I'm hoping someone can shed some light on my Virgin Broadband problem as I had an engineer visit today which managed to cure it for precisely the amount of time it took the engineers to pack up and drive out of the road before it all went downhill again! I have the M125 package with a Hub 3 and landline.
Please bear with me- it's long winded...
My Wi-Fi access was absolutely fine until one night around new year when I went to bed. It was working at midnight... by the time I woke up at 9am I had no internet access on my phone from the router.
My phone (Xperia 5 IV on Android 14) would not connect to the Wi-Fi. This gradually increased until my phone, Mum's phone (Xperia Z1 Compact on Android 9), Laptop - HP Omen running Windows 10, and the Freesat HD box all showed "Connected" but would not send or receive any data for apps, websites etc.
I have a TP Wi-Fi extender connected to the router to give enough range to reach the doorbell (we have a small house, but the Hub 3 range seems quite poor.) This has been in place for months and hasn't caused any problems yet. This was still connected to the Wi-Fi and happily communicating with it. I tried connecting all the above devices to it and hey presto, they were all able to gain access! Happy days for a week or so before both phones and laptop stopped being able to gain access via the TP link (Freesat was still ok connected via the extender).
I wanted to determine if the problem was with the router itself, wiring or something else (previous engineer visit last April replaced cracked fibre optic cable) so I created a guest network... Phones and laptop worked perfectly on the guest network (even though they still wouldn't connect to the original) so I guess that means the router/wiring is ok.
By this point I had-
--Wi-Fi directly from router: Nooie Wi-Fi Cameras, TP range extender, several Alexa devices.
--Connected to TP extender: Freesat HD box, 2 x Smart TVs, Doorbell
--Guest Network: 2 x mobiles, Tablet, Laptop
Landline has worked fine all the time
When anything stopped communicating with the router, I moved it along to the next option and decided it didn't matter what everything was connected to as long as it worked, so left it at this point until 10 days ago when all connections started dropping for brief periods at random times of day then coming back on again- I ran the Virgin App equipment tests on my account and it decided I had "Intermittent Signal Issues" so I gave up and booked an engineer visit.
After a month of being unable to connect my phone to the Wi-Fi (I even checked right before the engineers arrived) it was still showing "connected" but completely dead for accessing apps or the internet. I showed the engineers while they were going through their outside checks, and would you believe it the damn thing connected and worked!!! Honestly, I could have screamed. I explained my issues as above but although the engineers were perfectly nice, it was all met with limited interest.
Apparently there were "various issues" with my broadband- a red light on the back of the little white box and some other odds and sods, but eventually my month of connection woes was diagnosed as a dirty end on the internal fibre optic cable. Now I'm not nearly as familiar with tech as I used to be in the early days of internet when I worked in an old school IT department, but I'm not completely stupid. That fibre optic cable had not been touched in any way since it was replaced by the previous engineer- it was fine- it's in a quiet corner of the house were it is never in any danger of being messed around with. Cables don't just get dirty ends overnight and cause weird selective problems with accessibility.
Eventually after some more fiddling, I still couldn't connect either phone to the router although the engineer could connect his. They did a pin-hole reset and finally I could connect and access the internet from my phone. After thanking them very much and waving them off, I turned the laptop on... Couldn't connect. I tried both phones again- couldn't connect!
So we're back almost to square one- Everything that won't speak directly to the router is connected to the TP extender which still seems happy to connect itself. In a few days I suspect I'll start losing access through that and will set up another guest network and off we'll go until another engineer comes and goes.
Please does anyone out there have any idea why some of my items will happily continue to speak to the router but others will connect but will not actually load anything? Why does the guest network work fine with everything although it is using the same equipment? Why does it gradually become more useless until the connection starts dropping out altogether like a slow, drawn out death? Why did it all work for 5 minutes while the engineers were here then revert to useless again after they left?!
I would be so grateful if anyone has any ideas about why this is happening.
