Forum Discussion

dinth's avatar
dinth
Dialled in
5 years ago

UDP issues on SuperHub3 - collective thread

Hi. I decided to open a collective thread for UDP issues on SuperHub3, as it seems that many users are pestered by them, the impact is high and Virgin Media is not aware or fails to acknowledge the issue so far (they've been trying to fix my issues for a past year and nobody ever suggested that this has anything to do with UDP packets, until i found whats exactly the issue on my own).

This is the main thread for those issues was this one: https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Speed/My-350Mb-connection-is-throttled-to-10Mb/td-p/3953746/page/15 but it was originally created over a year ago and has a slightly misleading title. 

What we know so far:

1. The issue only occurs on SuperHub3 (and reportedly on SuperHub4) modem. SuperHub2 users are not affected. 

2. The issue occurs if an app/service is using an UDP connection to the internet. Examples of such apps: BBC Iplayer app, most online games, Microsoft Teams, Skype, third party VoIP apps, all kinds of VPN apps, torrent download apps. 

3. All UDP connections are performing very badly on Superhub3 modem, but also whenever there's a significant UDP traffic passing through the modem, other, non-UDP internet connections are slowed down to crawling speeds.

4. Depending on an user, the reported slowdowns are to between 10Mbps and 2kbps (!) speed measured through Speedtest. At the same time ping times go up all the way to 2000+ ms and huge packet losses (sometimes over 40%) occur. In other words, even web browsing is not possible if there's a significant UDP traffic going on through modem. 

5. VM street level fixes do not fix the problem - i had a whole uplink cable between CATV manhole and Virgin Media cabinet replaced by VM and it has not fixed the issue.

6. Replacing a modem does not fix the problem either - replacement SuperHub3 modems also have same issue.

7. Here's how the issue looks like on ThinkBroadband/Speedtest with just 1Mbps of UDP traffic flowing through the modem:

It's really sad, that Virgin Media fails to acknowledge this problem, as hundreds, if not thousands of people may be severly affected by it. The advice VM is giving out to the users is unhelpful and sometimes harmful (I've been told i need to chase the walls in the newly refurbrished house to replace my VM cable and desperate to fix the problem I have done that). Just look how many threads are being open on this forum describing similar issues with apps using UDP connections. 

 

Microsoft Teams
superhub3
torrent
UDP
voip
vpn

192 Replies

Sort By
  • MikeRobbo's avatar
    MikeRobbo
    Alessandro Volta
    5 years ago

    Will these UDP issues happen if the Hub is in Modem Mode with a third party router is used ?

    • dinth's avatar
      dinth
      Dialled in
      5 years ago
      MikeRobbo wrote:

      Will these UDP issues happen if the Hub is in Modem Mode with a third party router is used ?

      Yes, actually many people reporting it in the orginal thread were saying that switch Modem Mode OFF slightly improves the situation. 

      I havent tried that yet, as my network is quite complex. But in the past i have tried different firewalls/routers (Pfsense, OPNsense, Untangle) to check if it's not a router what's causing the issue and it's not. 

      MikeRobbo wrote:

      Does this page explain the >> FIX << using the Hub 3 ?

       

      No, with port forwarding/triggering, TCP connections are still forwarded through TCP and UDP connections are still forwarded to UDP.

      I can only think about two possible fixes:

      1. Stop or limit using apps/services using UDP connections - obviously that's rarely possible unless someone is just using computer for webbrowsing (i think that even Youtube partially started using UDP for high def/live content)  

      2. Set up a VPN account on a public VPN server which supports TCP-only tunnels (Mullvad for example), change VPN settings to TCP only and route all your network traffic (or just UDP traffic if you can set up such routing) through that TCP-only VPN tunnel. 

      • dinth's avatar
        dinth
        Dialled in
        5 years ago

        Today, I have spend a day testing my network connection with constant 5Mbps transfer over TCP and without any significant UDP traffic (except of ping) and havent had a single hickup of latency

  • archercj's avatar
    archercj
    Fibre optic
    5 years ago

    We are experiencing minor Teams issues (i.e. momentarily freezing).

    My setup isn't standard. I recently was upgraded to Gig1 (or whatever it's called). That comes with a Hub 4. With my Hub 3 setup I had it in Modem mode and my main router was a Linksys WRT32x with OpenWRT firmware. Anyway I thought I'd give the Hub 4 a chance. That lasted 2 days and I put it in to Modem mode and brought my Linksys back out.

    I was also given a set of Virgin wifi extenders.

    Setup is now a Linksys WRT32x flashed with the latest OpenWRT as my main router and the Virgin wifi extenders in operation.

    I have tweaked the channels to ensure they are out of range of other devices in the street. I have ensured that both the main hub and wifi extender are set with the same channels and frequencies. I also have my SSID's split between 2.4ghz and 5ghz with the same SSID set on hub and wifi extender. When I run something like NetSpot and move around the house I can see the device seamlessly moving between hub and extender depending on where I am in the house.

    But still Teams momentairly freezes,

    So I thank you for this thread. Will save me hours tinkering around if thye broblem is outside of my control.

    • jphobbs's avatar
      jphobbs
      Dialled in
      5 years ago

      Reading through this thread I think I may have a related issue. Here's my help thread: https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Networking-and-WiFi/Router-constantly-dropping-several-times-an-hour/m-p/4487707/highlight/false#M346224

      Here's examples of my graphs:

      1. This has been going on for months

      2. SH3 (been replaced twice)

      3. Engineers have come twice in the last month and added an attenuator, replaced everything except the coax (which is newish) and the cable between cabinet and property.

      4. The on thing that confuses me is that we don't use modem mode, just normal router mode

      5. However, the thing that makes me think it's the UDP issue is that when I shut down my torrent client for 24 hours I got this:

      Which isn't amazing but it a level of service I would have killed for!

      Does this seem like a similar issue? I'm not getting slowdowns to 10 Mbps like others and I'm not using modem mode like others but when UDP services are running it does seem to kill the connection completely.

      The other thing that really confuses me is that we are not in any way heavy torrent users. No auto-snatching, no constant seeding/leeching. Like I said, just a handful of files a week absolute max which are left seeding for 48-72 hours at low speeds.

      Any help greatly appreciated!

      • fordy's avatar
        fordy
        On our wavelength
        5 years ago

        Can't see the images yet - but certainly looks like the same issue.  Issue looks to be present in router mode, just less so.

         

        Bear in mind in modem only mode I only need to send 15-25 or UDP DNS packets in quick succession to trigger a problem.  Torrenting by nature of being a download comes with far heavier load than a few DNS queries. 🙂

        Try pinging your modem's private IP on your network to see if you lose comms with your modem across the local LAN when connectivity goes.

  • dinth's avatar
    dinth
    Dialled in
    5 years ago

    Just an update, as VM has closed my complaint.

    As for the resolution, I've been asked to reset my modem and got a promise that they going to send me a wifi booster. Obviously, this only made me more frustrated, as it shows a complete lack of understanding technical terms or even their own systems - in my original complaint, I have explained that the issue occurs (at least in my setup) when the SH3 is in modem mode. Feels like they are processing complaints by sending out wifi boosters without even reading the content. 

     

    • Topbloke's avatar
      Topbloke
      Up to speed
      5 years ago
      Dinth:

      Have you tried mulvad in Wireguard mode and with a UK server ?

      I found my 20Mb to 1Mb latency/UDP glitch was improved using WireGuard protocol instead of the normal VPNs Openvpn protocol so now hit 20Mb fine in torrents with issues. You can switch it within the mulvad settings you may have to try 4-5 UK servers to find the fastest one.

      This was the only thing that really improved the UDP Virgin media issue for myself, not that I recommend WireGuard since it's not as good as openvpn.

      Its also possible the hub or wiring can be at fault (I went through 3 hubs) before getting a good one, torrents trigger my 1Mb cap but it's so random. If you cue up 30-50 torrents the more active downloads
      the more it triggers the issue even if TCP is the protocol on your torrent app.

      Openvpn TCP mode fixes the issue but it gave me a 50-70% speed loss, but then again UDP is the fastest mode. TCP has error handling so avoids these issues.

      In the end I just ditched torrents and went Cloud Services or you can try Newsgroups.

      pfsense logs should show bad packet error id messages when you hit the UDP glitch, sometimes it wiggles out of it and cures itself and the errors vanish, speed then climbs back to full when torrenting and with openvpn vpn use, I think its almost like the hub is choking on its own UDP packets.

      Only WireGuard protocol on vpn seemed to fix it for some people, 1 un-offical post on reddit suggested they cloned their mac modem to a 3rd party router and this fixed the udp glitch for them but it was not easy to do and may not even work any more.

      Other conspiracy theories out there are pumagate was never fixed and VM engineers simply made a firmware fix which worked around the issue but not actually fixing the issue properly so UDP glitches will always exist.

      Others left VM and went back to BT or other Fibre optic services.
      • dinth's avatar
        dinth
        Dialled in
        5 years ago

        Hi @Topbloke and thanks for your post.

        I have switched my Mullvad to TCP only and indeed it improved things a lot *WHEN* i'm using Mullvad. Unfortunately i dont have an option to switch to TCP only with my works VPN nor Teams for example. Actually, i could do my work from home forever, but now im forced to commute to the office for 2 hours one way every day because my 350Mbps (and unlike some regions, i do get stable 350Mbps to my house) VM connection is not able to handle a simple MS Teams videoconference. 

        What is interesting though, is where the "cap" comes from? For me it caps between 200-300 and 5kbps on two different modems i have tried, but other people report that it caps at 1Mbps for them 

  • fordy's avatar
    fordy
    On our wavelength
    5 years ago

    Hello!

    Thanks so much for this thread!  I thought i was going mildly crazy before I found it!  I've been encountering very similar issues resulting in Skype apparently overloading the Superhub and stopping it processing all traffic for 1-2 minutes, resulting in a brief internet outage.  Very frustrating after initially being super excited about Virgin Media rolling out faster broadband in our area, then discovering that actually my previous fibre service appeared far more reliable.  (Uno, Plusnet never had these issues).

    I couldn't replicate the exact symptoms that caused Skype to do this, but while investigating this one thing I did find I could replicate 100% of the time is making the superhub become unresponsive at 192.168.100.1, and 192.168.0.1 (Running in modem only mode) by sending many DNS requests.

    To replicate:

    • Open a terminal window and ping the superhub, ping 192.168.100.1 (keep it open!)
    • Launch a loop of constant DNS requests, in unix:  while ( true ) do host www.google.co.uk 1.1.1.1; done
    • Boom - the first terminal window will stop responding to ICMP pings within a few seconds.

    Note: Thanks & Apologies to Cloudflare for the DNS spam during my testing (owners of 1.1.1.1) but I think you can take it! 😉

    Make sure you cancel the loop of DNS requests - your modem will recover but most of the time not immediately, it seems to take it a good while to 'get over' having a high number of UDP packets thrown through it.  During this time the modem management page will be intermittent or unavailable.

    I managed to escalate this to VM, and one of their clever folks has replicated this in the lab, and so will log it with the Superhub vendor.  It appears to affect Superhub3 and Superhub 4 (I've tried both).  VM are sending me a Superhub 2 AC, so I'm hopeful I'll then get stable connectivity for a while until a new firmware is released!

    I'm hoping this issue, and the poor UDP handling issue / Skype dropouts are linked, and so both get fixed! 🙂

    • dinth's avatar
      dinth
      Dialled in
      5 years ago

      Thanks @fordy for taking an effort to investigate this and persistence in trying to get to VM technical dept

    • Topbloke's avatar
      Topbloke
      Up to speed
      5 years ago
      Thanks fordy you have nailed the exact issue I have and every Virgin customer for that matter.

      Your test is much better and technical though, I got the same exact issue using multiple torrents, it simply causes the hub 3.0 to have a mild heart attack, after a few minutes the blockage clears up and it goes back on as normal.

      During this time the internet is unusable and the hub 3 is not accessible, my gut tells me its still the puma faulty chipset in the modem since it sounds very similar only one other guy on reddit mentioned he had the same issue but mac cloned his hub 3 to a 3rd party Cable router and fixed the udp issue.

      But you are perhaps the first on the entire planet to even get Virgin to admit the problem exist and there is confirmation the hub 3 is faulty.

      Maybe a router firmware may solve it or help it, but till it is torrents or anything with high UDP packets or high connections like skype and similar may get these drop-outs problems.

      I do not know how you got the Superhub 2 AC, I asked several members of Virgin Media staff and got the same answer from management, help desk, customer services, as in the item does not exist. Clearly it does still exist since you confirmed it !

      Do you have any direct email or way to contact this staff member at the VM technical dept, if you can pm I would be grateful?


      • dinth's avatar
        dinth
        Dialled in
        5 years ago

        Also fordy would you be able to share the ticket/reference number of your issue with VM. I'm trying to explain VM customer service that my issue has nothing to do with weak wifi signal and being able to reference your ticket would be super helpful

  • PdAUK's avatar
    PdAUK
    On our wavelength
    5 years ago

    Hi and thanks dinth for spotting my thread about issues I am having which sounds exactly what you are talking about here.

    I'm running a VM SH3 in modem mode connected to a Netgate pfsense router and I simply can't do my ms teams work calls, it's too unstable. 

    So having read all this I'm assuming three short term options...

    1. Get hold of a SH2 and use that? Not ideal as the overall speed is reduced 

    2. Use a TCP VPN service? But I've picked up from reading this thread that this is not easy or practical?

    3. Get another back up line into the house and configure pfsense to channel UDP traffic via that line (not sure if that's possible but assuming it is). But that comes with added £££ to the overall household Telco bill.

    Wondering what to do.

    • fordy's avatar
      fordy
      On our wavelength
      5 years ago
      PdAUK wrote:

      Hi and thanks dinth for spotting my thread about issues I am having which sounds exactly what you are talking about here.

      I'm running a VM SH3 in modem mode connected to a Netgate pfsense router and I simply can't do my ms teams work calls, it's too unstable. 

      So having read all this I'm assuming three short term options...

      1. Get hold of a SH2 and use that? Not ideal as the overall speed is reduced 

      2. Use a TCP VPN service? But I've picked up from reading this thread that this is not easy or practical?

      3. Get another back up line into the house and configure pfsense to channel UDP traffic via that line (not sure if that's possible but assuming it is). But that comes with added £££ to the overall household Telco bill.

      Wondering what to do.

      I went with 1 and 3 in the interim while waiting for the SH2- I strongly suggest pushing with VM as much as possible until they give you a SH2 to help them recognise the problem more officially.

      I managed to setup pfsense to route some devices (Skype / teams) down the plusnet line.

  • tibertig's avatar
    tibertig
    Tuning in
    5 years ago

    I'm also having terrible issues connecting with MS Teams and other conferencing apps.
    Phoned the Customer Service but completely fail to even understand what the problem is.

    Not having even an ETA I think I will have to cancel my subscription (Not going to pay a single £ for early termination)

  • M890089's avatar
    M890089
    Joining in
    5 years ago

    Getting exactly the same issue here, confirmed only occurs when UDP traffic is above a just a few connections.

    SuperHub3 in modem mode

    Happens instantly if you start a torrent, like clockwork, on a 350mb line, it drops to just a few kbps when it occurs, stop the torrent, few seconds later it revives, that is if it doesnt halt all traffic completely

    When it happens i also lose ability to get onto the superhubs web gui until i reboot it. I have now setup a schedule using a python script to reboot the superhub every night, obviously doesnt get around heavier UDP usage,. but at least im ready to go in the morning.

    No feasable option for UDP usage other than using a TCP only VPN Tunnel.

    How have VM not commented in this thread, thumbs up to OP for starting it with such detail, hope it gains enough traction to get VM involved, this is embarrasing for them and if they are going to be so awkward as to limit us to use their cheap crappy hubs in modem mode when we want to run our own high end network kit then the least they could do is make sure it works properly. Working as an IT Tech supporting a load of homeworkers its become apparent that this is happening to lot of people.

    VIRGIN LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS! Stop replacing and recabling stuff all over the place and look at the shoddy kit your giving people instead, please for everyone sake refer this to your technicians properly, show them this thread, anyone with any networking knowledge can confirm this is 100% the issue.

    • jgtimperley's avatar
      jgtimperley
      Up to speed
      5 years ago

      I got an update to 9.1.1912.304 overnight, which is a minor bump from 9.1.1912.302, and relatively close to the last update.

      I purposefully avoid unnecesarry UDP traffic since discovering the original issue documented here, but wondering if anyone else on here has the new firmware, and is seeing any improvements. I'm not in a rush to test, as we both rely heavily on Teams/Zoom calls, which have been spot on since reducing UDP flows.

      • Avalon-One's avatar
        Avalon-One
        Tuning in
        5 years ago

        Just to echo the same as the above, UDP traffic brings my connection to a crawl, routing traffic via a TCP VPN tunnel works, but obviously at a cost, I would be interested to know if VM are offering any facility for users to downgrade to a SH2 (I can hope can't I?) as frankly the SH3 isn't fit for purpose as it stands and the SH4 is seemingly no better from previous comments.

  • Super_Bladesman's avatar
    Super_Bladesman
    Joining in
    5 years ago

    Does this issue not happen for everyone? I am using the hub3 in modem mode and not noticed this whatsoever 

    • Rod-IT's avatar
      Rod-IT
      On our wavelength
      5 years ago

      From what I have observed this seems to affect Pfsense of OPNsense more than other DD-WRT or open FW based routers.

      Something could be clashing with a driver, BSD or one of the modules, i know that I've never had the issue with a DD-WRT modem and didn't have it until about March of last year when the SH£ FW was rolled out to fix the Wi-Fi issue, since then I have nothing but latency and lag throughout the day on a seemingly idle, top tier broadband package.

      For clarity this ONLY affects the WAN and not the LAN

      • tievolu's avatar
        tievolu
        On our wavelength
        5 years ago

        After some more testing I've found that Bittorrent does overload the SH3 if I'm downloading several torrents with large number of seeds and peers with uTP enabled. As with the pathological DNS test (described a few posts up), the problem only happens when several thousand UDP connections are opened in a short period of time.

        Disabling uTP in the Bittorrent client prevents the problem from happening.

        I think I can put up with this until CityFibre complete their rollout in my area.

  • SolidCactus's avatar
    SolidCactus
    Tuning in
    5 years ago

    Sorry to revive this thread but I have been suffering with this issue for about 4-6 months and I have no idea what to do!

    So far I have tried the following with the Virgin support team:

    • 20+ support calls
    • 2 SuperHub 3s
    • 1 SuperHub 4
    • 1 Engineering visit
    • 4-5 calls to retentions team

    I have 2 SuperHub 2ACs but the Virgin Support say they are unable to activate these devices.

    One agent offered to ship me a SuperHub 2 (which I was elated with) but it ended up just being another SuperHub 3 😀

    I’m desperately trying to get this resolved as my daily Teams calls are failing constantly and I’m unable to work effectively.

    Any idea as to what I can do?

     

     

     

     

     

    • Rod-IT's avatar
      Rod-IT
      On our wavelength
      5 years ago

      I've managed to stop mine having issues, I'm not entirely sure what ultimately fixed it, but these are the steps I took, they may help someone having the same issues, I was also sent a SH4 which may or may not have helped.

      In Pfsense under advanced, then networking, go to the bottom, disable (tick) the following and reboot the firewall;

      Disable hardware checksum offload*

      Disable hardware TCP segmentation offload*

      Disable hardware large receive offload*

      Even if your physical NIC supports these, your virtual NIC may not.

      I also applied the latest firmware to my server (HPE DL360G9) using the HPE SPP media

       

      I am also running the latest build of 2.5.1 of Pfsense.

       

      If disabling any of the above help, please let me know so others can resolve their issues too

      • SolidCactus's avatar
        SolidCactus
        Tuning in
        5 years ago

        Many thanks for the prompt response!

        I'm using the latest version of OPNSense in my scenario and have the three settings listed above disabled already.

        Unfortunately I'm still getting hit by the issue on a regular basis whenever large volumes of UDP traffic are hitting the SuperHub.

         

         

  • tievolu's avatar
    tievolu
    On our wavelength
    4 years ago

    So.... will the new Hub 5 resolve the UDP problem? Rumor has it the Hub 5 is based on a Broadcom chipset...

    • SolidCactus's avatar
      SolidCactus
      Tuning in
      4 years ago

      I'm hopeful I can get my hands on the Hub 5 and give it a test! I feel like we have to stand a better chance with the Broadcom chipset!

      • Moogera's avatar
        Moogera
        Up to speed
        4 years ago

        I have started using the Wireguard protocol instead of UDP 

        To compare these two protocols, we put together a WireGuard vs OpenVPN guide, which examines speeds, security, encryption, privacy, and the background of each VPN protocol. We found WireGuard to be about 58% faster than OpenVPN on average, and even faster with nearby servers (450 Mbps).

        Credit to - Top 10 VPN

    • dinth's avatar
      dinth
      Dialled in
      4 years ago

      Im super eager to test it, would even be happy to upgrade my existing 350M connection if my connection will be better utilized by the new modem. But didnt get the invite. Hey VM, im here!