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Wholehome Utterly Unreliable

Fender62 — Mon, 06 Feb 2023 18:15:32 GMT

I've had a four disc wholehome for a few months now and can only conclude it is the biggest load of tech junk I have ever had the misfortune to own. It will run perfectly well for a few weeks and then start crashing on a daily then hourly basis. Generally the discs show a solid blue light so the only sign of a problem is the complete loss of wifi in the house. I've followed every bit of advice the helpdesk have given and am now waiting on a further response to see what else can be done. I've BT Fibre, a BT Hub, when it works a good fast connection but it is just so thoroughly unreliable. Has anyone got a refund on their system because I think my only option is to buy from another provider.

Re: Wholehome Utterly Unreliable

spile — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 07:23:39 GMT

Do you have an old router that you can repurpose as a wireless point?

Re: Wholehome Utterly Unreliable

Fender62 — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 08:06:14 GMT

Thanks for the reply. Not sure I do but will take a look. What would be the point of doing this?

Re: Wholehome Utterly Unreliable

Keith_Beddoe — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 08:14:46 GMT

@Fender62

You may find the issue is cause by the home hub running out of internal connections.

Have you tried a factory reset of the home hub?

I think the post by @spile , may have been intended for another thread.

Re: Wholehome Utterly Unreliable

Fender62 — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 08:19:55 GMT

Thank you. I think I have an absolute max of 35 devices connected at any one time, would that be an issue? I’ll look to do a home hub reset, presumably a bit fiddly as I’ll need to reset the SSID etc etc.

Re: Wholehome Utterly Unreliable

Keith_Beddoe — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 08:30:08 GMT

@Fender62

The issue is not the number of connections at one time, but the fact that the DHCP table fills up, as the lease times never expire.

Also, if you have any Apple devices, or recent Android devices, they have MAC randomisation (private addressing) enabled by default, which means that a new IP address is requested each time they connect. Its best to disable this feature on your own wireless SSID, and use the device MAC address instead.

You will see a large number of "Unknown Devices" showing, if that is the case. Look at the DHCP table if its present on the home hub, and see how many entries there are.

A normal restart does not clear these entries, only a factory reset.

Bear in mind that BT have sold quite a few of these wireless systems, and if there was a major issue, there would be thousands of complaints.

I do not use a BT Home Hub, and use a TP Link router, and a TP Link Deco wireless mesh.

Re: Wholehome Utterly Unreliable

Fender62 — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 09:14:20 GMT

Thank you and forgive my rant, after losing the connection for the third time in 30 mins and still waiting for the help desk to get back to me I may have been a little over enthusiastic in my choice of words!

I’ll do a factory reset this morning. I do notice my android phone says IP Config failure when trying to reconnect when I lose the wifi, is that indicative of the issue you’ve suggested?

And afraid I’m unclear as to what “Its best to disable this feature on your own wireless SSID, and use the device MAC address instead.” means. Is this is a setting on the home hub that I need to look for or should I be changing a setting on iOS and android devices? Thank you.

Re: Wholehome Utterly Unreliable

Keith_Beddoe — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 09:24:23 GMT

The IP config fail is the exact symptom of this issue.

If you do not have any Apple devices, then it would be only recent Android and Windows devices that may have MAC randomisation enabled.

If you look at the wireless settings for your SSID, on the Android device, then look at the advanced wireless settings, there may be an option there. There is a similar option on Windows 10.

On my Samsung tablet, it has the option to use a random MAC address, or the tablet MAC address. The random one is set by default, so I had to change it to the tablet MAC, so I could always identify it on my Deco mesh.

Re: Wholehome Utterly Unreliable

Fender62 — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 11:24:29 GMT

Thanks again. Hub has been reset and wholesome is back and running. On checking the android phones were already set to use device Mac so guess will now need to wait and see if this is a long term fix or are there other devices that need to be changed - android TV, PlayStations, smart sockets? Appreciate your help.

Re: Wholehome Utterly Unreliable

Keith_Beddoe — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 11:52:58 GMT

As far as I am aware, most other devices do not use MAC randomisation. If you have other visitors to your house that have access to your Internet, then they may be using such devices.

The factory reset should fix the problem for quite a while. If you can look at the DHCP table on the home hub, then you should be able to see the list of devices, and their MAC and IP address.

If you only have 32 devices connected, then there should only be 32 entries showing.

A longer term solution may be to use a different router, provided you are not using a phone service, as that will eventually require you to use the Smart Hub 2 and BT Digital Voice.

As an example, my TP link router clears out the DHCP table on a soft reset or power cycle. It only retains those devices that have reserved IP addresses.

Another option which I used on an original Home Hub 1 (a long time ago), was to disable DHCP on the home hub, and use a separate DHCP server, until I used another router which behaved correctly.

I am fairly sure that the issue with your BT Whole Home system is being caused by the Home Hub, as, apart from a few Virgin Media customers who have posted on this forum and the VM forum, there have been very few reports of problems.

Re: Wholehome Utterly Unreliable

Fender62 — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 13:04:21 GMT

Great stuff, thank you. I'm about to come to the end of my BB contract with BT and likely to move to Sky so perhaps the timing is helpful. Appreciate your expertise.

Re: Wholehome Utterly Unreliable

Fender62 — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 21:54:55 GMT

Well it lasted until early evening when two of the discs started to drop out and then the whole system crashed three times. The second line support at BT contacted me this afternoon and suggested trying to use my sky box on wifi rather than Ethernet - sadly there is a known issue between the home hub and sky box which means sky suggest it is run via an Ethernet cable. A new TP Link Deco system arrived today - fear I am going to have write the whole home off and switch to another product.

Re: Wholehome Utterly Unreliable

Keith_Beddoe — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 22:09:17 GMT

Well it was worth a try. There is obviously an issue with the BT Whole Home discs. I am surprised you needed four of them, as overlapping coverage can cause issues with some mesh systems.

I had a Tenda Nova MW3 with three units, and that gave similar issue to what you are getting, and the only way to get my phone to connect, was to turn off the phone Wi-Fi for a short while.

I now use the TP Link Deco M4 with four nodes, and it does not suffer from any issues. It also has the advantage of a separate guest network which can be configured to 2.4GHz only, which suits my 2.4GHz wireless cameras and some other devices. The Deco app is much better than the Tenda one, but you do have to create an account.

I am only on a 12Mb ADSL connection, but its just fine, as there are only the two of us living here.

Hopefully you should find the Deco much better.

Re: Wholehome Utterly Unreliable

Fender62 — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 22:12:01 GMT

It’s a large three storey house but possibly overkill. Thanks again for your input.

Re: Wholehome Utterly Unreliable

spile — Wed, 08 Feb 2023 07:49:40 GMT

It’s a cheap way to resolve the wireless issues of the SH2 router. As explained by other posters in this thread.

Re: Wholehome Utterly Unreliable

Fender62 — Mon, 13 Feb 2023 17:15:32 GMT

Just to get this off my chest, BT second line support have got involved. They reckoned one disc had a poor connection despite the app saying it was good so I moved that, since then the system has crashed numerous times including overnight. I’ve just done the reset on all the discs and it lasted 35 mins before crashing. With BT support taking days to respond I’m totally unimpressed.