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

[SJMcG]

Hi Sasha,

Issue just reoccurred. Same characteristics as before. 

I tested and wired connectivity directly into the hub was down - no IPs were being issued.

Hub light remained white, as it did in previous incidents. 

I used an external website (via my phone's data) to ping the public IP of my hub and it was still responding, so the connection was up. Thinkbroadband corroborated this as it showed the connection monitor was up the whole time.

There were 2 entries into the log this morning, but they were at approx 60 to 90 mins before the issue.

[SJMcG]

These were the entries in the log:

13/04/2021 06:53:20	notice	NOTICE ATOM is restarted as part of Self Healing Mechanism;CM-MAC=**:**:**:**:**:**;CMTS-MAC=**:**:**:**:**:**;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;
13/04/2021 06:19:23	Warning!	RCS Partial Service;CM-MAC=**:**:**:**:**:**;CMTS-MAC=**:**:**:**:**:**;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.0;

The outage was about 7:50, but I've just realised the hub's time must be on GMT so the 'notice' entry was actually at the same time as the outage this time.

[Rusk]

That is exactly how mine was behaving. It is obvious it is the hub freezing up. I had two replacement hubs during troubleshooting, the first one seemed to be ok for about 2 months but then started with the same issue and the second had the issue within days.

It is as clear as day that the hub is only capable of modem operation. 

[SJMcG]

Yeah seems that way.

Incredible really that VM won't admit this fundamental issue.

[Shoal]

I have just found this thread and I have had exactly the same problem for the past 6 months and I had come to the conclusion it was the hub3 locking up.

About once or twice a week  I lose internet connectivity via wifi, then wifi shuts down, I cant communicate with the hub via wired conection and pressing the front panel button does nothing. The hub never recovers until you power cycle then its fine. When it fails the thinkbroadband monitor shows a short spike with total packet loss then it says everything is working....but its not. An engineer checked over the internal and external wiring and swapped the hub, checked the levels  but the problem persists. The other cable services (phone,tv) are not affected, just the hub. 

In a way I am glad that it isnt just me with the problem, not that I wish this on anyone else, as its very frustrating but its clearly a more common issue and VM need to sort it out. 

In my case it started about Sep 2020, before then we had a very reliable network connection but not any more and its hard to describe the actual fault to VM as once rebooted its working again. Has anyone had a resolution to this....other than changing supplier

[SJMcG]

I just bit the bullet and bought a separate router, putting the Hub 3 into modem mode. Never goes down now.

[Shoal]

was thinking of doing that, annoyingly I got an email from VM at end of March offering a Hub4 at no cost, just follow link. problem was it went to spam folder and I only found it 4v weeks later and link didnt work. I put in complaint and reply was yes its authorised just order it then was passed around for an hour by people who said they didnt know anything or doubted I had received an email, in the end they just said it was a trial, it was too late and flatly refused to honour their offer...I thought a hub4 might fix this lockup issue but im still stuck with it. what router did you go with?

[SJMcG]

I've not heard good things about the hub 4 either, but not had any experience with it myself. 

I bought a TP Link Archer AX50 in the end. Seems reasonably good so far. I'm having some WiFi issues, but I think it's just config and I have a couple of other Cisco APs that are complicating matters. 

[Shoal]

i'll have a look at that one in the morning, I had thought of one of the asus routers, the RT-AC3200 used to get good reviews but that was a few years ago, I imagine things have moved on a bit hopefully. Interesting what you said about the hub4, its on a list of "dont use" routers on this site along with the hub3 so probably modem mode and a decent router is the way to go although it is not clear whether my hub3 will still lock-up when in modem mode, if it does then I would still have the same problem

[SJMcG]

The router I went for has a few decent features, like WiFi 6, but overall it's a fairly cheap model so not necessarily the best on the market. I didn't need great WiFi range because of my other APs so your needs may be different.

As for the hub still locking up - mine stopped and so did many others if you search this forum and elsewhere online. I was in the same situation as you - I didn't really want to pay for the router out of principle, but it is the solution unfortunately.