Hub slowdown fixed for me

Over the last few months my hub has gotten slower and slower. Some lights that are triggered by motion were taking over thirty seconds to turn on. I had to rely on rebooting the hub at least once a day to maintain any kind of decent response time. During the last several months I’ve slowly added a total of eleven peanut plugs. And while I never made the connection each time I added a plug the hub would slow down even more. I read a thread on here saying the plugs could be the cause. I went for it and replaced all eleven plugs. Instantly the hub is back to screaming fast. Just thought I’d pass it along in case anybody else has the same problem.

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Now the question is, can we figure out what these peanut plugs do to the system to make it slow? Or is it just doing something to the mesh? And if so can we trade it? So maybe somebody with knowledge of drivers and programming and peanut plugs can shine some light on this. As these peanut plugs are still recommended from time to time.

Also as a side note, I have no peanut plugs and do have slow downs. So it might be a coincidence.

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I know that on my system they were continuously changing routes. Every time I would refresh the routing table it would change, and the peanuts would change what devices they were routing. One result of this seemed to be that my Sylvania 4-button switches would have to be pressed a couple times in order to reconnect every time I used them. I haven’t had to do this since switching to only Samsung and Sylvania plugs In December. I also have not had a single device fall off the mesh since.

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It was definitely the plugs for me. I restarted my hub and was still getting slow reaction times. Once I had all my plugs off the hub I restarted it and it was if it was brand new. It hadn’t ran that quick since I first got it.

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Just want include this thread as reference as well. Glad you got it sorted out.

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Same here. And since I've removed them, nothing has dropped off.

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Just wanted to add - because Peanuts constantly change routes, this issue is exacerbated with more Peanuts. Having one or two is probably ok. Having 8 - like I used to, or 11 as @PhilDeez did can become a serious issue ....

Could it possibly be connected with the number of plugs you have in your mesh? Like the Crees, I think that the magic number was 9. I broke that number and all hell broke loose. There's obviously something going on to cause issue, but people who run one or two don't seem to have issues like those running several. Almost like they create their own little bubble after so many. Ha!

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I definitely think so. When I had two everything was fine. The issues arose when I had 8.

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You read my mind. I was just going to link to that thread as well. I think a lot of people would find the information presented here very interesting. Given the insulting language that has been used around this topic, I find it quite amusing to read.

While some people would be held up as the savior of the community, I am derided as a fool or crazy for having first raised this issue back in January. Yes...for all the haters out there, it was me who first brought this up.

You're welcome.

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I hope you don't perceive that reaction to represent the majority view. To the contrary, several of us, including me, removed Peanuts from our zigbee networks. And I can't speak for anyone else, but I recall sending you a PM at the time indicating I had followed your advice.

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I tend to try and stay away from smart home devices that cheap.. Other than ebay items that used to cost more..

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Majority? No, probably not. Extremely vocal minority? Absolutely.

Thank you for cracking the peanut problem, but let's make sure we keep things constructive.

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First time I heard about issues with peanut plugs was back when the xiaomi devices were new and we were trying to figure them out. They were on the list of repeaters that didn't work. Even though people were reporting problems we just always thought it was xiaomi specific That is why I always steered people away from them. Just in case one day they wanted to get a xiaomi device.

But then there was the reveal by @Ryan780 and then @april.brandt, and now they are on the naughty list.

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I have 12 peanut plugs around my home and haven't seen any slowdown with Zigbee at all. I am using the "Generic Zigbee Outlet" driver and have not re-flashed the firmware of the outlets to allow for power reporting.

I have one to two Samsung buttons in each of my rooms, 30 Sengled Zigbee bulbs, 12 Samsung water sensors etc. I hit a button and my lights just come on instantaneously.

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Well, the typical thing to do would be to blame this all on @patrick since he recommended peanut plugs, and most importantly because he’s not here anymore. That’s just what you do right? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye::rofl:

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This was SOP where I used to work. Everyone looked at departures as a 6 month free spot.
The saying was "He with the biggest grin just thought of a scape goat"

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LMAO....exactly!!!

But seriously, I recommended Peanut plugs for a long time too. And some people have wonderful experiences with them. But I think that there is a lot more interactions going on behind the scenes that we are unaware of. Some devices just don't play well with others. For the most drastic example of this, look at Xaoimi devices with Iris plugs. They won't repeat to save their life. But Tradfri plugs repeat perfectly. So, depending on your setup, peanut plugs may be wonderful. But for me, they go on the YMMV list at this point.
:man_shrugging:

Also, this goes to show you that you can have multiple different reasons your hub starts to slow down. There really isn't just one cause or one problem you can tie it to. And hence, there will be no magic bullet that fixes every hub every time. Just not the nature of the beast unfortunately. Sometimes I wonder why the hell I took up this hobby. Some days I wish I had a time machine to go back and slap myself before I bought that very first Wemo plug way back when. Hehe.

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@razorwing and I were getting these off our networks last September due to issues with the Lightify 4-button switches. I will say that I thought/hoped it was an isolated issue with that device until you pointed out what was happening in the routing table. I haven’t had one of those switches drop, or need more than one press to work, since I finally put the peanuts in my junk drawer.

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