Forum Discussion

richieb41's avatar
richieb41
Tuning in
2 years ago
Solved

VPN dropping out regularly. Reset everything. Support desk are just dismissing my issue

i too am getting VPN dropouts. I have tried your support desk many times. As soon as i mention my works VPN they try to push me to Virgin Gadget Rescue.

i've had Virgin broadband for 8 years, and the dropouts are getting worse.

My laptop wifi card drivers have been updated, and all my laptop software is upto date. 
My works IT support have done everything they can. 

When i use my mobile hotspot i dont get any dropouts at all. 

Can an administrator please help me to solve this.

i have a Hub 3.

Unless i get a solution, i will have to leave when my contract ends.

  • OK first things first, the BQM you provided is really, very, very good for a VM connection - no obvious issues there. Except a BQM only really graphs the connectivity between their infrastructure and your hub, it’s a useful tool but nothing more than that - certainly isn't definitive about, well anything really!

    VM officially don’t support VPNs, now this doesn’t mean they don’t work, (otherwise, I’d be in trouble as I use them every single day); but rather they won’t provide any sort of technical support for them - and absolutely DO NOT touch ‘Gadget Rescue’ with a barge pole, or even someone else’s barge pole, they will be about as helpful as a house brick, although the house brick won’t charge you a sum each month for the privilege!

    VPNs can be a bit awkward, their main concern is to secure a connection between two endpoints on the internet, and anything that makes them think that the connection might not be secure can make them ‘fail safe’ and simply drop the connection. And there are multiple types of VPNs, some may work perfectly on a VM connection, others may not!

    In your case, we have established that your underlaying internet connection seems to be fine, the VPN works well on a mobile hotspot, ie a non-VM connection, which hints that there is something which a combination of a VM connection plus whatever VPN your company uses and the way it has been set up; simply isn't reliable.

    If you want my advice, dump VM as soon as you can! OK not really anything that have done wrong but, realistically you are one out of some 5.5 million broadband customers - they are absolutely not going to invest resources into fixing your issue! Now possibly with a lot of further research and digging into these things, it may well be fixable, but VM won’t do it, nobody is going to pay me to do it, so I won’t, not sure anyone else on this forum will be in a position to help either - which rather leaves you stuck between a rock and a hard place!

    Probably not the answer you wanted to hear, but it is an honest one!

  • The spike about 15.30 dropped my VPN. 

    NB: I get no dropouts on mobile hotspot.

  • OK first things first, the BQM you provided is really, very, very good for a VM connection - no obvious issues there. Except a BQM only really graphs the connectivity between their infrastructure and your hub, it’s a useful tool but nothing more than that - certainly isn't definitive about, well anything really!

    VM officially don’t support VPNs, now this doesn’t mean they don’t work, (otherwise, I’d be in trouble as I use them every single day); but rather they won’t provide any sort of technical support for them - and absolutely DO NOT touch ‘Gadget Rescue’ with a barge pole, or even someone else’s barge pole, they will be about as helpful as a house brick, although the house brick won’t charge you a sum each month for the privilege!

    VPNs can be a bit awkward, their main concern is to secure a connection between two endpoints on the internet, and anything that makes them think that the connection might not be secure can make them ‘fail safe’ and simply drop the connection. And there are multiple types of VPNs, some may work perfectly on a VM connection, others may not!

    In your case, we have established that your underlaying internet connection seems to be fine, the VPN works well on a mobile hotspot, ie a non-VM connection, which hints that there is something which a combination of a VM connection plus whatever VPN your company uses and the way it has been set up; simply isn't reliable.

    If you want my advice, dump VM as soon as you can! OK not really anything that have done wrong but, realistically you are one out of some 5.5 million broadband customers - they are absolutely not going to invest resources into fixing your issue! Now possibly with a lot of further research and digging into these things, it may well be fixable, but VM won’t do it, nobody is going to pay me to do it, so I won’t, not sure anyone else on this forum will be in a position to help either - which rather leaves you stuck between a rock and a hard place!

    Probably not the answer you wanted to hear, but it is an honest one!

    • richieb41's avatar
      richieb41
      Tuning in

      I appreciate your reply. I'm contemplating moving to a 4G mobile router with a SIM card with 200Gb data/month which will be more than enough, and similar cost to VM M130. 

    • nfinnx's avatar
      nfinnx
      Tuning in

      Fully agree. I've just had another frustrating morning where my connection timed out.

      I work for a large NHS Organisation and all of our partners are reporting issues with staff working from home. All agree that we only see this problem with Virgin Media.

      Our official advice now to all staff wanting to work from home is that they cannot use Virgin Media for this purpose and should switch to another provider such as Zen Internet.

      It's a pity, I've been a VM customer since the BlueYonder days (at least 15 years) but as soon as my contract expires I'm off. 

      • richieb41's avatar
        richieb41
        Tuning in

        It's strange as my connection was fine today, it didnt drop at all, but i only had a couple of Teams calls. 
        Looking at other community posts, it seems to be more prevalent when doing Teams calls. I will also be moving on  at the end of my contract. 

  • legacy1's avatar
    legacy1
    Alessandro Volta

    All you need to do is use hub i modem mode get your owe router with 1Gb ports

  • Client62's avatar
    Client62
    Alessandro Volta

    I use 3 office laptop with VPNs / Citrix, via a wired connection to a Hub 3 in Router mode they work fine.

    Our Hub 3's WiFi has been much more stable with the following menu settings.

    Wireless Security

  • Client62's avatar
    Client62
    Alessandro Volta

    "it seems to be more prevalent when doing Teams calls" - Yes it does ! What could that mean ?

    MS Teams & Twitch head the gripes list by a county mile, no by a light year.

    There a next to zero grumbles about Zoom, Skype, Webex, WhatApp - but for years MS Team has been as flaky as hell.

    On Windows 11 MS Teams regularly updates to a non runnable version, it is the worst.

  • I too have the same issue. VM with cisco anyconnect VPN. After going through VM customer service and several reset, goggle searches, engineer visit, it looks hopeless. Waiting for my contract to finish so I can move on 😞