Virgin Media Community

[Dominion]

I ran a test from your website.

All devices are showing up with poor signal strength, both hard wired and WiFi devices. All 3 gaming PC's are wired directly to the router.

The connection has been getting worse over the last month and is now making online games virtually unplayable. I am regularly getting disconnected from game servers, up to 10 or so times an evening.

I work from home, connecting into my work station remotely, and i see noticeable slowdowns occasionally during the day, but the biggest annoyance is in the evening as game servers are far less tolerant of poor connection that my work connection.

I am also seeing YouTube video stopping and only the sound remains until the picture can catch back up.

The connection had been poor previously and a new router was provided to replace my old hub that was several generation old, this made the previous issue go away. Could this router have developed an issue, or is there a problem external to our property?

My PC connection

Todays BQM

From a couple of days ago

Many Thanks

Paul.

[Andrew-G]

When you took those hub stats, how long since the hub was last restarted?  As posted there's a lot of timeouts and uncorrectable (post-RS) errors, but those are reset when the hub is restarted.  A slow progression of these errors is normal, but they shouldn't be evidently mounting each day.

[Dominion]

Hi Andrew.

Under normal circumstances the router is never turned off or reset.

I have just done the pin hole reset and will see how things go tonight.

Should the router be regularly turned off/on or reset?

Cheers,

Paul.

[Andrew-G]

Opinions vary on the perceived value of turning it off, but the hub is in essence a mini-PC that runs Linux software and is designed for the mathematically intensive processing needs of cable internet.  Some, maybe most people leave their hubs powered on 24/7, but my experience is that the majority of consumer grade computers benefit from an occasional reboot, perhaps once a week or fortnight.  My own hub is normally on a timer to turn it off overnight, so that gets a daily reboot and that causes no harm, and saves about a tenner a year in energy costs - just be aware that if you have a phone line plugged into the hub that wouldn't work if the hub's switched off.

In the circumstances a full reset (either via pinhole, or via the hub's Admin menu) is a good idea, but simply turning off and on again is all that's needed as an occasional precaution as far as I'm concerned. 

[Dominion]

Poor connection is still there after the reset. Again seems worse in the evening.

[risc19]

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@Dominion wrote:

Poor connection is still there after the reset. Again seems worse in the evening.

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For a virgin connection that looks almost perfect.

[Dominion]

Yes you are correct it looks a good connection in the last BQM image.

Just because it looks OK does not make my assertion incorrect.

The screen shot below taken tonight was during a severe period of lag. You can see a steam message popped up telling me my connection has gone. Enemy health bars were dropping when I shot them, then they would reset as if i missed. Enemy bots would remain motionless then jump to another position as the connection corrected.

This rules out the game server as this clearly shows other independent software had issues at the same time. As I mentioned before all internet connected software sees the issue, and on multiple devices. 

This is clearly an issue with the modem/router or the connection its self.

When using Virgins broadband checker i get this...

...for every device on the network, wired and WiFi. 

[Gareth_L]

Hello Dominion,

Thanks for your post. 
Sorry to hear about the issue with your connection 
I can look into this for you. 
If you don't mind, I will need to send you a private message to pass security. 
If you can check the purple envelope top right of your screen that would be great. 
Regards     
Gareth_L

[Dominion]

Thank you for arranging an engineer visit. The engineer replaced the in-line surge protector he said it was degrading, he also tweaked the power levels from the cabinet.

I play 2 games, Destiny 2 and Final Fantasy XIV. Recently I have been playing Destiny almost exclusively, hence this is where the issues were noticed. Since the engineers visit the Destiny performance has significantly improved, I no longer get messages its trying to re-connect to the server mid-game, that's great, but it still doesn't feel 100% right. I am still getting small game pauses, not sure how to prove whats causing it.

Today I tried FFXIV, previously I had the cable modem changed and the connection problems in FFXIV went away completely. Today in the first few hours I have lost connection to the server twice, I have seen massive lag between pressing spell actions and having to wait up to about a second before the action happens. Lag is not present all the time, its very intermittent, but always there. There is clearly still an issue.

Ill give an update after the weekend.

Edit: Particularly laggy around 1.40pm Saturday

[risc19]

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@Dominion wrote:

Thank you for arranging an engineer visit. The engineer replaced the in-line surge protector he said it was degrading, he also tweaked the power levels from the cabinet.

I play 2 games, Destiny 2 and Final Fantasy XIV. Recently I have been playing Destiny almost exclusively, hence this is where the issues were noticed. Since the engineers visit the Destiny performance has significantly improved, I no longer get messages its trying to re-connect to the server mid-game, that's great, but it still doesn't feel 100% right. I am still getting small game pauses, not sure how to prove whats causing it.

Today I tried FFXIV, previously I had the cable modem changed and the connection problems in FFXIV went away completely. Today in the first few hours I have lost connection to the server twice, I have seen massive lag between pressing spell actions and having to wait up to about a second before the action happens. Lag is not present all the time, its very intermittent, but always there. There is clearly still an issue.

Ill give an update after the weekend.

Edit: Particularly laggy around 1.40pm Saturday

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It's a warm Saturday, usage will be lighter during the day.

The real tests (in my experience) are..

Weekdays:

1pm-2pm

3pm-4:30pm

7pm-10pm

Weekends:

Any time in evening.