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[Jon555]

I've had a HH5a for a couple of months and after it updated itself to the latest firmware it's been having a lot of WAN drops and my speed is going down (I assume due to DLM). Anyway my initial approach was to revert to the HG612 modem (with whatever f/w BT Agent has put in it) which is a bit inconvenient but what the heck. Now BT have sent an HH5b as a replacement for the 5a (I have a Huawei cabinet BTW so presumably G.Inp hasn't been my friend). I have to send one back (or pay). I'm assuming the 5b is the way to go, but how is the general firmware quality and stability, as I've seen people being rude about it? (Mostly vs. the HH5a that is.) Also any other comments on 5a vs. 5b would be most welcome (I can find quite good stuff on the spec. of the 5a, but not for the 5b).
Cheers
John

Sample comment (in a G.Inp thread elsewhere) that made me want to ask:
"Even the Homehub 5B (broadcom chipset) supports it out of the box, though thats a bug ridden mess itself (NOBODY buy one of them unless you want bug ridden junk which crashes )"

[Dray]

Why not ask on the forum where you read it?

[Jon555]

That was just one person's opinion on one forum that I was using as an example. I was after a general view on a well-informed forum as s/he may just have a bias against it (or a point).

[Dray]

The 5B is more stable than the 5A and supports G.INP properly, but there are reports of port forwarding anomalies. However, I just used mine as a modem essentially by putting my router behind it in the DMZ which left the HH5B as still being able to offer BT Wifi but my router doing everything else.

[Jon555]

Thanks, as I use port forwarding do you have any links to problems people have had?

(Rather entertainingly I see the HG612 has caused the 5a to reboot, although I suspect it got a firmware update (the modem that is) as it happened just after midnight. Still luckily my connection speed hasn't slowed any more...)

[Dray]

Unfortunately not, I was trying to say that I didn't use port forwarding on the HH5B so I have no experience of problems.

[burakkucat]

If I was provided with both a BT HH5A & a BT HH5B and then was told I can keep one but would have to return the second, I would keep the HH5B & return the HH5A.

The HH5A has a Lantiq chipset (like the ECI B-FOCuS modems) whereas the HH5B has a ? ? chip set. (Sorry but I have forgotten. Possibly Broadcom.    )

[Jon555]

Apparently the HomeHub 5A has a Lantiq VRX268 SoC and the 5B a Broadcom BCM63268. There is very little information available on the former (it's a 500MHz MIPS 32-bit core with extra goodies) and almost none on the latter (400MHz dual-core 32-bit MIPS). Which is about par for the course with this type of chip. The chips will have bugs, the manufacturer's drivers will have bugs and the firmware will have bugs. They probably won't rush to fix them. I also know a lot of the other chips in the 5a but not the 5b, so of little use (it has particularly good 5GHz WiFi drivers for example, also 128MB of both flash and RAM).

Oh and thanks for the comment!

[burakkucat]

Apparently the HomeHub 5A has a Lantiq VRX268 SoC and the 5B a Broadcom BCM63268.

Thank you for filling in my memory gaps. Much appreciated. 

[kitz]

Apparently the HomeHub 5A has a Lantiq VRX268 SoC and the 5B a Broadcom BCM63268.

Yep and apparently both have some f/w bugs with BTr in no hurry to fix them.    Because the 5A is the older model then its had more fixes, so it depends on which of the bugs are likely to impact you least.    I think I'd tend to agree with b*cat to keep the 5B though purely because of g.inp.   
However port forwarding is problematic and Ive known at least one EU going back to using the 5A because of this.

[Jon555]

One of the things I don't like about the 5a is the b/w between the WiFi and Ethernet is poor. It may just be they didn't have much memory available for buffering, or something else. I moved my NAS onto it (975Mbps WiF connection and f/d 1G Ethernet sounded good) and went from 70+MB/s down and 40+ up to 22/12. Yes - I now write to it at 100Mbps. I think if the 5b improves that and with everything else looking more-or-less equal I'll keep it. I have no idea what BT would charge me if I kept both, but I suspect it's not worthwhile as one would just sit in a box for several years.

I really am keen to find out more about the port forwarding issues - an ideas where to look as search engines aren't helping much, I can't find anything useful re the B?

[licquorice]

There are numerous posts on the BT forums complaining about port-forwarding issues.

[Jon555]

I did look there, but couldn't find anything specific to the 5b. There are 5a specific threads but mostly they are finger-trouble on the user's part, or with old firmware. Here's a 5a example:
https://community.bt.com/t5/Other-Broadband-Discussions/BT-Home-Hub-5-crashes-when-clicking-port-forwarding/m-p/1456151/highlight/true#M104223

[kitz]

@ Jon

This is the one I was thinking of by bob pullen.   You can pretty much be sure that he knows what he's talking about.
As you can see, he has no problems with the port forwarding rules on the HH5B - until he tries to put his Pi into the DMZ

https://community.bt.com/t5/Other-Broadband-Discussions/BT-HH5b-DMZ-amp-Port-Forwarding-problem/td-p/1469402

[Jon555]

Excellent, thank you.
(I'm a bit annoyed it didn't turn up in my search attempts, but extremely grateful you took the time to pass it on.)

I'm currently running the 5a+Modem to get a base-line of what is possible before trying the 5b, plus if I keep swapping over I presumably might get an even lower speed. I'm hoping I'll be able to get an idea of whether the 5b is solid (for my needs) before having to send something back...