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Best Mesh for Hub 4 and 1Gb

guilbert
Dialled in

I have a Hub 4 on 1Gb. 

Would like to get a Mesh system as the wi fi gives us problems (dropping out etc)

We are not massive users of wi fi, just phones, tablets etc and also Sky Q. But my son in his attic bedroom has a PS4 and a computer (and streams TV a lot to his PC, often Sky AND BT Sports at the same time).

Don't mind spending a bit of money to get a good system. 

I am fairly technical (work in computers) but never set up a Mesh system before or put the Virgin router in modem mode so something "easy" to set up would be good..

15 REPLIES 15

Looking grim so far.  If it magically improves at around half past midnight, and goes downhill from perhaps 9 am tomorrow, with worst performance in the evening, then that would be a very clear sign of over-utilisation.

Based on what I can now see in the BQM, I do think you have a problem with local over-utilisation.

What is happening is that VM have allowed a situation to develop where local data traffic at busy times is greater than available capacity at the CMTS (the big 1,000 customer modem that sits at the top of the local analogue distribution network), and at times when the capacity is exceeded, data packets get queued for some milliseconds.  That's what the BQM shows, and why there's no problem through the small hours of the morning, yet the problem recurs as people wake up and do more on line activity through the day.  In some cases this can affect speeds, in many cases the sporadic delays of say 90-150+ms are not sufficient to impact across a speed test that takes say thirty seconds.  What it can and does harm is those uses (gaming, video calls, voice over IP, live upstreaming) where the data has to arrive and be processed in a certain order in near enough real time.  If a data packet gets queued, and the software expecting that data times out, the data is usually re-requested, but then either the entire stream of data is held up, or more likely the application software abandons the late packet because it arrives out of sequence.  The result is stuttering, glitches and disconnections.  In video calls that can be drop outs and sometimes echoing, in games it is teleporting, visual glitching, missed shots, or being killed by invisible opponents.

Nothing you can do to improve matters, and because this is between the hub's cable modem and the CMTS, putting in your own mesh will get you better wifi but won't improve that broadband problem.  In some areas VM undertake work to rejig the local networks to balance loads and eliminate over-utilisation, and they spend tens of millions of pounds a year doing this - overall the situation is getting slowly better as VM address these problems.  But sometimes that's either not possible, or judged uneconomic if there's a need to spend money on more equipment in particular locations, so they won't do anything.  There will be an "estimated fix date" if this is officially recognised as over-utilisation, but there's no way of knowing if that fix date is actually backed by any plan of action and programme of works, and there's a history of serially missed fix dates.  Like a lying toddler ("No daddy, I didn't eat all of Meg's sweets!") VM still haven't worked out that telling the truth and being honest is the best option, and refuse to treat customers fairly and admit these issues, and provide an honest and accurate date for a fix, backed by actual investment and a project plan (or even say "sorry, we have a capacity issue we can't resolve and this problem will remain for many months").  That's bad enough if they admit there's a problem.  In some cases they'll deny there's an over-utilisation fault despite clear evidence of one, because to admit over-utilisation there's a protocol to be followed, and until the networks team have formally agreed that there is a problem, VM won't admit one exists.  And in addition, because they won't be honest, you could be days away from having the fault resolved, yet you've no way of telling between that, or those uneconomic cases where they have no plan of ever spending money to increase capacity.

Your options:

1) Sit it out, and hope that VM do carry out improvement works. There's little or nothing you can do to force VM to upgrade the network, nor can you rely on any fix date that is stated.  I'd emphasise that if you aren't noticing any of the problems I describe then this is a sound option.  Different uses, and and different users have varying levels of sensitivity to over-utilisation.  Many customers don't notice, some notice but just think "internet's slow, oh well", and the fact that you haven't mentioned those sorts of problems may indicate that you're happy to accept the somewhat erratic service because you want the high bandwidth?

2) Get yourself a new ISP if there are acceptable alternatives. If you're in a fixed term contract you'll probably have to use the VM complaints process (and possibly escalate for arbitration at CISAS ) to be released from contract without penalty. If you need to do this, the grounds of your complaint is the poor performance, and your request for release from contract without penalty is twofold: First the Consumer Rights Act 2015 that requires any consumer service to be provided with "reasonable skill and care", and second, the Ofcom Fairness Commitments, that states "Customers’ services work as promised, reliably over time. If things go wrong providers give a prompt response to fix problems and take appropriate action to help their customers, which may include providing compensation where relevant. If providers can’t fix problems with core services they have promised to deliver within a reasonable period, customers can walk away from their contract with no penalty."

3) There is no third option.  There's nothing you can do that improves over-utilisation or bypass it.  VPNs, new routers, fiddling with settings, changing your package etc don't make any difference, the problem is that there's simply more data traffic than the CMTS gear can process in real time, leading to very brief delays that may not affect measured speeds, but destroy good latency.

When VM staff get round to this post, they will be able to say if there's a known over-utilisation fault (but don't believe the fix date).   I don't think your BQM shows anything that would be down to power or noise problems, but always worth going along with any reasonable request from the company to investigate, because I could be wrong......

For comparison here's my BQM on an uncongested VM network:

My Broadband Ping - Virgin Media 200 Mbps

Andrew-G, thanks a lot for spending so much time explaining the problem (I do help on forums myself, some computer / technical forums and others like TripAdvisor for holidays etc so know how much work they can be).

Can you (or somebody) just clarify that it is the high yellow peaks I see on my graph are an example of over utilization (too many users in the area)?

I live in the fairly affluent area of Solihull (on the Eastern edge of Birmingham). It is suburban area, packed solid with houses, so assume many people will have Broadband (and of course many of those Virgin Broadband).

I would also think that Virgin would see it economically worth their while improving the Broadband in this area due to the high number of houses and the amount of money people in the area have to pay for "fast" broadband. 

Funnily enough CityFibre has just dug up all the pavements in our area (including right outside my house) to lay their fast Broadband. However as yet we have had no letter through the post offering their Broadband and giving any sort of price. Be interesting to see what they offer.

Is there any way of contacting Virgin to see if they have plans to improve our local Broadband.   

I'm not so far away myself, and know Solihull well, but there's no correlation between type of area and over-utilisation. We've seen such problems reported in central Manchester, Croydon, Bromley, the low density housing of Telford, and even semi-rural suburbs of Reading.  It occurs where VM don't manage sign of new customers properly.  There are processes supposed to stop customers being signed up where problems exist, I conclude that they come into effect too late, and don’t account for every growing data traffic per user.

In terms of confirming the problem, only VM can formally confirm that, and they’ll only do that if the problem has been investigated and allotted a capacity fault reference by their networks team.  If that process hasn’t finished (or even started) then staff will correctly report that there’s no fault on system.  Also, there’s degrees of over-utilisation, and below a certain level VM say “no problem”, even if it is clearly visible on a BQM and in the user experience.

Having said all that, take a look at my prediction of things improving at half midnight, and then kicking off again around 8-9am.  I made that at about 8pm last night, now look at your BQM – spooky coincidence eh?  Or alternatively we’ve seen so many BQM traces like this that we know what to expect.  If it is not over-utilisation, VM will need to come up with an explanation of why the latency is fine through the small hours of the morning, yet poor during waking hours, and very poor through peak periods – perhaps the electrons they use don’t like daylight.

VM are investing to fix some capacity problems, they may get round to your area because it will be a nice profitable area – but that could be eighteen months away, it could be tomorrow, and for you and me there’s no way of knowing or enquiring and getting a truthful answer, and any promises of a fix date are not reliable.  If CityFibre goes live, then there’s a good chance that will resolve VM’s local capacity problem because VM’s customer numbers will go down, and without needing any VM investment that will improve the balance between VM traffic and VM capacity.  Unfortunately, that might mean VM may not plan further capacity upgrades in your area, and not just because of CityFibre, but also because most of your area other than the furthest south west fringes are planned to have Openreach FTTP available to all between now and April 2024.

Serena_C
Forum Team (Retired)
Forum Team (Retired)

Hi @guilbert


Thank you for making this post regarding your WiFi issues, I'm sorry to hear that your connection has been dropping.


I have taken a look at your account and can see that your WiFi is being impacted by a long term capacity issue. When investigating this further, diagnostics identified that there are WiFi settings that are not set to recommended values.

The 2.4GHz Primary SSID mode is not on a recommended setting. This could be causing slow speeds or connection issues due to device compatibility. An active modem of 802.11 b/g/n is backwards compatible. Devices that are n compliant will have the best performance.


A Bandwidth of 20/40MHz offers a good balance of performance and compatibility, with added benefit of resilience if there are any interference or congestion issues.


Are you able to change the WiFi mode to see if this improves things?


Kind regards,

Serena

 

 

 

 

Sorry for the delay, only just seen your update.

I was not totally sure what you meant by "The 2.4GHz Primary SSID mode is not on a recommended setting"

However I have been in the router settings and see the "Wireless mode" was set to "802.11g/n"

I have now changed this to "802.11b/g/n"

I that the change that you meant?

I don't ever remember changing this, though I may have selected it by mistake when changing the SSID and password