topic Re: Using older router for full fibre in Full Fibre

Using older router for full fibre

Matt68 — Sat, 17 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Hi. Engineer came today and installed full fibre broadband, but due to the Royal Mail strike there is no sign of the new Plusnet 2 hub coming anytime soon. The old fibre broadband seems to be switched of and is no longer available. I have last Plusnet router and an original BT Smart Hub (the first version not the second version). The Openreach engineer suggested that the BT Smart Hub 1 could be used by using an ethernet cable and converting Port 4 to a red port. He wasn't able to figure out how to do it though. Would be grateful of any help while waiting for the arrival of the new router.

Re: Using older router for full fibre

Gandalf — Sat, 17 Dec 2022 00:57:34 GMT

It should work if you plug an ethernet cable into the WAN port of the Hub One then the other end into the ONT.

Re: Using older router for full fibre

Matt68 — Sat, 17 Dec 2022 08:48:28 GMT

Thank you for such a quick reply Gandalf. The Openreach engineer told me that the Plusnet hub i already had wouldn't work. Just set it up as you described and it does indeed work. Much appreciated.

Re: Using older router for full fibre

MisterW — Sat, 17 Dec 2022 09:00:31 GMT

@Matt68 the only proviso with using the Hub 1 is that, if you've got one of the higher speed packages, you will find that your upstream speed will be limited to about 30Mb.

Re: Using older router for full fibre

Matt68 — Sat, 17 Dec 2022 09:40:53 GMT

Thank you MisterW, good to know. We're currently getting 30Mb with the old router and that's more than enough for us while waiting for the new router.

Re: Using older router for full fibre

Baldrick1 — Sat, 17 Dec 2022 10:20:43 GMT

@Matt68 wrote:
The Openreach engineer suggested that the BT Smart Hub 1 could be used by using an ethernet cable and converting Port 4 to a red port. He wasn't able to figure out how to do it though. Would be grateful of any help while waiting for the arrival of the new router.

For the record, the ‘engineer’ was wrong.

I believe that the Smarthub 2 can be configured this way but there were two versions of the original Smarthub. The FTTP version was called something like Ultrafast and has a permanent WAN port like the Plusnet Hub 2