How to Make Amazon Echo Work with BT’s Home Hub Routers

A lot of UK people are buying Amazon Echo, the Internet shopping giants new hands-free speaker and voice-assistant, but apparently not everybody can get it to connect with their home WiFi network and this seems to be especially true of BT’s Broadband customers.

Ordinarily connecting the Echo should be as simple as plugging the device in and then installing the Alexa App (or setup via http://alexa.amazon.co.uk/), which manages the hardware and enables you to connect it to the Internet. The whole Internet connectivity thing is kind of important and without that your Echo is just a large useless black or white cylinder with a dim light on top.

The problem is that some people, especially those with one of BT’s HomeHub routers, are having a great deal of difficulty in getting the new hardware to connect to their broadband service via WiFi. Funnily enough some of those who imported the Echo from the USA earlier this year also reported the same woes and it’s sad to see that the issue wasn’t fixed in time for its UK release.

Luckily the solution is to avoid Amazon’s automated setup for the device and enter the details you need manually.

Amazon Echo Fix for BT’s HomeHub Routers

1. Start the Amazon Echo setup process (the web browser method is best).

2. Choose your WiFi network (you need to know / input your network’s name and password).

3. Click ‘advanced settings‘ in the Alexa web app.

4. Enter the following details into the fields on the advanced settings page.

IP Address: 192.168.1.2
Router: 192.168.1.254
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
DNS 1: 62.6.40.178
DNS 2: 62.6.40.162

5. Click ‘Connect‘.

Take note that if you’ve previously tried and failed to connect the ‘Echo’ then you may need to click “forget this network” before trying again, otherwise you’ll just run into the same problems. In some cases it’s possible that you might have a different ‘Router’ (gateway) address from the one mentioned above, but pretty much all of BT’s active kit does use this.

Likewise if the IP address 192.168.1.2 doesn’t work, such as if it’s already being used by another device on your network, then just try something like 192.168.1.26 instead and the router should be able to adapt.

Every ISP will have a different set of details, thus the above settings won’t work for users of Sky Broadband, TalkTalk etc. Novice users should simply ask their ISP for the correct details, while Advanced users will already know to check their network connection details to discern what Gateway, DNS and IP Address to use.

Alternatively some people have suggested that separating the 2.4GHz and 5GHz WiFi bands via the HomeHub’s admin interface (they’re normally combined) can work, but generally you should not need to do this. In any case most BT broadband users will not run into this issue, it only seems to occur on some setups.