topic Re: Further observations on the Plusnet Hub2 in My Router

Further observations on the Plusnet Hub2

greygit — Fri, 03 Jun 2022 23:27:29 GMT

Very simple stuff.

Plusnet Hub Two Manager

http://192.168.1.254/broadband.htm

Click Disconnect.

Click Connect.

Then invoke a forever loop.

Do while (Disconnected)

Click Connect.

Connecting... (twirly circle)

Disconnected

Enddo
=======================

Questions.

Why?

Any error messages at the other end?

This end...

00:03:00, 04 Jun.
PPP LCP Send Configuration ACK
00:03:00, 04 Jun.
PPP LCP Receive Configuration Request
00:02:57, 04 Jun.
PPP LCP Receive Configuration ACK
00:02:57, 04 Jun.
PPP LCP Send Configuration Request
00:02:27, 04 Jun.
PPP LCP Receive Termination ACK
00:02:27, 04 Jun.
PPP LCP Send Termination ACK
00:02:27, 04 Jun.
PPP LCP Receive Termination Request (Failed to authenticate ourselves to peer)
00:02:27, 04 Jun.
PPP LCP Send Termination Request (Failed to authenticate ourselves to peer)
00:02:27, 04 Jun.
PPP: LCP down
00:02:27, 04 Jun.
PPP: CHAP authentication failed
00:02:27, 04 Jun.
PPP CHAP Receive success : authentication failure
00:02:27, 04 Jun.
PPP CHAP Receive Challenge
00:02:27, 04 Jun.
PPP: LCP up
00:02:27, 04 Jun.
PPP LCP Send Configuration ACK
00:02:27, 04 Jun.
PPP LCP Receive Configuration Request
00:02:26, 04 Jun.
PPP LCP Receive Configuration ACK
00:02:26, 04 Jun.
PPP LCP Send Configuration Request
00:02:24, 04 Jun.
PPP LCP Receive Configuration ACK
00:02:23, 04 Jun.
PPP LCP Send Configuration Request
00:01:53, 04 Jun.
PPP LCP Receive Termination ACK
00:01:53, 04 Jun.
PPP LCP Send Termination ACK
00:01:53, 04 Jun.
PPP LCP Receive Termination Request (Failed to authenticate ourselves to peer)

"Failed to authenticate ourselves to peer"

It looks like the PN Hub2 had an unfortunate loss/corruption of a password with nothing more than turning off the connection. It wasn't even a reboot or a reset to factory default. Something much, much less. Unless there is a 'feature' in the software that scrubs the password if someone clicks 'disconnect'.

Observation: the underlying ADSL connection remained stable/established (downstream/ipstream bandwidth exactly the same, although perhaps the logging is somewhat lacking).

Manually re-entering the password corrected this 'feature' of the Hub2.

I will now invoke some rhyming...

Hub two, pile of p**.

Re: Further observations on the Plusnet Hub2

jab1 — Sat, 04 Jun 2022 06:29:55 GMT

@greygit Just out of curiosity, why would anyone do as you are suggesting? It seems to me you are just looking for obscure reasons to moan about your service.

Re: Further observations on the Plusnet Hub2

Baldrick1 — Sat, 04 Jun 2022 08:34:23 GMT

@greygit

Rather than spend your life seeking out bizarre reasons to knock the Hub 2 why not just admit that you’ve got a down on it, buy a modem/router that fully meets your requirements, should such a device exist, and move on.

The Hub 2 is not perfect but is probably as good as the freebie Hub offered by any other budget ISP and fully meets the requirements of the vast majority of Plusnet customers.

Re: Further observations on the Plusnet Hub2

dvorak — Sat, 04 Jun 2022 10:17:10 GMT

I can confirm that I’ve had the same behaviour since the new firmware applied.
Each time I’ve had to do a manual disconnect/ reconnect for profile adjustments I’ve need to re-enter the password to get it to connect. @jab1 if you have a static ip a manual disconnect/ reconnect is required to pick up any profile changes. Shouldn’t be many other reasons to do this.

issue doesn’t occur if it’s a reconnect for by line drop etc.
Seems OP might have actually re-created a proper issue (for once).

Re: Further observations on the Plusnet Hub2

RealAleMadrid — Sat, 04 Jun 2022 10:16:06 GMT

@Baldrick1 I totally agree with you, I have no idea why he trying to trash the Hub2 by attempting to find every odd firmware quirk, when everyone else seems to be finding it a reasonable ISP supplied modem/router

I don't use ISP supplied equipment by the way. 😁

Re: Further observations on the Plusnet Hub2

Anonymous — Sat, 04 Jun 2022 10:21:32 GMT

@greygit Plusnet aren't known for providing timely firmware updates or implementing feature requests.

Have you considered more productively spending your time doing your investigations and diagnostics on another device that has an active developer community, where you can contribute to testing, reporting problems, uploading code, suggesting fixes, and being part of a volunteer group that actually care about making a product better for all ?.

Over the years, I have contributed to and had firmware releases for specific bug fixes for Billion BiPAC 8800 and 8900 routers, the DrayTek Vigor 130 modem, made many improvements to the pfSense project, and solved problems for various Ubuntu releases.

While I find it interesting to see your findings, I'm not seeing any solutions, or much hope of your suggestions actually leading to Plusnet doing anything to correct anything you find.

Re: Further observations on the Plusnet Hub2

jab1 — Sat, 04 Jun 2022 10:35:25 GMT

@dvorak wrote:

I can confirm that I’ve had the same behaviour since the new firmware applied.
Each time I’ve had to do a manual disconnect/ reconnect for profile adjustments I’ve need to re-enter the password to get it to connect. @jab1 if you have a static ip a manual disconnect/ reconnect is required to pick up any profile changes. Shouldn’t be many other reasons to do this.

issue doesn’t occur if it’s a reconnect for by line drop etc.
Seems OP might have actually re-created a proper issue (for once).

Interesting that you have seen the same issue. I am no longer with PN, and in the past 12 months since my move, I have had no major issues such as profile adjustments, so although I have a static IP (by default), I have had no need to investigate how Zen handle this - hopefully I never will, but I'm not going to worry about the remote possibility - life's too short. 😉

Re: Further observations on the Plusnet Hub2

bobpullen — Sat, 04 Jun 2022 13:49:05 GMT

I have this on my backlog of issues to attend to. I'm fairly certain I know how the behaviour has been introduced and it's related to a change that was made in the most recent firmware that has just been deployed.

Suspect we'll be able to address it in a future update.

Re: Further observations on the Plusnet Hub2

greygit — Sat, 04 Jun 2022 22:07:19 GMT

Nah. I'm moaning about a piece of hardware. If I'm finding these (very obvious, simple) glitches in its config I'd be sure that more serious people than me would find more serious stuff.

Re: Further observations on the Plusnet Hub2

Harddrive — Tue, 21 Jun 2022 15:47:10 GMT

To add weight to your suspicion, Bob. I’m seeing the exact same thing

I have just moved from a Hub One to a Hub Two.

I always used to disconnect/reconnect from the internet with the Hub One each day without issue.

The first day of using the Hub Two I could also do so. If I recall correctly, the disconnect/reconnect page offered a green Update button when disconnected but not when connected. I didn’t ever touch this green button.

I didn’t note the exact firmware level on that day but there was no update date time showing in the Technical Log Information page - the date/time line was blank.

The next day I noticed there had been a firmware update overnight. From the Technical Log Information page:

Firmware version:v0.05.03.07154-PN

Firmware updated:Sat Jun 18 15:28:08 2022

Board version:R01

GUI version:1.3 10_03_2021

From that day on, the connect/disconnect page seems to have a blank password resulting in Chap Authentication failure. I have to retype the account password before clicking Connect. There is no sign of the green update button anymore whatever the connection status.

Before writing this, I checked the Technical Log Information page again and found the firmware and GUI versions have been updated again:

Firmware version:v0.06.00.12134-PN

Firmware updated:18-Jun-2022

GUI version:1.6 19_10_2021

Ineresting that there is no time showing anymore in the Firmware updated line.

I still have the problem. Also, if I sign onto the router web page and it reports no internet connection, the facility for the router to Open No Connection Help will sometimes get me connected but otherwise result in an error page telling me to call PlusNet.

Re: Further observations on the Plusnet Hub2

bobpullen — Tue, 21 Jun 2022 16:14:12 GMT

@Harddrive - thanks, your observations further validate my suspicions. I raised it the other week, so it's now on the backlog to be addressed.

The different behaviour in the no connection wizard is probably a product of what state the hub views your connection at the time it's initiated i.e. no sync, sync but no auth, sync but failing auth etc.

Re: Further observations on the Plusnet Hub2

bobpullen — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 14:02:18 GMT

@Harddrive - FYI, your hub has been targeted with a firmware update that hopefully fixes this behaviour and allows for a PPP disconnect/reconnect without having to re-type the broadband password.

Expect your hub to reboot early hours of the morning over the coming days to apply the update.

Once you have it (version number is 0.08.00.08297), then I'd welcome any feedback you have.

Re: Further observations on the Plusnet Hub2

grtuser777 — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 08:49:01 GMT

While what the OP has posted is indeed not what an regular PN user might do as a new Hub 2 recipient I have to say I'm not impressed with it either.

You can't split the bands which you could on the Hub 1 and my upload speed dropped from a consistent 6-8Mbps to a consistent sub 1Mbps. I've ended up going back to my Hub 1.

Re: Further observations on the Plusnet Hub2

bobpullen — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 11:46:06 GMT

@grtuser777 - sorry to hear you're not satisfied, but neither observation is really relevant to the topic being discussed here.

The decision around band splitting is unlikely to change.

The issue with upload speed may warrant investigation, but I'd suggest starting a separate thread if you want to go down that route.

Re: Further observations on the Plusnet Hub2

grtuser777 — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 11:57:58 GMT

sorry but I disagree about relevance. There are people on this thread saying to the OP they are talking about some obscure edge case and that the Hub 2 is satisfactory for the majority of users. I was pointing out that even for the average user it has a reduced feature set and doesn't perform as well as it's predecessor.

Re: Further observations on the Plusnet Hub2

bobpullen — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 12:32:40 GMT

The opening post is specifically about a bug with the PPP disconnect/reconnect functionality of the hub. A fix for this is in flight so it's helpful if the discussion here can remain specific to that problem.

The Hub Two actually has a greater feature set compared to the Hub One, evening factoring in the inability to split the two Wi-Fi networks. It also performs better on average, and I say that based on empirical DSL data extracted from hundreds of thousands of lines.

That said, what's better for the majority isn't necessary better for the individual. Your upstream issue seems highly unusual but further discussion about it would still fit better in it's own thread.

Re: Further observations on the Plusnet Hub2

Harddrive — Sat, 29 Oct 2022 15:30:10 GMT

@bobpullen Thanks for the tip off about the latest firmware update. The firmware appears to have been installed in the early hours of Friday morning.

I'm pleased to report the loss of password problem when connecting/reconnecting has been fixed. I've been testing it frequently over the past two days.

Thanks for all your help.

Re: Further observations on the Plusnet Hub2

bobpullen — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 16:20:32 GMT

@Harddrive - glad to hear it, and thanks for getting back to me