Constant Hub5 Internet Dropouts since upgrade
Absolutely pulling my hair out (which is a gag, as I'm bald), since upgrading to the Hub5.
We've been a loyal customer of Virgin Media for 20+ years, been through all the upgrades, equipment changes, plans and packages over the years, with absolutely no problem. Never missed a bill payment, been one of the best customers Virgin have honestly ever had.
The latest offer lands in our inbox in April 2025. An end of contract offer to upgrade internet speeds whilst maintaining the current price and the rest of our kit. We have two additional Tivo boxes in the house.
I complete the order online, receive the confirmation, and a self service install of a Hub5 through the post. I'm a technical person with IT networking experience, so I'm confident to install the new Hub5 equipment. It is configured in modem mode, as we have our own TP Link Router and WiFi solution in the house, so all I need is an internet feed from the Virgin modem device.
In all our years as a customer, I have never had so many outages and intermittent connection issues. My family is really upset, as am I.
This has been reported every few weeks to Virgin, in-between May and September. To be fair to Virgin their customer service has been exceptional, can't fault it, which is why, up until now, we've be a loyal customer. What Virgin have done...
- Sent out 2 different engineers, across 5 different visits
- Replaced the Hub5 box 4 times, there is now a 5th in the post(!)
- Re-tapped the tap point in the street cabinet to primary position number 1
- Tested the cable from our house to the street cabinet, the cable is fine, no level or earth issues at all
- Virgin Media are out of pocket with "good will gestures" and "apologies" for the outages, whilst this is nice we dont want their money, we want a stable internet connection
The engineers, one called Mike, has run out of service offerings. He gives the hardware, local connection, cable in the ground, and cabinet the all clear. This has been repeated and given the all clear multiple times.
The symptoms are that the Hub5, once booted up, will sit there happy, and then starts to receive "notice", "error" and "critical" log issues in the log. The internet drops out for a few minutes, it renegotiates it's connection, then comes back online.
A sample of the errors include;
- Notice, CM-STATUS message sent. Event Type Code: 24; Chan ID: 33; DSID: N/A; MAC Addr: N/A; OFDM/OFDMA Profile ID: 1 2 3.;CM-MAC=...
- Warning, MDD message timeout;CM-MAC=...
- Warning, RNG-RSP CCAP Commanded Power in Excess of 6 dB Below the Value Corresponding to the Top of the DRW;CM-MAC=...
- Critical, Started Unicast Maintenance Ranging - No Response received - T3 time-out;CM-MAC=
- Critical, RNG-RSP CCAP Commanded Power in Excess of 6 dB Below the Value Corresponding to the Top of the DRW;CM-MAC=...
I have PDF copies of all the combinations of Warnings and Critical messages. The pattern is that when a Critical occurs the internet drops out.
In the Downstream logs, we are receiving hundreds of thousands, yes you read that right, and millions(!) of Pre RS Errors and Post RS Errors. Here is a screenshot to show a sample.
I can confirm, that every Hub5 has had the same symptoms.
The cable, local equipment, and street cabinet have been given the all clear.
I'm at my wits end now, and I'm trying to get this escalated to a level 3 network engineer to investigate the traffic between our Hub5 unit and the central server that our street cabinet is connected to. But so far level 1 customer support haven't been able to help with this.
To be fair, I dont think they have ever seen a problem like this. Something has gone wrong. Something since we upgraded online in April. My theory, whilst it sounds daft, is that there is some server type level corruption with our account or plan.
We are fed up completely. A copy of more errors lower down in the downstream log.
Where do we go from here? What do we do next?
I can confirm the local equipment is working fine. The fact the Hub5 is in modem mode is nothing to do with it! But please prove me wrong. However we need the Hub5 in modem mode for how we have our house network configured.
What I want, is for a senior network engineer to pick this up, take it seriously, and do a deep dive investigation to explain, and correct, the internal Virgin Media network routing which is clearly going wrong in terms of the handshake and communication between our Hub5 and the central routing server.
Over and out for now. (From a cross and distressed loyal customer!).
