Loss of wifi signal to devices - random behaviour

[PB54]

Hi

For a few months now my mother has been complaining about her devices randomly not being able to connect to the internet.

In her flat she has three devices connected to the internet.

- Her BT YouView box which is connected to a TP Link mini router to pick up the internet - this was setup and has been working fine for years. 

- A Laptop - Windows 10 -all up to date.

- Samsung tablet

She has a Smart Hub 5 which is quite a few years old no but to all intents and purposes works fine.

However, every now and then (at least once a week/few days) the laptop will not connect to the WiFi. Instead of the WiFi (radar) symbol in the system tray she has a globe icon. Clicking on it shows that her laptop can see her BT Hub but there is no connection. Automatically connect is selected and no amount of manual intervention appears to resolve matters. Sometimes the issue lasts for multiple days and reboots and sometimes just until the next day.

All through the problems the hub stays connected to the internet.

The problem has now started to impact the BT Box and her tablet but never seems to be all three affected at the same time. More often than not one or two devices are affected with a lack of connectivity.

During a recent visit both my wife's iPhone and my iPhone connected straight away and had no issues, but her laptop was a real pain. I installed a TP-Link Wifi USB adapter into the laptop and that seemed to work well for a few days but then the issue returned.

Yesterday she was able to get online and we reset the hub back to factory settings. Once the Hub was back up and running, we spent over 90 minutes connected via TeamViewer whilst we sorted out other (non-internet or laptop related) matters.

Today the laptop refuses to connect again. Tablet is fine and TV didn't initially connect but after a few minutes it did.

It seems this is going to be an issue with the Hub as this is the only common factor.

Is there anything else we can try before reaching out to BT for a new hub?

[Keith_Beddoe]

@PB54 

A factory reset of the home hub is going to be the only way to fix this.

https://www.bt.com/help/broadband/how-do-i-reset-my-bt-hub-to-its-factory-settings

If any of your devices have been using randomised MAC addresses (Private addressing), then the home hub has probably run out of IP allocations, as each MAC address is allocated a new IP address.

The only way to reset the DHCP table, is by a factory reset.

[PB54]

Hi Keith

I know it was a long read but i had a lot of detail to impart, including.

Yesterday she was able to get online and we reset the hub back to factory settings.

Unfortunately, this appears not to have helped.

[imjolly]

if you have a HH5 have to split the 2.4/5ghz networks by giving them different SSID to see if that helps

[Keith_Beddoe]

@PB54 

Sorry I must have missed that about the factory reset. People often assume that pressing the restart button does the same.

I would ask BT to send a replacement hub, as the HH5 probably has a failing wireless module.

[PB54]

Hi @imjolly
Thanks. I've give that a go when i get a chance and will report back 🙂

[PB54]

@Keith_Beddoe 

Thats OK. As I said, there was a lot to read and I wanted to make sure I had given all the details as we have been working on this for weeks.

I'll try @imjolly 's suggestion and if that doesn't work, I'll get onto BT.

Thanks 

[rbz5416 · Accepted solution]

It could also be that a neighbour has a new router that is now broadcasting on the same channels as the HH5. So I'd start with installing a WiFi analyser to see what else shows up. You may just need to manually switch the channel(s).

Splitting the 2.4 & 5GHz channels is useful as it puts you in control of what a device connects to. If BT replace the router it's likely to be for a SH2 that doesn't allow that.

Way back when, I went through a number of HH5s that all dropped the 5GHz signal intermittently. I found the original Smart Hub to be much more reliable & it still allows SSID splitting. So maybe look a picking one of those up if channel analysis shows no conflicts.

[PB54]

Thanks. Due to supporting her from 300 miles away i might try turning off the 5ghz band and see what happens. Can't do anything that involves her having to change SSID etc on a device.

Also, if I recall correctly there was a LOT of BT Hubs listed when you search for access points on the laptop. Perhaps the area is getting too crowded / noisy so i'll investigate the channels etc

[PB54]

So have just managed to get onto her laptop and there are 8 other BT Hubs showing on her list of available networks and 4 Sky hubs plus another half dozen others.

Using Nirsoft WifiInfoView - https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/wifi_information_view.html i could see all 8 BT hubs are on Channel 11 (2.6GHz).

As her laptop only uses 2.4GHz i have forced her hub to use Channel 2 which was not being used by any others in the area and we will see how it goes...

Funny how the hub was set to Smart Channel (Channel 11) and all the other hubs were also on Channel 11. Is that by design? If so, not terribly "Smart" 😞

Just checked and my hub is on Smart Channel 11 too. But then no issues here.