BT HomeHub 5 advice

Bullysrus

Bullysrus

Suspended / Banned
Messages
1,948
Name
Tony
Edit My Images
No
Hi

I need to get a new router, was thinking about the home hub 5

I currently have bt fibre and I'm currently using a draytek

Is the wireless any good
 
Masked Bandit said:
Hi Tony,
The wireless on mine isn't great.It tends to hunt a lot. I am in a separate room (the walls are thin) about 6metres from the router.
Click to expand...
Thanks, I'm in an older house with solid walls, that's not good
 
Stick with the Draytek.... ;)
 
Cannot recommend the BT home hub 5 myself, always get a lot of dropouts. I have the latest firmware installed on the router and have manually set the channels after scanning the spectrum in my area but still has issues. My plusnet one prior never missed a beat.
 
Thanks All

Perhaps I'll look at another Draytek
 
Is the reason for replacing the Draytek purely due to WiFi issues?

If so you might be better keeping it just as a router and installing decent quality access point(s) (such as Ubiquiti). It will be significantly better than any WiFi router.

I'd definitely avoid the HomeHub.
 
PorcupineFloyd said:
Is the reason for replacing the Draytek purely due to WiFi issues?

If so you might be better keeping it just as a router and installing decent quality access point(s) (such as Ubiquiti). It will be significantly better than any WiFi router.

I'd definitely avoid the HomeHub.
Click to expand...
Thanks, yes mainly wifi
 
Wifi works fine on hh5 - don't forget its dual band, so its best to set up difference SSIDs for each band, 5Ghz has a much shorter range than 2.4. Also I would switch off auto scanning and just scan the spectrum yourself and work out the best channel. As a free Router, its pretty much the best of the free bunch there is.
 
ChrisCW said:
Wifi works fine on hh5 - don't forget its dual band, so its best to set up difference SSIDs for each band, 5Ghz has a much shorter range than 2.4. Also I would switch off auto scanning and just scan the spectrum yourself and work out the best channel. As a free Router, its pretty much the best of the free bunch there is.
Click to expand...
Thanks, that's a good point about the scanning, what do you use
 
I use inSSIDer, normally find the upper channels are free as most routers default to mid channels.
 
I have been using the Home Hub 5 for some time, its upstairs at the back of the house, in my study, and I'm am typing this on a lap-top, downstairs in the lounge, at the front of the house.

This is a large house, and the router is some distance away.

Have never suffered from dropouts or lag, even when there are three of using using the internet, via the wireless connection, at the same time.

So, as far as I'm concerned, I have no complaints with the Home Hub 5.

Dave
 
DaveS2 said:
I have been using the Home Hub 5 for some time, its upstairs at the back of the house, in my study, and I'm am typing this on a lap-top, downstairs in the lounge, at the front of the house.

This is a large house, and the router is some distance away.

Have never suffered from dropouts or lag, even when there are three of using using the internet, via the wireless connection, at the same time.

So, as far as I'm concerned, I have no complaints with the Home Hub 5.

Dave
Click to expand...
Thanks Dave
 
Of the home hubs, version 5 is about the best. I can get wifi down at the bottom of the garden, in the garage. But it's patchy upstairs (the hub is at the back of the lounge) and I'm convinced the RF signal isn't great in the vertical plane. I've been considering getting something else for a while...
 
Partner works for BT therefore we've had all the Homehubs. Last one I put up with was a Homehub 5. They've all been awful, yes they were easy to setup, but wifi drop outs and slowdowns finally got the better of me. No end of changing channels, tweaking 2.4ghz and 5GHz, renaming SSIDs to separate the two bands would help.

Finally gave in and spent about £80 quid on a TP-Link TD-W9980 which is a VDSL router designed to work on fibre and ADSL. It's been rock solid. wireless performance and reliability is just so much better than the BT unit. Connection speed and line stats better too. Finally, it also does multiplexing properly so BY Youview works correctly.

Can't recommend enough not going with a BT Homehub. Shame as they could have been so good!

PS: I have a sneaky suspicion that if you're enrolled in BT-FON, the extra SSIDs that the homehub will always run (you can't turn them off) is just too much for the built down to a price HH5 and that's wht you get the crappy signal and wifi reliability.
 
Thanks for all the advice

I'm going to Oder the latest Draytek which gets good reviews
 
Not the 2860n I hope, the wireless on them has been horrific!! I think there's now a dual-band option but the original 2860 was simply appalling.
 
Another alternative would be to pick up a BT Openreach modem (HG612) off eBay - they go for like £20, you're then free to use whatever cable router (rather than VDSL router) you want. The HG612 boxes are *rock solid*, they literally just stay up for weeks at a time and can handle heavy throughput.
 
No problems at all with my HH5 old terraced house with two thick walls for it to work through.Speeds of 70mb down and 20mb up.
 
Steelfish said:
Partner works for BT therefore we've had all the Homehubs. Last one I put up with was a Homehub 5. They've all been awful, yes they were easy to setup, but wifi drop outs and slowdowns finally got the better of me. No end of changing channels, tweaking 2.4ghz and 5GHz, renaming SSIDs to separate the two bands would help.

Finally gave in and spent about £80 quid on a TP-Link TD-W9980 which is a VDSL router designed to work on fibre and ADSL. It's been rock solid. wireless performance and reliability is just so much better than the BT unit. Connection speed and line stats better too. Finally, it also does multiplexing properly so BY Youview works correctly.

Can't recommend enough not going with a BT Homehub. Shame as they could have been so good!

PS: I have a sneaky suspicion that if you're enrolled in BT-FON, the extra SSIDs that the homehub will always run (you can't turn them off) is just too much for the built down to a price HH5 and that's wht you get the crappy signal and wifi reliability.
Click to expand...

The Hub is there to produce a wireless signal nothing more. If something interferes with that wireless signal it is obviously going to drop out. Anything can interfere with wireless, baby monitors, supermarkets, christmas tree lights etc etc. The Home hubs have Smart wireless technology so if they are running on channel 1 and experience interference they will automatically change channel depending on your wireless enviroment. Thousands of people use the Home Hubs without any problems, if your wireless environment isn't very good you can't just blame the HH, the home hub doesn't just randomly cut off your wireless signal, it just doesn't happen.

You also mention BT WiFi/BT-FON, both of these can be turned off in the Home Hub manager screen or you can ring BT themselves and get them to opt you out.

To be perfectly honest the HH5 is a good piece of kit, dual band technology, you have the ability to have to separate SSID's, one for the 2.4GHz and one for the 5GHz, it does the same as most Netgears/Belkins/TP Links etc but it's simply cheaper as it's provided by your ISP.

I have used a Home Hub 3 for years, had around 10 devices connected to it constantly in a terraced house and I have never had any issues. I will be getting the HH5 eventually as I really can't be bothered paying for an over priced third party router, at the end of the day all you pay for is the name of the manufacturer.
 
MH88 said:
The Hub is there to produce a wireless signal nothing more. If something interferes with that wireless signal it is obviously going to drop out. Anything can interfere with wireless, baby monitors, supermarkets, christmas tree lights etc etc. The Home hubs have Smart wireless technology so if they are running on channel 1 and experience interference they will automatically change channel depending on your wireless enviroment. Thousands of people use the Home Hubs without any problems, if your wireless environment isn't very good you can't just blame the HH, the home hub doesn't just randomly cut off your wireless signal, it just doesn't happen.

You also mention BT WiFi/BT-FON, both of these can be turned off in the Home Hub manager screen or you can ring BT themselves and get them to opt you out.

To be perfectly honest the HH5 is a good piece of kit, dual band technology, you have the ability to have to separate SSID's, one for the 2.4GHz and one for the 5GHz, it does the same as most Netgears/Belkins/TP Links etc but it's simply cheaper as it's provided by your ISP.

I have used a Home Hub 3 for years, had around 10 devices connected to it constantly in a terraced house and I have never had any issues. I will be getting the HH5 eventually as I really can't be bothered paying for an over priced third party router, at the end of the day all you pay for is the name of the manufacturer.
Click to expand...

BT have acknowledged problems with the WiFi on the HH5 and I believe it was resolve in the Feb 2015 firmware update that is automatically deployed.

I've never had problems with the HH3 or 4, but the HH5 is not without its own flaws.

Unfortunately as you pointed out, unless a scan with a frequency scanner such as Channelyzer is carried out then no culprit can be determined.

I do experience dropouts on 2.4 occasionally (only PS4 and Chromecast are affected), all devices on 5GHz continue to function and channelyzer shows that airspace is relatively clear, need to have it running continually really as its more of a pulse/blip than a persistence signal loss. :(
 
I've had home hubs for a few years and been very pleased with them. Latest is HH5 which as others have said I occasionally get a drop out / freeze up. It clears itself after a minute or so (feels like forever though sometimes:) ) and everything works well and quickly again - more of an annoyance than anything. Doesn't drop out via wired connection though, I have been meaning to jump in and tweak the settings as earlier suggested, but keep forgetting as it behaves itself for ages ...
 
MH88 said:
The Hub is there to produce a wireless signal nothing more. If something interferes with that wireless signal it is obviously going to drop out. Anything can interfere with wireless, baby monitors, supermarkets, christmas tree lights etc etc. The Home hubs have Smart wireless technology so if they are running on channel 1 and experience interference they will automatically change channel depending on your wireless enviroment. Thousands of people use the Home Hubs without any problems, if your wireless environment isn't very good you can't just blame the HH, the home hub doesn't just randomly cut off your wireless signal, it just doesn't happen.

You also mention BT WiFi/BT-FON, both of these can be turned off in the Home Hub manager screen or you can ring BT themselves and get them to opt you out.

To be perfectly honest the HH5 is a good piece of kit, dual band technology, you have the ability to have to separate SSID's, one for the 2.4GHz and one for the 5GHz, it does the same as most Netgears/Belkins/TP Links etc but it's simply cheaper as it's provided by your ISP.

I have used a Home Hub 3 for years, had around 10 devices connected to it constantly in a terraced house and I have never had any issues. I will be getting the HH5 eventually as I really can't be bothered paying for an over priced third party router, at the end of the day all you pay for is the name of the manufacturer.
Click to expand...

Understand what you're saying there, you have to take the kit and the environment into consideration. And many thousands of lucky people probably do have great performance from their HHs. However, the proof was in the pudding for me. In the same environment over many years since we had BT as an ISP, a succession of HHs performed very poorly - my (overpriced thrird party) router performs flawlessly in that same network environment and connects 3 smart TVs, an iMac, MacBook Air, 3 iPads and 2 iPods, PS4 and 2 work laptops without a hiccup for many months at a time. It also has a higher VDSL connection speed compared to my ISPs own kit as well. For me, in my environment it works like a charm.

If I had of paid for the HH, the extra 40 quid for the third party router has been well worth it compared to the many hours wasted connecting and reconnecting equipment, struggling to get a reliable connection to stream to my TVs and general swearing at the HH as it needs another reboot to work properly.

It's horses for courses, and I may just have been unlucky though. YMMV with the HH.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top