Smarthub2 Failure to Connect

[petrusepetrus]

I volunteer for a charity looking after the public hall  in our village. We have a BT FFTC service running on a SmartHub2 that distributes a WiFi signal over repeaters in the building.

Recently we have had occasions where people have either been able to connect to the WiFi but not been able to reach external sites or, have been unable to connect to particular sites.

Researching the problem a little it seems that some devices are unable to get an IPV4 address so Windows is stepping in and providing APPIPA IPV6 addresses so can connect if the site supports IPV6 but get “connection refused” failures otherwise. When the last incident occurred I had a look at the DHCP table and there were a lot of devices in the IPV6 segment whose leases were expired/no longer attached, some in the IPV4 segment showing similar behaviour and devices that were present in both sections of the table. The router is housed in a cabinet that is running hot (37°C) or so. I had a couple of questions…

Does the problem look like a DHCP issue? I read that the SH2 can have problems clearing the DHCP table when leases expire. Is this the sort of behaviour I’d expect to see if that were happening?

I get that devices like phones will try and look for both IPV4 and IPV6 connectivity. Does this impact the DHCP IPV4 capacity in the router? I ask because we don’t necessarily have a lot of concurrent users but with the plethora of devices people have these days, if they are bridging both protocols and exhausting the DHCP capacity then it might explain why the router doesn’t seem to be able to issue IPV4 addresses.

Would the temperature be a factor here and if so, what would be a good target temperature to try and achieve?

Would turning off the IPV6 allocation on the router help and are there any potential downsides with doing that?

Should the SH2 be able to cope with around 20 or so people being attached with some periodic spikes when we have public events? If not, should we look for another router and if so, any recommendations that BT would support?

The challenge for us here is that we don’t really have the time and resources to provide any service level commitment at the hall or to be able to support folks that are having problems, so we want as trouble free an implementation as we can. Any helpful suggestions would be appreciated.

[WSH]

The SH2 is a domestic unit and, I would suspect, not really up to that sort of workload.  Would a business hub be better?

The SH2 is notorious for this sort of thing, and a factory reset is needed to clear it.  (A simple restart may not be enough).  This will drop it back to defaults, of course, so export the settings to a backup file first. Hold the reset button in until the lights turn green again.  Then re-import the settings.

I doubt it’s the temperature as such.  The temperature is pushing it a bit but, by the sound of it, that is more a problem for the cab as a whole and may also impact other equipment.  Better ventilation needed? 

[licquorice]

I suggest a more robust third party router would be more appropriate for your requirements.

Any third party VDSL modem/router with PPPoE capability will work. BT won't 'support' it as such but that just means they are unable to give any help. Just ensure you get a combined VDSL modem/router.

The PPPoE credentials are generic, username bthomehub@btbroadband.com and password BT.

[WSH]

Licquorice makes a very sound suggestion, but one word of warning.

If this village hall has a Digital Voice phone it will have to be connected through an SH2.  It will not work through a third party router.

[licquorice]

I made the assumption that the village hall wouldn't require telephony.