BT Home Hub

[DaveB]

Anyone upgraded from the Home Hub 3 to version 4? Was it worth it?

Wireless signal strength is a problem at home and I'm wondering if going for the HH4 with Dual Band WiFi will help.

[northernladuk]

Yeah I did but just to get the extra router to be honest. We have an awful signal so was going to buy a router and extend the network as we have CAT5 in the house. Spotted the BT upgrade so did that. We don't have anything to use the Dual band and hard to tell if the upgraded router made any difference as I added the old one sorry.

I have to say I might have set something up wrong though as I do have trouble with the wireless dropping as I move from the range of one router to the other so have to keep restarting my wireless. I used the same WPA key and other steps I found on the internet to add a second router. Someone said something about making sure the DHCP was out of the range of the first one or something like that so need to follow up on that when I have time.

I don't think the Dual band will help range will it. Also will be useless if you don't have any dual band devices.

There is an article on when 5Ghz trumps 2.4Ghz in the link below and it doesn't really make a case for the dual band..

Is 5 GHz Wi-Fi Wireless Computer Hardware Better than 2.4 GHz?

Only a couple of the high end phones support 5Ghz as well..

I would say it's down to time if you can be arsed to swap it over tbh.

[craig1]

A friend who works with BT's R&D lot in Ipswich told me that although the newer box has better hardware it's also got more BT-specific firmware that's harder to lock out completely. If you don't mind BT being able to remotely access the box then it's probably not a problem.

He also said that BT were considering making it chargeable to use a non-BT router or to turn off the Openzone (or whatever it's called) access, something like £2.50 a month, as a recognition that they really want a massive BT wifi MAN/WAN. Being a complete BT drone, his eyes went all fuzzy when I suggested that BT should reduce bills to compensate for us allowing others to connect through our home infrastructure rather than penalising those who don't.

Edit: why not just buy a 3rd party router? I have a high grade fibre/cable router and also separate wifi routers in the house. You can get very good wifi routers for quite cheap these days.

[DaveB]

Yeah I did but just to get the extra router to be honest. We have an awful signal so was going to buy a router and extend the network as we have CAT5 in the house. Spotted the BT upgrade so did that. We don't have anything to use the Dual band and hard to tell if the upgraded router made any difference as I added the old one sorry.

I have to say I might have set something up wrong though as I do have trouble with the wireless dropping as I move from the range of one router to the other so have to keep restarting my wireless. I used the same WPA key and other steps I found on the internet to add a second router. Someone said something about making sure the DHCP was out of the range of the first one or something like that so need to follow up on that when I have time.

I don't think the Dual band will help range will it. Also will be useless if you don't have any dual band devices.

There is an article on when 5Ghz trumps 2.4Ghz in the link below and it doesn't really make a case for the dual band..

Is 5 GHz Wi-Fi Wireless Computer Hardware Better than 2.4 GHz?

Only a couple of the high end phones support 5Ghz as well..

I would say it's down to time if you can be arsed to swap it over tbh.

The Phone's aren't really the issue, happy for them to stay on 2.4Ghz. The Computers all support 5Ghz already and thats where the problems are.

[DaveB]

A friend who works with BT's R&D lot in Ipswich told me that although the newer box has better hardware it's also got more BT-specific firmware that's harder to lock out completely. If you don't mind BT being able to remotely access the box then it's probably not a problem.

He also said that BT were considering making it chargeable to use a non-BT router or to turn off the Openzone (or whatever it's called) access, something like £2.50 a month, as a recognition that they really want a massive BT wifi MAN/WAN. Being a complete BT drone, his eyes went all fuzzy when I suggested that BT should reduce bills to compensate for us allowing others to connect through our home infrastructure rather than penalising those who don't.

Edit: why not just buy a 3rd party router? I have a high grade fibre/cable router and also separate wifi routers in the house. You can get very good wifi routers for quite cheap these days.

Upgrading as a BT customer is £40, dual band adsl routers start at around £100 new so there is a big cost difference. Keeping it BT means less hassle if there are ever any problems as well. If they know you have an "non-standard" router they'll use that as an excuse not to deal with it.

[craig1]

Upgrading as a BT customer is £40, dual band adsl routers start at around £100 new so there is a big cost difference. Keeping it BT means less hassle if there are ever any problems as well. If they know you have an "non-standard" router they'll use that as an excuse not to deal with it.

I must admit that it's been a while since I bought an ADSL router but I got the excellent Linksys E4200 dual band and multi-antennae cable/fibre router for £45 recently. Not sure if there's an ADSL version and if it's any good but it's worth a bit of research. Might just be my paranoid side coming through but I want nothing to do with BT being able to shoehorn people onto my connection. It's not really anything to do with privacy, I just want to keep every bit of the bandwidth I'm paying for for me, not anyone else who just happens to be a BT customer.

[BigRed]

Home Hub 5 is the latest model. If you push support hard enough they will replace your 'faulty' homehub with a nice shiny new one, may have to extend the contract to 12 months though. The permies at BT say that HH4 is rubbish, worse than HH3, and HH5 seems well received so far.

[Platypus]

I have a separate wireless access point, have had for years, and found it to be very reliable and stable. This stops any nonsense about "not using our router".

I recently switched to Apple Airport Extreme plus several Express to extend the wireless all over the house, wirelessly, 2.4GHz and 5GHz. Before that I used multiple WAPs with different SIDs connected over Home Plugs. Messy but effective.

I'm really pleased with the new setup. Not cheap though, but less than a day's rate, so worth it IMO.

[xoggoth]

My Home Hub is still in its box in the attic. As my existing router worked fine I could not be arsed to change it.