Virgin Media Community

[Laura96]

So I have been experiencing so much latency ping and jittering like many of you have and after updating every part of my set up and spending a bunch of money i have narrowed it down to the biggest offender. The Puma 6 chipset inside your Home Hub 3.

If you are a gamer or streamer what matters most is having a consistent smooth FPS experience. Unfortunately for all the pros of Virgin and its wonderful staff it is let down by the Home Hub 3, more specifically the Puma 6 chipset by Intel/Arris who have now made a Puma 7 chipset with similar issues. As a community of Virgin media I think we all - including the staff need to rally together to make this service as good if not better than what is advertised. 

No amount of software patches will fix this hardware problem and putting the HH3 in modem mode doesn't help either. The puma chipset line is poorly made in comparison to what is available on the market. The Virgin media development department with the final say on this has to be woken up in order to realise that people aren't stupid, if they continue with this chipset they will continue to lose customers permanently. 

Solutions;

-Scrap the Puma chipset line altogether in favour of any other better chipset for the Home Hub 4.

- Release a pro version of the Home Hub 3 with a different chipset tailored for gamers. (I would pay extra for that happily)

-Make a list of 3rd party modems which are compatible with Virgin DOCSIS 3 in Europe. Like BT does.

 https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2018/08/intel-coughs-to-puma-cpu-flaw-that-hit-virgin-media-hu...

https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r31122204-SB6190-Puma6-TCP-UDP-Network-Latency-Issue-Discussion~sta...

https://www.classactionlawyers.com/puma6

[cmac86]

I have been having similar issues. Been a nightmare to play games like FIFA, on Xbox one. The input delay and lag is just shocking for us to be paying as much as we do. I've had nothing but problems with Virgin relating to this. 

They just don't want to know and it's poor on their part. It's been like this for sometime which made me not want to game anymore. 

Are there any routers out there that accept Virgin's inline connection that work? I am thinking of switching out the router. I've tried modem mode with a decent TP Link but the problems still persist.

[Laura96]

You can buy a really good router but you will have to keep using the Home Hub 3 as your modem. I bought an ASUS RT-AC86u which is one of the best for gaming. This improved my wifi and Lan download & upload speeds a lot. But in the end what is most important to us gamers is the ping (ms) Im currently on 100 to 200 ping (ms) this is what causes the latency / jittering / packet loss or Lag. It's because the Puma chipsets cpu are trash and can't efficiently handle the information passing through to provide gamers with smooth FPS.

VM says we have to use the Home Hub 3 because it is the only modem which supports their DOCSIS 3 European system but this is false there are other modems which would be compatible. BT provides its customers with such a list. Other ISP's also allow for 3rd party modems.This leads me to speculate the only reason they keep saying this is HH3/puma6 allows them to gather our info easier or maybe throttle our internet easier or maybe they just want to spend less on chips and make more money. Who knows, but it's hurting the gaming community on VM. 

Thats why we need to band together with support from staff on VM to find a working solution.

[cmac86]

While I put mines in moden mode I still never got better performance with my TP Link router, that was a while ago, I wonder should I try it again?, the router has problems with the 5Ghz band so I only use it for bypassing netflix restrictions with dns and thats about it.

[Laura96]

If it improves your set up even a little.. I say go for it but it won't really do much. The lag problem will always be there until VM wakes up. 

[cmac86]

Bit of a nightmare, I am a very decent Fifa player, Was on a great run and basically lost around 10 games in a row, I knew there then was a problem. The players almost have an advantage over you, football is pinging all over the place like a ping pong ball, crazy goals and the like. I gave up and only today tried it assuming there could have been a problem that was fixed beforehand.

Still runs like crap. So i done some reading and found my way to your thread. I've had some bad experiences before with Virgin and their routers but this takes the **bleep**

[imzrex]

They have had the same broken router/modem ("super"hub 3) for too long best option is to switch providers haha, at this point there is no hope for virginmedia broadband as well as it being way over priced, gaming is almost impossible with latency/ping spikes though the roof just because they cant invest in a router with a decent chipset that works!

[cje85]

Wasn't this all fixed about a year ago? I remember there was a huge topic on this forum with thousands of replies about the Puma issues, then they started rolling out new firmware which made a huge improvement, and even the most vocal critics who said it could never be fixed via firmware updates admitted that it had made a difference.

I don't notice any problems nowadays, cable will always have slightly higher ping/jitter than DSL but the horrible latency and ping spikes that used to affect the Puma have gone.

[cmac86]

I've just ran a broadband quality monitor and it's shocking the latency. I want reverted back to hub 2ac or I'm leaving as my contract ended a while ago. I'm just paying out of contract. This is [REMOVED] ridiculous the amount of people with posts and virgin do [REMOVED] all about it. No software update can fix this. 

 [MOD EDIT: Inappropriate language removed, please review the Forum Guidelines]

[Laura96]

Don't let that fool you, if that firmware patch improved anything then I don't dare imagine how bad it was before. The problem is a hardware problem software/firmware fixes really won't do much. Just by looking at the gaming forum page on here you can tell its still a mess as everyone is still having the same latency ping lag issues.

I know that changing providers is probably my only option when my contract ends but maybe, just maybe we can get them to fix this simple issue and make their service the best in the UK. I mean can you imagine they actually tried one of the suggested solutions? They would become truly the best ISP in the UK. Gamers would flock to Virgin, Is it really that impossible?