Whole Home Wi-Fi Premium keeps resetting network name and password

[David001]

I have the Whole Home WiFi Premium system, with four discs across the house. The primary disc is connected by ethernet to a TalkTalk router. I've changed the WiFi network name and password to one which is convenient to use, and many devices use these to access the network. I've had the system for a few years without any significant problems, but recently the network name and password will reset to the default shown on the back of the primary disc (i.e. BTWholeHome-XXXX). This disconnects all the devices (including the mobile app) and requires either a full reinstallation of all the discs, or connecting a PC to the now-default network and resetting the name/password using the web browser interface. This started a few weeks ago and now happens every few days. I don't want to have to use the default name for my devices, not least because some integrated systems (e.g. house alarm) use the personalised name/password and can't easily be changed. Any ideas what's happened? Is this the result of a firmware update?

Thanks.

[foz]

May i suggest a full factory reset and set up a fresh, don't reinstall a backup.

I think these discs boot up using the default settings and look to a settings file during boot. It could be your settings file has become corrupt. 

If unsure regarding firmware updates/version, you can disable automatic updates to be sure. System>firmware update>Automatic Update>Disabled. (But always keep an eye out for new firmware, you may wish to test beta firmware if so enable early adopter)

[barrie_elliott]

I have had this issue for about a year maybe more…

i have reset the disks, changed them and have the same issues.

as frustrating as it is, i am Currently sitting with 5 red disks and 1 blue. I can go months with out major issues a simple router reboot and not even a wifi network reboot..  however what i have found is that wifi can work, but dhcp addresses fail to be given to new devices, so i restart the bt hub and all ok….

today the wifi disks have restarted 5 times, and not all come back ip till i manually power down and back on.  In some rarer cases the whole system resets and i have to reconfigure the lost from scratch.

interesting that when my DHCP on the router is 192.168.1.51 to 192.168.1.200, i allocate statics to 192.168.1.1-40, but seems wifi devices still get ip addresses from the lower end so end up with wifi devices clashing with wired static devices… so thats clearly a bug in the bt premium wifi disks as its ignoring the DHCP i have set…

this leads to clashes and the bt hub needs rebooting and all devices turned off, dhcp lease reduced to flush out after the shortest period then all turned back on..

sometimes take days to get to back to stable…. 

another issues is the amount of devices, the bt smart hub 2 is supposed to be able to handle 50 devices maybe leas.. the bt wifi premium disks perhaps 20-25 devices each, however this all goes via the hub, so if you have to many devices you may cause the wifi to reboot multiple times…

this is a major flaw in the design and even when i reported this to bt, they washed their hands of it… so basically when i het a chance ill be changing the wifi for the 4th time and go cisco.. more devices less dropouts…. 

[foz]

Try setting the disc's static ip in the router rather than on the disc itself.

This way it will get the IP you set. Not sure what version disc's you have but if i used static ip's on the original white ac2600 btwh1 discs, my guest network had issues never tested on the latest firmware, but assigning an ip to each disc in the router works without issues.

If you have the premium white discs may i suggest you set the static lease to infinite rather than a day this should stop a lot of master disc reboots.  

[barrie_elliott]

So I have set the master disks since day one and all of the other discs with static IP addresses, these are at the top end of the range. 

I still don’t get why the DHCP even though specifically set on the router does not pass through to the devices that connect via Wi-Fi. 

all hardwire devices get the correct DHCP lease because they are making direct communication with the router however anything I connect my Wi-Fi randomly gets anything within the /24 range completely ignoring a DHCP range set on the router. 

I have tried one day and I have tried seven days and I’ve tried maximum days, in the more devices that I have connected the more I see the reboots.  It has always been an issue for myself and I have gone through multiple different solutions and it hasn’t been no better.

i’ve already factory reset the number of times and set everything up from scratch one by one, that took me days because of the amount of devices that I had to reconnect so then I started doing it ad hoc with what was necessary. 

all I can think is that the Wi-Fi discs get overwhelmed so the master disk reboot.

[jamiejackson16]

I am having similer problems with restarting the premium home discs every few days due to devices loosing their connections and the discs going offline, they have the current firmware. How do i change to "infinite lease"? I looked everywhere for this. I have the BT smart Hub 2.

[foz]

It will depend on if the router supports this option some don't. I don't use BT routers so cant say, but it will be where you set a device Static IP to a particular MAC address within the router (NOT in the disc's)! 

[barrie_elliott]

The BT SmartHub 2 only has a max lease time or 21 days.  You can find this under Home/IPv4/AddressTable as shown below.

I have mine set at 21 days and although this works for a period of time, once the 21 days ends i have heaps of issues.

The other option is the you can run a NAS box with DHCP and use that as may give you infinite DHCP or perhaps run a small server.  But that really depends how familiar you are with IT.

[jamiejackson16]

Thank you both, this is a huge help and much appreciated! I am taking that BT are aware of this issue and are they currently working on a fix for this on their next firmware update? I think i am asking for everyone as everyone is getting fed up of restarting their discs 🙂

[cam50992]

Sorry to dig up a very old thread but did you get this sorted?

My Wholehome 6 Wi-Fi is doing the exact same thing. Frequently resetting itself to the default settings.

Sometimes its just certain discs resetting and I end up with both my normal SSID and the factory default SSID, both somehow connected to the internet!