Virgin HUB 5 suddenly appears to be blocking Ring Doorbell and PodPoint charger?

[Apnomis]

Sorry for the vague title, but I don't really know what the issue is and it's driving me mad! I've had the HUB 5 with 1 additional 'Pod' and it's been fantastic, no issues at all. Then all of a sudden this week something changed that has interfered with some of my WiFi connected devices. Problem is I don't know what has changed or how to fix it...

I still have WiFi access and ethernet access on all my devices, so it is not a connectivity problem, but some of the devices are now malfunctioning. For example my Ring Doorbell shows a strong wifi signal, but will not connect to live view, will not record motion alerts to the cloud, and will not send doorbell push notifications - but it is connected to WiFi and the hourly 'snapshot' image IS uploaded to the cloud.

Similarly with my PodPoint, scheduling is no longer working and the app insists the Podpoint is not connected to the internet and can't communicate with it, and forces me into WiFi setup mode. But when I do the setup on the PodPoint itself confirms it is connected to the internet - PodPoint support also confirm they can see it is connected to the network. So it is not a connection problem, it's like Virgin is suddenly blocking part of the signal getting through...

I've tried searching for answers but I can't find any, there is another user that says they've lost access to 'Slack' since Monday on their HUB 5, I've no idea what that is but that's about the same time my connections went wonky...

It feels like Virgin have done a config change to block a port or apply a VPN or something that is causing connection issues, but I don't know what. So any technical help would be very welcome...

I've tried resetting the router, I've tried setting up a guest wifi and connecting to that, I've tried resetting and reinstalling all the apps of the affected WiFi devices, but nothing is working. The config menu of the HUB 5 is very limited so there isn't really much I can try. I tried disabling the 'Smart' feature for the WiFi management but that didn't work either. Something must have changed at the Virgin end this week - is there a way to know what?

Additionally I tried the network diagnostic in the config menu and that unhelpfully said 'Your home network has a few problems' but with no explanation what those problems were or how they can be fix... The VM Connect app is also showing 'Unknown' for all the connections and 'can't calculate device's health' so that is no use to me either...

Any ideas? I'm willing to try anything (short of having to buy a new router!)

[Client62]

Any chance you based in the North West of England where network routing issues ( network traffic loss )
started 3 days ago and so far are not reported as fixed.

[Obsidian]

I'm in WA8, and I'm having the exact same issue, spoke to ring and they confirmed that Virgin and having issues. No word from Virgin though.

[itr]

I spent 2 hours on the phone to Ring support yesterday because all our cameras are refusing to connect via live stream but am still getting alerts and can watch catchup video clips.  We confirmed the issue is with virgin media as I only use the SH5 in modem mode with Opensense firewall, ubiquiti switches and access points and still experience the problems - the moment we connected one of the cameras to my mobile phone as a hotspot the issues disappeared.  Ring level 2 ran through a lot of tests and confirmed they have received a large number of VM hosted customers in the last 24 hours or so.  No reports on the SH of dropped packets etc so clearly routing problems

[Apnomis]

Thanks both, yes I'm in a WA3 postcode area, so it sounds like the same issue - I knew it must have been a Virgin routing issue but I could find no information about it, and the Service Status menu claims there are no reported issues with Broadband in the area...

I feel better knowing it's not just me!

I have had a text message from VM saying they will be doing some essential improvements on Wed 24th between 9-3. Anyone know if this is connected to the same issue? Thanks.

[Apnomis]

Just to add I've noticed similar issues with some pages of some websites too, when they hang I turn off wi-fi and use my mobile data and the page loads fine. It's weird how it is only certain pages and certain parts of certain apps and not a complete outage, but I don't really don't understand how network routing works!

[Obsidian]

Hi

Spoke to Virgin and they haven't a clue what's going on.  Not sure what to do next.

[Client62 · Accepted solution]

The connectivity issues in the North West are VM fault : F011273523 (search the forum for this ref to see more info)

[itr]

 VM don't admit there's a problem even when you've got a big red light flashing on your hub and smoke coming out of it....admitting issues mean they may have to pay you some compensation!

[Obsidian]

Spoke to Virgin, they have confirmed outage but couldn't give a time scale for fix.