Plusnet customers suffer patchy connection on 5GHz band

Some Plusnet broadband customers who use the Hub One router have been suffering from patchy internet connectivity when connecting to devices using the 5GHz WiFi band.

The issue dates back to March of this year, according to the Plusnet community forum, following a firmware update of the Hub One router to v4.7.51.83.8.263. Ever since the update, an increasing number of customers have been complaining of glitchy or unusable internet when connecting through 5GHz.

Plusnet attempted to work around this problem by offering a firmware downgrade on the affected devices. While this worked for some customers, a Plusnet support agent said that the downgrade alone “is unable to resolve the problem.”

Ever since the problem first surfaced, Plusnet has been trawling through router logs in an attempt to discover the root of the issue. However, there has been no indication of a permanent fix as yet and customers of the provider continue to report the problem.

Some customers have found that rebooting the router can resolve the issue, but that it often recurs within, at most, a few days. Some have resigned themselves to disabling the 5GHz band and using the 2.4GHz band in order to have a reliable connection.

Plusnet Product Manager Bob Pullen said: “I’ll be the first to admit that this problem has been around far longer than we’d have liked. Largely attributed to our complete failure to replicate the behaviour in the lab. In an ideal world, we’d have collectively identified a particular device/config that can be used to reproduce the error (all ears if anyone has any suspicions). I’m confident things would progress in leaps and bounds if we could get to this stage.”

In the meantime, Plusnet has been engaging with its router vendor and firmware engineers in an attempt to find a solution, but this continues to prove difficult.