BTWhole home mesh not working after update to firmware SG4K100174

[JeffJ1]

Hi about a month ago my BT Whole home mesh reported errors and stopped responding. I initially thought it was the BT discs and raised an error with BT. However, after a few weeks talking to BT support it appears that when my Fast5364 router was upgraded to SG4K100174 this caused the local DNS functionality to stop working. This has caused a few errors being raised with their support

However, when they are plugged into my talktalk router they can’t resolve btwhole.home in the local which means the discs don’t mesh correctly or allow me to connect to the web management interface.

To prove the discs are working, I have taken my discs and plugged them into my friends Virgin router, they work perfect, I have also tried Shell ISP and they work as expected.

Does anybody know how I can get my router firmware downgraded to the previous version that worked perfectly for 18 months or can somebody suggest a fix that will get btwhole.home to resolve?

many thanks for any help with this issue

Jeff

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Hello,

This should now be resolved. Are you now able to connect to your mesh system?

Thanks

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Morning,

Sorry for the delay. Just a quick update to advise that this should hopefully be resolved in the next 24hrs with a router update.

Thanks

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Morning,

The team have asked if you can confirm which mesh system you have please. Is it the standard, premium or mini?

Thanks

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Morning,

Yes, they are going to look at this particular issue as a whole and I'll hopefully receive an update back soon.

Thanks

[JeffJ1]

Hi Michelle,

Thanks for passing over to the devices team, A quick check as your response was to delahan’s message I’m hoping you have passed my query across?

Just wanted to say I have been with talktalk (tiscali) for nearly 25 years and have only ever had 2 problems this being the second. Hopefully, they can keep up the great service and sort this out!

Thanks

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Morning,

Just to advise, I've raised this over to our Devices Team for investigation.

Thanks

[Gliwmaeden2]

To avoid confusion, please start your own thread, @delahan. Return to the message board and click on start a topic. 

Also complete your community forum profile details. Go via your avatar/name; settings. Add your Talktalk landline number  / account number in Personal Information. SAVE CHANGES. 

[delahan]

I have got exactly the same issue since Tuesday 11-07-23. One disk works with the router, the other 2 don't connect. App does not detect the discs and btwhole.home does not connect.

[delahan]

I have got exactly the same issue. BT said they could not help and it was an issue with TalkTalk router.

[KeithFrench]

You can use a DHCP Reserved for the BT Mesh, that way it will always be the same IP address, e.g. 192.168.1.2 or whatever.

[JeffJ1]

Hi Keith,

Thanks for the suggestions

My devices are iPhone, Android and smart tvs, I believe I would need to jail break them to add static dns routes.

On the connect direct via ip address suggestion, yes it should work, but if you think about the logic here.

The disc can’t rely on a fixed ip address like 192.168.1.1, (like the router does) they have to use what is assigned by the DHCP server in the router and then register a local name of btwhole.home against master disc ip address

This local name of btwhole.home is used by the discs themselves to manage the mesh, also by the management app and by the web interface.

Hence the ip address is auto redirected to the local name when connected to and that then fails to be resolved.

The slave discs will be doing the same as they try to negotiate and auto adapt the mesh. Hence why the slave discs are red because they can’t resolve btwhole.home to the master disc.  Even if I could get into the discs web interface I don’t believe I can configure a static dns to the master disc as this isn’t how a mesh works.

I won’t be surprised if internet printers start having the same problem. However, using the direct ip address, with a printer, could solve the problem if you reserved an assigned ip address. 

regards

jeff

[KeithFrench]

You obviously could access the BT Whole Home Mesh via it's IP address that can be seen in the Sagemcom devices listings. The only other way to do this is to use a hosts file on a PC, with the btwhole.home DNS entry in it.

[KeithFrench]

You cannot add local hosts to the router's DNS server.

[JeffJ1]

Hi Keith,

Thanks for the suggestion I will try later. For clarity my problem isn’t public DNS lookup, it’s local DNS, so I’m doubtful it will solve this issue.However, I will try as you never know what talktalk have done with this custom firmware.

A bit more detail on my problem .When the router starts, it acts as a proxy DNS between the WAN(public)and LAN(local). Then as devices connect locally, in my case the bt mesh discs, they ask for an ip address from the router. The master disc (connected via Ethernet cable) should also register itself within the router with a local name of  btwhole.home. Therefore, when I enter btwhole.home into the browser I should get resolved locally and routed to the mesh master disc. 

This used to work on my talktalk router, until the firmware upgrade, and now it doesn’t. If I take my discs to friends with different routers/isp it works fine.

When I try it on the talktalk router I get server ip address not found. So I assuming it’s trying to resolve it via the public DNS and btwhole.home should never exist in the public DNS it should only exist locally.

Hope this explains my problem in a bit more detail.

so in my eyes there are three possible solutions. 

1. Downgrade the router to previously working firmware

or

2. Configure the routers Local DNS correctly, unfortunately talktalk have hidden most of the useful functionally of the router via their custom firmware.

or 

3. Buy a router that works. I would prefer to use the talktalk router as it is normally very reliable

Regards

Jeff

[KeithFrench]

Have you tried using Google DNS 8.8.8.8 as the network DNS server in the 5364? You can do this from:-

Dashboard > See internet settings > Manage advanced settings > Internet connectivity