HubOne firmware issue with DNS

[#1]

Thanks @dvorak, sounds like we could be onto something.

Were people using the same wi-fi SSID and password across both the Hub One and the additional access point, or were they different? Just trying to get something set up here to see if I can replicate the issue.

[#2]

I have the same setup also - BT Whole Home wifi x2, with one wired to the Plusnet hub and the other in mesh. WiFi disabled on the hub and DHCP by the hub not the BT units. Made sure the SSIDs were different too (to avoid any WiFi clash issues)

Still get problems with DNS intermittently but doesn't seem to be as frequent recently.

[#3]

I now have a Hub One using a wired TalkTalk router as a wi-fi extender. DHCP is switched off on the TalkTalk device. Different SSID's and both wireless radios active at the moment. The Hub One is using the default DHCP allocation.

There's a PC wired to the Hub One, and a number of wi-fi devices connecting to both the Hub One and TalkTalk SSID's.

Will keep an eye on it. Hopefully I'll be able to replicate the issue, after which extracting the necessary diagnostic info should be fairly simple.

[#4]

As someone who had DNS issues a couple of times, I'll mention that I also had a home hub 4 set up as an additional access point. Address set to 192.168.1.63 (i.e. outside hub one default range) and DHCP disabled. SSIDs were split but the same as the Hub one.

I used to get about three weeks of up-time before the problem occurred, and haven't had a problem since I started rebooting daily.

I have a Plusnet static IP for my broadband connection.

I have a feeling that I had DNS issues prior to have a hub one, when I was using home hub 4 by itself. I think this because I remember setting my PC to use google DNS servers, and I think that was prior to my issue with the hub one. But my memory is so hazy on this that I can't even be certain if it was before or after I moved to Plusnet from BT.

[#5]

@bobpullen fingers crossed something comes up.  For completeness on my setup, the following may (or may not) also be relevant.

Plusnet Hub has a Synology DS41x wired to it, along with the BT Whole Home main disc.  Secondary disc has a Gaming PC wired to it.  All other devices are wifi, including:

1 x Google Home

2 x Chromecast Audio

1 x Chromecast

1 x Fire Stick

1 x Samsung Smart TV

1 x Tablet

2 x Laptops

2 x Smartphones

normally, plus about 9 or 10 other devices which connect over wifi intermittently (guests phones and tablets mainly)

[#6]

Were people using the same wi-fi SSID and password across both the Hub One and the additional access point, or were they different? Just trying to get something set up here to see if I can replicate the issue.

The Asus router I'm using has a in-built switch to operate as 'router', AP or 'bridge'. It is set to AP so dhcp and WAN are disabled.  It has a static address of 192.168.1.253 and a separate SSID from the HubOne (192.168.1.1).

[#7]

@bobpullen, my LAN side of the Hub One:

Ethernet (all hosts configured with static IP outside Hub One DHCP range):

- 1x BT Home Hub 5A as AP (no DHCP on AP, no firewall, no uPnP, etc.) *

- 1x WDTV Live *

- 1x YouView BT box *

- 1x Technomate DVB-S receiver *

- 1x Synology NAS (diskstation 214)

- 1x ZyXeL NAS 

- 1x Raspberry Pi

- 1x Gigaset SIP phone

- 1x EPSON WF series printer/scanner

- 1x Netgear switch

- 1x Hikvision camera

Those marked with * above are connected via a Devolo powerline adapter, the other end-point wired into the Hub One.

Wireless (all on DHCP):

- 1x Roberts iStream2

- 3x laptops (occasionally via eth though)

- 1x Fire Stick

- 3x android phones, or more

- 1x iphone 5c

DHCP range on Hub One configured as 192.168.0.0/24. Separate WiFi bands, no overlap with the access point WiFi SSIDs. With this set up I experienced severe DNS problems the first 3-4 weeks (Jan '18), then everything went smooth after several reboots, mainly for testing.

In Oct '18 I replaced the Hub One with an OpenWrt box (unfortunately, this leaves no guinea pigs here) as I was finding the Plusnet DNSs noticeably and annoyingly slow lately.

On a side note: I have tinkered with the BT Smart Hub 6 as the AP to replace the BT HH6. I found the DNS relay of SH6 terrible when switching from the Hub One wifi to the SH6 wifi. 10 BOOTP requests of the wifi-connected station (laptop) would time out on the LAN side before the SH6 allowed the lease to come through it, eventually. Wonder if any common DNS relay code is in the SH6 & BT HH5 / PN Hub1...

[#8]

I have this problem too and also have a wi-fi access point wired away from the Hub One. DHCP is disabled on the AP but the AP address is not fixed on the hub. Wi-fi on the hub remains enabled though all SSIDs and passwords are different and split on the frequencies.

I can go weeks / months without an issue but then suffer several instances in a short duration (the past week noticeably). I notice it most with my smart thermostat, it downloads a temperature forecast and optimises the heating against it. When the house is cold in the morning I know it has lost connection!

Sadly I’ve not been able to identify a single event that triggers the problem.

[#9]

@edwh, when was the last time it happened? Wondering if there's any worth in me extracting some logging from your device.

[#10]

Some time overnight last Friday night in to Saturday morning 9th / 10th Nov, between 9pm to 9am approx.

You're welcome to look for anything though to recover I have to restart or sometimes power cycle the router. On that last occasion you may see a succession of restarts as for other reasons I need an IP address with a defined reverse DNS and not all Plusnet dynamic addresses seem to have this. It took a few attempts to get one.

[I've since moved to a fixed IP address but that's another story.]

[#11]

I have the same set up with an Asus router in AP mode and also have the same DNS issues.

The Asus AP is set up with identical SSID on non-overlapping channels.

Support tickets were a waste of time as once again they had never heard of this issue before.. I'm counting down the weeks till I'm out of my 18 months to get shot of plusnet.

Been living with this issue for over 12 months . 20-30 devices on the network

few further bits of info I can add

1) It gets worse and is far more likely to occur once parental controls kick in. About 9pm once my kids devices are locked out the internet the dns timeouts start to kick in more frequently on the other devices on the network. If I turn parental controls off most of the DNS timeouts stop

2) All my amazon devices , 3 fire tvs and an echo seem unaffected and continue to be able to browse and stream, while all the laptops and phones and xbox stop working. 

3) probably not related but since there's a possibility its related to the additional access point. I have had to turn my access point signal strength down to almost 0 to stop every device in the house connecting to it . I have the same ssid set up on both devices and my devices prefer the Asus access point to the Plusnet router nearly every time, including devices in the same room as the plusnet device.

[#12]

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@dylan_leggatt wrote:

2) All my amazon devices , 3 fire tvs and an echo seem unaffected and continue to be able to browse and stream, while all the laptops and phones and xbox stop working. 

---

@dylan_leggatt, to confirm we're definitely talking about the same problem, it would be helpful if you could carry out some further diagnosis during a period of time the problem is evident.

From one of the laptops, open a command window and do:

nslookup bbc.co.uk

And then repeat the same command appended with our DNS server address, e.g:

nslookup bbc.co.uk 212.159.6.10

If the first fails, but the second returns the expected results, then it points towards the DNS proxying.

Another couple of things it would be useful to know:

1. Are you able to reach the router interface at http://192.168.1.254 from an affected device?
2. Does restarting the router bring things back to life?

If all of the above fits the symptoms we're familiar with, then I'll extract some logging from your device and see if there's anything there that would gives us any clues to what's happening. Would be great if we could capture something from a router that's currently in the 'broken' state.

Another thing it would be good to get somebody to do, is run a wireshark capture from an affected device showing a few attempts to access websites when it's failing.

[#13]

Wondering if something has been changed to improve or rectify this - you don't notice when it's all working. I've had the longest interval of successful connection for some time. 31 days since last power cycle.

[#14]

Hi @edwh, I'm not aware of any changes with this.

However, I'm glad to hear it's been working successfully for a while for you.

[#15]

After being fine since sometime in late 2017 my HubOne again stopped returning anything for DNS lookups a little while ago (timing out). Querying a DNS server on the internet directly returned the expected results.

I was able to reach the admin interface by its IP address to command it to restart it and it's working again.

Firmware version is shown as software version 4.7.5.1.83.8.263 | Last updated 21/03/19

If it's back to doing what it did when I was having this trouble the first time, I expect it will stop working again within about an hour. I'll keep you posted.