Inter-connect Two BTHubs with Ethernet?

[GibberingRich1]

I want to change to the latest BTSmartHub with digital phone socket, but I'm previously using the previous version due to a large number of connected home devices.

My idea is to keep the older BTHub connected to my phone line, while powering the new SmartHub but inter-connecting them using an Ethernet Cable from the old hub to the new (i.e. just using the new hub as a router) and slowly moving over my wi-fi devices.

Anybody tried this or have any comments?

[imjolly · Accepted solution]

why not just change the new SH2 SSID to that of your existing hub and use same password and your devices will connect to new SH2 as if nothing had happened

[naylor2006]

Yeah what @imjolly says is the most straight forward solution but bear in mind all your devices will surely get different IP addresses as you have changed your DHCP server with the new hub, if that doesnt matter to you it should work just fine.

Im not overly familiar with the BTHubs as I havent used one but if you can go ahead and set static IP's attached to device MAC address prior to doing the switch over you could maintain the same IP addresses if you wanted to.

Connecting both routers together is far worse than just manually re connecting all your smart devices to the new WIFI, you'll have to do more config.

I empathise, I recently moved to a brand new WIFI Unifi setup, moving all my smart plugs and switches etc to the new WIFI was pretty painful but had to be done. The only casualty was my WasherDryer which wont ever enrol to the new hoover app for it because of some new legislation around smart devices and Hoover cant be bothered to patch it.

[GibberingRich1]

Yes I also considered this idea, and investigating how to change the new Hub and Id and Password to be the same as the old one. I guess I'll have to temporally switch off the old hub so the BT Hub manager will connect to the new one, and then I'll have to see how to change the Hub id and password?

[imjolly]

I always do this when I change router  I don't connect the new hub to my internet but just power it up and then make the changes to the SSID and password and channels if required and then disconnect existing hub, replace with new hub and power it up.  devices should just connect

[GibberingRich1]

Worked well thanks

[GibberingRich1]

Did what @imjolly said. Worked well.