On 50mbps, have to upgrade to get a hub 4 or 5 (stuck with a dodgy puma 6 - hub 3)

[jonnyc1944]

Only me and my Dad in the house. He max uses 5mbps, me 3-8mbps. 50 is plenty. Even 25mbps would be nicer. Is there no 25mbps package?

Paying £30 each month and stuck with a lack lustre work around fix for the puma 6 chipset. My internet use has gaming as a focus. The hub 4 is a puma 7 , same issue, but countered better due to better speed. The hub 5 has a Broadcom chip, so no issues.

I would of happily paid for the hub 5 (or hub 4 if no choice) but I can't.

I shouldn't have to pay more each month to have access to hardware that is operating as it should. The firmware fix for the puma chipset was to offload some tasks to the Wi-Fi chip. Oh great. That sounds optimal doesn't it.

Modem mode is one thing, but that isn't great either, this could put in latency in the chain. I rather it be only a data cable going to a better router.

Is there really no way of getting hold of a hub 5 where the hardware is operating as it should. 

Paying £30 each month for a faulty product. Great for competitive gaming. Yeah, take my £30 each month. Brilliant. 

[Andrew-G · Accepted solution]

Hub 5 isn't materially better than a Hub 3 for gaming.  The jitter (in terms of average latency) is a touch lower, but this sits on a higher baseline of minimum latency.  In terms of day to day variability there's little to choose over the Hub 3.

Hub 3, Friday 4th Feb is the first, Hub 5 Fri 18th Feb is below it.  Clearer when they're side by side, feel free to cut and paste if you want to! 

[jonnyc1944]

Thank you, that is great.

It even looks like the Hub 3 has less latency spikes than the Hub 5?

Just where do I put my attention to now.

[Andrew-G]

Depends what you want.  If your VM circuit is reasonable (mine's a bit cr#p, but tolerable) then it's entirely OK for gaming, and all that flannel about bufferbloat and Puma can be comfortably ignored.  If you don't need VM's speed, then a decent Openreach connection will have somewhat better latency performance, but unlikely to be enough to notice or improve your gaming unless your VM circuit is over-utilised, in which case latency will be massively worse than Openreach.

[Adduxi]

Just thought I would add to this one.  I did notice a difference to the Hub 3 and 5, but then again my VM connection has historically been good.  The chipset difference is noticeable on the BQM.  Having said all this, I still game on my slower VDSL connection.

Hub 3

Hub 3

Hub 5

Hub 5

[jonnyc1944]

Hmm the other post showed more lag spikes for the Hub 5. Not sure what to make of this.

[jonnyc1944]

Interesting. My area is suburban with some countryside. Not like inner city or inner town job.

However I don't want high speed but good latency. It's probably all margin of error here.

[Kath_F]

Hi jonnyc1944, 

Thanks for your post and questions around the Hub 5. 

To answer your first question, we do not offer a 25mb broadband speed anymore so this wouldn't be an option. 

In terms of the Hub 5, as it stands, we’re rolling the Hub 5 out in phases, and we’re emailing specific groups of customers over time to invite them to order ahead of a wider launch this year. We’re ironing out some kinks around customers who have Gig1, Intelligent WiFi Pods, and home phone via hub and once we've addressed these issues we'll start to include these customers in the rollout too. You can keep up to date on this here. 

Let us know if you have any further queries. 

Thanks, 

[Dominatez]

I am using a Hub 3 and i have noticed that on WiFi there is still some ping issues.

Our Hub 3 i ended up discinnecting the WiFi on it and went for a Belkin router to do the WiFI with a much better connection.

We had to reboot the Hub 3 every few days as i we had about 15 devices connected to it, and it just struggled with disconnects and buffering on netflix etc.

Virgin Media contract is at an end next month, and if they don't step in with a Hub 5, then we will part ways, and i will trot off to Hyperoptic, of which when i say i will move, i will move.

Been in it Since NTL and Blueyonder were and progressed with Virgin, but with increasing prices and decreasing quality, then what can i say.

Just reconnected my Laptop to the good old Virgin Media WiFI for this test which i will be running for a few days.