Wifi Calling and Website blocked on Hub5

[rolandharvey]

Hi community

First time poster. Long term fan of Virgin Media, rarely have had problems with them, if I have we've resolved it quickly and efficiently. 

Over the last 4 years I've been lucky enough to live in a location where I could get VM once again. 

Recently I opted to upgrade to the 1gigbit service, which requires a Hub 5. 

Up until this point, I've had a Hub 3 which has been switched to modem mode as it sadly met my expectations of my belief that "all ISP routers are not great". I then had an Amplifi Gamers edition Mesh router plugged into the Hub 3, with mesh points around the 3 storey town house. Awesome Not the best Wifi Speed, but it was a lot better than what the Hub 3 was delivering. 

We live in an dip in the landscape which means we are devoid of mobile reception. So Wifi Calling on all our mobile phones is needed. And has worked pretty much robustly over the years since Apple introduced the feature.

Fast forward to the 1gbit service being activated and the Hub 5 arrives, its Wifi 6, could this BE the ISP router that suddenly performs? Early signs are positive. 

I unplug the mesh network and see how powerful the wifi is from the Hub 5, and, wow, amazing much faster than the mesh network. I get 1gbit into the house to the router (awesome) and wifi, depending on room location is well over 500meg down sometimes 900meg. Amazing. Really happy. There are some drops and some of my cameras and ring door bell are not well served on the 2.4ghz. But thats not the priority. 

Then my wife complains that Wifi calling is not really working, people cant hear her. This happens multiple times. Then I notice it on the odd occasion for work, as most of the time my laptop is hardwired to the Hub 5 and I'm on Zoom calls most of the day. 

I then go to a website that my company utilises, www.showpad.com and the browser hangs and times out. This is a website service that is globally used by lots of a companies. Guess what, when I go into the work office or tether my laptop to my mobile phone away from my house I can get immediate access. But NOT when I'm connected to the Hub 5.

To prove a point I begrudgingly switched the Hub5 to modem only mode and connected and configured the Amplifi Mesh network. Immediately I can do wifi calls and of course can see ShowPad.  But sadly this is old technology and I don't get the speeds that the Hub 5 was delivering on its own. 

I have checked the settings in the Hub 5 to see if there are any website black lists, but this was a brand new Hub5 and I have not configured anything other than giving my Wifi a network a name. 

Trying to log a call with VM support desk in problematic as the site choices are all about having wifi or connection issues with the router. 

My next option would be to purchase an expensive Asus Wifi 6e router that punches out the speed to the house and switch the Hub5 to modem only mode again. But that's £500 I do not want to spend.

Any help greatly appreciated to understand what I need to change in the Hub5 to allow for Wifi Calling and for me to be able to use www.showpad.com

TIA

Roland

[legacy1]

Yup modem mode still needed

[Kain_W]

Hi there rolandharvey,

Thanks for your post and welcome to the community.

Can I ask regarding this, are you using a VPN to connect to the website at all?

Also regarding the Wi-Fi calling, is that happening on all devices?

Let us know,

[rolandharvey]

Hi Kain

Sorry for the delay I thought I would get an email notifying me of responses to my post. 

VPN - No VPN active. Work have suggested I use the corporate VPN to get around the website issue. But I’m loathed to do that as it routes to the US and is just a faff. But to confirm. I can see the show pad website if I activate the VPN. But to reiterate there is no VPN active on the devices (laptop and phone). 

Wifi calling. - both my wife and I have struggled with WiFi calling on both our phones. I will try a further experiment now that a recent point release for iOS is out that dealt with WiFi issues for some uses. I will take the hub5 out of modem only mode later this week and see if the WiFi calling persists. The kids tend to use snap or FaceTime. Rarely WiFi calling. 
Thanks for your responses. I will post back with an update. 

Roland

[mhdawber]

Hi,

We, too, are experiencing the same issues with Wi-Fi Calling that Roland is.

We have three mobile phones in our household, all of which no longer utilise Wi-Fi calling since our change to the Hub 5 on 12/11/2022. For the previous 18 months with our Hub 3, this has not been an issue.

Having read Roland's post, I am confident that the Hub 5 is causing the issue.

Thanks,

Matt

[Jsquires1990]

I had a similar issue yesterday, iPhone on EE connected to Hub 5 showed WiFi Calling was active. Every call I made or received were poor quality or they just couldn't hear me at all. 

Have asked my OH to check their phone also uses WiFi Calling on iPhone and they have had issues this morning. 

Is this a Hub 5 issue??

[Chris_W1]

Hi Roland, thanks for the message and sorry to hear that you are having issues with this, 

Can you confirm how the tests went and if things have improved?

We look forward to hearing from you. 

Kind regards, Chris. 

[rolandharvey]

Hi @chris_w1

Family are out today so have managed to reset the hub 5 back to factory settings. Turned off my mesh network and had all devices reconnect to the Hub5, including mobile phone and laptop.

I then carried out a couple of calls, outbound and had one inbound on my iPhone 13 pro max. iOS version 16.1.1. Those 3-4 calls all worked. Which is good news. Could I confirm what has changed? No. Could it be the factory reset or could it be merely that iOS was updated to 16.1.1 recently, I wont know. I will monitor the situation. And it will be my wife that will probably have the issues. But lets not second guess that situation. 

However, with the Hub 5 as the main router, I now cannot access www.showpad.com as before. To recap www.showpad.com is a corp website used globally. When I'm trying to reach it directly with the Hub 5 I get nothing. VPN on the Hub5, turn off wifi to the Hub 5 and use mobile data, access the website via any other connection, I can access it. 

Thanks 

Roland

[rolandharvey]

Today's update. 

More calls via Wifi calling occurred last night, without issue. Will continue today to experiment. 

As for the www.showpad.com not working. I spoke to a friend who has VM as their ISP. However, he has a Hub 3, but has switched it to modem only mode and plugged in a BT Home mesh network. He has tried the site and it works with no issue. 

So is the Hub5 blocking the site? 

R

[newapollo]

Hi @rolandharvey 

I have no issues accessing the website using my hub5 and Vm broadband connection.

Do you have websafe turned on?  To check log into https://www.virginmedia.com/my-virgin-media/home 

Click on Update Settings > Online security >  if Child safe is on turn it off and then try and access your site again.

You might also need to clear yuor browser cache in case your site page is stored in the cache and keeps going to the page that won't work.

Also try a different browser