
Forcing a public IPv4 address in the hub solved this issue for me (over both WiFi and Ethernet, I was being given a public IPv6 address). To do this:

1. Log in to the hub by going to 192.168.1.1 (copy and paste into your browser bar) and click on 'Log in'.
2. Enter the admin password and log in. This is different to your WiFi password (unless you have set them to be the same) and can be found on the hub itself.
3. On the left hand side go to Setup -> Profile Management
4. Click 'New' at the bottom of the page
5. Enter the following settings:
   

   Name	Value
   * Profile name:	IPv4 Only
   * Dial number:	*99#
   * APN:	everywhere
   IP Type:	IPv4
   Username:	eesecure
   Password:	secure
   Protocol:	PAP

6. Click 'Save'
7. Click 'Set as Default'. This will give you a warning that it will disconnect and reconnect the hub from the internet to do this. Click okay when all users of the hub are ready to be briefly disconnected from the hub.
8. The internet should now reconnect, and the internet issues you where having before should no longer be present.

I don't know why forcing a public IPv4 address solved my problems. What's also strange is that over WiFi, I would get an IPv6 address but everything still seemed to work (apart from my VPN, but it is an older version of the VPN software, so I can only assume that it or windows didn't know how to deal with IPv6).

I'm also really surprised that other people haven't had this issue. I'm sure there are plenty of other people who want to connect to the hub over ethernet and do similar things to me! I would be interested to know why this fix solved my problems...

[dan-giddins · Accepted solution]

'Solution' (or in this case a work around) is in the body of the OP.

This probably needs to be investigated by EE for a proper fix, such that we can use ethernet and also have a public IPv6 address.

[pilgrim152]

This worked for me too, after I'd blamed every other part of my network first. Wifi worked fine, but anything connect to the EE hub via Ethernet was intermittent for web traffic and broken for most other things (Sonos, Remote Desktop, games). Changing to IPv4 only fixed it straight away.

[Wannabee]

With my Zyxel 5GEE Router (the latest version) I experienced the signal dropping out completely every 20-30 mins, for 5 mins until it reconnected, making for a very poor unstable and unusable experience. I also set the router to 4G only in an attempt to force it to connect to a very close 4G only mast. Technical support thought an external aerial might help so I had a 4G/5G aerial put up on my house by TSG for £100, which only served to reduce signal strength by 10% or so, but with the problem not solved.

The solution is as suggested above, with another IPV4 only network profile completely solving both the signal problem and the  need to limit the router to 4G only.  It is now completely stable and reliable, thank you to the OP.

To be fair the symptoms and the solution are not obviously linked., and in my case the problem was intermittent and therefore hard to diagnose. But now it is known, it's a shame that the EE technical support team are not suggesting this known solution to customers when this has been discovered some time ago by several as this thread shows. 

The issue in not unique to EE, I found Three have the same problem with their version of the same Zyxel router. 

[fuzzmo]

I am using the Huawei CPE Pro 2.  Same problem, through Ethernet I could not log in to Battle.net, ESO, etc. Added the APN with IPv4 only and it worked. BUT the download speeds went down to a quarter of normal speeds, but ironically the upload speed almost quadrupled.  It stayed that way until I removed the APN and went back to default.  Does anyone have this?  If not I did see in another thread that apparently the mast was misconfigured and once it was fixed everything went back to normal?

https://community.ee.co.uk/t5/Mobile-Broadband/IPv4-not-working-with-default-APN-dual-stack/td-p/109...