Premium Whole Home Wi-Fi SGAB205018 Release for Early Adopter

[speedf]

Yup checked all those things.  I'm actually pretty tech savvy.  I did hope to not have to factory reset, since I spent about an hour setting up all my device names and groups and there doesn't seem to be a way to save the config.  *Sigh*

[speedf]

So did the factory reset and lo and behold - new firmware is available.  

Back to now setting up all my device names again.

This'll be fun if that's the routine I have to go through every time there is a new firmware release......

[kevin_marchant]

Well, at least you cracked it.  I’ve kept a screen scrape of the MAC addresses / Device names for just such occasions.  That and using Ethernet to pair the disks on initial setup rather than WPS bring the whole process down to 15-20 minutes.

[speedf]

I wish...I have 104 devices on my network that I individually named in the bt wholehome system that I now have to go through again,,,,

[Fellwalker]

Using a web browser, go to http://btwhole.home

It didn't work.  I got

Hmmm… can't reach this page
btwhole.home’s server IP address could not be found.
• Search the web for btwhole home
ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED

So I logged on to my BT HomeHub, found the IP Address of the disc, and connected using that.

For information: My PC is hard wired (no wifi) to the HomeHub. I guess that I'd have had to Wi-Fi connect to the disc to use the instructions as set out.

[kevin_marchant]

Yes, it seems to rely on the DNS in the WiFi system to resolve the extra domain, so only works from mobile devices or devices connected to a discs Ethernet port that pick up the disc’s DNS.

Hopefully BT will modify the instructions.  

For a brief instant you did seem to be able to opt in to betas in the app (v27) but that seems to have disappeared (v28).  That would have been easier but perhaps the option needs to be more hidden as reverting isn’t as easy.

[Fellwalker]

Confused!

My app is v 3.10.14, not v27 or 30.  It has just now been easy to opt in to the beta in the Play store.

I've fed back the information to the Whole Home team, so we can hope they'll incorporate it.

[kevin_marchant]

Apologies.  I’m referring to iOS versions 3.10.27 and 3.10.28 (latest).  I hope by constantly replying to each other we can keep the threads at the top of the forum so the support guys keep focus on fixing the problems.  I bought the disks when they first came out.  So far there have been six firmware releases and I’m still hoping we get a solid version with what anyone would describe as core functionality working properly.

 I have no idea why things as trivial as ensuring that manual channel selection is preserved after a reboot wasn’t picked up by some sort of testing process.  Every feature should be tested exhaustively to ensure it works and survives a reboot.  Why supply Ethernet backhaul if it doesn’t work at all.  Simply turn it off.  There is no need for a Rolls Royce solution to some of the issues which is what Dan has implied is due to fix the Ethernet problem (I don’t need bus topology nor being able to us the AX radio for client devices, nice as both of those would be I just want a simple topology with one disk connected by Ethernet from my garage to the Ethernet port on the master disk to work) so simply disable WiFi backhaul on any disk with an Ethernet cable inserted other than the master disk and identify the master disk by user selection if there isn’t a cleverer way of doing it.  As it stands the system goes into a tailspin.

I know BT got sidetracked on the Virgin issue but how many man days (man hours?) of effort have gone into firmware coding and more importantly testing (do the BT guys use these disks themselves at home on even slightly complex configs as they should.)

Sorry for the rant but there are an ever increasing number of us who think that the current Premium disk functionality don’t meet what might be described as minimum viable product.  Are proper development processes with a managed backlog in place?  The standard disks appear more robust, better tested and better value.  It was before my time but I hear the standard disks also had a chequered history but eventually got there.

Im hoping the same will be true of the “Premium” disks as well.

SGAB20121E	12/12/2019	When I purchased
SGAB202226 (FR1)	10/02/2020	Full
SGAB203010 (FR2)	20/04/2020	Full
SGAB204002	04/05/2020	Beta
	26/05/2020	Full
SGAB20400A	03/08/2020	Beta
SGAB205018	22/09/2020	Beta

[Sircoynie]

I agree with the this post 100%^, the lack of ownership and customer centric communication from BT is also really insulting for customers who have purchased a so called "premium product". I for one won't be buying a BT branded again!

[intoxicating]

Having had Premium since it was released, it’s a great shame that the bigger issues weren’t picked up or fixed during pre-release. The hardware is pretty decent but let down but software.

Why Ethernet backhaul wasn’t considered a must have from release I don’t know. The original WHW was great, it did what you needed and worked and Premium just needed to follow that same setup, or at least let users switch the system to AP only mode if they aren’t interested in features that need the DNS hijacking. 

Haven’t used Premium since I got Orbi but must say haven’t had any issues at all, plus now using AX WiFi 6 for devices along with WPA3. 

Hopefully BT will get its act together and solve this issues for customers, remembering these people actually paid money the kit.