On BT, but everything suddenly Virgin branded?

Have no idea what's going on here - is anyone able to shed any light?

I have BT Infinity 2, running at 75-77Mbps via a TP-link Archer VR900 with a set internal IP address of 192.168.1.254. All was running fine. Until this morning, when I find I can't get at my NAS box over wifi....

I try to open a web browser and am rather surprised to get a Virgin Media search page, saying the IP address of my NAS box cannot be found. I wonder if I've wandered onto an unsecured Virgin wifi signal, but the reported SSID is still that on my own router. But the IP address of the router is now showing as 192.168.0.1

Perplexed, I fire up the wired connection on the PC and again, I'm routed through to 192.168.0.1, not the static IP address assigned of the TP-Link router. Opening this IP, I get a login page for a Virgin SuperHub, not the usual TP-Link landing page. This shows I'm connected to the internet and shows logs of connected devices etc so it looks pretty convincing that I'm connected via a Virgin router.

Reboot the router and I'm now suddenly back to the fixed IP of 192.168.1.254 but with no internet connection, with either Virgin or BT. Reboot it again, and try to reconnect twice, and I'm now finally back to my usual connection, with all the usual IP addresses, with a BRAS profile of 77Mbps.... I can also connect to the NAS box again and see the usual connected devices.

So, I'm back to normal, but have not the faintest idea what went on this morning. I should have taken some screen grabs, but was too perplexed to think of that!

Does anyone have any rational (or irrational!) idea what on earth was going on with my connection??

Are you using powerline adapters (homeplugs) ?

Yes, I have three across the house.

Further complication now arising - IP is reporting as BT as expected, wired speeds are > 70 Mbps but the wireless speeds are now at ~ 2 Mbps, unlike the 50+ Mbps I'm used to....

A known problem with homeplugs is that they can connect to neighbours networks. I think the fix is to use encrypted connections.

That makes a lot of sense - I disconnected the homeplug attached directly to the router and then rebooted the hub. Back to a single router IP, and wifi speeds are restored.

Will look at encrypted connections across the homeplugs and report back.

Happy to report that, so far, all appears to be behaving itself. Thanks for the advice!

So much for the printed blurb about signals not crossing power meters and intrinsic pairing security!!

Have you enabled encryption?

I"ll be honest, I can't see a specific setting in the config app to enable or disable encryption on these - they're TPLink AV500s. the user guide suggests that pairing them to each other (which I've done) should enable encyption automatically....? or have I missed the setting somewhere?

This is the procedure to enable encryption http://www.tp-link.us/faq-259.html

In that case, then yes! Thanks for the link. Once all adapters were on a unique domain with tied network passwords, as per the FAQ link you sent, everything started to behave itself.

I wondered if there was a second layer of encryption or an extra setting I'd missed...thanks for the clarification.

Edited by scoop (Sun 18-Sep-16 23:04:56)