Virgin Media Community

[nicksykes]

I am having a regularly-occurring issue with my VM broadband connection randomly dropping out - we joined VM just before Christmas and it has seemed every day at some point the Internet connection just drops; sometimes it dies for a minute and restarts, other times, we have to reset the hub. I am currently required to work from home and so it makes WEbex/Zoom/Teams calls difficult to schedule, participate and host. In addition, my son is home-schooling currently (as most pupils are), and this is impacting his interactions during lessons.

I see that VM claim on their adverts that their service is 'reliable'. The service level we have received since joining is far from that.

It actually amuses me that when you have exhausted all of the online suggestions to fix an issue the VM website states the following (i.e. 'click the button below') and yet there is no button to click:

Message us

Due to safety precautions put in place because of the coronavirus outbreak, it’s taking longer than usual to respond to messages. Thanks for bearing with us, and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. In the meantime, please check out our help articles to find the answer you’re looking for.

If you would like to message us, just click the button below to get started.

Any help to resolve this would be greatly appreciated

[nicksykes]

I am having a regularly-occurring issue with my VM broadband connection randomly dropping out - we joined VM just before Christmas and it has seemed every day at some point the Internet connection just drops; sometimes it dies for a minute and restarts, other times, we have to reset the hub. I am currently required to work from home and so it makes WEbex/Zoom/Teams calls difficult to schedule, participate and host. In addition, my son is home-schooling currently (as most pupils are), and this is impacting his interactions during lessons.

I see that VM claim on their adverts that their service is 'reliable'. The service level we have received since joining is far from that.

It actually amuses me that when you have exhausted all of the online suggestions to fix an issue the VM website states the following (i.e. 'click the button below') and yet there is no button to click:

Message us

Due to safety precautions put in place because of the coronavirus outbreak, it’s taking longer than usual to respond to messages. Thanks for bearing with us, and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. In the meantime, please check out our help articles to find the answer you’re looking for.

If you would like to message us, just click the button below to get started.

Any help to resolve this would be greatly appreciated

[jbrennand]

First thing is that webex/team meeting etc are always best done on a device connected directly to the Hub by ethernet cable.

Is that how you are connecting? If not can you try it - if only as a temporary test - that way we might be able to tell whether the issue is an underlying VM Network connection issue - or just a wireless problem exacerbated by the current upsurge in home working activities.

Different routes to a "fix" will apply to those two possibilities.

[nicksykes]

John,

Thanks for your prompt reply, I don't think connecting an ethernet cable for work videoconfs will be feasible; the outages are so random that I could be conducting a number of videoconfs from my hallway tomorrow. However, I could ensure there is a laptop connected by ethernet to the hub and the next time the broadband connection drops for my work laptop, iphone and ipad, I can check whether the ethernet connection has also dropped.

Would that help to give you the information you need?

Nick

[jbrennand]

I am not interested in the long term feasibility - that's for later 😀

Just as an aside on that - my neighbour was having the same issues with courses on Zoom she runs once a week fro her kitchen. I advised her to get a 30 metre run of ethernet cable and just trail it over the floor from the Hub to the kitchen and connect it with an adapter to her laptop. Then when finished to just disconnect it and roll it up and stick it in a cupboard until the week after. She hasn't had a single disconnect since starting doing that back in October. I realise that's not feasible for all - especially those with small children and/or enquiring pets 🙂

But, yes - connecting a laptop anywhere on ethernet cable and checking whether it remains stably connected when the wifi drops is equally good data to have to move on from there.

[nicksykes]

Thanks for your help so far. 

For the past couple of days I have had a spare laptop connected by Ethernet to the hub and when the WiFi signal appeared to drop I would quickly check to see whether the Ethernet connection was still active, it would appear to be the case but the drop in the WiFi signal has not been long enough to be certain that the Ethernet connection had also dropped (there is a flight of stairs for me to navigate between my office and the hub).

I saw another post that suggested setting up a Hub home monitor from thinkbroadband.com. I'm not sure whether that will help provide any further evidence, so your advice on that would be welcome. If so, would it be wise to have a monitor from both the ethernet-connected device and a wiFi-connected device?

I've also found that resetting the hub has a positive effect on having a stable wifi connection but I am a little wary about doing that too often (e.g. every few days) in case that will cause more long-term problems.

[tehwolf]

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@nicksykes wrote:

Thanks for your help so far. 

For the past couple of days I have had a spare laptop connected by Ethernet to the hub and when the WiFi signal appeared to drop I would quickly check to see whether the Ethernet connection was still active, it would appear to be the case but the drop in the WiFi signal has not been long enough to be certain that the Ethernet connection had also dropped (there is a flight of stairs for me to navigate between my office and the hub).

I saw another post that suggested setting up a Hub home monitor from thinkbroadband.com. I'm not sure whether that will help provide any further evidence, so your advice on that would be welcome. If so, would it be wise to have a monitor from both the ethernet-connected device and a wiFi-connected device?

I've also found that resetting the hub has a positive effect on having a stable wifi connection but I am a little wary about doing that too often (e.g. every few days) in case that will cause more long-term problems.

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it is worth setting up a BQM - then post a sharing link back here to the Live Graph.. the BQM monitors the WAN side of the connection, it won't / can't monitor the wired/wifi connections on the LAN. worth it nevertheless.

you could just set a ping up on the downstairs laptop (it's not a perfect tool, but will show if the laptop is dropping a connection at the same time as the wifi)..

open a command prompt on the laptop and type "ping -t 8.8.8.8" (no quotes) and hit enter.. this will constantly ping 8.8.8.8 until you hit CRTL-C. when wifi drops upstairs, go down and see if the ping command has any "request timed out" messages..