Information for Siminn users in Iceland with a Sagemcom router

Update 18 March 2020

According to reports the affected routers have now all been updated, so users with this type of router should be able to freely use playmoTV DNS servers on their devices.

We have received numerous reports from users in Iceland that have Siminn as their internet provider and use a white Sagemcom router leased by Siminn.

With a recent firmware upgrade, the router has what is called DNS relay enabled in the router, which overrides any manually configured DNS server on individual devices.

Currently, the router is set to use the router IP address (192.168.1.254) as the DNS server. That is an usual situation, as when assisting users and configuring our own routers the default setting is usually "Obtain DNS servers automatically." That means that even though you set your device to use our DNS servers, it will use 192.168.1.254 as your DNS server.

Is there a solution?

The only way for users to use custom DNS servers with that router at the moment is by setting the playmoTV DNS servers in the router instead of the router IP address. That has its own problems, because according to our reports some devices seem to lose internet connectivity after making those changes.

That is a router issue with Siminn, as we have never heard of that issue before, and almost all broadband routers sold in stores offer stable internet connectivity even if the router is set to user custom DNS servers (whether it's playmoTV or other DNS servers).

What do we recommend?

  1. As a first measure, try adding the playmoTV DNS servers directly to your router, and see if you keep your connection on all devices in your home with internet connectivity.
  2. Contact Siminn and notify them about your issues using custom DNS servers with this router.
  3. If that doesn't yield any results, go Christmas shopping for a new router that is compatible with your connection.

Update 10 December 2019

We have received word from Siminn that this happened during a regular maintenance cycle. Those still affected by the change can revert the upgrade by speaking to the Siminn help desk, either by phone or chat.