For what it's worth

The Plusnet Hub 2 is a Gigabit router, but it doesn't seem to downgrade to 100Mbps as I would expect. If you don't have all 8 wires connected through, the Hub 2 won't play at all

I had convinced myself that my new Hub 2 was faulty: my PC would connect to my Hub 1 (and on the the internet) happily. But replace it with the Hub 2, and it wouldn't even ping via Ethernet (although it would support wifi, and connected to the internet perfectly).

It turned out that I had a break in Pin 1 of my Ethernet connection between my PC and the Hub 2. The Hub 1, at 100mbps, doesn't use Pin 1. The Hub 2, at 1000mbps needs all the pins connected through. If not, it doesn't downgrade, it just fails.

Plusnet Customer Support were no help - they sent a replacement router (two actually: the first never arrived) and when I called to say that the second specimen was no better, they tried to fob me off with a link to suggestions of how to "tweak" my network. I stood my ground, and was promised a callback from a more senior engineer within the hour. But the call never came. So I had to work this out for myself, and was only successful because I had an Ethernet tester that identified the disconnected wire.

Hope this might help someone else!

# posted by John Geddes @ 4:07 pm