Home Network Problems, possible conflicting?

[Winjas]

Apologises, always feel bad joining a forum to ask for help, but hopefully someone can help.
I am in the UK if that helps.

We have a Modem/Router as our main supplied from our ISP (BT Homehub 5) which does wifi and lan to main house, working fine. We have an outbuilding office about 60-70m from house down garden, there is a Cat6 cable ducted to the office, and a 2nd router (TP Link) in the office acting as repeater (and lan router) for wifi in the office. All was working fine until a week ago.

It seemed to stop working without reason last week, so thinking it was the cable and cats i re-terminated both ends of the cable. Tested with LAN tester all 8 cores working fine (straight cable).

Now at the outbuilding if i plug in my linux laptop i can connect to the internet and everything working fine, But if we plug in office Imac or a Macbook nothing works? The Macs show "cable unplugged" and if trying to ping router say "network not reachable".. I am confused, as cable working fine with linux laptop and everything did work fine before last week?

As an experiment i plugged a 5port netgear switch into the cable, and then my laptop into the switch... Nothing, no network, no connection, nothing? And yet without the switch works fine?

Confused? Is is a IP conflict somehow? A Subnet issue? Why does the net work fine on laptop and nothing else..

Thanks

 

[CaptainSTX]

Apologises, always feel bad joining a forum to ask for help, but hopefully someone can help.
I am in the UK if that helps.

We have a Modem/Router as our main supplied from our ISP (BT Homehub 5) which does wifi and lan to main house, working fine. We have an outbuilding office about 60-70m from house down garden, there is a Cat6 cable ducted to the office, and a 2nd router (TP Link) in the office acting as repeater (and lan router) for wifi in the office. All was working fine until a week ago.

It seemed to stop working without reason last week, so thinking it was the cable and cats i re-terminated both ends of the cable. Tested with LAN tester all 8 cores working fine (straight cable).

Now at the outbuilding if i plug in my linux laptop i can connect to the internet and everything working fine, But if we plug in office Imac or a Macbook nothing works? The Macs show "cable unplugged" and if trying to ping router say "network not reachable".. I am confused, as cable working fine with linux laptop and everything did work fine before last week?

As an experiment i plugged a 5port netgear switch into the cable, and then my laptop into the switch... Nothing, no network, no connection, nothing? And yet without the switch works fine?

Confused? Is is a IP conflict somehow? A Subnet issue? Why does the net work fine on laptop and nothing else..

Thanks

1. Be sure the cable from the main house to the shop is plugged into a LAN port on the router in the shop unless for some reason you need to run in a double NATed setup.
2. Turn the DHCP function on the shop router off unless you need to run in a double NAT.
3. Take the 70m cable out of the equation. Take the shop's router into the house and connect it using a short store bought jumper and connect up all the shops PCs and see what happens. If everything works then you may need to replace the 60m cable with a better cable. Before doing that you could try installing a unmanaged gigabyte switch at the far end of the cable in the shop. It might increase the signal power enough to get across the distance you have.

 

[Winjas]

Thanks for tips, will take the 2nd router into 1st and test that

 

[yorgi]

Thanks for tips, will take the 2nd router into 1st and test that

I had a similar setup and all I can tell you is if you use long cables and you have winters like we do in Canada or super humid weather, the cable takes a big beating and should be replaced every few years.
I even bought the best cable that had lubrication inside but that still didn't do it. When the weather gets to a + figure and then goes down to -30 C in a day like in Quebec, that cable will have a short life.
If i would have to take a guess i would say its the cable. but do test that router without the 60m cable to make sure the router is its not defective.
Very important to have only 1 dhcp server otherwise you can get into weird situations unless each router has different IP address from the other. example
router 1 192.168.1.1
router 2 192.168.2.1
in this scenario you can have 2 dhcp servers going.
DHCP server conflicts can cause similar problems as you are having by some devices working and others won't

 

[TonyH]

Thanks for tips, will take the 2nd router into 1st and test that

Is this cable home brew one, using a conduit? Just wondering.

 

[yorgi]

Is this cable home brew one, using a conduit? Just wondering.

No they actually make and sell external network cables cat 5 or 6 that are made for outdoors and this one had a certain lubricated oil inside. But from my experience oil freezes as well when its super cold out there.
so that transition between hot and cold basically destroys the wire.
Humidity will do the same and if you live near the sea the salt will corrode the wire as well.
If you look at the internal wires they are tinny, it doesn't take much to make a short.

 

[TonyH]

No they actually make and sell external network cables cat 5 or 6 that are made for outdoors and this one had a certain lubricated oil inside. But from my experience oil freezes as well when its super cold out there.
so that transition between hot and cold basically destroys the wire.
Humidity will do the same and if you live near the sea the salt will corrode the wire as well.
If you look at the internal wires they are tinny, it doesn't take much to make a short.

Off topic, you in Quebec? I am in Calgary AB. This afternoon we had hail storm hit the Stampede fair ground. Lately
we keep having mild winter. Not much snow, not too cold weather. This summer everything bloomed early and growing
faster. Maybe due to global warming?.... Some CAT7 rated cable I have is semi rigid, pretty heavily shielded. Just like type N coax cable.

 

[yorgi]

Off topic, you in Quebec? I am in Calgary AB. This afternoon we had hail storm hit the Stampede fair ground. Lately
we keep having mild winter. Not much snow, not too cold weather. This summer everything bloomed early and growing
faster. Maybe due to global warming?.... Some CAT7 rated cable I have is semi rigid, pretty heavily shielded. Just like type N coax cable.

This summer its been hot here and at the same time cold with rain.
Our weather is never predictable. This is why in 6 years I had to change that cable 3 times
Quebec you have high humidity in the summer and super cold winters not like Calgary but close enough LOL

 

[System Error Message]

other than cabling issues i have the bt homehub5 too and i hate it. So make sure to check if thats working or not. Personally if networking is important to you get a modem and use a better router with better security and QoS. Even wifi on it is terrible.

sometimes the homehub will randomly redirect you to the setup wizard.

 

[Winjas]

Sorry all, missed these replies.
Thanks for comments, we are still looking into it.

 

[Winjas]

SO

Had a further play today with few spare hours..

- Factory Reset HomeHub Router
- Can connect linux laptop to LAN port 4 only? ports 1-3 have no network connection on laptop? (blown ports?)
- However still nothing other than my linux laptop will work in port 4 even! Macbooks / Imac show cable unplugged in port 4, yet Linux works fine?
- Same issues at the end of the long cable, laptop connects fine, nothing else even shows a cable connected?

Considering i cant get anything at all on ports 1-3 and port 4 is acting odd as above, would it be safe to assume the router/hub is faulty? It is only 3mths old so we will try calling for a replacement, still baffled and confused "IF" its 100% a faulty router/hub?

Thanks

 

[yorgi]

SO

Had a further play today with few spare hours..

- Factory Reset HomeHub Router
- Can connect linux laptop to LAN port 4 only? ports 1-3 have no network connection on laptop? (blown ports?)
- However still nothing other than my linux laptop will work in port 4 even! Macbooks / Imac show cable unplugged in port 4, yet Linux works fine?
- Same issues at the end of the long cable, laptop connects fine, nothing else even shows a cable connected?

Considering i cant get anything at all on ports 1-3 and port 4 is acting odd as above, would it be safe to assume the router/hub is faulty? It is only 3mths old so we will try calling for a replacement, still baffled and confused "IF" its 100% a faulty router/hub?

Thanks

If you ports on the router are gone, I think its time to change that router. something went wrong with a chip inside or bad solder joints. Production stuff made in China
You should have warranty on the router. Get an RMA

 

[Winjas]

If you ports on the router are gone, I think its time to change that router. something went wrong with a chip inside or bad solder joints. Production stuff made in China
You should have warranty on the router. Get an RMA

Indeed we are fighting our way through call centres to do just that! lol
Still cant for the life of me work out why port 4 works with a linux laptop and nothing else though!?

 

[yorgi]

Indeed we are fighting our way through call centres to do just that! lol
Still cant for the life of me work out why port 4 works with a linux laptop and nothing else though!?

if you did a factory reset and plugged the router alone and tested it without any tweaking and only 1 port works you can definately be sure something is wrong with the Router. Does the laptop that has Linux on it work with the other 3 ports?
or is it just this miraculous port 4 only?

 

[Winjas]

The laptop works with port 4 only, like you say a miracle port

 

[yorgi]

The laptop works with port 4 only, like you say a miracle port

That's some weird voodoo stuff man
Let us know how it all worked out

 

[System Error Message]

I managed to entirely ditch the BT homehub 5. I am on BT but i am using a BT openreach modem (the netgear modem advertised on this website can also be used too) with a mikrotik router. Look at the username and password for PPPOE from the BT homehub.

I think the homehub is really nice if you're a basic user but if you arent the only user or you need more things than the BT homehub sucks because of its lack of QoS. Use a different router, just replace the homehub as it doesnt support what you want to do. It doesnt support vlans or layer 3 segmentation. You can only set the SSID, password and encryption for your wifi and nothing else. The featureset of the homehub is really basic so you're better off using something else. I've tried calling BT before and the experience is just terrible. If your needs arent great than just pair one of the well ranked affordable consumer routers on this site with a modem and just use PPPOE from the router.

If it costs money to replace your bt homehub and you still want one i can sell you mine as mine is the homehub 5A which uses less power than 5B and has a faster CPU as well.

 

[Winjas]

Awaiting a delivery of a Homehub 6 (smart hub)

 

[Winjas]

Works fine now on new HomeHub 6
Very weird but hey ho

 

[Winjas]

Spoke too soon, worked for about a week.... gone again! Argghh