Apparent Hub 3.0 Freeze

[Rusk]

Hi All,

I became a customer recently (just a few months ago). So you are aware I am an IT engineer in several fields including networking and WiFi among other things. 

Trying here as it's very hard to get hold of VM in these times. I have an intermittent issue with my VM broadband. The internet will drop out randomly, I have troubleshooted but my explanation doesn't seem to be understood by the techs I've spoken to so far at VM.

The issue - with no pattern (I can tell anyway) my internet will drop out. WiFi stays connected for maybe another minute or so after the drop out but then no devices can connect any longer and the currently connected devices drop off a little while after that. Looking at the hub there are no red lights with only the normal white power light on. During this time of no internet but WiFi is still up I cannot browse to the hub and it will not respond to ping either. The fix is turning the hub off and on again (classic IT action of course). This leads me to feel it is a Hub issue not a WAN side issue. Perhaps the Hub crashing in some way. I've checked to logs in the GUI and it seems like nothing is stated there.

I said white light above but this is now, my first hub always had a yellow ish orange ish LED light. My second and current hub has white. More on that shortly.

VM response to far - A few weeks ago I managed to get a chat session with VM. I explained to them as above and also highlighted the yellow LED light which I thought was odd as it wasn't listed in the troubleshooting stuff on their website. Although they said they could send a new hub they didn't and referred my to a (more) technical person who would ring me. During that call I, again, explained as above and he thought it was a network issue not a hub issue ad he wanted to send a tech to the house. I thought sending a new hub would be a simple troubleshooting step and avoid contact with someone in the house during lockdown but ok fine.

Tech came, I explained everything, he said he would run his outside tests first to avoid coming in if he could. Tests came back fine so he came in and tested everything he could and also saw the yellow light on the hub and said that is was odd so replaced the hub for a new one. Unfortunately the issue was not occurring during his visit so we had no idea if that would fix it or not.

Before the hub was replaced the issue was happening every day, sometimes several times a day. With the replacement hub we went a good week before it started happening again. Now it is happening once or twice a week so no where near as bad but still happening. I am still feeling it is a hub issue as the failure is always the same order of events. As a side note this hub does seem to have some really poor WiFi performance. I'm really struggling to get signal in several places in my home. I was about to buy a new Mesh network and upgrade that way but then stopped when I remembered I'd still have to use the VM hub as a router and if there was a problem it would potentially remain.

I have just seen there is a new hub 4 and also thought, if this issue is a hub 3 issue, it might fix things for me and maybe improve WiFi at the same time. Fingers crossed VM will agree to add me to the new hub roll out!

Anyway this is very long but hopefully a few of you got through it and have seen similair issues or have some fixes for me to try. MY hub firmware is on 9.1.1811.401 and it is hardware version 11.

Thanks,

Russell

[Shoal]

good to hear that the hub3 doesnt seem to lock-up in modem mode, that was a major concern. I had a quick look at the AX50, as you say it seems to have decent features at a reasonable price. One of the original reasons I was considering a new router was to get wifi6, it would speed up synching my laptop to my NAS if nothing else. One thing I do need is reasonable wifi range, we have a 1920's bungalow, very spread out, very dense brick walls and solid floors so extensive cabling not really practical, hub3 was always a bit marginal with several dead areas on 5g band.
There was something I intended to check out this morning but you might already know the answer....our landline is connected through the hub, do you know whether that service still works if hub put into modem mode?

[SJMcG]

Don't have a land-line, so not sure.

Easy test though - put it in modem more for a few mins and test your landline. 👍

[Shoal]

yep, landline works fine in modem mode so now just need to sort out a router 🙂

[Adduxi]

If I was you in a bungalow I would install a PoE switch and use ceiling mounted Access Points, something like Unifi AC Lite. A couple of these would give better coverage than a single router. 

[Shoal]

thats definitely worth considering, I already have a gigabit POE switch cabled to a built in cupboard so it has easy access to the roof space, I put it in to run external security cameras and it has has plenty of spare ports and power capacity although I presume you would lose wifi6 capability (assuming I replace the router with wifi6 enabled one)

[Shoal]

Ive been looking at router options, The AX50 that you have seems a good choice for the money, I have a couple of questions about it before pulling the trigger on one though.
Several reviews mention how hot it runs with the intel processor, in your experience do you think it runs excessively hot.
The other thing was wifi coverage as you mentioned that you still had some wifi issues. My current hub3 will cover the whole house (just) on 2.4g band and has a few dead spots on 5g. so the question is, does the AX50 provide a better wifi signal than the hub3, if its a bit better then it should be ok.

[SJMcG]

It does get a bit hot. Def hotter than the hub 3, but not especially hotter than some other components I have. It's not been an issue so far, but I guess it could do over time. There's a 3 year warranty included, so should cover this.

In terms of WiFi coverage, it's hard to say as I have multiple APs so I don't necessarily know which AP I'm connected to. Worst case you can send it back if it's not good enough?

[Shoal]

thanks very much for the info and the help, I will probably go for an ax50 and if necessary, supplement it with a unifi lite AP . From reviews I have found, where folk have used an ax50 to replace router functions of hub3 they often say coverage is better but without some objective testing its hard to get a feeling for the difference. I have been looking at lots of routers today, TP-link, Asus, Netgear, etc and 1 review might say best thing since sliced bread then another will slag it off for poor firmware, unreliability, bad customer service, being worse than a hub3 (is that possible?) etc....makes your brain hurt but I think an AX50 should do the trick.

[SJMcG]

Yeah it's been solid for me so far.

Think Ubiquiti do a Wi-Fi 6 AP in case you want to try that too. 

[Wotcha]

I have the exact same problem. Started around 6-8 weeks ago. It was freezing on 1-2 times daily.

VM switched out the router, but I am still getting the same freezing 1-2 times per week.

VM tech tried to lay blame on my ethernet cabling. But I can hardly go around swapping out other  cabling/devices just because the VM router has some strange issue, and I resent having to have a 2nd router device powered up all the time so that the VM hub can be in modem mode.