BT Wholehome causing line drops

[billgrieve]

I recently moved from EE to Vodafone. Have been having issues with the line dropping. Vodafone sent Openreach and they confirmed that line was OK. Vodafone replaced my router but still getting line drops. They asked me to disconnect my BT Wholehome from the router and the drops stopped so they are suggesting that I do not use my BT Wholehome or get some form of support. Any suggestions.

[KeithAlger]

BT Wholehome pretty much just works as a mesh network that REPLACES the WiFi on your existing router.  Once you've BT Wholehome set up, you should even be able to turn the WiFi on your (Vodafone) router off, and just use the BT Discs.

As the Discs just connect to an Ethernet port on the router they shouldn't be impacting on any other function of the router (their only interface is via IP protocols), so it's pretty much impossible to see how these devices could be causing line drops.

I'd be kind of suspicious that there was a differnet fault was found on the line somewhere, but that your Wholehome is being blamed in order that you can be "blamed" and then charged for the fix.

*I'd retry them, but once set up, disable the WiFi on the router....

[tjb15]

I also have problems using the BT wholehome with the vodafone router; sporadically it seems to cause the router to malfunction - can't even access it using the internal 192.168.1.1 web address, so it's not just a 'line drop'. Resetting the BT system usually causes the router to start working again; though when it doesn't it's all a complete nightmare because it all has to be reset in a particular order to stand any hope of recommencing. I think a replacement of the router is probably the way to go.

[Blair]

Hey @tjb15, are you using only the Whole Home Wi-Fi, or are you also using the Wi-Fi from the router? 

It might be best to switch off the router Wi-Fi.

Blair

[tjb15]

Obviously, to prevent clashing, the wifi from the router ought to be switched off (or at least left using a different network name for redundancy), but that is not the issue here. After  much exasperation, I called vodafone, got my username and password for the PPPoE connection, and used a third party router. Problem now solved.

If anyone has managed to get the BT Whole Home system to work with Vodafone's router they will no doubt declare their genius in reply.

[KeithAlger]

I think one of my projects for the future is to get a loaner of a thermal camera and study what happens to the VF router under different conditions!  It seems to be going wrong in ways that it's terribly hard to justify/fathom!

[simonmcc]

Same or similar issue here. I normally use a Netgear router with my bt whole home, but of course when there are line issues Vodafone ask me to plug in their router, and every time the network completely locks up. The last time I went through devices one by one to find out what was causing the issue and didn't find anything.

It seems the issue is deodepend on startup order somehow .

Today, I only plugged one whole home disc in, literally nothing else and the router becomes unresponsive. 

Very odd behavoube between two huge UK products! If anyone has any suggestions, I'd like to hear them .

Would it be worth trying some sort of network analysis?