Virgin Media Community

[VirginMedia]

Learn how to get the most out of your Hub 4 and Gig1 service with our handy FAQ.

How do I make the most of the Gig1 Fibre Broadband speeds?

With Gig1 Fibre Broadband on the Hub 4, you get to share over 1Gbps bandwidth across loads of devices. This means everyone in the house can download films and mammoth files, stream in Ultra HD and play games to the max, all at the same time.

To make the most of your Gig1 Fibre Broadband speeds, we recommend using a mix of wireless and wired Ethernet connections.

We know most of our customers prefer to use WiFi, so we’ve designed our Hub 4 with mighty WiFi technology – including Wave 2 802.11ac, and 3x3 MIMO on 2.4GHz WiFi and 4x4 MIMO on 5GHz WiFi – so you can share out your connection speed across multiple devices at the same time.

How do I find out my guaranteed speed?

All your speed information can be found on our speeds page.

This provides your upload and download ranges and your minimum guaranteed download speed.

Why am I getting different speeds from the other speed tests?

The SamKnows speed test gathers data directly from the Hub 4 which is configured for 1Gbps as opposed to connecting to devices which may not have the capacity for 1Gbps.

An external speed test may also reflect limitations due to device and local environmental influences.

Why am I getting different speeds from other speed tests?

The SamKnows speed test gathers data directly from the Hub 4, which is configured for 1 Gbps.

An external speed test may also reflect limitations due to device and local environmental influences.

What is 2.4GHz & 5GHz WiFi?

Devices can connect to your Hub 4 using two different WiFi frequencies - 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz.

2.4 GHz WiFi is great at providing connectivity over longer distances and through obstacles (like walls, doors, floors), but it’s limited to around 100 – 160 Mbps and will share this out if many devices are connected to it.

5 GHz WiFi is super-fast and can cope with lots of devices, but it can’t reach as far as 2.4 GHz WiFi.  It can provide speeds of c900Mbps, but how much of this speed any device will be able to use is limited by the number of WiFi antennae the device has. Older devices may not be able to connect to this newer 5 GHz frequency.

Your WiFi device should automatically switch between 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz WiFi, but if you think your WiFi is slower than it should be or as it usually is, just turn the WiFi on your device off and then on again, as this helps the device choose the best WiFi to connect to.

Why wasn’t the Hub built with the 802.11ax/WiFi 6 WiFi standard?

WiFi 6 is in the early stages of adoption with only a small number of devices capable of supporting it in 2019, therefore we have focused on delivering the best possible experience using WiFi 5 (802.11ac).

[jhuk]

Very vague answers as a 1Gb/s port cannot do 1Gb/s minus overheads be that this HUB 4 or even a good Motherboard with an Intel 1Gb/s LAN port hence why some new Motherboards come with 2.5Gb/s and 5Gb/s ports be it 3rd party not Intel so far but you can buy a 10Gb/s PCI-E Intel card for £70.

So I have no clue how anyone will get 1Gb/s never mind with the addition 10% Contention VM add due to Ofcom.

WIFI 6 devices have now started to be certified (I have an Intel Card that is certed as of Sep 2019) it seems VM always release something just as new feature are out so in a few years time the HUB4 will be dated well before the HUB5

WIFI 6 is backwards compatible same as before and does AC etc.

[delmann68]

how do I get the new hub

[spikey673]

Why are you preventing “normal” customers upgrading there hub from 3-4?

[si1972]

I got the new hub 4 yesterday, while the WIFI seems stable compared with the Hub 3 I have been unable to get some of my smart light switches connected. With the Hub 3 I just disabled 5ghz to set them up and then re-enabled 5Ghz. They cant even connect to the Hub 4, tried everything. Ended up having to use an old Edimax Access Point/Bridge/Extender device to provide a viable 2.4Ghz network for them, wasting one of the 1gbit ports on the Hub 4 in the process. Annoyingly I was using that Edimax for a wired only device, asked VM to either send an engineer to "attempt" to resolve or pay me the £20 for the replacement wifi/ethernet bridge.. zero help. I only got the 1Gbit for the Hub4 as it was £1.50 a month more than I was paying and £40 for the unit. If you have SONOFF wifi switches I would avoid.

[jhuk]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT9b7VU8nHc

[Bistna444]

It will be brilliant for me when it’s available in Shropshire England Telford I’m on the 350 mpbs package not fast enough for downloading PS4 and future gen consoles digitally 

roll on when I can get it super hub 4.0

[gaz132]

I have 5 Sonoff switches and 19 efamilycloud plugs All Alexa control. 
I have had the same nightmare problems connecting the switches

but the plug is connected no problem

I also have 7 x IP cameras (port forwarding setup) And have had a nightmare to set these up to the hub4 also.

It is as though the Router gets overloaded giving out internal ip’s DHCP

I also had to disable auto and manually set 2.4 GHz to channel 1

In the end I have had to buy an {Access Point} and plug that into the hub4 ethernet port

Using the access point I created a new Wi-Fi SSID name just for my Sonoff Switches

This worked. But it has been a nightmare to set up my Alexa controlled house.

Changing from hub 3 to the hub 4 allotted me a new ISP WAN IP address

I don’t know if this new IP address has anything to do with the problems.

[VIRTUAL-ALAN]

Can we/you get HUB4 in account area 03 - Surrey

[asmales]

Don't ever use any of the supplied hubs to actually connect to your network devices. Use a good 3rd party router and only use their hub as a modem... that will fix most if not all of your problems.

[JitteryPinger]

Had the new Hub 4 with Gig1 for two weeks.... dissapointing.

Despite the toted Wireless specs above, I had better performance for 5Ghz from other 3x3 (this is 4x4)  routers, as has been said in the comments above the Router on this thing seems very inconsistent and tends to bug out and slow down with packet loss becoming a usual thing daily from within the local (home) network.

Alarmingly, Seem to be seeing packet loss issues between the internal modem and router.

As for the again toted 'This means everyone in the house can download films and mammoth files, stream in Ultra HD and play games to the max, all at the same time' is also not true with the very things listed not possible.

Xbox One connected via Cat6 Ethernet downloading game at 100-300mbps is brought to a grinding near halt due to a download taking place on iPad Mini 4 connected using Wireless AC 5Ghz.

So I will be purchasing my own router,  I guess, though I did pay £35 for this one, plus £62 per month (losing a long term customer discount) 

and I suppose once I switch to modem mode, I'll hope issues with packet loss dissapear, and also swallow the fact that I'll be losing out on >18% of the bandwidth I pay for (200Mbps)

Also wheres the Gig? BT sells their Gigabit service as 900mbps, and users are able to test above that speed, Virgin, how can you sell something not acheivable apart from one website that seems to always acheive over a Gigabit when everything else is struggling with even 100megabit.... Just saying!

Suggestion: I guess it's going to be a long wait for the next shambles of a Hub to be reveiled however maybe make sure it has atleast a router that can route and a 2.5Gb ethernet port.

[Forid200]

The Hub 3 is plagued with packet loss and high latency issues, I was really hoping that the Hub 4 would address these. But doesn't seem like it... I honestly wouldn't mind buying my own Docsis modem since I use pfSense anyways.

I think it's time Virgin allow customers to run their own modems, without requiring the use of the SuperHub. If not, they need to release a adequate router ASAP. 

[gaz132]

Disabled Wi-Fi 5G and 2.4G on Hub4 

Then connect two EAP’s via cat7 cable POE

(one upstairs one downstairs)

Job done ✅ 

[squeakonline]

I've just signed up to gig.1 I could have gone to 350 with no contract but for 3 quid more and an 18 month contract - Why not. 

Because it seems like it's a fiddling of the figures to me. Notice how they bleat on about sharing the speed. It appears that it can't shovel that entire gigabit down one connection.

They have their samknows test built in so that they can point at that and go "Look it's fine" 

But with my laptop directly connected to the router using the cable they supplied I get ~1100 to the superhub and ~300 to my PC. The only device on the network. Well surely  if you've got this thing in cable modem mode you'll always be limited to that. My fingbox is reporting ~400Mbit.

Anybody else had any better experience in cable modem mode?

EDIT: I have just watched the youtube review above where she gets 900+ Mbit/s. Makes me doubt the validity of the built in  SAM Knows test.  Is it just an animated gif 😉

[Forid200]

I haven't tried this with VM but some routers have load balancing (my pfsense setup has this), I guess if you had the SH4 in front of your own router. You could connect two ethernet cables to it giving you a 2GB uplink and breaking that 1gig bottleneck if you load balanced across them. 

It makes me surprised that VM cheap out, they could've provided a 2.5gb port... Especially because they take these modems back at the end of the contract. So technically its never actually yours.

I'm on the 350 Gamer package, and although gig 1 isn't available in my area in London. I wouldn't go for it even if it was, simply because the speeds aren't symmetrical. I'm more bottlenecked by my upload than my download at the moment. 

[JitteryPinger]

@forid - some of us struggle to get 400 over a Gigabit ethernet connection from Hub 4 atm.

I've just downgraded to 350 again, your right about upload.

[Forid200]

@JitteryPinger Really? That sounds quite disappointing. It could be down to capacity issues, have you managed to speak to anyone at VM regarding the slower speeds?

I've been with VM for sometime now, my biggest gripe with them is the dodgy super hub with the flawed puma chipset. Since I joined, I've been having high ping spikes and packet loss here and there. Over the course of a year or two... They did release updates to elleviate the issues but it's not completely gone away. Modem mode seems to help a lot with the underpowered SH3.

I was quite hoping they'd learn their lesson and stay away from Puma chipsets with the SH4 but nope...

All this is already bad enough, but recently I've been facing disconnections, downtime and lots of weird hiccups. Even some of my clients on VM business are affected as well as others who use an ISP who uses virgin for transit. The core network needs a little TLC in my opinion. 

[JitteryPinger]

@forid200 - the issue is hardware, its not a bandwidth problem, intermittently the hub just crashes, sometime its stable, other times ota just off, I'm sure it'll work out with updates.

[Forid200]

@JitteryPinger 

That's really disappointing to hear... You'd think they'd iron these things out before releasing gig 1. Anyways, personally I'll stick to 350M until my contract is up. I'm hoping by then, there's better competition in the gig space.

Terrible modem + support staff that 'just' know their script put me off. I can't say I've ever had any support staff literally cut me off mid conversation or leave me on hold indefinitely like VM. All that said, I'd love to try the SH4 to see if it's any better at all at maintaining my 350M package. I hear it has more bonded channels. 

[Susan1a]

Thanks for sharing this info mycfavisit

[tigga]

@ squeakonline your test could be showing a problem because of the PC... it is most likely maxing out at the PC side.   I have desktop PCs on ethernet which max out and it is a realtek drive issue.  There isnt an easy solution.

Best way to check the speed is to try several different devices.