BT Whole Home Premium Wifi - Now here's why it doesn't work for me

[queeg505]

Personally I have found the coverage to be very good, I have always had dead spots in the house due to the construction of a few of the walls, (thickness and some metal in the walls apparantly). My office in an outbuilding has always been awful. I currently have three discs, one in the hallway attached via ethernet to my Draytek router, one in the loft that covers the top of the house and one in the kitchen that projects out to the garden and office. I get very good speed and reliability. I generally have about 15 devices connected, a mix of mobile, tablets, TV, Netflix, PC, laptop etc

They do need to talk to each other, but the disc to disc back channel works well. You can have up to 6 discs if required.

[engelbertink]

Hi,

I'm a big tech fan as well and love to push or try new gadgets. I loved the initial BT WHW mesh and increased my discs from 3 initially to 5 and then 7/8. The network became unstable after initially working well with 8 discs and I then scaled back to 7 to 5. It continued to be unbstable so I bought into the Premium discs.

Stable for 1 hour but since not anymore (5 discs). They disconnect every so often each day and my SkyQ main box shows 'no network' on and off. It also seems my 4 google minis used for my Nest doorbell and are connected as a group so they all 'ring' when someone presses the doorbell is interfering with the network?

Before I return I still want to give it ago so I have factory reset my original BT WHW set of 5 discs and noticed the setup procedure hasbecome much simpler. Tho, you HAVE TO GIVE IT TIME and follow the suggested steps by the letter as sometime the blue light flashes again after 25secs, turns red and then reconnects during setup.

Anyway - my 2 questions - 

(1) I have the BT HH6 and wonder if I can setup another WiFi mesh, running in parallel to my current WiFi mesh,on the same BT router using the app on another device (not iPhone but iPad)? Using a different SSID of course?

(2) Do I need to turn the 2.4 and 5GHz on my BT HH6 off as it is only used for DHCP?

[freestyle]

@Dan-O 

Any ideas when bridge mode will be available to stop the discs hijacking DNS entries in DHCP?

[Dan-O]

Hi,

Bridge mode was implemented in SGAB204002 (it no longer takes over the default gateway and allows all traffic to pass).

We don't have any plans currently to disable the DNS relay as it is used for core functionality but I will note your suggestion and consider as configurable option in future. 

Are you having any specific issues with how it is working now?

Dan-O

[dbrb2]

I came across a problem with my discs last week (SGAB205018)

My DHCP server failed, at which point the discs (which were set to get their IPs over DHCP) starter running their own DHCP server, handing out addresses on the 192.168.9.0/24 subnet, which caused a lot of confusion on my network, but doesn't seem to be documented anywhere in the web UI.  

To try to prevent a recurrence, I set the devices to use a static IP. This is set via the web UI of a single disc, and somehow broadcast to the others. However, this mechanism seems to have some problems - after repeated attempts I was unable to get all 5 discs running with static IPs. More often the wifi would go down briefly, and when it returned the units settings page would have reverted to DHCP. 

I did, after repeated attempts, manage to get one device to have a static IP. At this point though, DNS stopped working. On investigation, I could see from wireshark that the DNS server provided over DHCP to my device had been replaced by the IP of one of the discs. But crucially, it was the IP the disc had had whilst it was previously on DHCP - so all my DNS queries were going to a device that no longer existed! 

A second problem, though less urgent, relates to logging: 

Many of the log entries contain placeholders, such as: 

2021-01-12 23:01:55 | 6 | WIFI | 209 | <Device Hostname> (84:0D:8E:B6:C1:92) has deauthenticated (<Reason>)

It would be helpful for tracking down problems if the placeholders were populated with the actual data 

The logs also seem to not be in cronological order: 

2013-01-01 00:00:42 | 6 | WIFI | 207 | <Device Hostname> (9C:30:5B:06:65:CE) has authenticated successfully

2013-01-01 00:00:42 | 6 | WIFI | 206 | <Device Hostname> (FC:FE:C2:03:66:62) has connected to the 2G4 network with signal strength -86

2013-01-01 00:00:41 | 6 | WIFI | 207 | <Device Hostname> (FC:FE:C2:03:66:62) has authenticated successfully

2013-01-01 00:00:41 | 6 | WIFI | 209 | <Device Hostname> (FC:FE:C2:03:66:62) has deauthenticated (<Reason>)

2021-01-13 04:40:12 | 6 | MGMT | 713 | <Device Hostname> (30:FD:38:7B:5B:24) cannot be steered. Reason: Device currently making traffic.

2021-01-13 04:39:54 | 7 | MGMT | 702 | WiFi Smart Handover communication issue (16)

2021-01-13 04:33:32 | 6 | MGMT | 715 | UNKNOWN steer for <Device Hostname> (20:DF:B9:B9:88:1C) from 78:65:59:8D:C2:82 to 7A:65:59:8D:C2:83 successful

2021-01-13 04:33:32 | 7 | MGMT | 711 | <Device Hostname> (20:DF:B9:B9:88:1C) removed from the steer unfriendly list

2021-01-13 04:33:32 | 6 | MGMT | 715 | UNKNOWN steer for <Device Hostname> (20:DF:B9:B9:88:1C) from 78:65:59:8D:C2:82 to 7A:65:59:8D:C2:83 successful

I assume this is some problem down to a combination of how the files are updated, and the clock defaulting to 2013 before it has received a time fron NTP....but it is very confusing! 

[dbrb2]

I have just tried this again - after a couple of failed attempts I was able to set the static IPs, but something is not right in that it took many tries. 

The logging issue still remains. I'll keep an eye on the address behaviour....

[dbrb2]

And final issue....

"
2.4GHz Device Setup Mode
If you're having trouble pairing a smart 2.4GHz device to your Whole Home Wi-Fi network due to a conflict with 5GHz, you can temporarily enable 2.4GHz-only mode. Turning on 2.4GHz Device Setup Mode will disable 5GHz on all discs for 30 minutes or until you turn it off.

2.4GHz Device Setup Mode:Not applicable
"

The top paragraph on the web UI suggests this feature is available....the bottom that it is not. It would be really useful if it could be made to work, since so many IoT devices use 2.4Ghz for initial setup....but if it can't be fixed, should the option not be removed entirely?

[Sircoynie]

Some great feedback there! Sadly BT don’t care about this product anymore and appear to have dropped it with all its issues still in hand and falsely advertised features missing or poorly implemented. 

[dbrb2]

I spoke to soon.

Last night the 5 devices were all on IPs .4, .5, .6, .7, .8, and all showing as static IP 

This morning they still show as static, but all but one of them have changed IP

Something definitely buggy....

[dbrb2]

...and now after a restart (NOT a factory reset) they have all reverted to DHCP....

It's a little dispiriting that the re seems to be no active support from such a large company - it's more like buying from AliExpress!