VDSL FTTC 3rd party router settings - BT Business Smart Hub 2 cannot route

TheRealBigAl — Thu, 24 Feb 2022 22:18:27 GMT

After 4 days of pain before coming to the conclusion that the BT Business Smart Hub is not up to the task and discarding it for my previous router, I thought I'd share the settings so nobody else has to go through this pain. I've also shared my experience further down...

Anyone using VDSL/FTTC wanting to switch to a 3rd party router, these are the settings should your modem require one:
VLAN-ID/Tag: 101
PBit: 0
VPI: 0
VCI: 35
Encapsulation: PPPoE
Authentication: CHAP

If you have static IP, using the Broadband userid and password provided instead of the default (btbusinesshub@business.btclick.com, no password) is advised.

As for my experience:
I run a small business with a couple of satellite office and folks working from home. Neither we nor any of our employees used BT until Monday after a wave of insanity hit me and I decided to save a couple of hundred pounds a year by switching to BT Business for 2 sites. We switched on Monday and its been 4 days of pain, only alleviated by discarding all the BT provided equipment this afternoon. So no Cloud Voice either, and no "Hybrid backup".

There were no positives.

Here are the negatives I encountered:
BT Business Smart Hub 2's cannot route, even after upgrading to the current firmware v0.19.01.01105-BT. There is a reason they call it Hub rather than router! You can set a limited number of routes (to all RFC 1918 addresses except 10.0.0.0) but they only work for the Hub, almost. Its not a router. If you use its DHCP, the default route is to the router - no static routes to your VPN are given out, no ICMP redirects for internal hosts to your VPN or any other local network+router, and no routing to them either.

You lose around 5% line speed in the DSL connection and large uploads kill downloads. For WiFi, you cannot split the SSID between 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz, nor customise the guest SSID nor set a password for it, and WiFi is measurably slower than the two other manufacturers I used previously (and now use again). You only have a choice of 3 channels fo 2.4Ghz and 4 for 5Ghz (there are 24 wireless networks in one of the buildings, which requires a delicate choice). You cannot login to the Hub externally. You cannot customise your internal domain name. You cannot assign a host a static IP addresses (i.e IPv4 address to a MAC address) until that host is on the network (i.e. you have to let DHCP give it an address from the pool, then fix it to an IP address)

The GUI is poor. Adding DNS host names and routes is only permissible 1 at a time. i.e. Add+Save is required. You can add multiple and then save, but it does not actually save.

So whatever I saved on the monthly fees I lost over the course of the last 4 days (plus time+cost travelling between offices to reset Hubs, change settings, etc).

Re: VDSL FTTC 3rd party router settings - BT Business Smart Hub 2 cannot route

licquorice — Thu, 24 Feb 2022 22:40:01 GMT

This is the BT residential forum, the business forum is here

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VDSL FTTC 3rd party router settings - BT Business Smart Hub 2 cannot route

Re: VDSL FTTC 3rd party router settings - BT Business Smart Hub 2 cannot route