Friday, July 18, 2014

BT - strange lot!

Well, my BT provided router (a HomeHub3 - revision A) is known for not being particularly good when it comes to setting up port forwarding. I have seen this before when setting up port forwarding, but not enough of a problem to bother me.

This week I had cause to set up port forwarding for VNC so I could carry out an experiment. The BT HomeHub has a number of preset port forwarding rules built in - and one of those opens the ports needed for VNC. So I went into the hub and set the VNC preset up - applied the rules etc and the hub tells me all is good.
But, when I try to VNC into the relevant machine, no luck. So I check the open ports with a couple of websites - and the relevant ports (specifically port 5900) are not open! BT hub says they are - but they are not.

So, I fire off an email to BT, complaining about the useless hub.
After lunch today (well, yesterday now!), I get a phone call from them. A nice lady tries to explain all about things to me, but when I explain the actual issue, she goes off to get her crib sheet on port forwarding! After various dead end suggestions, she tells me that BT don't support port forwarding on residential lines and that I need a business line! I remark that the HomeHub3 is a residential router and has port forwarding built in - although it doesn't work!
She just repeats that port forwarding needs a business line. Truly bullpoop!
Eventually, I give up, accept her fairy tale and decide to escalate the issue with someone who perhaps doesn't need to read from a crib sheet to answer basic questions.

Anyway, shortly after this call had ended, I get another call from BT. This time it is a bloke. Same basic start - what is my problem etc. I explain the issue, tell this one that I am familiar with using a computer and port forwarding etc before he goes for the crappy crib sheet. Eventually, he accepts there may be an issue with the port forwarding. This chap decided he needed to speak with some tech people at BT before answering my questions - so he will ring me on Monday!

Lets see what happen then!

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