Unstable connection

[Lorenzo]

We have a Smart Hub - Type B.

The wi-fi connection through the house had been generally stable. There would be the odd glitch but nothing that caused regular problems.

However for the past week we seem to have had constant issues. Every time I run the BT troubleshooter it advises us the restart the hub. There is an improvement but then a few hours later we have to repeat.

 I have tried both manually setting channels and using the Smart channel selector. Currently we are using the latter but neither seems to make much difference.

 I am running out of ideas, especially as I work at home and rely on broadband. Appreciate any thoughts.

[Keith_Beddoe]

@Lorenzo 

It might be worth doing a factory reset on the home hub, but if you have any digital voice handsets paired to the hub, then backup the numbers first.

A common problem with all of the home hubs, is that they run out of internal connections if you have any devices that use a randomised MAC address, sometimes called private addressing.

Each new MAC address takes up another IP address, and soon you can run out of connections. You will see lots of "Unknown device" entries on the home hub network map.

A normal restart can help for a while, but only a full factory reset clears out all the old entries.

If you have any devices, both wireless and Ethernet, that have MAC randomisation turned on, then turn it off so that only the device MAC address is used. That will ensure only one IP address is allocated for that device.

Then do a factory reset, and see if the problem returns.

[Lorenzo]

Thanks. I will definitely give that a try.

[Lorenzo]

I left the factory reset until the weekend.

Having now done it, I can still see lots of old devices showing as disconnected. I thought that reset would wipe all of these. Does that suggest that it hasn’t worked?

Thanks

[Keith_Beddoe]

A full factory reset should clear the device list.

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

Its best to use the recessed button, and hold it in for about 10 seconds. You should see the hub restart.

[Lorenzo]

Thanks, I thought I had done that first time around as the hub went through all its colour changes.

Anyway I have tried again and this time all the disconnected devices have disappeared.

Thanks for your help.