topic Re: Stunned, hub one door wedge in Plusnet Feedback

Stunned, hub one door wedge

dorkasaurus — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 19:28:12 GMT

Ok, here's some background, we moved from BT because the service was so shocking, one of my main gripes was the inconsistent port forwarding problems with the HH5 (the re-badged plusnet hub one), port forwarding is a nightmare to set up if you ever get it working at all and some routers just blankly refuse to forwards ports at all, this has been a known issue by BT for over two years and is obviously a hardware problem.
I contacted plusnet to tell them the router was faulty as it simply wont forwards ports and I was directed to "the community" sooo after a post in the "community" with no remedy other than somebody suggesting I flash the router with the DD-WRT firmware I am now here again to let plusnet and all the plusnet customers know what a farce this has been, The router has a port forwarding menu and there are even step by step instructions in the help section.....IT DOESN'T WORK! plusnet's response "we don't support port forwarding, you'll have to go an BUY a router that does, we just support the connection" excuse me? thats like ford saying they don't support door handles on the cars they provide,
I am in the IT sector and pretty well versed in setting up routers and I have NEVER heard of a service provider say "sorry but thats not our problem" with regard to a piece of kit that they have supplied that a fundamental part of it's function is broken and patchy at best, This is the biggest pile of junk I've ever had the displeasure to work with and the same issues that dogged the HH5 for at least 2 years is obviously present in this firmware, yeah just do a google search for "HH5 port forwarding problem"
I'm now at the point where if this isn't resolved I may have to pass it over to trading standards as one of the main reasons I went with plusnet is for the services they provide and the gaming aspect, neither of which I can use to full potential, this is not acceptable and I don't want another pile of these god awful routers in the corner in my room.
If you supply kit and it's faulty....is that MY responsibility? no I don't think so, and to add insult to injury you wan ME to BUY another router so I can have one that works to it's specification? Not gonna happen I'm afraid and we're now going to start looking elsewhere, sad thing is you came highly recommended in one of our forums that has 30,000 members, early results were quite promising as well, unfortunately we certainly won't be able to recommend you after this farce.
Me

Re: Stunned, hub one door wedge

dorkasaurus — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 19:48:18 GMT

Soooo the faceless person on facebook thinks this an acceptable reply when informed the kit they have supplied doesn't perform one of it's primary functions, to route traffic to the right place, you know....hence the name ROUTER and not MODEM
"The router works for the reason we provide it, which is to allow a connection to the internet on your service. I'm afraid that there really isn't much more I can add. ^CP"
I can see this is going to be a trading standards issue

Re: Stunned, hub one door wedge

chenks76 — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 19:59:36 GMT

it's not even close to being a trading standards issue i'm afraid.
i suggest you step away from the internet for the evening and calm down, you're clearly in no frame of mind for any sort of sensible discussion on the matter.
however, the basics are that you pay for the connection and the connection IS working as advertised, the router was most likely provided for free?
you are free to use any router you want, you are not required to use the supplied free router.

Re: Stunned, hub one door wedge

dorkasaurus — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 20:11:48 GMT

chenks76 is it that obvious I'm not happy?
when I signed up for plusnet I didn't expect I'd have to go and spend another £120 on a router that can do all the functions I was told the hub one can do, for that reason alone I consider it to be a trading standards issue, as far as I was concerned and all the sales gumf led me to believe The router supplied by plusnet would allow me to play all kinds of online games, sadly the router doesn't let ports forward and just blocks everything inbound which is kinda pointless where routers are concerned, so now they want me to go and spend another £120 on a router that will do the job they promised theirs would do....but won't, yeah I think thats trading standards issue don't you?

Re: Stunned, hub one door wedge

Gel — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 20:19:24 GMT

Good luck with Trading Standards; in most cases, these days seem to refer you to Citizen's Advice;
as per other reply as you got for now me thinks you doth protest too much.
Doubt you were issue a Router specification from PlusNet, and it's probably not even on their www.
As you're in IT you should be well aware of routers to do what you need for less than sum you quoted

Re: Stunned, hub one door wedge

dorkasaurus — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 20:30:53 GMT

Tbh I could quite easily just put a pfsense box on this side of the router and drop it in the DMZ, but again that is putting me to expense rather than the kit just simply doing it's job, thats what irks me, these routers were a nightmare with BT (got through six of them) all with the same fault and it's a 2 year old fault, wheres the business sense in pushing out routers with known problems?
An hour on hold doesn't really help much from a "happy customer" perspective, "don't you want me" on repeat.....right now plusnet do you really think thats a question I want to answer in less that 10,000 four letter words?
Yeah I know am a bit ranty but come on......they had one job 😛

Re: Stunned, hub one door wedge

PeeGee — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 20:51:49 GMT

Quote from: dorkasaurus
.... we moved from BT because the service was so shocking, one of my main gripes was the inconsistent port forwarding problems with the HH5 (the re-badged plusnet hub one), port forwarding is a nightmare to set up if you ever get it working at all and some routers just blankly refuse to forwards ports at all, this has been a known issue by BT for over two years and is obviously a hardware problem.

So, have you just started gaming after moving to Plusnet and accepting a router which you despised greatly (albeit a re-badged version) or did you have another device when with BT that allowed you to do what you wanted? You can probably still use the hardware you had with BT with minor re-configuration, as it appears it may have worked.
Phil

Re: Stunned, hub one door wedge

dorkasaurus — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 21:04:06 GMT

Prior to being sent the "Hub one" I didnt have any knowledge of what model or make we would be getting, I was however assured that the router that is part of the package would do everything I needed it to do (note..part of the package), when it turned up and I saw It as you can imagine my heart sank, I've only this week started to fire up all my gear so only needed to sort that about two weeks back, I'm now an extra router down the line and still no functioning port forward, and to top it off I've just had some cheeky s**t at plusnet tell me "it will work if it's configured properly, go to portforward.net and all the information is there" gee I hadn't thought of that <facepalm>
What I find disturbing is that a communications company hasn't got a damn clue how to make their own kit work and then turn to insulting the customer when they can't answer it, one thing he did mention is that they don't support it because some people might open the wrong ports and then they'd be liable if they'd helped them.....if thats the case then don't damn well sell routers and tell people you can port forward games and other things as needed.
Actually, you know what, sod em, I'll configure up one of the other boxes I have that was for a customer and I'll just let the forum users know what a shower of brown stuff plusnet is
if it's gonna cost me money to supply a router that works then I'm pretty sure it's gonna cost them more in lost business, customer service own goal <slow claps>

Re: Stunned, hub one door wedge

pint — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 21:56:03 GMT

Rule 1 with internet service providers, the provided kit is almost always of the cheapest the ISP can get away with that just about does the job with the minimum of fuss for the end user ( ie just plug it in wait for the green light/activation and forget)
Average joe bloggs doesn't want port forwarding, or will even know what it is. If it exists on a setting page somewhere its potentially something that can be messed up, and cause a support issue for the ISP.
If you want a decent router with bells and whistles ( or even port forwarding) you should do a little research, If you can make the ISP router do what you want it to do then fair enough, if you cant, or its locked down/a useless POS then its a case of put it in a drawer ( in case of a line fault where you may need to hook it up for diagnostic purposes/isp testing) and get something that does a little more than just provide a basic signal.
You will probably find compliants and moans about other ISPs and the kit they supply, one word of caution: If you sign up to Sky you have to use their router as they use some sort of non standard sign in (MER ?)

Re: Stunned, hub one door wedge

dvorak — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 21:58:52 GMT

haven't had any issues forwarding ports with my hub one..

Re: Stunned, hub one door wedge

dorkasaurus — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 22:32:34 GMT

It doesn't even respond to upnp wizard or any of the usual external Upnp controllers, biggest pile of link:censored I've ever had the displeasure to try and work with, this was exactly the same though as the BT HH5 bag of link:censored, it took 6 before we actually got one that would work properly.
The only reason they don't want people getting to deep in to it is they know you'll find Vlan 301, oh sorry we aren't supposed to know about that are we shhhhhh
[Moderator's note by Mike (Mav) Avoidance of swear filter edited as per forum rule.

Re: Stunned, hub one door wedge

chenks76 — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 07:52:18 GMT

Quote from: pint
If you sign up to Sky you have to use their router as they use some sort of non standard sign in (MER ?)

not true.
on Sky ADSL you can use any router you want - and their Ts&Cs allow it
on Sky FIbre they say you must use their router, but in reality you can still use any router you want.

Re: Stunned, hub one door wedge

ejs — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 07:59:23 GMT

Also, there are two different types of BT HomeHub 5, type A and type B. Did you really get all six of the same type? The Plusnet Hub One is very similar to the 5A.

Re: Stunned, hub one door wedge

w23 — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 13:29:48 GMT

Quote from: dorkasaurus
this was exactly the same though as the BT HH5 bag of [Censored], it took 6 before we actually got one that would work properly.

If you did eventually get one from BT that worked properly then there should be nothing stopping you using that one on Plusnet (if you still have it).

Re: Stunned, hub one door wedge

jafreer — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 18:09:03 GMT

I have a HH5A and use port forwarding on it. I haven't had any issues but not being an expert maybe I am doing something different to what you are trying to do.

Re: Stunned, hub one door wedge

deathtrap — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 22:40:31 GMT

HH5 A shudder shudder, They aren't G.inp compatible either so if your on a Huawei cab , then your connection may no work as well as should or would if you had a fully compatible device plugged in , I have never used any ISP supplied router/modem As in my experience they all have been POS regardless of the ISP

Re: Stunned, hub one door wedge

AlaricAdair — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 09:41:29 GMT

I've not had problems with the ISP boxes, but we only use them in pass-thorough mode with a proper firewall router between our network and the outside world.

Re: Stunned, hub one door wedge

w23 — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 10:59:33 GMT

Quote from: deathtrap
...I have never used any ISP supplied router/modem As in my experience they all have been POS...

Isn't that rather self-contradictory? (my bold)
I agree, though, in general ISPs will never 'hand out' the best of equipment, they generally supply something simple that will work adequately for the majority of customers.

Re: Stunned, hub one door wedge

andyfinlayson — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 16:44:02 GMT

If the OP was in fact as smart as he thinks he is i'd have thought he would have cottoned onto this concept a fair few years ago and invested in a router that fits his needs.
I did when i realised that the HH BT originally gave me dropped wifi connections every 30 seconds. £50 later i had a router that lasted me 5 years with 0 issues.
dick:quote

Re: Stunned, hub one door wedge

dorkasaurus — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 18:47:21 GMT

This has made some interesting reading, it would appear that expecting some kit supplied by an ISP to actually do the job it's supposed to do casts doubt on my intelligence, what I have ended up doing Andyfinlayson is writing my own router in an old linux box that I had lying around, the whole point is I shouldn't really have to but obviously up their on your high horse you see so much clearer I guess at least this way I can load up my own choice of IDS system, and VPN server all in one box rather than the POS plusnet have supplied,
The whole point was principle, for an ISP to supply something and then hide behind the "we don't support that function" is laughable, well as more and more people have problems with it (and this will particularly hit gamers) then it will cost them customers the same as it has with BT, but thats fine because there be a ready supply of smart comments in the forums from people that haven't got the balls to stand for principles and will happily take any old gumf they are given....simply because they haven't got the brains to question it
To the few that offered serious advice/comments, thanks, I am now in the process of sorting the issue and am building my own router with multiple networks for the wireless which will be more useful for my purposes anyway, it just grates on me when a company can say "not my problem" and walk away from the POS they provide, you live and learn
dick:quote