BT Community Care Forums

Last Wednesday, BT launched its revamped peer to peer support forum as the BT Care Community Forums.

Aside from a few minor teething problems and a growing wish-list of features that need adding or revising, first impressions are rather pretty good. I'm sure many of the niggles will be sorted out and, given a few weeks or months, the forums will be much more usable than their predecessors. So BT are to be congratulated on something of a success.

If you've never visited the Forums before, you might want to do so now. If ever you've had a question about your BT Broadband, it might be the place to find the answer - there are some very sharp folks around with a wealth of experience.

Less pleasing have been the early responses on the Forums to some very legitimate customer concerns about unwanted targeted advertising, tracking, back-doors being left in the BT HomeHub firmware and privacy issues in general. The locking of threads and constant references back to the forum's Terms and Conditions has a horrible resonance of the Phorm debacle that ran from 2007 until last year.

I really, really hope we are not going back to the bad-old-days. I suppose the next week or so will tell.

Finally, New Firmware for the BT HomeHub 2.0

Way back in June I wrote about the problems that were being caused by the latest iteration of the firmware for the BT HomeHub 2.0. Far from getting rid of problems, the new firmware (8.1.H.G (Type A) ) had introduced a raft of new problems that have annoyed BT customers all summer and autumn.

BT initially promised a fix by 26th June 2009, but no one was really surprised when this failed to materialise.

Finally, 6 months after the problems with firmware 8.1.H.G were first reported and a mere 5 months and 1 day later than promised, BT have finally begun to roll out a new firmware.
The details are as follows:

Software version 8.1.H.J (Type A)
Software version 4.7.5.1.83 (Type B)

There are two versions of the latest Hub 2.0 firmware because of changes in the BT Hub manufacturing process. The functionality of both firmware versions is the same.

The latest version introduces the following improvements:

* Changes to automatic wireless channel selection.
* Correction to a problem with Power Save activation.
* Correction to problems uploading large files.

The new firmware has been 'in the wild' for 48 hours now. It's not clear what proportion of Hub users have already been updated, but BT expect the roll out will be complete by Christmas. BT haven't specified which Christmas, but in the light of previous experience this may be a tactical omission.

So far, so good. I've not seen any reports that the firmware is causing any problems, but watch this space.

Wi-Spy 2.4i - A Great Tool for WiFi Problems

I've frequently written about the value of a little piece of freeware called InSSIDer when it comes to checking which wifi channel might be the best for you to use, to avoid conflict with a neighbour's router that might be on the same channel. If you have a wireless router, I really cannot recommend InSSIDer enough for every wireless equipped machine you have.

InSSIDer is produced by a company called metageek who produce a range of spectrum analysers - widgets that can help locate sources of wifi interference. The 'baby' of the range, shown at the top of the page, is the Wi-Spy 2.4i. metageek also produce a range of these devices that operate in the 2.4 GHz (802.11b/g), 5 GHz (802.11a/b/g/n)and 868 and 915 MHz bands.

If you want to see in detail what these devices can do, then it is worth spending a little time exploring the metageek website.

Perhaps the best way of understanding what the Wi-Spy 2.4i can do, is to look at a couple of traces from it. The device can output the 2.4 GHz spectrum in a variety of 2D ways and as a 3D display (but not all 3D-capable video cards are yet supported for the 3D display). To be honest, whilst the 3D display is pretty, I've found the the 2D displays to be more useful so far. The trace above (click on it to get a larger view)shows the 'Waterfall' view and the 'Density' view seen by my PC. The Density view is overlaid by the output from my wireless adapter, so you can see my router (solid green line) sitting on Channel 6 and my neighbour's router (solid red line), which is on Channel 1. The blue speckles surrounding the green line are the output from my router, in this case a 2-Wire 2700 operating in 802.11 b/g mode.

Now, lets take a look at some interference. In the trace above (again, click to see an enlargement), I've managed to identify some of the things that might cause my WiFi connection problems - and there are a couple of things that are still a bit of a mystery. I've also switched off the wireless adapter output, so that the W-Spy 2.4i output is a little clearer.

In the upper Waterfall display, I've labelled some of the sources of radio frequency emissions. Most obvious is the green vertical bar close to Channel 9. It turns out that this is the car alarm in my Toyota Previa. There are similar bars near to channel 6 and channel 13 that may also be car alarms, but I haven't yet shown that for certain.

A little harder to see are the array of green and yellow speckles that form a horizontal line across Channels 9 to 13 at the bottom of the Waterfall display. This it turns out, is characteristic of my microwave oven. So, although Channel 11 (one of the three non-overlapping channels in the UK) is free from wifi routers, it's probably not going to be a good channel to use as it will be affected by both the microwave oven and the car alarm.

There is an odd source of interference that appears best in the Density trace below and is labelled #2. It's not clear, yet, what is causing this. It's not my PC, nor any of the ancillary equipment. I've also eliminated my DECT phone, Homeplugs, Skybox, TV and a host of other things. Because of the way the trace was obtained and the close proximity of the router, it is possible that the router itself is being picked up by the Wi-Spy. Clearly, I've a bit more work to do on this.

In a nutshell, that's what the Wi-Spy 2.4i does - helps you find and eliminate, or avoid, sources of interference.

If you are in the UK, you can find Wi-Spy at Crownhill Associates for £68.94 (inc VAT). OK, it isn't cheap, but if you are having wifi problems, it could save you a lot of time and effort - and money spent on other solutions that don't work.

The other bit of good news is that Wi-Spy 2.4i works with both PCs (XP and Vista) and Macs (OSX 10.5).

As for me, I've been so impressed after only a few day's use, that I'm going to have to save up for the WiSpy 2.4i's big brother!

UPDATE: You can see a recent success with the Wi-Spy here. It shows what you might expect if you are hit with repetitive electrical impulse noise (REIN)

HomeHub 2.0 Faults & Finding the Manufacture Date of Your Home Hub

Going off the many posts on the BT Broadband Community Forum, a fair number of HomeHub 2.0 users are having problems with them. Perhaps the most commonly reported problems are associated with the wifi. Either the range of the router, despite it being type n, is pitiful and worse than earlier type g models, or the wifi keeps cutting out for no apparent reason. Other issues include an inability to hold sync particularly well, and the 8.1.H.G (Type A) firmware upgrade of May 2009 that has caused all sorts of problems, many of which are still unresolved.

Often, the problems disappear when the user goes back to using an earlier version of the HomeHub (1.0 or 1.5) or uses an entirely different router - which does sort of point to the HomeHub 2.0 being the culprit.

A great guy known as DS on the BT Community Forum, has recently been pulling his faulty HomeHub 2.0 (Type A)s apart and found some interesting thing, including:

- trapped and chafed power supply wiring
- finger-prints all over the internal circuitry
- loose/unattached aerial wires
- dirty connector strips for the wifi adapter sub assembly (Top right in the adjacent picture of one of my HomeHubs

I pulled two other HomeHub 2s apart to see if mine had similar issues. Fortunately, the two I looked at did not show any of the faults reported by DS - aside from a single greasy fingerprint on one of the internal components. The power supply wiring for the hub phone charger were well routed, aerial cables properly attached and the aerial plate securely mounted.

Now the question is this. Are these faulty HomeHubs fairly randomly scattered through the production run, or do some batches of hub suffer from more faults than others?

If you are going to report a fault on the BT Forum, or directly to the BT Help Desk, you might want to tell them when your hub was manufactured. To work this out, look at the base of your Home Hub and you will see a large sticker. The serial number appears on the top right hand side of the sticker and looks something like this:

SN: CP0825*****

The first four numbers refer to the year (08) and week (25 = June) of manufacture.

If you are tempted to full a faulty HomeHub apart, it is fairly straightforward by following the simple yet excellent instructions referred to by Jarviser here . Please note that I wore an earthed wristband to minimize the chance of static damage to the electronics.

Be warned though. If you do pull a hub apart, there is a risk that you could brick your hub and it might never work again!

You might also want to add your HomeHub date of manufacture to the list here, reporting whether it works and if it has problems, the nature of the fault.

STOP PRESS If you have any photographs of the insides of a HomeHub 2.0 (Type B), please send them to Jarviser at: jarviser.one@live.co.uk

He wants to add the details to his excellent website.

Don't Flash at Your Router!

I've written before about the range of electrical items that can have a dire effect on your broadband, but every so often you can get caught out, even if you know how these things can cause interference or even repetitive electrical impulse noise (REIN).

The other day, I was trying to help out someone with a broadband problem and thought it would be simplest if I took a photograph of my own broadband set-up to illustrate the point. I was showing him how the use of a timer can help miss spikes of REIN activity. To get the photo, I had to crawl under my office desk and pull out a panel to get at the wiring. Unfortunately, it was fairly dark under there and I had to use flash photography with my little digital camera. As it only has an LCD screen rather than a proper view-finder, the process was a bit hit and miss, so I took half a dozen shots to get one that was half-way decent. Things weren't helped because the camera was playing up and not capturing pictures properly, so I had to resort to a second camera.

Whilst taking the photos, the cameras were within a couple of feet of the router, my PC, the BT Master socket and all sorts of other PC-related electricals.

I was surprised to discover that my SNR margin began to drop very rapidly when I was taking the photos and then I realised that the download speed had dropped through the floor. The trace from RouterStats looked like this:

The SNR margin bottomed out at 9dB and after some minutes, shot up to 21dB. During all this, the IP profile dropped from my usual (pitiful) 1250kbps to 500kbps.

Well, the SNR target had dropped to 12dB by the following morning, but it took a further 15 hours before the IP profile increased again. Surprisingly, this settled at 1500kbps, but it was back to its normal 1250 kbps. So, no harm done in the long term.

There is a lesson here if you are on a long and flakey phone line - don't try flash photography near your router, it may cause the router to lose sync!

The ITCH Network - Free Local Computer Assistance for Disabled People

Over the last year or so, I've been trying to help out on a couple of web forums that deal with broadband problems. It's fascinating stuff and a real challenge to find a way to fix a problem without having direct access to the computer or router involved. Sometimes things work and sometimes they don't, but no two problems are ever quite the same.

During the course of this, I came across a subset of problems that were harder to deal with than most and these came from people who had disabilities of various sorts. Quite often, the solution to their problem was quite straightforward and would have taken minutes to fix, but they could not physically do what was needed - for instance, crawling under a desk to open up a phone socket. Sometimes, the needs were much more specialized. In both types of case, it was frustrating not to know where to point people for additional help.

Searching the internet for solutions, I came across IT Can Help - the ITCH Network.

ITCH was founded in 1994 by the late Ken Stoner, a Motor Neurone Disease sufferer, who realised the important role computers and communication devices can play in the lives of disabled people, and their needs when it comes to getting such sytems running and keeping them running. ITCH is a network of volunteers who provide FREE computer support to disabled people in their own homes and in other locations such as day centres and residential homes.

The ITCH network is a programme of the British Computer Society (BCS) - the industry body for IT professionals. The BCS has had an involvement in the voluntary disability sector for more than 25 years, focusing on how computer technology can assist disabled people.

So what can ITCH offer?

- Provide impartial advice on computer hardware and software;
- Install new equipment and software;
- Help in getting connected to the internet and using email;
- Help in getting started with standard software packages (eg word processing);
- Solving technical problems that may arise;
- Giving advice and assistance with hardware and software upgrades;
- Helping people get the best from their computers and software.

ITCH works in partnership with AbilityNet, the UK's leading provider of expertise on computing for people with any type of disability.

DO YOU NEED HELP?

If so, you can contact the IT Can Help Client Helpline via the AbilityNet Freephone (and textphone): 0800 269545

or by email: enquiries@abilitynet.org.uk

Ask for help from an IT Can Help volunteer

CAN YOU HELP ITCH?

Of course, activities like ITCH are totally reliant on volunteers. If you want to learn more about ITCH, or think you have the skills to become a volunteer (and no, you don't need to be a complete computer nerd to help!), then you can visit the ITCH website

You can email ITCH at: info@itcanhelp.org.uk

Telephone ITCH at: 01793 417723

or, you can even contact them by snail-mail at:

IT Can Help (BCS),
Member Groups,
First Floor,
Block D,
North Star House,
North Star Avenue,
Swindon
SN2 1FA

Finding The Source of Interference

I've spent ages trying to find some useful and practical advice on ways to track down the source of broadband interference and it has been remarkably hard to find anything useful. Finally, I've managed to track something down which, although highly technical, does at least suggest some possible approaches. It also gives some good examples of the types of devices that can cause problems and how they do it.

The paper, entitled "Interference to Amateur Radio Reception," was produced by the Radio Society of Great Britain. Although it is intended for radio amateurs, it appears to apply equally to broadband reception.

In rural areas, electric fences may be a very specific source of broadband problems, particularly where they run close to, and parallel with, the telephone cables. If there are no long runs of parallel fencing, then well-maintained fences shouldn't normally cause too much of a problem. However, fences that are broken and shorted to earth, or ones which have green vegetation touching the wire or tape conductor, can put a large unwanted signal into the telephone lines, especially in wet weather. Buried telephone cables are particularly susceptible to this form of interference.

Typically, there is little information on this source of interference available in the UK from BT, who seem fixated with urban communities, but telecom providers and electric fence manufacturers in New Zealand do recognise this as a significant cause of problems in rural communities and have produced a very useful leaflet on the subject. This can be obtained from the Gallagher electric fence company.