Hub One - 5GHz WiFi issue

[#1]

Further to post 159:

We've just had a remarkable 5 days of trouble free usage and the only thing that changed is not turning on the s7 every morning - left on standby. 

Unfortunately this changed yesterday when the 5G problems returned for no obvious reason.

A reboot restored everything but I've had enough now.

It always happens at the most inconvenient times and although I take the point about flu & suicide I've replaced the Hub 1 with the BT business 6. The £45 is well worth paying if it succeeds in removing the aggro and earache the 5G and subsequent rebooting problems cause.

I would be happier with Plusnet if the people who are aware they're affected with this problem had the hub replaced with something that works properly.

Let's hope the BT equipment works better.

[#2]

I have three (yes three) hub one's in two different properties and they all have this same issue. They're still being given out as part of a broadband package with the 5GHz combined and not split. So either there are lots of people with sporadic issues out there that aren't reporting it or it is actually related to the types of devices that are connecting.

[#3]

My issue started only yesterday. Initially no 5GHz wifi connection at all until toggling it on and off, but then sometimes reported incorrect password, and always no internet connection even when I could at least get wifi.

I wasn't even aware this was a known issue until I looked it up yesterday. Decided not to waste time waiting for a fix and have been out today and bought a TP-Link Archer VR900. Not even convinced it is firmware related as I only went on to Fibre a few months ago and my router is as supplied and worked perfectly for all these months with no reboots or issues until now. Why therefore would unchanged firmware suddenly start producing issues now out of the blue? I'm more inclined to believe the cause is something hardware related that a reboot can temporarily solve.

[#4]

Has anybody ever thought to question why BT customers are selling HH6 routers?

It's because they also have bugs. Look on their forums.

They are miles better than the Plusnet Hub One but still riddled with bugs and they also ignore queries from customers.

Some will be selling because they got a HH6 free but weren't affected by the HH5 firmware update which broke a lot of their routers (which is the issue we have but they got it 18+ months ago).

The only winners here are BT group who broke this ages ago but won't own up to anything.

Sorry @bobpullen , I know you are trying to solve this, and I am trying to help you. In 2 weeks it will be the 12 month anniversary of me first seeing this issue. It was first reported 5 months before that.

This simply isn't good enough.

[#5]

I spotted the length of time this had been going on and concluded that as a fix hadn't come already then it wasn't likely to come any time soon (if even possible in firmware) given the ongoing requests from PN for information and inability to replicate on demand. It wouldn't be in PN's interest to admit if it was actually hardware related due then to the need to replace so many routers 

[#6]

The fact that BT admitted it and sent new routers out years ago just makes Plusnet look incompetent.

The fact that that the HH6 also isn't very good makes BT look even worse.

The fact that Plusnet seem to no longer have award winning customer service or indeed any customer service..... Last reply from any Plusnet staff on this thread 3 weeks ago.

Read into that what you want.

Plusnet were great when things worked. Now things don't work they simply can't be bothered. End of. Whether that is Plusnet's fault or BT's isn't up to me to decide. It is however a fact.

A 'budget' product is only a product whilst it works. Nobody even said it was a budget product, it is 'award winning' allegedly.

It certainly deserves some recognition, probably a huge fine.

[#7]

After a firmware upgrade and a few experiments I thought all solved. However, these last few days have been worse than ever. The problem really shows on my echo devices which drop out at the slightest problem. So back to square 1.
I hate things that do not work, and this is not working. I am prepared to pay to have WiFi that works so looking at a mesh.
Yes I know the kit supplied should work but I'm just about at the end of my tether and something is going to break.

[#8]

I have to second this, because in a nutshell:

  *We supply you with this 5ghz capable router so you can use the internet at the speeds you're paying for!*

"The 5ghz keeps failing and is buggy"

*That's ok! we have a solution!  - Turn off the 5Ghz!*

 - So  you're saying we should not use the feature that's advertised as making this such a great deal?  Well done👍

[#9]

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@bobpullen wrote:

@tonywalsh wrote:

The SmartLife app is installed on the android phone which couldn't access the internet when connected at 5GHz. The plugs connect at 2.4GHz.

Can you confirm what model Android phone you're using? (and software version if it's not too much trouble). We've some of the Smartlife plugs on the way to test with.

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So, no luck with the Smartlife plugs I'm afraid. We've had them running across two lab setups and been unable to replicate the reported problems with the 5GHz radio.

Over the last few weeks, we've been conducting further testing using engineering builds that are designed to identify the particular area of the code that introduced the issue. We also have access to some lower level debugging now, that we're hoping will offer some clues once we're able to get it up and running in an affected environment.

@penfold, none of the evidence points to a hardware failure, and we've had 30+ clients connected in the lab and been unable to replicate the issue. This is true for devices that have been returned to us too by affected customers. I'm going to drop you a message shortly so keep an eye out for it.

@spacecadet, if you are able to re-instate the Hub One then let me know and we can try something remotely that might help.

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@SteveA wrote:

What I've noticed is that the 5GHz band doesn't suddenly stop working - it gets slower and slower until eventually it gets to the point where it stops working.

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We've a separate ticket tracking the throughput observation. We've managed to replicate it using testing software. Whether or not the two things are related remains to be seen but we're keeping them separate for the time being.

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@FOREST37 wrote:

@bobpullen - how do I request a firmware upgrade? My router is also epxeriencing 5GHz wifi disconnections - I have separated the channels with new SSID identifiers, and I have even tried fixing the 5GHz channel to avoiid interference from local SKY routers, which I had noticed were interfering with the channel that the 5GHz wifi was attempting to use - I am still occasionally experiencing 5GHz drop out and having to use 2.4GHz for most of my wifi appliances. Thanks. 

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Splitting the channels is unlikely to help if you continue to connect things to the 5GHz radio. The only acknowledged workarounds are detailed in the first post of this thread. I'll drop you a message separately about the firmware.

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@andrewdmchugh wrote:
@bobpullen as a very recent Plusnet customer (as of last month) I'm very disappointed at the 5ghz issue that I am also experiencing. Details of how to upgrade or downgrade my firmware in order to resolve this would be greatly appreciated.

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Keep an eye on your inbox.

@Sheddyian, @catphone, @Derek52, @KevinKilford, @NX1977 & @chrisrosevilla I'm going to message you too.

@briston, are your Wi-Fi extenders still in place, and are your issues related to the 2.4GHz network (as originally reported), or solely the 5GHz network?

@SpecialID, if you can message me the serial numbers of the two routers in use, then I'll take a look.

[#10]

Thanks Bob. Oddly, the router just dropped the connection, after supposedly 43 days uptime, but checking the logs, last drop was 14th Feb. Not sure why the disparity here. Drops caused by
6909714.500000) PPP LCP Send Termination Request [User request]
Anyhow, it wasn't a reboot, but 5ghz has reappeared and connects again. Even though it was a dropped connection though, all wireless connections went down as well..... This was in the WiFi logs
20:32:52, 20 Feb. ( 38.910000) WiFi auto selected channel 44
20:32:52, 20 Feb. ( 38.910000) 36-​93::40-​95::44-​94::48-​94::52-​93::56-​93::60-​92::64-​92::100-​94::104-​96::108-​96::112-​97::116-​96::120-​98::124-​98::128-​99
20:32:52, 20 Feb. ( 38.910000) 5 GHz Wireless: Rescan, Reason: 'Power-​up'
20:32:43, 20 Feb. ( 29.560000) WPA2 mode selected
20:32:43, 20 Feb. ( 29.560000) WPS enabled
20:32:41, 20 Feb. ( 27.580000) WPA2 mode selected
20:32:41, 20 Feb. ( 27.580000) WPS enabled

[#11]

@penfold, sorry about that. The drop was down to me tinkering.

[#12]

I am now at my wit's end. Firstly my nowtv stick used to be able to connect to the 5GHz stream. Now I have to force it to and subjectively it seems slower than the 2.4GHz stream. This observation is made when it is loading the menus. Now it usually prefers to connect to the extender signal not the router WiFi even though the router is closer. See further comments.
I tried turning off the WiFi and using the extenders only, they master is fed with Ethernet from the router. This then led to dropping out which leads me to think it's nothing to do with the WiFi at all. After all the WiFi from the router is not on. I then disconnected the extenders and switched on the WiFi in the router. Same problem. In fact now, in the past hour the WiFi has dropped 3 times. I would like to stream a radio station through our echo but it keeps dropping. Alexa reports having problems connecting to the internet.
Since I started looking into the matter, it has got much worse, particularly in the last week or so to as be useless so far as using an echo device.
As I have said before, we had internet dropping previously but it was highlighted when we got echo devices which show up dramatically when the signal drops. Now our internet has never been worse.
As an electronics engineer I know I should do a linear fault finding sequence but of course, without being able to monitor and record what is going on I have to rely on subjective observations. I am now suspecting a failure in the router before the WiFi and Ethernet section, if that makes sense but I do not know enough about the internals of such a device and don't know if I can be (this is where I would usually put a vernacular in).
So someone tell me. I have a 4 bedroom house. It is an L shape, ground floor has main area of 720 square feet with a story above it. There is an outrigger of 120 square feet which forms the short leg of the L. The router is in one corner of the smaller outrigger which forms the leg of the L and cannot be moved. All I want is to be able to get internet about the place. There are about 18 devices which want to access the internet but never all at the same time. I have a hub1. What should I need and what do I need as the 2 things seem to be different.
Not a happy bunny again.

[#13]

Further to my long rant, looking at my logs which for the most part might just as well be in Chinese as at the moment I don't understand the jargon, can someone tell me what this means
ath00: STA cc:66:0a:ca:88:81 IEEE 802.11: WiFi registration failed
In particular the WiFi registration failed.

[#14]

@briston
My NowTV box is connected via Ethernet and has also become very slow to load the menus.
I wonder if that is a NowTV issue. We'll only know if someone not on Plusnet can tell us.

[#15]

No, I am confident the slow menus I am talking about is down to slow WiFi speeds. I am not commenting on absolute but comparing how the menus load relative to how the stick is fed not the actual times. Hope this makes sense.
So the speed of say displaying the menus to log into BBC various according to if it is connected to 5GHz stream, 2.4GHz stream, via WiFi extender or not.
Just to confuse matters, this morning our echo regularly dropped out but had remained connected for the past 3 hours.
I would really like to understand the logs do I can get an idea what is going on.