Virgin Media Community

[Kadajio]

Hi All, 

I have only been with virgin since December and feel like I have been sold a lemon! I was promised the rumours of the router constantly dropping out weren't true and the speeds were stable as they were on fibre cables. Which has not been the case.

Router

So far we went through a period of the Internet dropping and saying Internet unavailable. A tech phoned us and split the signal between 2g and 5g. So now we have to connect to either signals depending on what's the fastest or strongest signal instead of it doing it for itself. 

During the week the 2g and 5g will come up unavailable 3 to 4 times during the working day. So it's anything but stable. This also happens when trying to watch apps through the media box like amazon prime / netflix 

Speeds

We pay for a 200mb package 

I understand that the further away you are from the router the more your speed will drop and if devices are downloading it will report differently.  However some days I will get 219mb 20ft away in my office with 0 issues and then like today I get 3mb. I have used the virgin connect app and it says all rooms of the house bar the far back are great signal.  The speeds fluctuate so much that any given time of the day the speeds will be completely different. (screen shot attached). 

I've tried phoning virgin customer support to be told "our router isn't designed to gaurentee you any speed via WiFi only ethernet" when asked to confirm that he is saying their wireless router isn't designed to be wireless he confirmed it! 🤦‍♂️. 

Any help will be greatly appreciated as I have to give a webinar to 30+ employers next week and I can't afford for it to cut out! 

Thank you 

 

[jbrennand]

The simplest solution (assuming your wired connections) are all ok is to ditch the Hub's poor wifi and get your own better quality equipment. ~£100 should sort it all out permanently and be yours to keep if you move to another supplier. But its your choice of course.

[Z92]

WiFi is very temperamental at best, your next door neighbour turning the microwave on can upset, as can lots of other things. It can't be classified as stable. You can improve it by buying a WiFi router with a stronger signal, but to solve it completely you need to go down the cable route. 

[Kadajio]

We had 0 issues with sky though in three years of having it in same location. We only switched to virgin as the sales rep and an engineer gaurenteed that we would have 0 drop outs and the speed would remain stable as its a fibre cable. 

As noted even the media box has issues when the Internet drops out it won't launch apps. So cabled won't resolve this issue either. 

We has a period of 2 weeks at the begining of it being installed that it was stable and fine. Being 2ft away and the speed fluctuating  by over 100mb shouldn't be swayed by a stronger signal either. 

[jbrennand]

Just to clarify this issue. Can you connect a computer/laptop directly to the Hub with a Cat5e/6 Ethernet cable and when the wifi ones drop see if that one remains stably connected or not. Also note and report what the wifi and power lights are doing/showing when this is happening. This will show wired connection issues - as will a BQM - see below.

One year ago there werent the same number of your neighbours or people connected to the same VM systems as you, sat in the house all day connect on Zoom meetings, doing home schooling, running businesses from home, gaming, etc
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if you haven’t already, set up a free and secure “Broadband Quality Monitor” to continually monitor the state of your connection and record any true network dropouts , latency issues, packet drops, etc - it will thus allow you to differentiate between those and simple wifi dropouts. It does it 24/7/365 and it keeps a visual record of any/all of your network disconnections, useful data to have to match to the Network logs (in your Hub settings) and also in discussions with VM - note it will take a few hours to start seeing a sensible picture - post up the “link” to the “share live graph” (as per instructions on the TB website) when it starts to develop.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality