For all Gamers with lag: Puma chipset and the Virgin media development department.

[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

[Laura96]

Isn't it time for a new Home Hub 4 anyway? Please don't make the same mistake, do it right.

[Laura96]

I think the real question is how can we reach the right Virgin Media departments? what is right department? and what do we have to do to get them to pay attention, petitions, protest, lawsuits? whatever we gotta do count me in I'm sure all gamers here feel the same. 

Apparently this is working in the US https://www.classactionlawyers.com/puma6

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/latest/media/media-releases/2019/clear-information-before-buy-b...

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2018/04/uk-broadband-isps-stop-locking-users-bundled-router.ht...

[Laura96]

I think the real question is how can we reach the right Virgin Media departments? what is right department? and what do we have to do to get them to pay attention, petitions, protest, lawsuits? whatever we gotta do count me in I'm sure all gamers here feel the same. 

Lets make Virgin Media great again!

Apparently this is working in the US https://www.classactionlawyers.com/puma6

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/latest/media/media-releases/2019/clear-information-before-buy-b...

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2018/04/uk-broadband-isps-stop-locking-users-bundled-router.ht...

[cje85]

The ping/latency issues have dogged VM for years, well before the Puma 6 issue which is now as good as fixed. Some of VM's routing is less than perfect and cable broadband in general has higher latency/jitter than DSL based services.

I've found the huge thread I mentioned on the last page about the Puma issues, and starting about half way down the link below you see users starting to receive the fix firmware (.603), that's followed by extensive testing in the following pages which shows a major improvement. 

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Gaming-Support/Hub-3-Compal-CH7465-LG-TG2492LG-and-CGNV4-Latenc...

[Louis_R · Accepted solution]

Hi Laura96,

Thank you for your post. We will feed this information back to the relevant department.

Many thanks,

Louis

[shanematthews]

The simple answer is, we can't, latency was never part of the package hence they haven't actually done anything wrong, and america will start class action lawsuits about literally anything

[jpeg1]

This is very, very old news and has been discussed on here ad nauseam.

The firmware updates that Virgin applied to the Hub 3 have substantially reduced the problem.  I reluctantly changed to the Hub 3 because my old superhub failed, but I am entirely satisfied with the Hub 3's performance.

[CMAC1986]

Well you are lucky. There are alot of us that still have the problem. Just because you are sorted does not mean the fireware updates fixed the hub problems for the rest of us. It may be old news but its still happening and virgin wont sort it.

[shanematthews]

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@CMAC1986 wrote:

Well you are lucky. There are alot of us that still have the problem. Just because you are sorted does not mean the fireware updates fixed the hub problems for the rest of us. It may be old news but its still happening and virgin wont sort it.

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Because short of replacing every hub with a new hub that doesn't use the puma6 chipset there isn't anything VM can do, they don't manufacture the hubs, they don't code the firmware for the hubs, Intel makes the puma6 modem and Arris manufactures the hubs and writes the firmware for them and re-brands them for partners, VM only buys the products

And considering the puma6 modems do meet the standards specified in their contracts they have no incentive to replace them, so unless you're going to personally fund the manufacture, testing and distribution of a brand new device it isn't happening

[CMAC1986]

So they are gonna leave possibly 100s of thousands of gamers high and dry. Not a nice thing really. Also I dont care who manufacters or creates the chipsets. It is down to Virgin who are buying the hardware to listen to the complaints of their customers instead of having people like yourself shoot people down for being disappointed in a service they dont believe is acceptable.

I am here looking help, if you cant provide that dont make a comment.

It does not meet the standards, there are thousands of topics here, people complaining about the puma chip on the hub 3, it makes gaming unplayable, even on the so called gaming package of 350mb.

For a company that makes 100s of millions from its userbase I think it woiuld be the least they could do and manufacter or buy new hardware that actually works for what I buy the service for, Many many others included would agree.