One of the things that came with my recent Bell Install is was the Home Hub 4000 (AKA: HH4000) hardware, which I have effectively bypassed by using first this method and then this method to do it. But since Bell has been rolling out a new piece of hardware as they roll out 8Gbps service in an attempt to make their chief rival Rogers as extinct as a T-Rex. That piece of hardware is called the Gigahub. On the surface it looks like an HH4000, but it’s not. The main difference is that it comes with WiFi 6E rather than WiFi 6. Which if you have hardware that supports WiFi 6E you can get faster WiFi speeds as you will be on a less congested frequency. But under the hood, it runs different firmware which implies that there are other differences that users are not aware of. And perhaps some of those differences are starting to appear in the form of problems that users of this new modem are having.
For example, there is a thread on DSL Reports where people are having issues with PPPoE pass through which is by far the cleanest way to use your own hardware. That is assuming that your router can handle the overhead that PPPoE creates so that you get the speed that you’ve paid Bell for. Reading through the thread, it seems that users are not only having a variety of issues, but some of this appears to have been escalated to Sagecomm who makes the hardware for Bell. Thus if you want to go the route of using your own gear via PPPoE pass through, you may want to be aware that at present, this may not work for you.
The second thing that I have noted is some anecdotal evidence that using the DMZ method may not work nearly was well as it did with the HH4000. I use the word “anecdotal” because I have not directly touched this hardware and tried to troubleshoot this myself. Nor is there anything that I can find online that validates what I am hearing. But a couple of people have reached out to me for help as the documentation that I have created to assist people in setting this up doesn’t seem to work anymore. At least not without some extra tinkering.
Thus I am asking for a favour. If you are in the Greater Toronto Area, and you get this Gigahub from Bell and you wish to set it up to use your own gear, I am willing to assist with that for free (as I normally charge for my services) so that I can better understand what the issues with the Gigahub are so that I can better communicate to the readers of this blog how to set this hardware up so that it can be used with your own hardware. Thus if that’s you, please reach out to me by email and we’ll take it from there.
In the meantime, if you get new service from Bell, or you upgrade to faster service, you should try ask for or keep the HH4000 as that is clearly a stable platform that works. At least until whatever issues with the Gigahub are sorted.
UPDATE: I have additional information here.