Powerline adaptor & BT Home Hub 3 Problems Roaming

[22shandy]

Hi,

I have BT Infinity installed with the BT Home Hub 3 but due to the shape and age of our property the wireless connectivity from the HH3 would not reach the other end of the house.

As a result I purchased the Netgear powerline adaptor (XAVN2001), which connects into the BT Home Hub 3. This powerline adaptor provides wireless connectivity and works well - no complaints there.

The issue I have is that my family and I are constantly roaming through-out the house on various mobile devices and once you have connected wirelessly to either the BT HH3 or the powerline adaptor, it is then not possible to reconnect to the alternate wireless point for a sufficiently long period of time.

It is not even possible to force a conection to the alternate wireless point, even by forgetting the network configuration and re-connecting from scratch.

I have tried various configurations to get roaming to work and I always get the same problem.

In summary my current set-up is as follows:

- same SSID on BT HH3 and Powerline adaptor
- same passcode on BT HH3 and Powerline adaptor
- static IP configured on the powerline adaptor outside of BT HH3 range (192.168.1.15)
- same subnet mask configured on both BT HH3 & powerline adaptor - (255.255.255.0)
- same IP gateway address configured on both BT HH3 & powerlien adaptor - (192.168.1.254)


I heva read some forums and it has been indicated that this issue is to to the BT HH3 not allowing duplicate mac addresses but I am unsure if that is the root cause of this problem or not.... plus I am not sure if there is a way around this issue by changing the conifiguration of the BT HH3 or the powerline adaptor.

Any help is greatly appreciated, as this problem is causing me a huge headache... I have a wife and two daughters in the house and I am the IT guy who it taking a kicking 🙂


Thanks very much.

[jmizoguchi]

problem is not all wifi devices has ability to hop the AP .

google roaming aggressive and you will find such as Win XP etc has setting for threshold.

Also wifi device to hop sometime are in wireless AP side. Most access point devices do have some ability to change the how it behaves when multiple devices are connected.

In your case some of these setting are not available.

I would look open-mesh.com and create better hotspot .

[22shandy]

Hi,
Thanks for your response.

Just to confirm, I think you are saying that using a powerline adaptor with the BT HH3 is never going to allow seemless or near seemless roaming of wireless connectivty and thus I should look for an alternate solution?

Thanks.

[jmizoguchi]

Doesn't matter power line with wireless or consumer wifi ap.

Usually the roaming aggressiveness issues are common and require better products to to hot spot design.

[22shandy]

I have taken your advise and spoken to open-mesh in the UK. You are correct, the state that their product provides seemless roaming wireless connectivty.

I am going to order a couple of access points and test their solution. Will let the forum know how I get on.

Thanks very much for your help.

[ShinyF1]

I just had infinity installed and have had problems trying to replicate my old setup.

I used to have a Netgear DGND3300 as the main hub on ADSL, connected via a powerline adapter to the old HH2 with DCHP disabled, both with the same SSID and devices [laptops, ipods, ipads etc] would switch seamlessly between them. The hub was only using the 2.4GHz channels and not the 5GHz.

Had Infinity installed about 10 days ago, and after the BT man had done his thing, reset the whole thing with the HH3 in place of the Netgear router, with the same IP addresses and ranges and non-conflicitng wireless channels as before. You would think it would all work fine...

Sadly not - apparently the architecture of the HH3 is such that if you have a wired wifi range extender connected to it [via an ethernet cable or through a powerline], once a device connects to the slave wifi, the HH3 locks that MAC address out so cannot reconnect back to the HH3 when you move around. Very frustrating

Calls to BT and speaking to their engineers did not ellicit a solution so I found a heavily discounted Netgear WDNR3400 at PC World last week and have substituted that for the HH3, and brought the DNGD3300 out of retirement to use as the extender. I think I may have gone overboard as I have two networks on the go, the 'old' 2.4GHz one as before and a new 5GHz one with a different SSID.

It does work, but the switching is not as smooth as it was originally on original BT Broadband setup. I suspect there is some finetuning that could be done which is beyond my technical knowhow to get the current setup working perfectly [can anyone help with router settings on this].

On a positive note the pitiful wireless speeds being delivered by the HH3 have been nearly doubled by switching to the Netgear WLAN router. It's still only 65% of the 'wired' speed that seems to be available but fingers crossed.

Hope your access point solution works.

[ShinyF1]

Sorry 22shandy I meant to say I have the identical problem to you - wife and 2 daughters with heavy wifi needs but next to no IT knowledge.

In hindsight I am beginning to think my original working setup was more luck than judgement