Premium & Whole Home Wi-Fi 6 SGAB/C20832C now live

[foz]

This project is obviously dead, no new firmware is coming, just empty promises. I just wished the papers were aware of the way we have been treated!! 

Simply put, it doesn't take 12+ months to update firmware code and test it, it's just BS.

[gameinn1]

What's likely happened with this is the software and firmware is likely outsourced to some foreign firm and BT tried hard to get them to do something but ofcourse that's not a priority or cared about after the initial contract has expired.

[nurquhar1]

Yep, I had two boxes of the Triple Disc Kits. One I got from Amazon over a year ago and one from the BT shop in January.
When I could not get the Ethernet back haul to work reliably I complained to BT and sighted this forum thread and list all my issues with it. Within a few hours they issued me a return ticket no.
I contacted amazon and BT shop to arrange the returns and provided the BT support return ticket no. I now have all my money back on the 6 unreliable discs I had.
I have instead invested in some Unifi U6 Wifi-6 AP's, I am well pleased with them and I have rock solid WiFi thorough out the house. The only downside is the Unifi AP's are probably double the price of BT's Premium discs but they do at least work.

[foz]

I agree the Unifi U6 are great, I have deployed a few sets of these, I am going down this route myself come the summer when they hopefully release 6E on the pro versions. I would advise getting a refund if your able on these BT premium discs as fast as you can to anybody reading this thread, as it obvious BT are not going to fix these issues anytime soon.  

[Kev2021]

I’ve actually got a fairly stable system running.  My config is:

• Three white premium discs and three Wi-Fi 6 discs
• Before setting up I factory reset each disk in turn with only that one disc powered on, then powered off and moved to the next, and so on
• One, and only one, of the Wi-Fi 6 discs connected into the router by Ethernet 
• Absolutely no other Ethernet connections to any discs, as previously noted in the forum, ethernet connections cause problems, especially with backhaul
• All running the same respective SGAB/C20832C firmware
• I'm using a Plusnet hub 2 router and assign the discs static IP addresses using DHCP against the disc MACs, I’ve not adjusted any lease durations from default
• I don’t get concerned about the network map of how the discs interconnect, they don’t always take the most economical/obvious/direct route, it is what it is, but it’s still fast enough for video calls and streaming 
• Every 3 months or so the app will refuse to recognise that I’m connected to the BT Wi-Fi network, even though the Wi-Fi and routing are working correctly.  Generally a full Wi-Fi reboot resolves this
• I don’t know it it makes a difference, but every few weeks I clear the disc usage statistics.

I appreciate that many owners, myself included, would like to use Ethernet backhaul for performance or the avoidance of Wi-Fi unfriendly thick walls, however I’ve got some semblance of stability with exclusively Wi-Fi backhaul and good connections to all through creative disc placement.

like everyone else I do however look forward to the next fixed firmware.  In the mean time I hope details of my working setup helps others avoid some of the issues present.

Kev

[hatton33]

So, my story with this was I bought the system off the back of the rave reviews the original disc system got, so I thought I’d buy the newer premium version. I hadn’t visited the forum before so knew nothing about what was to come. This was August 2020.

The system arrived and was a nightmare to set up. It took me the best part of three hours to get working and this is someone who’s worked across various roles in IT department over the last 20 years. The discs simply struggled to talk to each other and the only way to get it to work was to connect them via Ethernet briefly and then relocate them. I finally got them all working. Next, I couldn’t get some IoT devices  connected at all. So I had to keep my sky network broadcasting. A few weeks later however, a firmware update and a few extra settings landed which enabled some legacy mode type settings and these devices then could connect. Next I tried to hard wire some devices so I could finally turn off the sky mesh system. Connecting Sky Q caused the whole system to crash and reset. Only a factory reset of the whole system recovered the issue, so now, i still had to keep the sky mesh running.

Roughly every month, at least once, I ended up having to do a factory reset. This was because I experienced one of a number of problems and these all happened using any firmware up until this last one;

* Wrong SSID being broadcast (Default BT one rather than renamed one)

* Stopped accepting the correct (unaltered) admin password 

* Speed dropped to 70mb (less than 1/5th of the speed at the modem)

* Connected devices disconnected and on trying to reconnect gave the message of ‘incorrect password’

* One disc disconnects from the system and won’t reconnect

* High jitter rate resulting in poor video streaming performance

To name a few. I put up with all of this for three years, waiting for this mythical new firmware that would resolve all the problems. Eventually however, when I checked back here and saw there was no updates on when this would land, I lost hope and decided to abandon the system and move on.

I contacted BT regarding all of the above in the hope they may offer some compensation but I didn’t expect anything. However, having spoken with the tech support team and customer service I can confirm that they paid for return postage and provided a full refund for the product bought nearly three years ago. For that, I can only commend their service and thank them for it.

As for where I’ve gone now, well, the Amazon Eero 6 Pro had an offer on at the time so I jumped on that. The experience so far has been polar opposite to the above. I set up 6 access points out of the box within about 10 minutes flat. I remained the SSID and password to that of my old network and every device connected automatically. I’ve had it running for a couple of weeks now and it’s not skipped a single beat. It’s genuinely everything I hoped the premium BT system would have been. It’s just such a shame that it never realised its potential. 

[notnud23]

Who did you contact at BT?

[hatton33]

I bought it though the BT shop, so went on my orders page and requested a refund through there explaining the problems. A few days later, the BT Shop Team replied asking me to contact tech support first and if they provided me with a returns code, then they’d continue the returns process. I called tech support straight away and explained everything again and all that I’d tried. Within 15 minutes they issued me a code which I sent to the BT Shop Team and then pretty promptly after I’d been emailed a returns label etc.

Hope that helps.

[notnud23]

Thx....

[gameinn1]

@hatton33 I actually recommend the Eero 6+ over the Pro 6. I've tried both.

I can say as a single unit perspective, the range on the 6+ is actually somehow better even if advertisement is 1500 sq ft vs 2000 sq ft. The main reason being is that the 6+ has newer qualcomm radios built in so clients actually properly change to 2.4Ghz which doesn't really happen on the Pro 6 even at max ranges. General ballpark is about 20 extra feet of range on the 6+ in my testing.

Ideally Eero would release a Pro 6+ that actually has a third band unlike the shamble of the 6E but even then speeds of the dual band on 6+ from a node can sustain 500 easy.

I got the 6+ 3 pack for £194.99. That's £90 less than the 6 Pro 3 pack price of £284.99 that has better range and basically similar speeds.

Not saying the pro 6 is bad btw but the 6+ is just a unicorn in terms of price, range and performance.