I know this isn’t purely an SQL Server issue, but I just wanted to share a very recent issue I’ve had with my home broadband. Hopefully this will help someone facing the same issue.
Vodafone UK is my ISP and I am on their Pro 3 Full Fibre 910 package, which comes with their Ultra Hub on WiFi 7. I’ve been on this package for over six months now, and it’s been great with symmetrical speeds of almost 1 gbps.
A couple of days ago, I started having WiFi issues. First thing in the morning, I noticed that my phone was connecting to my wireless network OK, but it hasn’t got internet access. I couldn’t browse any websites. Soon I started getting complaints from the rest of the family, as their phones and laptops stated playing up. We could access internet for a few minutes here and there, and then the connection would drop. It was unusable. Strangely, when I logged into my work via Cirix portal, there was no issue. While I couldn’t access websites like BBC.com, my office remote access was flawless. At least I could work, but could do nothing else on the internet.
In the router event log I found that a firmware update was applied to my router automatically by Vodafone in the early hours. I was sure this had something to do with my issues.
I called up Vodafone customer support straightaway, which is based in the beautiful city of Alexandria, Egypt. I’ve had to go through the usual troubleshooting steps like rebooting my devices, restarting the router, unplugging/plugging back the cables, restarting the boosters/extenders etc. Nothing helped.
I did mention to them that a firmware updated was pushed to my router, but the first line support was not interested, as its not part of their script. I had asked if I could rollback to my previous firmware for which they had no answer. They promptly escalated the case to their infrastructure provider Cityfibre. The Cityfibre guys took half a day and found no issue with the fibre line to my house – but said the Ethernet cable connecting my ONT and the router is flapping and that I should try using a different cable. I tried a spare cable, but that made no difference.
Back to square one and now Vodafone support asked me to email them my router event logs. Their instructions were a bit misleading on how to get the event logs, but I just did my own thing and sent them the logs. They were supposed to escalate the case to their thrid line support immediately, but they didn’t do it until the next day. I was very disappointed as it’s been over 24 hours since the issue started.
The third line support team took their own sweet time, sat on my case for almost a day, but eventually came back and said, a device named iRobot in my home is clashing with the Vodafone Ultra Hub router and causing it to crash. They asked that I turn off that device, restart the router, and see if the problem goes away.
Sure enough, when I did that, the wireless network came back to life, and all of a sudden all my devices started working. We observed the network for a couple of hours, and had no issues.
The iRobot Roomba i7+ is my smart robot vacuum cleaner, which we use regularly – its not the robot’s fault. After all, it’s been working fine for over 5 years across multiple different ISPs and routers. Somehow the new Vodafone firmware clashed with how the iRobot accesses the network.
I now faced a choice – stop using the iRobot vacuum cleaner, or rollback the firmware update on my router to the previous version. Obviously I went with the rollback option. There’s no option to do this via the admin interface of the router. Vodafone support remotely completed the rollback. I turned on the vacuum cleaner, and everything was fine.
Specific details of the firmware update:
| The problematic firmware version: 01.08.82-P-P-V1-20260403 |
| The previous firmware version I rolled back to: 01.08.35-P-P-V1-20250812 |
| Router model: Vodafone Ultra Hub 7 |
| Entries from the router event log that indicated that a firmware update was pushed down to my router by Vodafone: [System]Upgrade firmware is starting by TR069. [System]Requested to reboot by TR-069, reboot reason is FirmwareChange |
Whilst I’m glad Vodafone third line support managed to diagnose the issue correctly, I am not happy with the amount of time they took to resolve the issue. Over 2.5 days without proper intenet in this day and age is a nightmare. The SLA for third line support to respond to an issue is 24 hours, and I’ve lost a day already dealing with the first line support with basic troubleshooting. Vodafone should at least prioritise the cases raised by their Pro package customers. They should be keeping their first line staff in a professional office environment, rather than letting them work from home – the background noise from screaming family members, barking dogs and the car horns is not nice. Overall it took them 2.5 days to resolve my issue – and its all down to a faulty router firmware update. The customer service agents and managers that I spoke to have been nice and helpful, but their hands are tied when they are awaiting a response from thrid line support with 24 hour SLAs.
