Firstly, you do need BT Broadband; either the old ADSL 2 or the new fibre Infinity for this hub to be any use at all.
It is a good idea to check prices with BT before ordering equipment elsewhere. I got my first home hub 6 for £9.99 delivery charge when I upgraded to BT Infinity.
BT sent the new hub in good time and asked me to set it up the day before BT Infinity was due to be activated so that they could check the hub was working.
All I had to do was unpack the box and connect the hub up. I connected the hub to power with the adapter that was supplied. Also to the BT master socket via the Broadband port with a grey ended cable that was NOT supplied! Fortunately, I had the necessary cable from a previous BT hub.
Then I just powered up the hub and waited for the lights to change via stages to a solid blue.
At that point, I just connected my laptop and printer using the old-fashioned method with the hub key code. The printer settled on the 2.4 GHz channel and the laptop on the 5.00 GHz channel. Since everything worked fine I saw no need to meddle.
The next day the hub went through all the colours again whilst BT switched on Infinity. After about half an hour the connection settled to a fairly constant 64mb, where by and large it has stayed ever since.
There has been the odd glitch; the connection did go very slow for one session. On a couple of times the hub has restarted during a session but I've never had a hub that didn't do this occasionally. But for this I would have given it 5 stars, it is certainly worth 4 stars.
My heart goes out to everyone who has had issues with this product. If anything changes I will let you know. I'm currently on firmware version SG4B1000B540 which was updated on 18/05/18. I now believe the hub may have been upgrading its firmware on the occasions it restarted.
Also I've noticed that the Hub occasionally gets kicked off the 5GHz channel and reconnects on the 2.4GHz channel. The 5 GHz channel tends to be faster but can be less reliable.
I've purchased a second hub 6 via Amazon to keep as a spare. This is my major gripe; the amount of equipment that comes with the hub differs from box to box.
With the hub from BT I got the power adaptor, the extra key code sticker, and a bag to recycle my old hub. That was it.
With the hub from Amazon I got the power adaptor, the extra key code sticker, a yellow ended Ethernet cable that I know how to use, and a red ended Ethernet cable I don't know how to use.
Crucially neither set contained filters or the grey ended broadband cable for connecting the hub to the BT master socket via the Broadband port. Anybody receiving these two kits who had never had a hub before would have been left up a certain creek without a paddle!
My Amazon seller is hopefully going to help me out and send me any missing items separately. Some sellers are more helpful than others, and here's the rub: Amazon is known to take hubs from one supplier to fulfil orders from another, so nobody can be quite sure what is in the box.
Perhaps it's about time Trading Standards sunk its teeth into Amazon!
| Brand | BT |
|---|---|
| Product Dimensions | 20 x 11 x 13 cm; 990 Grams |
| Item model number | 084319 |
| Manufacturer | BT |
| Color | Black |
| Connectivity Type | Wi-Fi |
| Wireless Type | 802.11n, 802.11b, 802.11a |
| Operating System | Windows |
| Are Batteries Included | No |
| Item Weight | 990 g |
