I am a retail BT Broadband customer, and have been struggling with the Hub in two locations for 6 months. I have a btinternet.com domain mail id and account. I have previously been a BT Connect customer and used a Linksys Wireless Gateway which was rock solid.

I have given up on the BT home hub today in one of my hub locations and replaced it with a Linksys WAG160GN. I do not have an IP phone in this location. I tried googling but got no help, and I was tired so I rang BT Broadband help and came across a very knowledgeable and helpful guy.

My linksys had been configured to work with the BT Connect Line and needed the following parameters changed.

* DSL Modulation needed to be set to G.dmt

* The user name and password needed changing, the domain for the user name needs to be btbroadband.com. I am unclear of what the rules are for the user id portion of the username; it needs to be a mail address, but it seems that it doesn't need to be real and the password doesn't seem that important either. I expect they validate the line in different ways.

* The encapsulation parameter remained pppoa.

The line can't cope with two live hubs, so don't plug the new hub into  an extension socket, and turn the hub you want to retire off as well. I was advised that a 3 minute down time is required, but I am not sure I left it that long.

It really was that easy

set DSL Modulation
change the login credentials
plug it in correctly having turned off the old hub

Now to see if its any better 

My first google query leads to the advice to use a fixed/static IP address.

How can I do this and make it nomadic, i.e. portable between networks? Why is it only wifi that fails?

I mustn't forget that I have Dell Connection Manager installed. Maybe I should just give up and install Windows 7.

I need to go to work now. I might some more googling later.

The http://is.gd/bWzvL, a thread on these forums points at all my trials and tribulations using the Vista box with a Home Hub.

i didnt read your post correctly, sorry i was up til 3 am last night, and up at 7.30 this morning, so i'm a bi tired now

if you can get rid of the dell connection manager in favour of the windows zero configuration

what you need to do is assign a static ip address, outside the range of the dhcp server, so if your dhcp server asigns 192.168.1.2-192.168.1.25, set your static ip address as 192.168.1.26 or higher

on homehubs 254 AND 253 ARE RESERVED this may be the same on other routers as well, so be aware of that(they could be the address of the router, or a usb port on the router, as they are on homehubs)

Since last friday, I have been experimenting with using an HTC Hero as an Internet Modem on my Vista laptop. I have a T-Mobile contract. (Moderators : these are facts pertaining to understanding Vista's appalling dhcp behaviour, I know I have travelled some distance, but please bear with me.)

I changed the Linksys from wep to wpa today. Will this make a difference?

I have also changed the sleep/hibernate/shutdown button configuration and am trying to shutdown between site/network moves, except at work, where I may move from wired to wifi via a sleep.

if you cant find it in add remove programs its probably running as a service. Follow the steps below to stop it.


1) Go to Start/Run and enter “Services.msc” which will bring up the windows Services window.

2) Here find "Dell Wireless WLAN Tray Service"
Right click it and go to Properties.
Under the General tab change the “Startup type” to Manual and then hit the Stop button below and then click OK.

3) Now back in the Services folder find “Wireless zero configuration”.(WLAN Autoconfig in win7)Right click it and go to Properties.
Under the General tab change the “Startup type” to Automatic and then his the Start button below and click OK.

4) now try connecting to your wireless network.

Dave Levy wrote on Oct 28^th, 2010 at 10:42pm:


I was thinking of removing the the Dell Connection Manager, but upgraded the drivers and linksys firmware.

As said above, prior to the update, I am now getting errors that the dhcp server is refusing to issue a new address in response to ipconfig /renew. Also I am getting an error on a third device, runs MacOS when I reboot the hub.(So document this error!)

This does not imply the dell connection manager at fault. Perhaps I should check out the registry fitting described in Windows Vista cannot obtain an IP address from certain routers or from certain non-Microsoft DHCP servers  at http://support.microsoft.com/. Although why rebooting the dhcp server works in that case I haven't a clue.

Also KB 9283 now has some you might b interested in these links, including a search on "Windows Vista DHCP Problems" which seems to have quite a few references. More reading 

One of these is Windows Vista does not keep its DHCP IP address if a DHCP server is not available which on reading stil does not seem right. My problem is that on arrival in a new dhcp server's domain I want to ask for a new address and this request fails; I cannot using static addressing, and do not think I can use alternate addressing either. I want to request a new ip address.

The original problem still remains on the BT Home Hub. I need to stop the client losing the connection. Perhaps I should make the home only computer a static or fixed address.