I also have AT&T UVerse and noticed this same issue. My situation is slightly different in that I’m on the Gigapower fiber service. I don’t have problems with Internet outages, but I have noticed this problem after a brief power outage. Even after the router comes back up and wifi works on my phone, the ST hub remains unresponsive until a hard reset. It’s possible it would come back on its own after awhile. My hub does go through a couple simple switches before the main router, so I assumed maybe it was related to those, but I’ve never done much testing.
My current solution is to just get my router and those middle switches on battery backup so the hub won’t drop connection at all just from a 5-minute power outage.
I am on Gigapower as well. I have a setup similar to you as well. I have the hub on my core switch. I don’t think that has anything to do with it either but I suppose the battery backup is not a bad idea.
Email I sent to support last night:
Re: Hub stays offline after internet outage, requires reboot AT&T UVerse
I have read the SmartTihings community and it seems this is problematic with AT&T Uverse.
Before I purchase any more products there has to be a resolve to this issue as I can’t reset my
ST hub if I’m not home. This is a serious issue since the last firmware update, please advise
Here is the response I received today from support:
My apologies for the trouble; this is something we’ve started to see with AT&T Uverse customers recently. Our engineers are working to find the root cause of the issue and get it fixed. Unfortunately I don’t have an estimated time that I can offer on when this will be fixed, but I have your account tagged so that we will follow up as soon as we have this resolved. Until then thank you for your patience while we work on getting this fixed.
Best Regards,
Kyle
SmartThings Support
@Big_Jim, I appreciate your response… Sometimes people don’t realize we who work at the helpdesk are geeks too . I’m glad to hear you’re on your way to a resolution. If you find that you need additional help please feel free to respond back and I will get you in good hands.
@SlideRulz, Thanks for posting that information! At this time, it doesn’t look like there is a lot that we can do until they get the issue figured out. Although the commonality is with SmartThings and U-Verse, since the internet is being restored to all other devices it does make me believe that the issue is with the way the SmartThings hub is sending its request to connect out once service has been restored.
The only real way to figure out what’s going on would be to put a packet sniffer between the smart things hub and the u-verse router and see what is causing the hub to not reconnect. I’m sure that’s what the engineers are doing or have already done.
Sorry, forgot to include this in my last post. This is not the modem that I had in mind with the delayed reconnect so this issue is not related to that. I appreciate you sharing that information though! Although all of our modems work about equally well, the NVG599 is my personal favorite so I would hold on to that one
I spoke with a ATT tonight and they told me that a “port” might need to be opened and they would do that if the support team could tell us which one to open.
Uverse Gigapower and my hub automatically comes back online 99% of the time.
I do however have the gateway setup in IP passthrough to my Nighthawk x8.
This gives me VPN access to my home network and the ability to reboot the router remotely should I need to from the Netgear Genie app.
IP passthrough with an Asus is better because of the enhanced features
The one time my hub didn’t come back online I used the Netgear Genie app to reboot my x8 and Smatthings was back online within a min or two.
If it’s a blocked port then the ST hub must be doing something very odd for it to only use that port when it’s reconnecting and not when it’s connecting after a cold start. The hub should recover in any case.
Just knowing that the issue isn’t limited to one modem is very helpful information… but unfortunately it doesn’t solve the case entirely. In either case, thanks for adding your modem’s model number to the list.
This is of course probably why you aren’t affected. I also use my own routing equipment, but the reality is the average customer just tends to use the modem provided by the ISP since it’s the least complicated way to go and the cheapest.
If unfamiliar with the way the ST hub works I might provide similar advice, however, I don’t believe the ST hub requires inbound ports to be opened. I think it connects out to a mediation server owned by Samsung. This is the connection that I believe may be somehow failing. I do know that sometimes when establishing a connection between WAN devices without the assistance of port forwarding they will use something known as UDP hole punching. UDP hole punching can be problematic in its implementation simply because it’s an unintended side effect (loop-hole if you will) of NAT (Network Address Translation). In laymen’s terms, I’m pretty much saying the ST hub might be trying to pull off some internet wizardry and the modem isn’t playing well with the way they are attempting it.
I have a few thoughts on what might be causing this. My first thought is that it could be a DNS related issue. The reason I say this is because there has been an unresolved issue for some time now with AT&T services and one of Samsung’s DNS entries. We’ve never been able to track it down, and I’m not sure if anyone at Samsung or AT&T are bothering to even try for a fix anymore, because the fix is easy - just to use an external DNS instead of AT&T’s for the device (this typically applies to Samsung Smart TV’s - but it stands to reason Samsung may be using the same servers for both). Unfortunately, this isn’t possible with the Samsung SmartThings hub because it does not have customizable IP address settings (that I’m aware of).
The second thought I have is that maybe somewhere some way it is a port related issue. This could be figured out quite easily though. What I would like someone to try is to enable DMZ/IP Passthrough (it’s the same thing) on the ST hub and see if that makes a difference. This shouldn’t be necessary, but the idea is to eliminate variables and possibilities. Also, if someone here is from Samsung and would like to send me a ST Hub to use in the AT&T test equipment to try and formulate a fix, I would be glad to do so - but I don’t own a ST Hub sadly (I hope to in the future of course, which is the reason I’m here at all).
Anyway, please give it a try and report back if you don’t mind! Thanks!
I too have this exact same problem. I have ATT Uverse with the NVG589 router. Can anyone advise if they have already started a ticket with Smartthings? I will be sending them an email myself. I just want to make sure they are aware of out issue. It makes it unrealistic to use Smartthings as a home monitor if I have worry about my internet going out while I’m away. Just my two cents.
I agree, while this does not change the subject at hand I did want to point out (if you weren’t already aware), your modem has a battery backup compartment built into it and you can get a battery backup for it. The official ones typically run about $40 but you can get cheap knockoffs on amazon etc. Running your modem with a battery in it is better than say an external UPS because without conversions it can run your modem for much longer than an external battery can.
While the battery backup is good the fact that the ST Hub goes offline and doesn’t reconnect is the main focus here.
I urge everyone that is having a issue to please start a support ticket:
I certainly hope my advice wasn’t misconstrued as suggesting to use a battery backup as the fix to the problem. I am willing to help further, just need a smart hub. Either someone can try the suggestion I provided earlier, or I can get a ST hub and try myself. I will eventually be getting one, but that might even be April depending on how my home renovation goes.
Yep. Same problem here. I have AT&T uverse and my Internet hiccups about twice a day (sucks! ). When my Internet drops, my v2 hub will NOT reconnect without bouncing it. I hope this is fixed really soon. I thought all processing and commands were processed locally? When my hub goes blue after losing Internet, I can’t even send any commands to turn a light on locally!
Also having this same issue. Got v2 in Dec and seemed to be fine for about a month and now when AT&T goes down and back up ST won’t reconnect unless it is cycled. I also have a NVG589. If I remember correctly there might have been an ST update around that time.
Do you have ip passthrough/DMZ enabled and have the Time Capsule doing your routing? If you can reply with this info, this would help us to eliminate some variables.
. I’m glad to hear you’re on your way to a resolution. If you find that you need additional help please feel free to respond back and I will get you in good hands.