Virgin Media Community

[nathanrogers]

Hi everyone. I have an issue that I hope someone can help me with.

I've recently upgraded my internet to the 200mbps gamer package, and in doing so received a brand new superhub 3. This was a good upgrade because the superhub 2 I had before this had intermittent problems with some of the LAN ports, so I needed a new hub anyway.

Ever since I've had this new hub, I've been experiencing issues with the wifi. The internet works perfectly through LAN, and I've not noticed any issues there. However, when using the wifi, my devices will connect fine, but then after a while the internet will not work. I have eliminated loads of potential reasons for this, and I will bullet them here to tell you what I have done so far.

• The devices will remain connected to the router, and will show they haven't dropped connection (This is for iPhones, iPad's etc). One PC in the house connects through wifi, and this will occasionally drop connection and hang, but the issue mainly affects the mobile devices. The devices that are affected are 2 iPhones, 1 iPad and 1 Samsung galaxy s7. These devices are working fine, and were working fine on the old router.
• The issue will cause webpages for example to just hang, and will never load. This also happens when trying to use the internet on any app too.
• I have contacted VM about this, and someone has made sure the router is up to date, and the wifi settings have been configured correctly.
• The devices will have the issue whether they are far away or right next to the router.
• The issue happens on both 2.4 and 5ghz bands.
• An engineer has been out to check the line, and the router. He also fitter a booster or something like that to the cable to eliminate that.
• The router was also swapped out for a brand new one at the same time. This issue has been a problem on both of the VM superhub 3's.

Interestingly, when the engineer was here, he suggested pulling the ethernet cables out when this issue happens. Surprisingly this fixes the issue, and wifi works straight away after doing that. But as you can probably guess that's not a fix, it does not fix the problem.

Does anyone know what is happening? And maybe knows how to fix it? Everything was working fine before switching to version 3 of this router, and I'm starting to lose my patience with it. Especially when I pay a lot of money for the virgin media service. 

Thank you!

[Samantha_L]

Hi there nathanrogers,

Welcome to the community and thanks for posting.

Sorry to read you are having an issue with the wireless connection. 

With the Hub as it broadcasts the both 2.4 and 5 GHz as one network, have you tried separating these to see if that helps?

Have you tried to change the wireless channel at all?

This does sound a bit puzzling as to get the connection working, you have to remove the Ethernet cable. Are all ports used on the router? Is there a device always turned on that maybe causing interference that is connected via cable?

Look forward to hearing from you

Sam

[nathanrogers]

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@Samantha_L wrote:

Hi there nathanrogers,

Welcome to the community and thanks for posting.

Sorry to read you are having an issue with the wireless connection. 

With the Hub as it broadcasts the both 2.4 and 5 GHz as one network, have you tried separating these to see if that helps?

Have you tried to change the wireless channel at all?

This does sound a bit puzzling as to get the connection working, you have to remove the Ethernet cable. Are all ports used on the router? Is there a device always turned on that maybe causing interference that is connected via cable?

Look forward to hearing from you

Sam

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Hi, thanks for getting back to me.

The hub's frequencies have been split, and that doesn't help to issue.

The wireless channel has been changed, so it can't be that.

If there was a device connected to the ethernet ports this issue would have been present before on the old router. It was the engineer who suggested pulling the ethernet cables out as a temp fix for the issue. This makes me believe I'm not the only one having this issue if he knew to do that.

I'm starting to run out of options now, I can't think of what else to do.

[nathanrogers]

Just bumping this up. Can anyone help me with these issues? Thanks

[greeniegirl]

hello

by taking the Ethernet connections out "process of elimation" as sometimes you get a fault with a piece of equipment which causes the intermittent connection on the router or it could be as simple as a faulty Ethernet cable, first thing vm does is always remove whats connected and test the connection, plugging everything in bit by bit until you see when the connection drops to help find the fault.

It is frustrating don't get me wrong...hope this helps

[Heather_J]

Hello nathanrogers,

Thanks for getting back to us 🙂

This certainly is an interesting fault! If the engineer is aware of some conflict with the Ethernet ports, he knows something we don't as I've never heard of that work around and we deal with connection issues all day.

Do you have another router knocking around? You could pop your Hub into Modem Mode and fix up your own router to see if that helps.

Catch you soon,

Take care.

[eveangelic]

Hello nathanrogers,

Are you still having this issue... I have had the same... engineers have change all the connections.... the superhub has been changed... The issue is the update I think...

When i went into the hubs setting http://192.168.0.1 I went to tools and then network setting... it couldn't give me this information... every time an adviser sent settings to the hub everything worked, except Galaxy S7 which i think doesn't like the two channels being sent as one... just going to see about separating them now.

It's been 3 days now and i haven't had an issue.

[nathanrogers]

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@eveangelic wrote:

Hello nathanrogers,

Are you still having this issue... I have had the same... engineers have change all the connections.... the superhub has been changed... The issue is the update I think...

When i went into the hubs setting http://192.168.0.1 I went to tools and then network setting... it couldn't give me this information... every time an adviser sent settings to the hub everything worked, except Galaxy S7 which i think doesn't like the two channels being sent as one... just going to see about separating them now.

It's been 3 days now and i haven't had an issue.

---

I have fixed my issue. I'm going post the fix below this one. I hope it helps your situation.

[nathanrogers · Accepted solution]

Just to close off this post, I have identified the issue, and it is now fixed. However, I do have some feedback with the Superhub 3 that I would appreciate being passed on to the correct people at Virgin Media.

The Issue:
Ever since I've had this new hub (previously Superhub 2 AC) I've been experiencing issues with the wifi. The internet works perfectly through LAN, and I've not noticed any issues there. However, when using the wifi, my devices will connect fine, but then after a while the internet will not work. (See in original post all the potential reasons this fault was happening, and the things I eliminated as not the cause.)

The Fix:
The fault was found to be potentially faulty ethernet cable. This took months to identify as the cause because there were no signs of it being faulty.

I found the fault be installing a new router and putting the Superhub 3 into modem mode. That router worked fine, except when this particular ethernet cable was plugged in. I found the fault just by accident. When the cable was not plugged in, all wifi and internet services worked perfectly. Doing speed tests showed that the download/upload speed was high, and the latency was low. However, as soon as I plugged in the cable and performed the tests again the speeds dropped by 50mb and the latency doubled. The wifi also started to perform poorly when that happened.

I repeated the test several times to be 100% sure. Changing variables such as no ethernet cables, then testing with 1 plugged in, then plugging more in 1 at a time. Even testing to see if it mattered whether it was plugged into a particular ethernet port, and whether switches on the network had anything to do with it.

It eventually came down to it being that cable. Which was odd because I was able to access my server on the internal network and access the internet fine through that cable.

I have no idea why this cable was faulty, or what the fault was. I even checked the ends and tested it with my tester, no issues. The funny thing was I had another cable of this brand laying around, this one was only 0.5m but also had issues with the network! So it may be the brand.

The brand is Duronic. Here it is on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Duronic-CAT6a-Professional-Shielded-Network/dp/B003CL71II/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF...

I hope this helps anyone in the future with an issue like this.

PS:
Superhub 3 Feedback
You guys really need to work on getting the administration site (192.168.0.1) sorted out. It’s so slow!

The router does seem to be a little flaky with mobile phones and tablets on wifi.  

[finster]

I've been havinge exactly the same connectivity issues it's driving me mad but unplug all the Ethernet ports and Wi-Fi works fine start plugging things back in iwifi ssues resume come on virgin this issue has been going on way too long now!!