Reuse a spare BT Home Hub as a Wireless Access Point

This article was rewritten and updated on 9th April 2017.

BT is a popular Internet service provider in the UK.  BT subscribers receive a free router called the “BT Home Hub“.  A new model of Home Hub is launched every few years, and as BT never takes the old ones back, many people have an old Hub tucked away somewhere, gathering dust.

This post explains how to convert an old BT Home Hub 5.0 or Home Hub 4.0 into a second wireless access point (“AP”) on your network, strengthening and extending the wireless signal around your home or office.  Although the details are for those routers, the basic procedure works for other BT and perhaps non-BT routers.  In particular, notes have been included for the BT Home Hub 3.0 and the now ancient Home Hub 1.0 – these are indented and written in italics.  Many users have also had success in reusing Home Hub models 2.0 and 6.0 (BT’s latest router, also known as the Smart Hub). Continue reading

BT Home Hub Cannot Access SSL Website

This article explains why the BT Home Hub routers appears unable to access SSL/TLS (https) websites on your internal home network.  It may interest users in the UK, where the Home Hub is a popular router/ADSL modem.

Hosting your own website(s) at home is pretty easy these days.  You have a small server running Apache, and configure your router to forward port 80 to it.  For SSL sites, you forward port 443.  That’s about it. Continue reading

File Serving: Sheevaplug vs Pi vs WDTV vs Linkstation vs Home Hub 3

In need of some network storage in the home ? Well, you could go off and buy a proper NAS unit, offering RAID, several Tb of storage, fast access speeds and so on. On the other hand, you might have something lying round the house that will do. It won’t be as good as a proper NAS, but it might just be good enough. Continue reading