New BT Smart Hub

[BertRoot]

I have had BT fibre for a good while and my home hub 3 wireless is fucking useless in my Accy brick house. I have tried all sorts but cannot be arsed plugging more shit in. So I didn't know about this hub but they dropped me a letter saying I could have one free if I signed up for another 18 months. I get a good service off them so did it.

Anyone got one already?

http://www.trustedreviews.com/bt-smart-hub-review

[DJ OD]

No and quite frankly I think they should give me one free anyway... I've got the previous model and it's mostly fine.

I will continue with them most likely but I'm sure I only committed for another year recently.


DJ OD

[BertRoot]

With the one I have now I have a white fibre modem as well. Assuming with this I can bin that.

[trueblue924]

Yes any above the hub 4 can get rid of the openreach modem. Is the superhub any better in terms of wireless though I know it's been developed over the last four years and is ment to be really good

[BertRoot]

It will only land on Thursday but read a few reviews saying it is a vast improvement. Getting rid of the white box will free up a socket as well.

[dainese]

Maybe I'm in the best position to advise you since mine was installed on Tuesday gone. I had a new line put in as it was free, the previous installation was a mess of wires and extensions and my router was in our bedroom and not where I wanted it, to hard wire my gear straight in!

The 'engineer' was pretty annoyed he was having to do a new installation as he kept going on about how brilliant the wifi range of the new hub is, 200m apparently. I was having none of it saying I already had to use powerline adapters to get wifi in the other side of the house as the far room upstairs and down never got a signal. This isn't a huge house, 3 bedroom semi; but is a stone house. He was adamant I wouldn't need them anymore. I should have put money on it because as soon as he went, I tested it in those places and still didn't get a signal! Unless I was right next to the nearest wall to the hub or at the door of those rooms, it wasn't any better! The hub has just been brought down from the room above, but it's in the very same position as where my sky hub was.

It does have 2.4ghz and 5ghz wireless, so linking the further devices on the 2.4ghz is meant to improve the signal there. You have to turn Smart Setup off in the hub settings as it keeps popping up and I hear it can cause issues on some devices. It's slim but quite big, just over A5 size I'd say. The light it displays can be altered in brightness, time of day you want it on or even turn it off. The Hub Manager isn't as easy to use I found compared to the sky one, and I had altered a few settings for some of my gear and then found my wifi connections to my laptop, phone started to play up. So I had to factory reset it all and reboot all attached devices.

It has 4 Gig Ethernet ports at the back and one USB, though I'm not sure what use that is. I could have done with another really as I have a Sat STB, XBox 360, Now TV and Rasp Pi2 connected through Ethernet, and a NAS that hasn't joined the set-up yet!

I'm impressed with BT as a whole so far as a service, so hope this continues. Just hope I can get another 12 months at the price I have just got now!

[DJ OD]

Yeah I don't have any extra modem for mine. I assume mine is a v5 and this new one a v6? Or a 4 and 5.

I do get times where it just stops and loses internet connectivity for a few mins but more likely the service than the hub. Has a USB port on it as well if u want to network a printer or power something.

Range wise fairly decent with a standard brick house, gets outside in the garden a fair bit.

If the new one is an improvement then u can't go wrong.


DJ OD

[BertRoot]

My other hub has been wank for ages but it is like talking to a puppet when you call them. Am too busy to fuck about at the moment but the wife and kids are fucked off with the wireless as it stands currently. Stays connected but no transfer rate at all. I don't really use wifi but they bleat a lot.

[trueblue924]

to be honest it isnt worth getting the hub free as it then full price for the bb, where as if you get a discount it works out cheaper paying the £57.95 one off.

[piggzy]

I have the Hub 4.0 and find it's wireless signal utter shit. Please let us know if this new Hub is a big improvement as I may pay to get one too. Only been with them about 5 months so don't see any way of getting one at a discount sadly. Or maybe I should look at an entirely different router as I would like one that can handle VPN settings e.t.c (Unless this router can do that too, I know my Hub 4 cannot)

Cheers


Edit:

I have the Hub 5 not 4... still shit though.

[Northernbloke]

Just got my new smart hub delivered last week - massive improvement in signal strength round the house and connection stability - with my old hh3 when I had more than half a dozen or so devices connected by wifi it would often crash the hh3 and need a reboot. Early days so far but first impressions are good

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

[evilsatan]

I find the BT home hub to be the best free router from any ISP, I guess it's due to them being the largest so have the better R&D. That said, as I run my office from home I am using a Draytek 2860ac but have every revision of home hub here for testing and loaning to clients when needed.

If if you are out of contract with BT then they should offer you the latest hub if you just renew your contract, you will often find you will also save money on your monthly bill will be put on a new price plan.

If if you have problems with them the residential call centres are poor, tweet them @BTCare and you will generally get a better service.

In the past the USB port could be used to share a USB printer over the network or you could connect an external HDD and and access over the network. I am u sure if this is still the case.

If you run out of Ethernet ports on the back of the router just buy a 5-port or 8-port gigabit switch, they are cheap and then you just connect any of the router ports to any of the switch ports and you now have doubled the amount you can use.

I know everyone here knows this already but in case it helps any readers, 5Ghz is good for areas where there is a lot of wireless pollution (say you are in a built up area) at the cost of worse penetration so if you have a lot of walls etc. you may still find 2.4Ghz is better for you.

[piggzy]

I find the BT home hub to be the best free router from any ISP, I guess it's due to them being the largest so have the better R&D. That said, as I run my office from home I am using a Draytek 2860ac but have every revision of home hub here for testing and loaning to clients when needed.

If if you are out of contract with BT then they should offer you the latest hub if you just renew your contract, you will often find you will also save money on your monthly bill will be put on a new price plan.

If if you have problems with them the residential call centres are poor, tweet them @BTCare and you will generally get a better service.

In the past the USB port could be used to share a USB printer over the network or you could connect an external HDD and and access over the network. I am u sure if this is still the case.

If you run out of Ethernet ports on the back of the router just buy a 5-port or 8-port gigabit switch, they are cheap and then you just connect any of the router ports to any of the switch ports and you now have doubled the amount you can use.

I know everyone here knows this already but in case it helps any readers, 5Ghz is good for areas where there is a lot of wireless pollution (say you are in a built up area) at the cost of worse penetration so if you have a lot of walls etc. you may still find 2.4Ghz is better for you.

Some very good advise thanks.

To add I also found I got a much better signal by turning off the Smart wireless setup or whatever they called it.
e.g. 2.4 and 5Ghz shared the same SSID. I changed this and things improved. Worth trying for those with signal issues.

[EvilBoB]

In my experience I just turn off 5ghz on BTHH. Get sketchy performance from 5ghz but 2.4ghz is rock solid and still has a great range.

[c0axial]

I wanna know where my Letter is

[BertRoot]

Had had it up and running a few days now and the wireless is a vast improvement so all good in the hood and also now got a spare socket in my wall.

[BigBird]

My contract was up two months ago. Only realised when I saw my bank statement and saw that my monthly bills have shot up by around a £13. Will call them this week to renew my contract and hopefully get a better deal and a smart hub into the bargain. Don't want to switch providers as I am more than happy with the 52/10 Mbps that I am getting at all times of the day. (">

[Lou_smorals]

My contract was up two months ago. Only realised when I saw my bank statement and saw that my monthly bills have shot up by around a £13. Will call them this week to renew my contract and hopefully get a better deal and a smart hub into the bargain. Don't want to switch providers as I am more than happy with the 52/10 Mbps that I am getting at all times of the day. (">

Hi
I suggest you contact a guy on here, think he is called trueblue (sorry if my memory is addled on this) I believe he works at BT retensions and he can get you good deal - or at least did a year or two back.
cheers
LS

[trueblue924]

yeah i know some one in there retention teams, let me know if you need help and i can let you know what i can do to help

[BigBird]

yeah i know some one in there retention teams, let me know if you need help and i can let you know what i can do to help

Spoke to someone in BT and said I was thinking of leaving as my bill had shot up since the end of my 12 month new subscriber offer. Was a waste of time because the best they offered was a £3 discount or stay as it is but they would give me a new smart hub for no charge.

Was thinking of switching to Vodaphone's 18month contract which is priced at £25 for 38meg or £28 for 76meg with free line rental. BT's infinity 1 has been upgraded from 38meg to 52meg which is great, but I can get 76meg with Vodaphone for less because of the free line rental. Although advertised as unlimited I dont know if Vodaphone have a fair use policy so If I can get a decent deal with BT I would prefer to stick with them because I am happy with the 52meg service which has never let me down.

@trueblue924. Thanks for the kind offer of help to get a better deal - how do I go about it? (">