BT home hubs

We have recently moved house, and on getting our Broadband we ended up with a BT Home Hub5.

Now we have all sorts of WiFi connection issues. It frequently cannot be found and then asks for our passwords again.

We often see the option of BTWiFi_with_FON instead, which is a hotspot thing.

We did not have this problem with our previous router (also on BT broadband), so it’s aroused my curiousity.

The BTWiFi_with_FON is a hotspot. How do they manage create so many hotspots in the suburbs?

Are they setting up WiFi points everywhere, or are they piggybacking of our home hubs?

They seemed awful keen for us to use that rather than our own setup which is uptodate. It may explain the crap performance.

smash the homehub to bits…

your fon spot is piggybacked onto your router but their router is terrible.

the only benifit to hosting a fon spot is that you can access other fon spots when out and about for free…

the joy of living mid no where is no one was ever using my fon spot 😀

Are they setting up WiFi points everywhere, or are they piggybacking of our home hubs?

They’re very open about this that Home Hub 4 and 5s also act as a public wifi spot.

that Home Hub 4 and 5s also act as a public wifi spot

It is unless you opt out, which is quite easy.

if your gonna use their router you might as well opt in anyway. the fon spot wont be throttling your speed nearly as much as that piece of crap router does.

i swapped to a cisco router and got massively increased speeds.

What’s a good replacement for a Home Hub?

It is unless you opt out, which is quite easy.

Yes it is but then you don’t have access to BT hotspots not that’s much of an issue with mobile data coverage.

You get access via Hotspots for having a BB account with BT.

You can switch off the Hotspot bit in the router menu.

These things are not connected. 🙂

trail_rat – Member
the fon spot wont be throttling your speed nearly as much as that piece of crap router does.

That’s weird. I’m using a HH5 and it seems okay speed wise. It can max out the gigE ports or the 5 GHz WiFi connection no problem. No problems with the modem either.

Maybe whatever issue yours had has since been fixed in the firmware.

It comes out of the box with both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz bands using the same SSID (network name). There are plenty of devices that get confused by this. Split this out so each has a different name, as per: http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/44798/~/i-have-problems-connecting-5ghz-and-dual-band-devices-wirelessly-to-the-bt-home

They’re a perfectly good device and it saves having a separate VDSL modem.

simon_g – Member
It comes out of the box with both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz bands using the same SSID (network name)…

Thanks.

I wondered about that, so now I’ve changed it.

You can switch off the Hotspot bit in the router menu.

These things are not connected.

I thought the 5 had taken that option out so you had to opt out?

I had lots of issues with the HH5. Then I split the 2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz wifi into different SSID’s and also using a BT open reach modem turning the HH into just a router (I think?)

Anyhow never had a problem since

I forgot doing that to make my MacBook more stable in connecting.

Although my HH5 has been ace since day 1, I also did this. Lots of devices can get confused otherwise.

Huh, I have a plusnet branded one which seems fine but occasionally is a pig. Duly noted…

Got mine specifically to replace the one, it really struggled to get a decent signal through the whole house, the HH5 has been significantly better in that regard. Speed seems good too but be interested if anyone can verify the slower speeds?

HH5 here – between 45 and 65Mb

If strength goes down to two or one wifi bar then it slows to about 5mb

If you’ve got problems with distance then get a booster to get the three bars where you need it