Virgin Media Community

[Serebro33]

Hi,

I’ve two of these pods which to be honest haven’t made the slightest bit of difference to improving the wifi where I need it. I’ve gone back to a booster I already had which seems to be so much better. 

Any ideas on how I can return them and cancel the £5pm ?

perhaps a VM moderator can assist here. I really don’t want to call the off shore service team   

Thanks. 

[Adduxi]

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@Serebro33 wrote:

Hi,

I’ve two of these pods which to be honest haven’t made the slightest bit of difference to improving the wifi where I need it. I’ve gone back to a booster I already had which seems to be so much better.   <snip>

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Have you placed the Pods in the correct locations?  The Pods are designed to "hop" the wifi signal from one to the other.  They should be placed about halfway between the Hub and the wifi black spot.  If they are too far apart or too far from the Hub, they will not function correctly.  Also each wifi "hop" reduces the speed.

[Serebro33]

Thanks..   Yeah I believe I’ve got them in the right place, the hub is in the dinning room, the ‘black spot’ or poor signal is the Ring doorbell on a gate. There’s a pod in the conservatory and another in the garage. Is this what you’d place them? One pod doesn’t really make a difference. The Ring rssi seems better without any pod plugged in, so I don’t see the benefit of having them. Unless you can offer another suggestion 

thanks 

[jbrennand]

Cancel and return them and put the £5month towards an introductory Mesh system like the TP-Link Deco M4 or M5 - 2 or 3 packs depending on your property size, construction and budget

[Tudor]

“There’s a pod in the conservatory and another in the garage.” I think you need to carry out a full WiFi survey. Two points, the conservatory is I assume a large amount of glass and certain types of glass have metal in them and WiFi signals do not pass through them very well. Also what is the garage made of?

[Serebro33]

Thx for response. 

yes it’s a reasonable sized conservatory. The garage is standard brick. 

using a broadband speed checker, indoors I get the 350mbps, by the Ring bell it drops to around 125mbps. 

the whole point is to improve the Ring rssi.  Previously with Sky I had a booster in the garage, that helped. I had hoped these pods would negate the need for a booster, which it seems to suggest in the marketing. If the pods slow the speed down, I can’t see the point of them 🤷🏻‍♂️

any help appreciated 

[jbrennand]

You get 125 Mbps at the ring doorbell !?

Why on earth do you need more ? Surely ~ 1-5 Mbps would be more that enough bandwidth for that - why would it need any more than that?

What exactly is the issue with "Ring rssi" that needs a connection speed/bandwidth that is more than that, which is less than what ~90% of UK BB customers receive?

I am just confused.

[Serebro33]

The issue is the Ring rssi, the lower the figure the better, the stronger signal then quicker notifications are received, if the rssi is high - currently 69, then notifications are not always received. The front door Ring bell has an rssi of 45 which is great, we get all notifications really quickly. Hope that clarifies it. 

[Tudor]

Are the RSSI figures you gave from the Ring doorbell app? Because with WiFi it’s a two way game. A device may be able to receive a signal perfectly, but its radio being week cannot return a good signal, so the hub is missing these return signals sometimes. Might not necessarily be the doorbells fault might be the VM hub is not very good (understatement!).

[Serebro33]

Thx for response. 
yes these rssi figures are from the Ring app. The VM hub is in the same place the Sky hub was and is 350mbps vs 79 with Sky. The booster in the garage seemed to work previously but I had hoped the VM hub being newer, better tech and faster speed would negate the need for any booster, hence I though the pods might just help, but in fact highers the rssi.