BT Home Hub 6 (Smart Hub) on PlusNet

[#1]

This might be relevant  - moving from BT fibre & wanting to keep the existing HH6 set up, I followed this guide from Life On Mars (thanks) but I could not get connection. It appears that it was not happy with the '&' character in the password, once I changed to a PW without that in, the connection was made..

[#2]

I know this is an older thread but I just wanted to post and say thank you to everyone who contributed to this, particularly

Life on Mars. It really helped me make the decision and set-up a HH6.

I'm a John Lewis ADSL BB customer, but the service comes via Plusnet. The Sagecom 2704N router is not very good and only single band. We have some newer (5ghz) gadgets in the house and they seemed to be struggling with everything on 2.4ghz. It's not like we have a lot, 1x hard wired PC, 1 wireless MAC, 2 phones and 2 tablets, but it was not working very well.

We are very rural, with only 4mb and recently got FTTC (whoop) and now we get 17mb (double whoop).

Sadly, the router (or BB) was up and down and really poor. Got JL to check it all out. Turns out they were digging up the road and BT OR were doing some `stuff`. After that it settled down. Sort of. Then it went wonky again but this time seemed to be the router and not external (hardwired speedcheck was all good). Asked for a new router. We'd been with them 3 years and were well out of contract - so we signed up for another 12 months and got a price reduction. 

They sent me another 2704N. (sad face).

So - I thought about Powerline wifi option - I have 2 already for hardwired PC and better wifi. They are only 2.4ghz so decided to attack the router first. If that was rubbish then dual band Powerline wifi might make no difference.

Lots (and lots) of Googling saw me come up with either buy a router (TP-Link or something) on Amazon or get a 2nd hand/new router. Enter HH6 stage left. Lots of reading on this forum (and then some). Took the plunge. Got a Business HH6 for £33 delivered and brand new in the wrapper. 

Followed the delightful instructions on here (no need to hard reset as it was brand new).

• Plug in power
• Turn on router
• Wait (it starts green, then flashing orange and then solid orange)
• Plug in cat5/ethernet cable
• Get into control panel
• Follow the other instructions 

I was on-line in 2 minutes

Bleedin' brilliant. I now have a very constant 17mb DUAL BAND (double smiley face) and more importantly SWMBO is very happy (if she's happy, I'm happy - it's a simple arrangement).

So - the HH6 Business edition works fine with FTTC and is a MASSIVE improvement on the 2704N.

If you're a John Lewis ADSL customer - just do it. For £35 you can have a dual band router with greater wifi range and MIMO (or is it Nemo?). My devices love it.

Sorry about the essay - I only signed up to say a MASSIVE thank you to the contributors, as I love it when forums like this can help people overcome issues that can really grind you down.

Vive la forum!

[#3]

This is really helpful - thanks. However I had to resolve a couple of issues before I could make it work.

• 'Once reset, Switch on router and if connecting using an ethernet cable as per instructions inside the BT Smart Hub box Making sure you have your telephone line also plugged in to it'

  When I did this I could not get to the Home Manager, only a page which said 'You're connected!' and because my line is not BT I couldn't get further - just an error message saying that perhaps I was not on a BT line. Typing in 192.168.1.254 didn't help.

Solution was to switch off and start router without the telephone line plugged in. I then got to the pages in your picks and it went fine.

• yourusername@plusdsl.net is fine for Plusnet but they have other brands too (eg mine, Force 9) which have different addresses. You can find them here https://www.plus.net/home-broadband/router-reconnect

Thanks again though, I'm now up and running with a strong connection.

[#4]

Wonder if anyone can help. Have followed these instructions to the letter but when I input my plusnet username and password the smarthub just says error. Any ideas would be most welcome.

Thanks

[#5]

This is the same error I saw. Try changing your password on the plusnet portal and avoid special characters. Your password is being rejected by the hub according to rules I don't fully understand.

Regards,
Iain S.

[#6]

Thank you so much Iain and coming back so quickly! Solved the problem and saved my Sunday!! 🙂

[#7]

Thank you for this post @LifeonMars

Moderator's note by Mike (Mav): Post released from Spam Filter.

[#8]

Great thanks very much I will go through your suggestions and hopefully get it sorted. Would the BT Hub be better than the plusnet hub do you 🤔 think?

[#9]

Sorry where do I use the yellow ethernet cable for, I don't have the box the router was in it was just left in the property I bought.

[#10]

You don't if you  are using wireless, if not wireless then plug the ethernet cable into your computer and other end into a yellow hub

You use the Broadband  grey cable to your BT socket  or filter  and the power cord to the router

see attachment

and for photos

http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/54651/~/connecting-and-set-up-of-your-bt-hub

[#11]

Thanks again for your time and effort much appreciated 😊

[#12]

No problem,

Its important that you reset the router completely first, this can take a bit of effort.  

also

Do not use any odd characters like ? / + in passwords the BT smart hub will not accept them if used

[#13]

Just an update managed to get connected with the BT Hub OK so will see how it goes for now.  Will it update itself if there is any new firmware etc?  Appreciate all your help, without that I could not have done it myself.  Much Kudos to you and thank you again.

[#14]

Yes it will update itself, It will also reboot its self every two weeks.

[#15]

I'm about to migrate to Plusnet (tomorrow) and intend to use my BT Smarthub. I'm pretty certain that I can follow the procedure, but there's one thing that I don't quite understand. Will the Network Name, BTHub,..etc and Security Password that are currently working, remain the same? And if not can I revert back to them once I'm back on line. I have so many devices connected up I'd hate to have to go through them all and update network and passwords! Thanks