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BT Home Hub

Created by Dave. Last edited by Dave, 2 years and 6 days ago. Viewed 406 times. #56

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Category:	I.T.
Category:	Vista Networking

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querytcpip.tcl (2595)

BT Home Hub

BT are the largest provider of broadband lines in the UK. They provide a hub/router as part of the package. This is my bliki page detailing my use and knowledge about the hub. I cleaned the page up in March 2010, when I simplified the content on this page, mainly be shifting the Vista & Wifi stuff to "filesaveas.com".

I use the following internet sites/resources.

The BT Home Hub board at filesaveas.com.
http://community.bt.com/ which I started to use when it was in Beta and
http://twitter.com/btcare

I have two (real) sites, the first opened in Sept 2009, the second in Jan 2010.

Vista & Wifi

Ben and my new Laptop have problems keeping their wifi connections. (Sue hasn't complained, but she doesn't move networks.)

I am documenting this in full, and asking for help at vista laptop gets limited access message (2) at filesaveas.com. Its the second thread because the first thread was hi-jacked. The first thread discusses suspend/resume, fixed addresses and anti-virus products, but Bramshot & Flanker both decide to move onto new hubs, as have I in London 8 Mar 2010. If you have knowledge to share, please go to that site and add a post.

In Hampshire, I use,

BT HH Software Version = 4.7.5.1.83 (Type B) 26th Dec 2009

Interestingly google: bt home hub limited connection wifi vista returns quite a lot, so loads of us have this problem, what does BT say?

Jarviser's Page , who talks about device drivers. Always worth checking as are the Dell Forums.
Dell ControlPoint Connection Manager causes WiFi to drop connection which applies to my Dell E4300.
There is a Vista feature which requires that the router i.e. dhcp server supports the DHCP BROADCAST flag. The Microsoft Page shows how to check if the flag is set, also the blogger at Consuming Experience writes about this problem I have some difficulty understanding which GUID matched which NIC, but it seems the BROADCAST flag is set on Ben's machine. (Do I want to unset it?)
http://en.kioskea.net has a question about this with some interesting pointers and subsiduary issues such as why the PS/3 doesn't work. Explicit answers are harder to find.
and finally BT Community Forums which despite what Google suggest if you type in the keywords seems to think there's no problem.
File Save Us thread Re: vista laptop gets limited access message
and vista laptop gets limited access message (2)

My actions are to check if I am on the default channel (I did, but the default is auto, which I left in place in London) and document the state of the NIC DHCP BROADCAST flags.

What are the NIC DHCP Broadcast Flags set to?

I blogged on the 9th March 2010 about Window's Alternate IP Configuration which was pointed out to me by my colleague Tim Reczek. Opinion be divided as to if this might help and I discussed it with "JM" at vista laptop gets limited access message (2) who recommends fixed ip addresses on the hub before alternate ip addresses on the laptop.

See also the Microsoft KB article : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/283676

I updated the file save us thread, and discovered that Dell Control Point Connection Manager might be a factor. I found a thread, Dell ControlPoint Connection Manager causes WiFi to drop connection which certainly describes the symptoms

BTCare & Twitter

I have asked for help on twitter, and in both cases, been offered too simple advice. See the comment dated, which starts "After the 18th Feb" below.

However, the twitter advanced search page will allow one to search for threads, http://is.gd/aLGPt is a short URL that queries for threads from me to BT Care. I constructed this by using the twitter form, but the reply page has a Show Conversation button, so if we keep replying, we get a forum like conversation trail.

Connecting the PS/3

This has intermittent failures as well, it fails to connect to the playstation network. I found the following links,

http://www.orpheusinternet.co.uk/support/ps3/index.html
Connecting PS3 To BT Home Hub at filesaveus.
Sony's FAQ which points at the firewall rules.

This is now fixed, forgotten how. Was this allocating a fixed address?

Hub Private Address

This is configurable. So if the default disagrees with your current switch/router/hub/gateway, you can change it. This is probably best done before you connect the second device. i.e. if this is not your first router, then the default address, 192.168.0.254 might not be what you have previously configured.

Is this realy the default. I turned the London hub off today, but was connecting to it using 192.168.1.254. Is there a new default? Anyway it can be configured, if you have a view then implement it before connecting the second device.

DHCP

This defaults to nearly all. I needed to bring my legacy rules forward and so initially constrained the pool in size, but I discovered that the BT hub permits the fixing of an address to a specific DHCP client which it recognises using the MAC address. The "Devices" panel has the switches. It seems much happier doing this than co-operating with statically addressed systems so I have configured my windows servers as dynamically addressed with a fixed address. See also How to implement dhcp fixed addresses using BT Home Hub and Windows XP and this seems to work. Before converting the Dell server, I had noticed that the hub manager did not recognise the Dell server on the network as connected. It had a static address outside the dhcp pool.

SSID

I have changed the name to have no meaning.

Port Forwarding

I had a problem with this which proved to be about the Gateway/DNS settings of the service host. See the 1st comment below. I wonder how diablo will work, although they have a canned rule AFAIK.

Complex Networking

Several people talk about complex networking by which I mean using a second hub/router in conjunction with the home hub.

This thread called "Can I connect the wifi Hub and the old wired hub BOTH to the same phone line" is at BT's Community Forums
The magnificent Jarviser site has an article called Typical Large Home Network and How to use an additional 3rd party router with the Home Hub

ipodtouch and location

I documented this on my sun blog in an article called You'd think I know where I am when at home. The Apples use a service called Skyhook, and you submit your details at their submission form. You no longer need to calculate your Lon/Lat as they have a map-app that does this for you. You need to find your MAC address, which with the BT Home Hub is one the Wireless Configuration page.

Helpful Links

BT Broadband Self Help start
BT's Help Forum, a community self help forum hosted in the bt.com domain.
Frequency Cast's page, ith audio/video support, but mainly repeats the manual.They also have a page called Home Hub FAQ which also has an item about using additional or 3rd party hubs.
filesaveas homehub forum, linked to the Frequency Cast.
Jarviser's Home Hub is an awesome compendium, with great advise.
A forum thread on configuring port forwarding for utorrent

short url:

http://is.gd/2oiu5

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Dave, 2 years and 274 days ago.

Over the last two days I have been working to understand why the bliki went offline when I switched broadband suppliers and gateways. The new gateway is a BT Hub.

My first suspicion was that the firewall rules weren't appropriate so I have also created a new rule and applied it to the Qube, as opposed to using a BT pre-canned rule. The webserver host, aka the Qube is a Linux box and was configured with a static address. I could access the Qube's services using a private address but not using the public address or the dyndns internet name.

I then configured a webserver on one of the dhcp clients and this was exposed onto the internet using the BT pre-canned rule i.e. it works. In creating the custom rule, I took the opportunity to read BT's rule which is tcp:80:80. i.e. protocol:source:target. This is the rule I had in place on the linksys, the previous gateway so I shall proceed in future on the assumption that BT's web server rule works and is not the problem.

Having discovered that dhcp clients can expose their ip services to the internet, I returned to the statically addressed systems. I discovered that the Alienware was in fact a dhcp client, but that the hub hosted server was allocating a fixed address. The "Devices" panel has the switches. I also noticed that the hub manager did not recognise the Dell server on the network as connected; it had a static address outside the dhcp pool. I changed the Dell to be a dhcp client with a fixed address.

I then looked at repeating this for the Qube, i.e. the bliki host. It seems that the Qube has no dhcp client, which sounds a bit odd given its design goal but I can't find it on the network, in the documentation or on the hard disk. Fortunately, resetting the IP gateway and dns servers addresses to the new ip value of the BT Hub seems to have fixed the problem which suggests that my dhcp failure ideas was a diversion.

I used a number of resources on the internet to help me get there, most of which are bookmarked in my delicious over the last day and half. I also used the following forums, "file save as" forums, in a thread called Help: http service & "Application Sharing" and at BT's official forums in a thread called port forwarding/http service. Thanks to the authors of the web pages and contributors to the forums I used.

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