Smart 4G Hub doesn't work with other DNS providers

[Shamrock7]

Due to living in a rural area, my parents' BT landline service has been degrading as they're several miles from the nearest cabinet with a mix of over- and under-ground portions, and the old copper lines are just deteriorating with age and neither BT nor OpenReach care to fix or replace them given the locality. Because of this, they've recently migrated their contract to EE 4G mobile broadband and are now experiencing DNS issues.

Initially, BT provided an older model of EE mini hub as a temporary measure which worked okay. Then the EE contract was properly started and they were supposed to send a Smart 4G Hub but sent the newer mini hub by mistake, and told my parents to use that temporarily as the original mini hub needed to be returned to BT immediately - this also worked fine. Now the Smart 4G Hub has arrived and we're having DNS issues.

As you may be aware, DNS translates human-readable URLs like www.google.co.uk into the numerical IP addresses that websites and computers actually use to connect to each other, but until very recently all DNS traffic was basically plain-text and unencrypted. This means that anyone who cares to look - both on your WiFi and out in the wider Internet - could see exactly what websites you're visiting and what apps you're using on your phone, even if this doesn't grant them exact knowledge on what you're doing.

Recently, secure DNS services have appeared are are getting easier and easier to setup. Android has "private DNS" as a core feature under Network & Internet settings these days! There are also a variety of DNS services which provide assurances that they don't log or sell your activity, or provide malware blocking services, and other such things. These are a great boon for less tech-savvy users, and I've always made use of these for my parents to try and prevent issues before they occur.

However, with this new Smart 4G Hub, not only is there no option to change the WiFi's default DNS for LAN devices (the BT hubs have never allowed this basic feature for some reason, so I'm not surprised EE are also not allowing their users to control their own WiFi network) but changing the DNS provider on individual devices is also being blocked! I have tested with Android, iOS, Windows, and Linux devices using Google DNS, Cloudflare, Quad9, and others. Both IPv4 DNS and DoH/DoT secure DNS.

Any change to the DNS settings on the device whatsoever, and it loses Internet connection despite having WiFi connection. No amount of waiting or rebooting the device or the hub restores connectivity, but removing the custom DNS instantly works.

Both versions of mini hub, and the BT landline hub before, did not exhibit this behaviour, so I believe it is part of the Smart 4G Hub itself and not a network issue. We have disabled parental controls (set to 18+ iirc) through my parents' EE account to see if that was the cause, though as far as I'm aware they have never changed this setting with BT or the previous EE mini hubs, but it has not helped the issue regardless.

Is EE intentionally crippling secure DNS and user safety, or is this "smart" hub faulty?

[Shamrock7]

Due to living in a rural area, my parents' BT landline service has been degrading as they're several miles from the nearest cabinet with a mix of over- and under-ground portions, and the old copper lines are just deteriorating with age and neither BT nor OpenReach care to fix or replace them given the locality. Because of this, they've recently migrated their contract to EE 4G mobile broadband and are now experiencing DNS issues.

Initially, BT provided an older model of EE mini hub as a temporary measure which worked okay. Then the EE contract was properly started and they were supposed to send a Smart 4G Hub but sent the newer mini hub by mistake, and told my parents to use that temporarily as the original mini hub needed to be returned to BT immediately - this also worked fine. Now the Smart 4G Hub has arrived and we're having DNS issues.

As you may be aware, DNS translates human-readable URLs like "www.google.co.uk" into the numerical IP addresses that websites and computers actually use to connect to each other, but until very recently all DNS traffic was basically plain-text and unencrypted. This means that anyone who cares to look - both on your WiFi and out in the wider Internet - could see exactly what websites you're visiting and what apps you're using on your phone, even if this doesn't grant them exact knowledge on what you're doing.

Recently, secure DNS services have appeared are are getting easier and easier to setup. Android has "private DNS" as a core feature under Network & Internet settings these days! There are also a variety of DNS services which provide assurances that they don't log or sell your activity, or provide malware blocking services, and other such things. These are a great boon for less tech-savvy users, and I've always made use of these for my parents to try and prevent issues before they occur.

However, with this new Smart 4G Hub, not only is there no option to change the WiFi's default DNS for LAN devices (the BT hubs have never allowed this basic feature for some reason, so I'm not surprised EE are also not allowing their users to control their own WiFi network) but changing the DNS provider on individual devices is also being blocked! I have tested with Android, iOS, Windows, and Linux devices using Google DNS, Cloudflare, Quad9, and others. Both IPv4 DNS and DoH/DoT secure DNS.

Any change to the DNS settings on the device whatsoever, and it loses Internet connection despite having WiFi connection. No amount of waiting or rebooting the device or the hub restores connectivity, but removing the custom DNS instantly works.

Both versions of mini hub, and the BT landline hub before, did not exhibit this behaviour, so I believe it is part of the Smart 4G Hub itself and not a network issue. We have disabled parental controls (set to 18+ iirc) through my parents' EE account to see if that was the cause, though as far as I'm aware they have never changed this setting with BT or the previous EE mini hubs, but it has not helped the issue regardless.

Is EE intentionally crippling secure DNS and user safety, or is this "smart" hub faulty?

[XRaySpeX]

Very few, if any, EE mobile routers provide the ability to change DNS.

[Shamrock7]

Thank you for the reply.

I'm not trying to change the default DNS in the router settings; while it would be nice and there's no good reason for EE to completely forbid this, I was expecting it as BT do the same.

My problem is that when I change the DNS settings on individual devices for privacy and security reasons, using core features of my devices all of which natively allow such a thing, the Smart 4G Hub then blocks them from using the Internet until the custom DNS is removed, and none of the previous EE 4G hubs nor the BT landline hub behaved like this.

My question is whether this Smart 4G Hub is faulty, or if it's something EE are doing on purpose for this class of hub specifically? If the latter, how do I get them to stop blocking us from using our own Internet properly?

[XRaySpeX]

As you are changing the DNS in your device to a custom DNS from "Obtain DNS addy auto" (which would be the router) I can't see the router is even consulted in DNS lookup.

On a PC you are trying this what does the command ipconfig /all say, obscuring your personal info?

You could also check nslookup is giving expected lookups.

[Shamrock7]

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@XRaySpeX wrote:

As you are changing the DNS in your device to a custom DNS from "Obtain DNS addy auto"

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Yes, I tried changing each device from automatic DNS (the router) to manual and then specifying multiple different providers one-at-a-time to see if any would work. Every device I tried had no Internet connectivity when manually configured with any DNS provider.

Note: Android doesn't let you specify only the DNS manually, so that was changed from DHCP to static while utilising the same IP and Gateway but with different DNS; on both Windows and Linux I kept DHCP for all settings except DNS.

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@XRaySpeX wrote:

I can't see the router is even consulted in DNS lookup.

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Every consumer router I've ever used is consulted for DNS. When a new device connects, if it doesn't have a manual configuration, it asks the router for DNS servers to use. Sometimes on the device you see the router's IP address as the DNS, sometimes you see whatever provider the router advises it to use. What routers don't work this way?

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@XRaySpeX wrote:

On a PC you are trying this what does the command ipconfig /all say, obscuring your personal info?

You could also check nslookup is giving expected lookups.

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Unfortunately I'm not at my parents' house for a few days so can't check this right now. The output of those commands will certainly be interesting but also not too relevant, I think?

With 1 device set to manual DNS and others all automatic, only the one with manual DNS was affected and the other devices continued to work as normal, so this behaviour is specific to manually changing DNS settings on a per-device basis. Also, as stated in my original post, the mini-hubs EE sent out did not have this issue and neither did the landline BT hub before them.

Only this so-called "smart" 4G hub actively blocks Internet connectivity for any device with manually-configured DNS.

[XRaySpeX]

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@Shamrock7 wrote:

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Every consumer router I've ever used is consulted for DNS. When a new device connects, if it doesn't have a manual configuration, it asks the router for DNS servers to use. Sometimes on the device you see the router's IP address as the DNS, sometimes you see whatever provider the router advises it to use. What routers don't work this way?

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But in this instance you are making the device have a manual configuration. So the router hasn't any need to be consulted & so isn't. All routers act that way.

I asked cuz it could be relevant. Don't prejudge before you see the results.