Airport Extreme and BT Homehub

Question

Airport Extreme and BT Homehub

I wonder if anyone can help. I will try to make the problem clear but please bear with me as I am not very computer literate.

I am on BT Infinity and have a history of the homehub crashing and/or having to restart it because of lost internet connections. I have a separate issue in that I have multiple Macs I am currently backing up using a Freecom Mg hard drive which means that I have to plug and unplug into each mac separately. I was hoping that with the extreme I could replace the homehub entirely by connecting the new extreme to the OpenReach modem in place of the homehub. However i am unclear how to do that because the user manual seems to contemplate setting up a new network from scratch. I already have multiple wireless devices connecting via the homehub e.g. Sonos, a music streamer, computers, printers etc and am frightened i will lose all existing connections.

Is there anyone out there who could give me a fool's guide as to how to do this, assuming of course i am right with the premise that I can indeed delete the home hub. (In case relevant, currently the home hub is connected to the modem via LAN 1, LAN 2 is unused.)

Many thanks

Posted on Jan 5, 2012 6:34 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Stolen_uk

Level 1

5 points

Jan 5, 2012 7:23 AM in response to MoosetheMoosinator

I am on BT infinity too. Ditch the homehub and replace with the AX. Insert the red ethernet cable into the first port of the AX and log on to the AX using Aiport Utiity.

Before disconnecting the BThomehub youll need to get a few settings from the box.

You will need the two DNS server ip's and the username you log in with. the password you will need to use is BT

You will need to set up the internet connection as is in your advanced settings on the homehub in the AX. Its PPPoE follow the fields and put in the missing values as above.

This should work fine.

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Answer 2

Jan 5, 2012 7:43 AM in response to Stolen_uk

Thanks for such a helpful response, appreciated.

I have a BT user ID and password but how exactly do I access the homehub to see the two IP's from my Mac? Sorry to be thick but not had to do it before as was all set up by a BT engineer.

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Answer 3

Jan 5, 2012 7:55 AM in response to Stolen_uk

Me again.

I think i have found it using system preferences but it only shows one DNS server IP address under the DNS tab, which is the same address shown for the router under the TCP/IP tab. The only other IP address I can see is also under TCP/IP and seems to be the IP address fro the iMac, referred to as the IPv4 address.

Can you point me in the right direction please?

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Answer 4

Jan 5, 2012 11:09 AM in response to MoosetheMoosinator

OK my settings are:

in internet conneciton tab:

Connect using PPPoE

acountname bthomub@btbroadband.com

password BT

connection: always on

disconnect if idle : never

conneciton shareing: share public ip address

on tcp/ip tab dns: 194.72.0.98 and 194.74.65.68

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Answer 5

Jan 6, 2012 3:43 AM in response to Stolen_uk

correction bthomehub@btbroadband.com

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Answer 6

Nov 18, 2016 9:20 AM in response to Stolen_uk

Just to clarify: when you say 'the first port of the AX' do you mean the WAN or the LAN port? I'm scratching my head here trying to replace my homehub with my AX since airplay keeps dropping out with the AX set up in client mode...

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