Is the BT Home Hub 5 a better option than the Thomson TG589N v3 supplied by Zen? Bill
Can't comment on the BT home hub. Got a Zen one pre configured, plugged it in, it worked. WiFi OK all round the house with Mac, ipad, android and windows phones (a much older one struggled upstairs). I have a NAS and the office laptop connected to the ethernet ports. Chrome TV dongle via wifi. Never had any cause to fiddle with it or think about is so it meets my criteria.
I have a Zen 582n and like yours it connected straight out of the box. However trying to be clever with the LAN side was quite tricky. The Zen support guy admitted as much. So, it's fine for basic use, but not easy to configure for special requirements.
I'm quite surprised that Zen chose to supply such a strange router. In my experience Zen users are sophisticated people who are prepared to pay Zen's premium prices for performance and technical competence; and as such are the very people would like a router with useful facilities - which the Thomson is not, as you have found out! Zen would have done better to persuade Draytek to get their Vigor 2860n router approved by Openreach and to offer it to their customers at a heavily dscounted price.
I suspect they went for the simple low-cost option (including: easy to support), thinking that anyone with special requirements would source your own router. My previous router was a Draytek and I only took the Zen offering this time through laziness.
: Is the BT Home Hub 5 a better option than the Thomson TG589N v3 supplied My understanding is that the HH5 can ONLY be used with BT Broadband and Plusnet - so that will solve your problem! If it does work then it is very good at the price - dual-band, Ghz wired sockets etc.
If it's supplied by BT then that's probably correct. I've encountered other BT modems that definitely are locked to their service, in that if you enter a login name that isn't one of theirs, the firmware won't allow you to save it. BT are the only internet service of which I can say this from personal experience. I don't know if others, e.g. Plusnet, hobble their modems in the same way. For some BT devices, amateurs have produced alternative firmware to flash a restricted one for general use, but this is more of a challenge for the technically curious than for somebody who just wants something that works. However, you can also buy a generic BT Hub from other suppliers. Amazon, for example, make no mention of the one they sell being restricted to any particular service, so I assume it isn't. True, and it's not the only one. I use the the Billion 8800NL, and there's also the TP-Link TD-W9980, both also available from Amazon and cheaper than the BT Hub. Any of these will work with either ADSL or VDSL and will replace both the Openreach modem and the router supplied by your ISP, so for VDSL you end up with a single box instead of two. Rod.
It seemed to my limited knowledge to be a better spec so a better performance. However users all seem to prefer ZEN for speed and reliability. Bill
: I would imagine a couple of baked bean tins and some string would do a : better job than the HH5... : I've had HH3, 4 and 5 and I binned them all for giving shite Wireless : reception and constant update reboots. I have been using the BT HH5 since March 2014 with zero reboots - and pretty good wireless performance.
I used to find the Home Hub 5 kept crashing when plugged into my Windows 8 desktop. I tried putting through an Ethernet hub or switch to isolate but the same. It would crash even if the Windows 8 PC connected via WiFi. Eventually I used an old WiFi router just to isolate from the PC. Even then it would occasionally reboot. I then bought a TP-LINK router and (after struggling to find the right settings!) used that in place of the HH5 and not had any problems. It does a few things that the HH5 does not do so I like it. I have occasionally put the HH5 on overnight to check still OK and must try again with my Windows 10 PC to see if that will work with that. I always like to have a spare router configured so I can put in the event of a fault then tell the people on the 0800 number that I have the fault with two completely different combinations of router and PC. The BT Indian customer service centre would still want to go through all the usual completely pointless tests!
: > I have been using the BT HH5 since March 2014 with zero reboots - and : > pretty good wireless performance. : Stay up till 3am and often you will see BT reboot it for you... My HH5 goes for typically 12 days or more these days. On ALL routers you are going to get restarts - not reboots - at that sort os frequency! : My HH's were all fine and dandy for a year or so, then umpteen updates, : patches, reboots and firmware upgrades sent all my HH's screaming off to : the funny farm. I think I have had 3 firmware updates in 20 months! : minimal reboots my IP Address lingers for many many months before getting : renewed. Sweet... Why not use DynDNS or similar?
A changing IP address has nothing to do with any of your points. It is reasonable to expect the IP address to change, unless you specifically ask for it to be constant. Some ISPs will make a small charge for this (e.g Plusnet), others will offer it as a standard part of their service (e.g. Zen). Yet others (e.g. BT) will make an exorbitant charge for a static IP address.
tigger wrote: [snip] There's nothing in the design of the system that says the IP address should not change. When you first power up a router it negotiates the ADSL connection with the equipment (DSLAM or whatever) at the local exchange. By this stage it can send and receive data packets. It then sends an authentication request. Depending on the ISP this is either handled by a RADIUS server within the Openreach network, or it is forwarded to the RADIUS server operated by your ISP. This RADIUS server verifies your credentials and issues your router with an IP address and related addresses for default gateway and DNS server. Your router repeats the authentication request very frequently - possibly every few seconds. Potentially any of the IP address paramaters can be changed when this happens. Specifically if the ISP changes anything within their system both default gateway and DNS server parameters might change. For example this allows them to have multiple DNS servers and be able to take one out of service for maintenance. Or they may have multiple connection routes to the rest of the internet, and one route may have failed. You might experience this as a brief delay on the display of a web page. Generally the ISP has a limited allocation of IP addresses. If any user disconnects, their IP address is returned to the pool of available addresses, and might be issued to you when your router repeats its authentication request. The ISP does not percieve it has put you at a disadvantage by changing your IP address, so the "lease time" might be configured to be quite short. However if you ask them for a static IP addres, this is configured into their RADIUS server, and regardless of how many times your router requests authentication, it is always issued the same address. In summary: unless you agree a static IP address, the address you are issued might change at any time to suit the convenience of your ISP.
I prefer the following nomenclature, to avoid the sort of ambiguities thrown up in this thread: Static IP - you have one address, permanently. Nailed in. Usually costs extra. Dynamic IP - you have an IP address which can change as much as once per session, although in practice it might not change so often. Overwhelming the most common. Fixed IP - you have an IP address updated by the same mechanisms as a dynamic address, but the ISP promises only to change it if something really drastic happens (like them renumbering their entire network). Can be a sign of a more B2B kind of ISP.
Do some sites not recognise subscribers for a paid service only by their IP address? I had one when I logged in say something to the effect of subscribers IP address not recognised. Bill
A lot of routers were compared by PCPro around the turn of the year, you might be able to find this online. The HH5 did quite well in all areas except the speed of the plugged in drive (as I have found from experience). Broadband speed, Ethernet speed and wireless speed on both bands are good. Range on 5GHz is understandably less. Can't say on the Thomson one. For a good all singing all dancing router, get a Draytek.
: The HH5 did quite well in all areas except the speed of the plugged : in drive (as I have found from experience). Broadband speed, : Ethernet speed and wireless speed on both bands are good. Range on : 5GHz is understandably less. : Can't say on the Thomson one. For a good all singing all dancing : router, get a Draytek. I have an HH5 which I am quite happy with - BUT, as I said, it is ONLY useable on either BT or Plusnet as the ISP! I am iso used to having a single box - if I could not use the HH5 I think I would go for Billion I think - they get good reviews for about half the price of the Drayteks!
If so you would expect this to be explained as part of signing up for the service. I have VPNs set up between one router and another which rely on the IP address for correct authentication, which is why the broadband services at these locations use static IP adresses. But I chose this method of authentication.
That unless you agreed with ISP that the address should be static, then the address might change. How often the address changes is related to many different things, some of which might have to do with your own equipment if it contributes to frequent disconnections. If this is inconvenient for you then get your ISP to agree to issue a static IP.
