Whole Home Premium extra discs failing

[Bri-Fi]

Spoiler

I have 2x three packs of Whole Home Premium discs.I've set up one three pack.I can the add the extra discs to my network via the app. They add ok. BUT once I add an extra disc and then I switch it off and back on, it resets back to its original settings. It doesn't remain part of the new network to which I added it.Any suggestions?Ta.

[naylor2006]

Try factory resetting the discs from the second pack whilst they are connected to the router, ensure the master disc is powered on and connected to the hub also so the new disc can find its settings.

From my experience after a factory reset the discs boot up and pull the details of the new network automatically and will then just appear in the app as 'New Disc' or similar, you can then change its name to 'Lounge', 'Bedroom 1' etc...

Factory reset is the pin hole on the back, hold it in for a good 10 seconds.

[Bri-Fi]

Hi, thanks for the reply.

Will resetting the discs not just set them back to the default SSID and P/W on the back of the discs though?

The second pack obviously has a different SSID than the first pack. I didn't think the second pack would pull anything from an already configured Mesh network, even if its connected to the router, as the router itself (Virgin) doesn't know anything about the Mesh network (as its configured directly on the discs and not via the router).

Does that mean that directly connected discs will take default settings off other previously connected discs somehow?

Can I just attach them all to a simple unmanaged switch and then the switch to the router if that is the case?

Sorry for all the clarifying questions.

Cheers again for the help.

[naylor2006]

I should probably adjust my advice......starting with this question first.....

Can I just attach them all to a simple unmanaged switch and then the switch to the router if that is the case?

No.....BT Wholehome Premium is super dumb, you cannot connect them all back to the router at the same time, they do not support this like BT Wholehome Standard does, you have to use the ethernet ports on the back of the discs to daisy chain them to each other, has to be one of the most stupid things ever. Wholehome standard you can connect back to the main router all separately using ethernet as a backhaul network.

So in your case you might want to connect the addon disc to the master disc directly, factory reset it and hope when it boots it pulls the credentials and stores them properly. Yes of course the idea is for you to end up with one wifi network, not two different ones.

It might work by connecting it to your router to grab its settings but thats a failsafe for Wholehome Standard, and yes it does locate the master disc after a factory reset and pull its details when it boots up, the important thing is that it must have an ethernet connect to the same network where the master disc is when it boots after a factory reset. It may still work this way or try connecting it to the back of the master disc via ethernet and doing the same, given that the premium discs dont support ethernet backhaul and only daisy chain to each other.

[Bri-Fi]

Ah right, daisy chain makes sense. My old whole hole discs only had 1 port, but since these have two then daisy chaining is possible (if I have enough Ethernet cables).

I thought a simple layer 2 switch would work (I assume its just layer 2 ports in the back of my virgin router) but the fact I can daisy chain I suppose that doesn't matter.

In any case, thanks for the assist. I'll feedback on the results if I get it working.

Cheers

[naylor2006]

For me all benefits of Premium are diminished over the standard version because on the standard you could all link back to your LAN providing each disc its own uplink. With Premium, every disc will be sharing a single 1Gb uplink into your network if they are daisy chained, also it makes it far harder to cable your house.

I can’t get my head around why they did that, how often are two discs going to be near enough to each other to benefit from being attached to each other? Usually they are always in separate rooms. If you installed Ethernet into your house you would have all the ports terminate in one area, where your router and switching is normally, Premium couldn’t make use of this.

Yes the back of most ISP routers has a usable switch interface with 4 ports, you can expand this by connecting other switches to each port, but then in that topology you can’t connect the discs to one switch.

[Bri-Fi]

I managed to do what you suggested and got the second 3 pack to join the network of the first 3 pack by resetting them whilst they were attached to the master disc (the one attached to the router) and letting the firmware update.

However I have run into another issue. I have 6 power supplies. 3 of them say WHOLE HOME WIFI and three of them say FOR USE WITH F398 AND F368.

The ones that say WHOLE HOME WIFI work with all 6 discs. But the other ones won't work with any of the discs (weirdly except one). They cause the light on the front of the disc to go purple for a while then quickly turn a light red (not the dark red it goes when there's no signal) then it quickly turns white, and then back to purple again. And this just keeps happening.

Although for some reason ONE of these other plugs works with ONE disc and one disc only. But, when it works with this one disc, it resets the name of the disc when I initially start the disc.

Do you have any ideas?

This seems so weird.

[naylor2006]

BT Product Support

Above is where I found these model numbers....

Wow this is getting tricky to unpick, but I have found some info which might help....

BT Whole Home Wi-Fi 6 | BT Help

I wasnt even aware of 'Wholehome WIFI 6' but its a model of the disc which is black, black usually attributed to 'Complete WIFI' but not in this case.

Anyway, given that those PSU's say they are for use with F368 or F398 they should be fine with all your discs considering that they are Wholehome Premium.

Also generally speaking if the PSU is rated correctly and has the right DC barrel jack it should matter if its a PSU from a completely different item, certainly a PSU would not be triggering a disc to forget its name, I would most likely blame the disc for that.