Virgin Media's mesh system for M600

[Dasco]

I have the standard wifi extenders that you could get from Virgin for ages but they have never really worked very well.
When I had my 360 box and two 360 minis fitted last year I asked the engineer about fitting a mesh system as the extenders just don't work reliably he said to wait till now and phone and ask for the mesh system.
I am on the Ultimate Oomph bundle and have been since it came out.

My wife is a teacher and is now teaching via live video link to her class in their homes and with both my kids using the live video teaching from their schools the wifi just can't handle it, which is not great for my kids but is terrible for my wife as she is trying to teach 35 kids at home everyday.
So i've tried to call Virgin today to try get the pods sent out to me but I just get no lines available, is there anyway one of Virgin Media staff can contact me so I can get these ordered and hopefully fix the wifi or at least make it more stable.
Many thanks

[legacy1]

Faster to get Tri-band mesh with hub in modem mode.

[Dasco]

I've looked into a mesh systems but would rather try the free upgrade from Virgin before I go out and spend my money.

[jbrennand]

Their pods are worth trying but only if they are free - and that is to 1GB or Ultimate Oomph customers only. Otherwise they are £5/month and then getting our own Mesh makes more fiscal sense.

Oh and they are currently out of stock and not being supplied for a few weeks (according to reports here)

[Dasco]

I'm on Ultimate Oomph so would be free to me if they weren't i'd of got my own mesh system. Why am I not surprised they are out of stock. Looks like i'm going to be running cat7 cables again to sort it for now.

[gary_dexter]

And when they are in stock, don't be surprised when they let you down performance wise

[sayekm]

I am in agreement with a triple band mesh kit over the extra sockets Virgin would supply you.

But you do have a valid point that you are paying a lot of money for the top package and then need to spend £200+ on a triple band mesh kit. But sadly the default Virgin equipment is not built for the speed they sell to customers.

[jonathanpye]

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@Dasco wrote:
I'm on Ultimate Oomph so would be free to me if they weren't i'd of got my own mesh system. Why am I not surprised they are out of stock. Looks like i'm going to be running cat7 cables again to sort it for now.

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I'm on ultimate oomph gig1 with hub4 and get a black spot in my daughters room. I phoned and actually managed to speak with someone in Customer service about a week ago  asking for the new wifi mesh pods as they are free. I was advised there is no stock of boosters or mesh pods and told to phone on 15th February as stock will be back in for both then 

Somehow he didnt sound convincing in his answer and it took him 20 minutes on silence to come back and tell me that. 

So I will persist and phone on 15th Feb and see what happens.

I asked for boosters along time ago but as they couldn't prove the black spot as VM connect app doesnt work with hub4 I never got the boosters.

@VM forum team can you please confirm availability or expected due date into stock of mesh wifi pods. Would be much appreciated.

Thanks

[jonathanpye]

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@sayekm wrote:

I am in agreement with a triple band mesh kit over the extra sockets Virgin would supply you.

But you do have a valid point that you are paying a lot of money for the top package and then need to spend £200+ on a triple band mesh kit. But sadly the default Virgin equipment is not built for the speed they sell to customers.

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Oh and I use cat7 for my AV equipment and PS4 as they are within 2m of the hub4

[mjpartyboy]

Most home Wi-Fi issues can be resolved with a decent third-party router. Most of the great preforming ones will have external antennas and decent specs to be able to cope with serving your bandwidth to multiple devices with ease.

Personally, I wouldn't bolt anything onto a Super Hub and expect much in the way of performance gains. If you need to rely on your broadband for more than web surfing and the odd stream, then a decent router is the way to go in the long-run and may mean you don't need any additional access points or mesh nodes for a simpler solution.

For example, I've been using the Asus AC86U for a few years now (Merlin firmware) and it deals with multiple devices streaming video and music, online gaming, and working from home (lots of Teams and Zoom video calls/meetings) simultaneously daily across two floors without a problem, despite it not being placed in the optimal position. I even get our max 200 Mbps down speed on the 5 GHz network in our environment.

I still had my old AC68U, that the 86U replaced, collecting dust in its box, so just to make use of it I added it as a mesh node in the first 2020 lockdown. Overkill for our setup really, but hasn't had any negative effects on our home network, so left it active upstairs.