Internet connection keeps dropping every 30 minutes

[redorbluepill]

Hi Virgin Media Community,

I experience a very weird problem with my connection. It keeps on dropping out every 30 minutes, exactly on the dot. Which most of the time causes me to loose the virtual desktop for work.

I have a long journey of root cause analysis behind me and finally decided to do a longer term speedtest with speedtest-cli and auto-speedtest, running every 5 minutes on my Raspberry Pi (static IP address) connected via network cable to the Virgin Media router. This resulted in the following 

Strangly enough, for every full hour and half hour, my connection drops. I did run it every minute the day before and it confirmed it's excactly at these times.
Please note that the additional drop at shortly after 9am is the result of rebooting the VM router. However, the connection still dropped out at 9.30am, 10am, and 10.30am.

I confirmed this assessment with another of my Debian machines at home. It also looses the connection.
To further exclude any dodgy ethernet cables, I also connected another MacOS machine via WiFi to the VM router and ran the speedtest. Same result: drop outs every half hour. I have to admit though that this will need to contact the DHCP and DNS server connected via ethernet cable (and ethernet switch in-between) to the VM router.

I just have no idea what could cause this. I reckon I need a Virgin Media engineer to re-test the connection?

My set up:
I have a Virgin Media router, which functions as Wifi-Hotspot and router. Combined with a Raspberry Pi, which runs PiHole with DHCP server and unbound DNS service. Most of my machine are connected via ethernet cable, but some machines connect via WiFi.

What I have tried so far:
- Double checked my connection with ping 8.8.8.8 to ensure there is a problem with the connection and not the DNS
- Checked my cron jobs on my Raspberry Pi to make sure there are no big services running every 30 minutes. That doesn't seem to be the case
- Restarted my Raspberry Pi
- Checked my DHCP settings and the leases to my machines and the leases are for a week.
- Restarted the VM router and moved the power supply to a seperate power point (no other devices on this power point)
- I have a BQM from Thikbroadband running: Broadband Quality Monitor from Thinkbroadband 
- And now I do have a speedtest running every 5 minutes on my Raspberry Pi and my seperate Debian machine.

What I haven't done yet is:
- Set up my MacOS device with a static IP address and 8.8.8.8 as DNS server and perform testing

Does anyone have any additional ideas?

Many thanks in advance!

[Kath_F]

Hi redorbluepill,

Thanks for coming back to via private message with your information.

I have booked you in for the next available appointment. We cannot confirm the appointment time slot, so to view this please sign in to My Virgin Media here: My VM Just go to My Account > Track your orders. You can also view this in the My VM app.

Please ensure that someone over the age of 18 is at the property for the time the engineer is there. 

If the appointment is unsuitable or if anyone living at your property has tested positive for Coronavirus, has been asked to self-isolate or has flu-like symptoms then please reschedule the appointment on the same link. 
Lets us know how the appointment goes. 

Take care.

[redorbluepill]

Thanks Kath_F,

technician visit is now confirmed. Great service!

Hope this resolves the hick-ups in my internet connection.

Best regards

[redorbluepill]

Quick update:
The technician was here yesterday and
1. Replaced the hub with another VM Hub 3.0; and
2. Confirmed that I'm still connected to my neighbours connection, so basically still sharing the cable with my neighbour.

Unfortunately, the replacement Hub did not change anything.
Drops restarted directly after connecting the new Hub. See graph below after 5pm.

And drop-outs continue to be a regular occurrence. 

The technician promised that my property will be re-connected in a few weeks to a separate cable. So fingers crossed that will address my connection problems. 

[Serena_C]

Hi @redorbluepill

Thank you so much for getting back to us with an update, I'm sorry to hear that the replacement Hub did not resolve your issue. Please do keep us posted in a few weeks on how things go with your seperate cable.

Kind regards,

Serena

[Kath_F]

Hi redorbluepill, 

Thanks for your private message. We only use private message when we are needing to discuss account specific information. Anything else can be posted publicly 🙂 

There is no update on the account but this sort of work can take months to plan. As you have a connection, it won't be classed as a priority. As soon as there is an update, the relevant teams will be in touch.

Apologies for the delays. 

Thanks,

[redorbluepill]

Thanks Kath_F,

not sure about that. Last year November the technician connected us temporarily to our neighbours cable, stating that it will be rectified soon. Which unfortunately never happened.

Now it seems that our connection problems (disconnection every half hour) are potentially traced down to poor cables, I don’t think your reply is good enough. I always thought our problems are just random disconnects until I investigated properly.

If it’s not sorted until our end of contract 18 months later, I don’t think you earned any loyalty. I will happily move to another provider. Even if that means less than 100 MBit, I hope they manage to not disconnect us every half hour.

[Hayley_S]

Hello @redorbluepill.

I am sorry for the inconvenience caused.

We will be working on this and doing everything possible to fix it.

Many thanks,

[redorbluepill]

Thanks Hayley,

look, it's just frustrating to loose the connection every 30 minutes. While in the end I can access the internet, it sometimes causes up to 5 minutes of re-connection hassles. So I'm not sure you realise how significant the impact on my connection and my ability to work from home is.

Btw, this morning, I had no internet connection for 1.5 hours (8.30-10.00am). No idea if it is related.

Browsing around the Virgin Media account page, I could see that it mentions raising a complaint. How can I do that?

Best regards

[Tom_F]

Hi redorbluepill, I've taken a closer look into this today and can see the issues may be further impacted by a known SNR fault which is ongoing at the moment (ref.# F0094513830) and currently estimated to be resolved by Nov 30th. 

If you're still having the same issues at that point please let us know so we can check for another update/take further action where needed.

Tom 

[redorbluepill]

Thanks Tom,

do you have any update on this?

I unfortunately still experience connection drop-outs every half hour.

I think at one point I will just need to change the provider.
Given this is going on for months, what is the procedure to cancel my contract before the contract end? I don't think I can wait another 6 months.