projectshome.devarticles.bthomehub

Article Download

• Article Zip

External Sources

• Jason Hirst Blog about the Home Hub – the comments are an additional source of great information
• Unlokias Post About Telnet
• Thomson 716g – PDF Manual
• Thomson 7G
• Thomson guide to all the telnet commands

Flow

• Introduction
• Hub Overview
  • Screenshots of every hub page along with description of all the options
• Looking under the hood
  • Telnetting into the hub to access the full range of options including those not available via the web interface
  • Give brief over-view of each section
• Good Points
• Bad Points
• Conclusion

Good Points

• Lets you easily add new ports to be forwarded
  • Has a wide selection of popular applications for speedier method of assigning ports to a client via port presets
  • Adding ports manually is pretty easy and it lets you do port ranges
  • Can set trigger ports at the same time

Bad Points

• Turning off DHCP server means cannot access internet
  • Doesnt matter whether you manually set the IP of the client on both the client and in the hub (Advanced/HomeNetwork/Devices/ClientName/Configuration)
  • Auto-IP seems to do nothing, the tick in the box gets cleared whenever you do apply
• Auto-update – through the standard web interface you're unable to turn it off
  • Means you can get disconnected when you're in the middle of doing something
  • I had this happen already during a game of Dawn of War, kinda sucks
  • I've had the hub do two updates in one week, this would of been only 1 I'm sure but since it was new it had to do the intial update when I first hooked it up
  • The update seems to reset the clock in the hub so you have to manually update the time
    • If you dont then any VOIP phones connected to the hub will have the wrong time associated with them including their logs
• Losing config pages
  • After tinkering with the hubs setup pages you may find that some of them have dissapeared
  • Unless you have a brain like a rodent that can remember all the obscure paths to pages then you may end up looking for the page you were just on for hours before you realise, I did!
  • Only thing that fixed it was to do a full “Reset to factory defaults”, tried simple “Restart” web option and then did a full manual power off. Did the “Press the button of the back for 20 seconds” thing as well. As stated only the full “Reset to factory defaults” option brought back the lost pages.
  • The page in question that continuously gets lost is the Advanced/HomeNetwork/Interface/LocalNetwork, when I view the Interfaces page the entire Local Network? branch is missing meaning that unless you had the foresight to bookmark all the pages in that branch then you have no way to access them. After the 3th/4th time I did learn to bookmark them straight off :¬)
• Odd DHCP/DNS behaviour
  • The only way to get online is to enable the DHCP server, even if you lock an IP to each client manually you can't get online. The only way is to set the client to get its address dynamically
  • You can still set a static IP to each client via the hub, you just cant use that same IP in the clients network config, that must remain on auto.
• Cant use encryption higher than WEP without enabling automatic client registration (Advanced/HomeNetwork/Interfaces/WLan/Configuration/Allow new devices dropdown)
  • Setting the above dropdown to “Via Registration” means you get a new option to “Scan for wireless devices” which allows you to register new clients with the hub. This also prevents you from using any encryption over WEP 
  • Can register all your clients and then set it to “Not Allowed” TEST THIS and then WPA works
  • The default option is “Automatic” which means as long as they use the correct password they can connect and use your hub 
  • MAC spoofing is pretty simple anyhow but still, its one more tiny step that might make a network tapper more inclined to go for your neirboughs totaly unsecured network :¬)
• Default WLan channel selection sucks
  • The default channel is 1, alot of other people have had problems with channel 1, on the other hand channel 11 seems to be the best
• Hub loses internet connection under heavy load
  • If you use a file sharing application such as DC++, Emule etc then you might lose your internet connection
  • The hub reports everything is ok but its not 
  • Sometimes manually “Disconnect”ing and “Connect”ing will get things back to normal
  • Sometimes it requires a full hub “Restart”
• Javascript error with telephony means you lose the menu including when you do “Back”
• Hub becomes totally unresponsive when an automatic bios update fails
  • Cant connect via ethernet or wireless
  • Searches for phone line, shows data and wireless to be active but doesnt connect online
  • Can be fixed by doing a manual bios update plus using the push the button in trick:
  • push the button in trick
    • Just found this today woohoo!
    • BT say to just hold the button on the back in for 15–25 seconds to make the hub restart.
    • The real trick (which they dont tell you to do) is to power off the decive i.e. unplug it.
    • Hold the button on the back in as you power it back on.
    • Keep holding the button down for 15+ seconds and then release it.
    • During this time all the lights should of lit up and then died down again.
    • Now you can do a manual update using the downloadable firmware updater.
    • Just remember to set a valid ip for the system you have ethernetted into the hub i.e. 192.168.1.65 which falls in the hubs default dhcp pool.