BT Home Hub 3 on Infinity

kwikbreaks · 02-06-2012, 10:10

I've just ordered Infinity - install 25th. I see it comes with a BT Home Hub 3 router. Is anybody using one of these and what is the feature set/performance like.

On 10Mbps VM I've been using an antique Buffalo as I like the Tomato firmware but will probably use something with N wireless for Infinity. As alternatives I have the VM issued Netgear WNR2000 or a D-Link Dir655 which had good reviews but didn't impress me.

I'm not keen on buying yet another router as for the most part my network is a couple of Gigabit switches and the router is only a DHCP server and internet gateway.

kwikbreaks · 04-06-2012, 09:23

My own investigations on other forums show that the Home Hub 3 is of similar quality to VM's Superhub.

I've retired my Buffalo router which I used because of its excellent QoS which I used to control abuse of my public webcams - the 20Mbps upstream on Infinity should make this pretty much irrelevant.

Resurrected my DIR 655 which I found to have rather mundane firmware and can't be used with DD-WRT but the hardware is fine for my needs.

|Kippa| · 04-06-2012, 16:03

Do you have fiber to the cabinet or fiber to the premises? I'll be getting upgraded to Infinity in a few months, can't bloody wait. In my old home I used to have Virgin Media cable with 50mbit connection, now I in a new house and am getting ADSL at 15mbit. Just downloaded Max Payne 3 off steam, bloody game as 30gb, really need the fast connection back again.

qasdfdsaq · 04-06-2012, 18:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by kwikbreaks

My own investigations on other forums show that the Home Hub 3 is of similar quality to VM's Superhub.

I've found it uses half the power and has double the wireless range, but does have intermittent issues accepting connections that I'm yet to figure out.

One major omission is it's incapable of responding to pings, so I use my own router anyway, in BT's case you have a separate modem so don't need to leave the router connected even though you use your own.

kwikbreaks · 05-06-2012, 07:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by |Kippa|

Do you have fiber to the cabinet or fiber to the premises?

It will be FTTC. I'm 300m from the cabinet so expect to see 60Mbps+

Quote:

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

I've found it uses half the power and has double the wireless range, but does have intermittent issues accepting connections that I'm yet to figure out.

As most routers cost no more than ~ £10 a year to run apart from the Superhub I'm not overly concerned by the power saving. I only use WiFi for phones and tablets so that isn't important to me either. I just wanted to put a 60Mbps+ connection into a router that was built this century.

From what I could see about the HH3 the firmware seemed to be as feature rich as the Superhub. I've set up the 655 now so I can simply alter the connection to PPPoE when the time comes and swap it over to the Infinity modem. The HH3 will be delivered on a Thursday and my install is the following Monday so I'll have time to explore it and set it up if it looks usable for what I need.

The D-Link is pretty poor - despite having some favourable reviews the damned thing screwed up big time yesterday. I thought the connection was down initially but when I looked again a few hours later it was still busted and I realised the router wasn't working. I had to hard reset it and set it up again.

ShadowTD · 07-06-2012, 10:44

I've actually been quite pleased with my HH3 - I've rebooted only a couple of times since my install (and one of those turned out to be my Hackintosh playing sillybuggers). My needs are simple - MAC-based static IP's and gigabit, with decent wireless range. While my iPad occasionally drops off the network, it reconnects in seconds. The only other weirdness is the single (!?!?!) Gigabit port.
It's good enough to still be hooked up after 3 months.

littleh · 07-06-2012, 12:40

Im just about to start trialing the new BT Vision box (kit not delivered yet) I have 40 meg infinity spot on however you have a seperate modem and the black router all a bit cluncky. Wireless range pee's all over the superslug nice and reliable

**Chris** · 07-06-2012, 12:46

I have a HH3 running basic up-to-8Mb ADSL. I'm happy with the wireless - better range than the Linksys gateway I used to use with VM National ADSL. It seems to lose its connection to the internet periodically, without realising that it has done so ... or at least, it's connected but speed is effectively zero. Every couple of weeks I will have to reboot it 2 or 3 times over a couple of days. Then it's all stable again.

My parents-in-law have a HH3 connected to FTTC and the improvement in wireless connectivity over the HH2 they used to have is marked. The only drawback is that the infinity install required an additional white box to be bolted to the wall next to the master phone socket, which the HH3 is then connected to. I've not had a play about with it but the WAN/LAN ports on it lead me to assume it's a modem. So I guess that means the HH3 is operating in router-only mode. Seems a bit clunky to me.

qasdfdsaq · 07-06-2012, 15:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris

My parents-in-law have a HH3 connected to FTTC and the improvement in wireless connectivity over the HH2 they used to have is marked. The only drawback is that the infinity install required an additional white box to be bolted to the wall next to the master phone socket, which the HH3 is then connected to. I've not had a play about with it but the WAN/LAN ports on it lead me to assume it's a modem. So I guess that means the HH3 is operating in router-only mode. Seems a bit clunky to me.

You're correct there.

Openreach have taken the "clean" approach in supplying simply an NTE and demarcation point. It's up to the user or ISP to supply the router, hence the separate units. Different people will have different needs, and it's not Openreach's business to be designing or supplying routers for people.

Frankly, I prefer it that way and wish VM had stayed the same.

**Chris** · 07-06-2012, 17:35

Right - so the modem is part of the Openreach network rather than the product supplied by the ISP? Presumably this is so the FTTC product can be supplied wholesale, with ISPs able to provision an address without bundling any hardware at all, if they choose?

qasdfdsaq · 07-06-2012, 18:35

Yes, that's exactly right.

kwikbreaks · 08-06-2012, 07:28

BT seem to be unphased by people using their own VDSL hubs though as I've seen plenty of references to people using Draytek and Fritzbox units. I doubt I will as they are expensive plus I've seen people having issues with one of the Draytek units on Infinity 2 - using two boxes is flexible and there will be no compatibility issues.

I had my fingers burned with a Draytek ADSL hub back in the early days - it was expensive at ~ £160 iirc but when BT released rate adaptive ADSL it performed very badly indeed and couldn't hold the connection. That lead to me seeing an ever increasing target noise margin and ever decreasing speeds. I investigated and bought a Speedtouch 585 which performed impeccably and was a fraction of the price. Draytek can stick their high priced kit where the sun don't shine so far as I'm concerned.