BT Mini Whole Home Wifi mesh network technical support

[raichea]

I've just installed the three disk version of this product. Things went pretty well but there are two issues I'd like to have addressed by BT tech support. I gave the 0808 100 6116 number a try and was told the issues (below) would be passed to second-line support (Ref #: 1542684).

That said, here are the two issues:

1) After installation, I wanted to change the SSID and WPA2 security key for the Wifi. The app let me do so, and I chose a key that happened to contain a '£' character. The app accepted this quite happily and I was able to connect devices to the network using this key. However, when I examined the setup via the web interface and tried to switch WPS off, I got an error message and the 'Save' request was denied. The error said something like 'Please use non-Chinese characters in the key'. It turned out the '£' was the problem - definitely not Chinese, but not ASCII so it looks like the key validity checker is faulty.

2) I'd like to see some level of security on the Ethernet ports on the secondary disks. At the moment, anyone can plug a device into the Ethernet port on a disk and have full access to my network. It would be useful to have the ability to disable the Ethernet port on secondary disks via the app and web interface.

Thanks for reading.

[Darren_B]

Hi raichea,

Thank you for highlighting these observations to our helpdesk.  The observations have been passed to the appropriate development team.

No.1 is indeed an issue, the £ symbol should have been restricted by the App - the Web interface restricted it correctly, albeit with a misleading error message.  These have both been logged with the appropriate teams.

No.2 is not an issue as such - but we value the feedback and it has been passed to the team for future consideration.  The Mini WHW is for use within your home, so the Ethernet port is there for anyone within your home to utilise a wired connection (to a printer, PC, TV box, etc.). 

Many Thanks

Darren_B 

[raichea]

Thanks for the reply.
1) I believe there is no restriction on the data within the 32 bytes of the SSID, however, BT may have applied their own restrictions (including '£') but it should be consistent - I hope this will be fixed, as you say.
2) Agreed, the risk is low but it would not take much effort to implement disabling of the Ethernet port and this would enhance security a little. I accept it might cause more calls to support for those not familiar with networking, should the port be disabled inadvertently.
Regards, raichea