Only affecting my PCs

[9864Heff]

Only affecting PCs

Hi

Having a real headache with my Broadband, this has cropped its head up just over the last two months. The issue only occurs on my PCs, (1 brand new 2nd nearly new) they will not connect to the internet or sometimes connect but drop off after a couple of minutes. All my other devices iPads Alexa’s streaming sticks all work fine.

The issues happen if I am using WIFI or Ethernet connections, here are some of the steps I have taken.

My router is a BT Smart Hub 2

Removed Antivirus and Firewall

Rebooted router several times including resetting to the factory

Had the router replaced, only to have the same issues

Paid an IT consultant to check my pcs, to ensure the fault was not on my side. No issues there

Flushing DNS and refiguring IP

Used all available tools resetting all adapters.

BT/Qube engineer came to check the system and was also unable to connect with his laptop escalated to Openreach

The Openreach engineer checked lines and connections which are working and stable, unable to assist with the issues,

I have tried assigning the IP and DNS settings manually but to no avail.

The fact that this is only affecting PCs and no other devices is frustrating, surely with my system all connections and lines are checked the only common factor is some exchange issue with BT.

Has anyone out there had or has had this experience?

[Keith_Beddoe]

@9864Heff 

Welcome to this user forum for BT Retail phone and broadband customers.

The first thing to do is to make sure that MAC Randomisation (private addressing) is not selected on both wireless and Ethernet network connections. Do this on both PCs.

The home hub needs to see the physical hardware MAC address each time, and not some randomly generated one, as each random MAC gets assigned a totally new IP address from the home hubs DHCP server. This will rapidly cause the home hub to run out of connections, and result in the device being connected, but with no Internet access.

The only way to remove these unwanted entries, is with a full factory reset of the home hub.

You may also wish to check all your other devices to make sure MAC randomisation is turned off, as that will prevent multiple allocations for those devices as well.

[gg30340]

Have you checked to see if you have any access controls set up via your Smarthub that could be blocking your PCs.

You need to use the MyBT app in order to access the access controls but you should be able to check in the Smarthub's advance settings to see if the PCs are being blocked by them by going to the "My Devices" section.

[gg30340]

@Keith_Beddoe 

The replacement Smarthub should have ruled out the MAC randomisation being the problem. 

[WSH]

You using IPv6 or IPv4 and is that on Windows 10 or Windows 11?

[TimCurtis]

@9864Heff 

What antivirus & firewall are you using?

[rbz5416]

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@gg30340wrote:

@Keith_Beddoe 

The replacement Smarthub should have ruled out the MAC randomisation being the problem. 

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Always assuming a new or properly refurbished one was sent. We've seen examples of replacements being sent out, apparently with someone else's devices still in the network map. Certainly wouldn't hurt to try a reset.

@9864Heff 

If the reset doesn't help, are the PCs getting full network credentials from the router? Run ipconfig /all from a command prompt & make sure that an IP address,subnet, gateway & DNS are all assigned. If not maybe try assigning a static IP address outside of the DHCP range (below 192.168.1.64)

[Keith_Beddoe]

The other thing to consider is that any new home hub would have its access settings updated to match what has been set up on the MyBT app, once its accessed by the BT management system.

Assuming there is nothing configured via MyBT, then its always possible there is a data mismatch, and changes are being made to the account, using another account`s settings.

The only way to prove this, would be to see if the problem still occurs with a third party router, as that would not be under the control of BT.