Solved: Re: Whole Home app failure

PeterVM · ‎24-03-2018

I have just purchased a Whole Home Wi Fi pack. I have spent the last four hours resetting,researching, upgrading firmware, checking ios and app versions and have had absolutely no response from the app. The disc sits there quite happily connected to the phone's web browser but the app just says try later.

Had I realised that BT had been so stupid as to rely on iphone or android smartphones for setup then I would not have chosen this product.

I have an iphone 4S with ios 9 something, the Whole Home disk I am using has been updated to the latest firmware.

Can I use the web browser to set up the whole network, and if so how?

peaslaker · ‎25-03-2018

You can access a web interface by entering http://mybtdevice.home

Points to note.

1. Out of your discs one is the master disc for the mesh network (usually the one wired to the router). mybtdevice.home resolves to the IP address for this disc.

2. This means that the BT device is intercepting any DNS request on the AP and is not telling you what it does with that information for all addresses apart from mybtdevice.home

3. The web interface is not the full interface for the mesh but you'll be able to set an Admin password and disable WPS (this is the only setup I recommend)

PeterVM · ‎25-03-2018

Hi peaslaker

I used the web interface to update the firmware, although the forum thread on the latest version indicates that this was a very bad move. Would you update the firmware on all the discs or use the old firmware on the master disc? I was reluctant to turn on the rest of the 'discs' without the app but presumably the web interface will pick them up and I can then set up names and passwords?

peaslaker · ‎25-03-2018

If you can, wire *all* the discs to your router for the duration of setup. Only one of them will be the master at any given time but you need to make sure they all get to sync up.

For firmware update, just have the one you are updating powered up (it will be master).

For password update, power them all up and wait for them to settle (give it three minutes).

Switch off auto firmware updating. You cannot trust it will get to all discs reliably. Change your admin password. Maybe change your SSID WPA2 passphrase. Switch off WPS.

Do no other setup ever. Most features do not work. Pause / Resume does not work.

Place your discs as you need them and power them up. That should be you good to go.

Only other comment is that wired backhaul is infinitely superior to wireless.

peaslaker · ‎25-03-2018

Fixed 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz channels are sensible. Some clients won't handle these shifting around.

Depends on how congested your locality is but Channel 36 is the only sensible default for 5Ghz because the channel width actually covers all the other channels up to 44. Channel 1, 6 or 11 are your choices for 2.4Ghz.

Zorromeister · ‎31-03-2018

@peaslakerwrote:
If you can, wire *all* the discs to your router for the duration of setup. Only one of them will be the master at any given time but you need to make sure they all get to sync up.

For firmware update, just have the one you are updating powered up (it will be master).

For password update, power them all up and wait for them to settle (give it three minutes).

Switch off auto firmware updating. You cannot trust it will get to all discs reliably. Change your admin password. Maybe change your SSID WPA2 passphrase. Switch off WPS.

Do no other setup ever. Most features do not work. Pause / Resume does not work.

Place your discs as you need them and power them up. That should be you good to go.

Only other comment is that wired backhaul is infinitely superior to wireless.

When you say "pause/resume does not work", can you give a little more detail?

I've found that it does work, it just pauses/resumes all devices, when I've specifically selected devices that I want to pause.

The only workaround I've found is to use a timed pause against groups, but this isn't as convenient as using the pause/resume button.

Zorromeister · ‎31-03-2018

@peaslakerwrote:
If you can, wire *all* the discs to your router for the duration of setup. Only one of them will be the master at any given time but you need to make sure they all get to sync up.

For firmware update, just have the one you are updating powered up (it will be master).

For password update, power them all up and wait for them to settle (give it three minutes).

Switch off auto firmware updating. You cannot trust it will get to all discs reliably. Change your admin password. Maybe change your SSID WPA2 passphrase. Switch off WPS.

Do no other setup ever. Most features do not work. Pause / Resume does not work.

Place your discs as you need them and power them up. That should be you good to go.

Only other comment is that wired backhaul is infinitely superior to wireless.

When you say "pause/resume does not work", can you give a little more detail?

I've found that it does work, it just pauses/resumes all devices, when I've specifically selected devices that I want to pause.

The only workaround I've found is to use a timed pause against groups, but this isn't as convenient as using the pause/resume button.

peaslaker · ‎31-03-2018

My recent experience with pause/resume (latest firmware) was that, after resume, certain traffic was not forwarded by the Whole Home Wifi.

I couldn't access the web interface for the managed switch the disc was attached to. This behaviour was rectified by restarting the disc.

It has now got to the stage where if anything weird happens on my network, my "go to" fix is to power down the Whole Home Wifi and power it up again. When the triggering event has been use of features of the Whole Home Wifi this has just led me to the conclusion not to use those features.

YMMV

PeterVM · ‎04-04-2018

@peaslakerwrote:
If you can, wire *all* the discs to your router for the duration of setup. Only one of them will be the master at any given time but you need to make sure they all get to sync up.

For firmware update, just have the one you are updating powered up (it will be master).

For password update, power them all up and wait for them to settle (give it three minutes).

Switch off auto firmware updating. You cannot trust it will get to all discs reliably. Change your admin password. Maybe change your SSID WPA2 passphrase. Switch off WPS.

Do no other setup ever. Most features do not work. Pause / Resume does not work.

Place your discs as you need them and power them up. That should be you good to go.

Only other comment is that wired backhaul is infinitely superior to wireless.

I've now marked this as an accepted solution in that it allows for the setup of the mesh. There does not appear to be any solution to an app that does not find the mesh and the failure of many supposed features. My basic configuration appears stable. My only outstanding problem is an iphone 4S that does not settle when two discs are in range and the battery is exhausted in 10 minutes. I imagine this is an Apple problem as my previous experience has been that Apple products are often dodgy with WiFi that other brand products are happy with.