How to do simple things in your Home Hub

Printing this article: if it does not page properly, print in sections or try latest Opera browser for Windows which seems to behave better.

May 2008
Some common problems and fixes in the BT Home Hub, in association with the guys at the
Home Hub Forum.

1. How to reset the Home Hub
2. How to change wireless channel.
3. How to Reactivate Broadband Talk.
4. How to do passwords.
5. How to diagnose and sort out speed problems
6. How can I connect a hard disk to the hub?
7. How can I connect a Printer to the hub?
8. How can I use BT wireless manager?
9. How can I use WINDOWS wireless manager instead?

More How-to's
Even more How-to's

Other Links

Hub Simple Troubleshooting

Home Hub (V1) Manual
New Home Hub (V1.5) Manual

1. Resetting the Home Hub

If the hub behaves badly, or you can't remember the admin password, you are often advised to "Reset" the hub. This will put all settings back to standard or "default" as it's called.

Note that a Resetsets the hub back to defaultsettings. Sometimes this is called "Factory settings" which is not quite true because it will not restore the version of the firmware, only the settings such as password, wireless key, firewall etc are set to default.

Restartor as some people call it rebootis simply switching the hub off, waiting a few seconds, then restoring the power. The V1 hub needs unplugging, but the v1.5 has a "Restart" button. This may cure some strange problems so it's worth a try before a full reset is executed.

Before you reset the hub,although not strictly necessary, and a bit of a fuss, my advice to reduce the "trauma" on the broadband exchange, I would recommend that you disconnect the hub cleanly from the broadband as follows...

• If you can get to the admin pages, on the home page click on the Disconnect button on the screen.
• Even if you can't get to the admin screen, the next thing to do is to always pull out the DSL plug from the filter (or the hub, makes no difference).
• Now that the hub is disconnected from ADSL you can give it a good old reset and if necessary repeat the process without upsetting the exchange and getting a big drop in sync speed.

There are two ways to do a Reset.

The first is a Soft Reset.Go into advanced settings, click on System, and click on the Reset button.

However, very often the hub admin settings cannot be accessed simply because the hub is misbehaving. So you need to do a Hard Reset


Version 1 hubs have just one button on the back. Its primary use is to associate the hub phone to the hub so it's called the "Wireless Association" button.
To reset the version 1 hub, hold in the "Wireless Association" button until all the lights come on in a row and a distinct Click is heard. About 15 seconds. Then let go of the button and allow a few minutes for the hub to settle down again.

Version 1.5 hubs have three buttons on the side, one of which is the recessed Reset button which may need a straightened paper-clip to press it. The others are for wireless association, and restart (which just cuts the power to reboot the hub).

Version 2 hubs have three buttons similar to V1.5. The reset button on V2 is also recessed.

To reset the v1.5 and V2 hubs, you need to hold in the recessed reset button for 3 seconds only til the lights change, then again allow a few minutes for the hub to settle down.

If you took my advice to disconnect from the DSL, you can now reconnect and wait for the broadband and internet lights to come on steady (v1 hubs) or for the broadband light to go steady green (v1.5 hubs) or blue (V2 hubs). If you disconnected the hub in the admin pages before the reset, you will also need to go into the admin pages and click on Connect.

After a reset you may notice the Broadband Talk (BBT) Phone light is no longer on. If you use BBT you will need to reactivate the BBT service as below.

Sometimes you may find the hub refuses to resetno matter how long you hold in the reset/wireless association button. In that instance switch off the power to the hub , wait 10 seconds and plug in again. When all the lights have settled try the reset again.

2. Change wireless channel

or "The Wifi Fix for Home Hubs"

The official reason for changing wireless channel is because the channel may also be used by another device.
However, these days, since firmware update 6.2.6.B thru to 6.2.2.E, you may well have to change the wireless settings simply to get your laptop to connect at allto the hub wirelessly.
6.2.6.H onwards on V1, V1.5, and all V2 hubs should not have this problem but you might try this fix for general non connection.
If your laptop refuses to recognise your hub, but is quite happy to find the neighbours' router (!) try this standard fix for Wi-Fi not connecting.
(If you already have a PC connected to the hub by cable use that one to do the following change, otherwise use your new PC as follows. )
Switch off the PC, leave the Home Hub on.
If you have a wireless switch on the PC switch it off, otherwise don't worry.
Connect an ethernet cable between ethernet 1 or 2 socket on the hub and a similar socket on the PC. (An Ethernet cable has a square plug with 8 gold pins and a clip, and would have been supplied by BT with the hub.)
Switch on the PC.
In your web browser type in http://bthomehub.homeand hit enter
On the Home Hub page click on Advanced.
Then click on Continue to Advanced

Follow the instructions how to enter the password (see 4 below)

Click on Wireless
On the dropdown box where it says Automatic, click on the dropdown arrow and select Manual
After a second or two the channels will be selectable. Select a different channel, like 1 or 11. Click the Applybutton.
Click on Manualdropdown again, this time select Automatic.
Hit Applyagain. Close the browser.
Switch off the PC
Pull out ethernet cable from the PC
Switch wireless back on if you switched it off
Boot up PC and try to connect wirelessly as before.

If that does not work, repeat the above, but leave it on manual.

3. Reactivate Broadband Talk

Type www.bt.com/bbvinto your browser and hit enter.
Type in your Broadband Talk (BBT) phone number .
Type in your BBT password which was emailed to you when you signed up.
Click on NextClick on Configure Hub/RouterClick on Configure. Only click on it once, have patience!
In a few minutes the BBT light should come on.

4. What's all this about serial numbers and default Passwords?

Before we start,

• First rule of thumb - please note the the word admin when used as name or password does NOT start with a capital "A" - just so we don't look silly when we write to a forum saying "Admin" doesn't seem to work. It won't!



• Second rule of thumb - if the hub will not accept the password you thought was the right one Reset the hub and start again.

With the older versions of hub firmware (6.2.2.6 or earlier on V1 hubs) the default admin name and password to get into the Hub's Advanced Pages were admin and admin respectively

If you have later firmware it will not be admin and admin, but admin and whatever the password was changed to.

New Password Screen.

Since the firmware (BT call it software which is a bit of a misnoma) went to version 6.2.6.E, if you had not already changed your admin password at the time of the update, or if you have Reset the hub, next time you go into the hub admin pages, you will see a new dialogue box (see below). The top one is for the V1 hub and one below that is for the smaller V1.5 hub, and finally the new V2 hub's screen.

On V1 and V1.5 hubs, you have to enter the hub's serial number (first 11 characters only!) in the first box, then put in a new password of your choice in the second box (e.g. fredblog99), and again in the third box.
On V2 hubs you type in the admin password which is printed on the label on the back of the hub rather than the serial no. You will not be allowed to use "admin" as the new password.

And remember to click the "Change Password and Open Hub Manager" button - hitting Enter will usually not work.




This new password should be used along with the usual username adminfrom then on.

If you ever reset the hub you will again be asked for the serial number (or default password on V2 hubs) and to add a new password.

Your password will never actually be your serial number unless you choose to use it as your password, which is not a good idea. Best choose a word of about 10 characters and numbers that you cannot normally find in a dictionary, like "fredblog99".

So What?

So if you are asked by the hub a straight question for admin name and password, and whatever you try does not work, do a full Reset of the hub and start again as described in this section.

And remember it's adminnot Admin!

Browser problems - Hub 2.0

One user complained to Home Hub Forum that whatever he did the Hub 2.0 would not accept his password, to the extent that BT took control of his hub remotely and still could not solve it. Two replacement hubs later we found out on the Home Hub forum that his IE7 was the culprit. Installing another browser fixed it. IE7 is still usually the best browser for Hub 2.0 but it may need a complete reset if you have password problems.

Note that page 57 of the first edition Hub 2.0 manual suggests that the default admin password is "admin" - that is presumably an error because the default is printed on the back label.

Passwords and Software Recovery Tool

If you ever have to run the BT software recovery tool, you have to reset the hub first, and when the recovery tool runs that is the only time that I know of when the password will actually be the serial number, if it asks you.

5.How to diagnose and sort out speed problems

What is my speed?? That's a big question, and one which is very emotive! And probably the subject of the majority of forum postings.

The following also refers to ADSL-MAX, or "up to 8Meg" BT Total Broadband. If you are on "BT Broadband" you are on a fixed service of 1/2, 1 or maybe 2 Meg and until you upgrade you will never get "up to 8Meg", but then there's no guarantee you will improve from the upgrade either.

To complicate matters, speed is also expressed in two ways. Theres KiloBytes per second (KB/Sec) used to measure file downloads by Windows dialogue boxes, and theres Kilobits per sec (kbps) or Megabits per second (Mbps) used to measure broadband "bandwidth" and currently broadband speeds are typically "up to 8Mbps" or "up to 8Meg".

To convert from kB/sec to kbps you need to multiply by EIGHT. So 250kB/sec is 2000kbps or 2Mbps ("2 meg"). Very important to remember that B is bytes and b is bits, and there 8 bits to a byte."Fred" contains 4 Bytes or 32bits.

There are several "speeds" to consider.

First there's the Displayed "sync" Speed in the hub. On the hub home pageyou will see Upload and Download speeds displayed. BT describe this as the "Sync speed" which in my opinion is usually a little optimistic, as you don't actually get that speed. When first booted up the sync speed is typically what the line expects but rapidly moves towards the IP profile, or vice-versa, but the actual throughput will depend on all sorts of traffic loadings. For that reason it has no real value except as a palliative.

What people should know is What speed would BT expect you to getunder normal circumstances?
Visit this BT "Expectations" siteand enter your POSTCODE.(If you enter your phone number, BT already know your profile speed and will just give it back to you) The postcode uses an algorithm of distance, topology and cable makeup to calculate a likely speed for your street.
If the profile speed (below) is very different you may well have a problem with your house phone extension wiring or your link to the BT green box in the road (See later).

Then there's Actual line speed and IP Profile Speed.
These are found by a nice BT Speedtester utility here.This site will not work until your hub has been connected 24 hours, so don't unplug the hub and then expect the site to work, as you will have reset your IP address! Also make sure you use Internet Explorer rather than Firefox for this test as the latter often has problems with the site.

If you are on BT Total Broadband 1, 2 or 3 the speedtester result should look like...

Test1 comprises of Best Effort Test: -provides background information.
IP profile for your line is - 2500 kbps
DSL connection rate: 448 kbps(UP-STREAM) 3168 kbps(DOWN-STREAM)
Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 2307 kbps

The 448 and 3168 are the sync speeds shown on the hub.
The 2500 is the profile, and should be considered your maximum available download speed, but the profile will gradually change to adapt to line conditions in 500k steps.
The 2307 is the actual load test, and will vary with loads on the line by other users, but will never exceed the IP Profile.

If you get this extra bit

2. Assured Rate Test: -provides background information.
Assured Rate IP profile on your line is - 500 kbps
Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 675 kbps

You are probably a BT VBision customer. It means they have set aside 500kbps for normal surfing whilst Vision uses the rest for the TV pictures.

(If you are on the old fixed rate BT Broadband you will have a different result which I can't reproduce here unless someone sends me a txt file of it.)


Now compare the Profile with the speed expected for your PostCode If there is a substantial difference (say profile is less than 60% of the expected) you have a local problem. Then see hereas the cause may be your extension wiring.


Finally there's your Tested File Download Speedwhich will affect you if you want to download music or videos.
Visit this BT download test site.Download one of the files and watch the download speed in the little window which is usually in kB/sec, in which case multiply by 8 and divide by 1000 to give you Mbps or "Megs".
You must delete the file from your download folder before you can try the test again!

OK but say your file downloads from other sites are really slow.When you go to download, say, some music from a fan site you only get 60kB/sec. Well if your BT file download test shows 500kB/sec, then the slow speed is entirely due to the remote server and the thousands of miles of internet in between. No good moaning to BT or whoever your ISP is - it's not their fault!

If you use peer-to-peer(P2P) before midnight, the liklihood is that BT will "shape" your download speeds. That includes downloading BBC iPlayer programs to watch later, and also be warned, others will use your upload bandwidth even when you are not downloading iPlayer programs unless you disable that feature, and you'll wonder why BT sent you a nastygram.


And remember for the best ADSL speed

• Keep the hub switched on and connected to the phone line all the time, 24x7
• Remove or otherwise isolate any bellwires as in my article

6. How can I connect a Hard Disk to the hub?

A hard disk in a USB enclosure can be attached to the Home Hub's USB-A socket as a shared always-on network drive.
Such drives must be formatted to FAT32 and must be self-powered, because there is not enough power in the hub's USB-A socket to spin a drive without its own power supply. The only exception to this rule is USB Flash (thumb) drives.

Version 1 and 1.5 hubs:
Windows: To communicate with the drive from network computers, start Windows Explorer, right click on My Computer, select "Map Network Drive", choose a drive letter and enter the path as

\\192.168.1.253\bt_7g

The Hub port should then appear as a drive in Windows Explorer.


Vista shot with V1.5 hub



New version 2.0 hub:
Windows: Try the same as above but map to \\BTHUB\Disk_a1
If that does not work, remove the drive, re-insert in the USB socket, then try mapping to \\192.168.1.253\Disk_a1

Vista shot with V2 hub on \\BTHUB\Disk_a1. (pic Jon Crawford, BT Beta Forum)

For Apple Mac on V2 Hubs the following was posted by Adam Liversage of BT in a BT forum.

In Finder, choose Go and then connect to server.
In the server address dialogue box, enter smb://BTHUB/Disk_a1
Just select continue when the password dialogue box appears.

7. How can I connect a Printer to the hub?

If you want to use the USB-A socket on the hub for a printer instead of a hard drive, you can do with some success. You cannot use a USB hub to run more than one USB device as only 192.168.1.253 is available for the socket to use.
Also the printer may not behave well, for example you may have to purge the print queue each time you print a job, and ink levels etc will not be passed back to the PCs. However if you want to try it, follow these steps...
1. Add your printer to the PC printers normally with it attached to your machine.
2. Once added, right click on properties then on the ports tab.
3. Click add port, choose Standard TCP/IP Port, click New Port.
4. Enter 192.168.1.253 as the IP address, and anything you like as the name.
5. Click Custom, then Settings.
6. Choose LPR as protocol Queue Name: LPT1 check LPR byte counting as enabled, click ok.
7. Finish the wizard and repeat for other PCs.

Connect the printer to the USB-A port on the Hub then power-cycle the hub either by pulling the power for 30 secs, or hit the Restart button if your hub has one. As I said, may not work or may work in one direction only.

8. How do I set up BT Wireless manager?

I don't personally like BT software, because it can interfere with windows manager on XP and Vista, and vice-versa. The V2 hubs have a new version of the BT wireless manager but I had problems connecting with XP on that new version so my recommendation on XP onwards is still to uninstall BT Wireless manager in the Windows Add/Remove Software and use only Windows to connect.

However if you want to use BT software and it does not seem to connect, do the following...

In the system tray/notification area you should have a red circle with a white X which is the BT wireless manager with no connecion. When it's connected it will be an upside down green Xmas tree.
Double click on it and it will fire up the wireless manager and will try to find wireless networks, one of which is your BT Home hub.
On the left click Manage Connection profiles, and if there is one set up for your hub, click on edit.
Make sure it is set up as follows
Authentication - "WEP shared key"
Encryption - "40-bit or 64-bit key"
Key Type = "Hexadecimalformat (10 characters)"
Security key - should be your WEP key from the hub
Key index - "First"
and the "Attempt to use this connection first" should be ticked.
Click on OK
Click on "Connect to a Network", ensure your hub is highlighted, then click on "Connect" and the red icon should turn into the upside down tree icon and you are in.
If there is no profile alreadfy set up, go back to Connect to a Network and set up the profile as above.
If that lot does not work try a hub reset to factory settings and repeat.

9. How to use WINDOWS wireless manager

To get windows to connect wirelessly to your hub, I recommend to first uninstall BT wireless manager. see here.
Preferably don't install BT CD in the first place. The Home Hub manual also tells you how to connect without using the CD so it is officially sanctioned by BT if you are worried that the Help Desk may frown on you!

If you don't want to uninstall BT software then in XP go to the wireless network connection, select Properties, Click on the Wireless Networks tab, make sure "Use Windows to configure my wireless network settings" is ticked.
I don't know how to do that in Vista as it's a fool's errand to even try to run the BT CD in Vista so I've never been there. Vista should NOT have BT software installed. Get rid.

To make the Wi-Fi connection, simply right-click on the wireless connection icon in the System Tray, (or Notification Area in Vista), and select the "Connect to Network" or "View Available Wireless Networks" or similarly named option and connect to the network bearing your hub's SSID name.

Another way to get there, or if you cannot find the icon in the system tray...

For Windows XP perform the below steps:

Start
Run
ncpa.cpl [Hit Enter]]


For Windows Vista perform the below steps:
Start
In the Search space type
ncpa.cpl [Hit enter]

Whether you are on XP or on Vista you should see something like this.




Right Click on the Wireless connection ("Tweedle-dum" was my Home Hub's SSID), and with Vista you will see 'Connect/Disconnect', or with XP you will see 'View available Wireless Networks'
Click on that and you should see a list of wireless networks in range.

Look for youe BT Home Hubs SSID (check the label) and then double click on it
When it asks for 'Network Key' this can be located on the back of the home hub, usually called "Wireless key".

If the wireless key is the correct one. you should be connected to the hub, and after a moment or two acquiring the right IP address you will be connected to the internet.

Two things can go wrong.
1) You may have already tried this connection with the wrong Wireless Key, or mor likely you may have changed the wireless key recently, in which case Windows may have saved the wireless key against your Hub's SSID as a "Profile" or "Network"

In Vista you need to go Start, Network, then find Network and Sharing center on the header ribbon, then in the menu on the left find "Manage Wireless Networks".
This will show up a list of all the SSID's you have connected to in the past. Right-click on the suspect one (or all of them) and hit Remove Network.

XP has something similar.

2) The other likely problem is that the wireless connection is not set up to obtain the IP addresses automatically (the default situation). It may even be set up to connect to your workplace network and have a fixed IP address which is not within the range of the hub - i.e. between 192.168.1.64 and 192.168.1.237, the subnet is 255.255.255.0 and the Gateway and DNS both 192.168.1.254.

If your PC has been set up with a special IP address because of your work (e.g. a company laptop) you may have to modify the connection properties as follows:

Go back to the wireless connection screen pictured above.

Right Click on the Wireless Connection then click on Properties.
That will bring up the following screen.



Then higlight the TCP/IP line (Or as shown here in Vista the IPv4 line) and hit Properties.

The following screen allows you to click on automatic, or to type in suitable addresses.




Select the automatic IP option as a preference.
Hit OK, OK etc to save and back out.
Notes:
With Version 2 Home Hubs, any devices with a fixed IP may not appear on the list of connected items.
With Vista and Home Hubs, at the same time as changing the properties for the IPv4 line, you may like to un-tick the IPv6 line in the connection properties above as this new protocol will not be used in the near future and may cause problems with older kit.