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iPhone Wifi Internet problems with Hub 3

Jobie
Tuning in

I have having daily intermittent problems with my two Apple iPhones with Wifi internet and my Virgin Media Hub 3, which is rendering my home Wifi to be pretty much useless.   

The devices appear to connect to my Wifi but internet doesn’t work.  Sometimes on the iPhone WiFi settings it will say “No Internet Connection”, but not always.  However there will be no internet connection on the iPhones regardless.  

I have a wired PC, two laptops and an Android device on WiFi, and also a smart TV on the WiFi and these ALL work perfectly – the problem only appears to be with the iPhones.  (I have an old iPad Air 2 and this works fine also).

My two devices are an iPhone 11 and an iPhone SE.  Both will connect to the internet on WiFi networks outside the house (eg. My workplace) and work without any problems whatsoever.

If I do a “forget this network” and rejoin, sometimes the device will reconnect, but to be honest it is driving us crazy as my home WiFi is effectively useless and is constantly eating up mobile data. 

Doing a power off/on will sometimes resolve the problem but it is guaranteed the problem will occur again within a few hours, if not sooner.

I have tried – pin Resets, splitting the wifi Bandwidths to separate SSIDs. Static IPs, all to no avail.  I have had a Virgin engineer visit and of course his basic diagnostics found no problems.

I am at the end of my tether with this.  Is anybody able to advise?  Thanks in advance.

 

75 REPLIES 75

jbrennand
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

Firstly, you should have started a new thread as the OP is getting email reminders long after they finished on here.

That said....   I am all Apple and have no issues at all - albeit I have never used any Hub's wifi. Upgrading the VM Hub is not going to help - unless by chance you have altered something in the Hub3 settings that are causing the issues.

TBH you should consider getting your own better quality router to sort it once and for all. £40 will do it for a modest user.

Or if you don't want to invest in better equipment that you will own forever  - you should try this first...
______________________________________________________

Go into the Hub’s settings. Type in  http://192.168.0.1  into your web browser’s url box and login with settings password on the Hub's base sticker (or your own if you changed it). Then in Advanced>wireless signal >smart wifi - tick the disable “channel optimisation” box or “Smart Wifi” box and save settings.  May be different pathways and wording on the 3 Hub types

Then, go to advanced>wireless signal>security, rename the 2.4 & 5 GHz network ssid's.  Just type over to change 'em to whatever you like and something that will differentiate them (e.g - Halltony_2 & Halltony_5) Try to avoid spaces and periods in the SSID names as they can cause issues with certain devices. Use the same password for simplicity, 

Then, apply settings and restart the Hub.  Your 2 wifi networks will now be clearly separated with their own SSIDs' - and you can then select the network you want each device to connect to… individually from the "available networks" list on each of your devices wifi settings

Note all your wifi devices will need re-connecting to the new SSID's and passwords.

All things being equal, 5 GHz is always better/faster and subject to less congestion/interference and is better for all iDevice speeds than the 2.4 one - although the 2.4 one has the better "range" and will be needed when the 5 GHz drops out of range and some older/cheaper/dumber devices can only use this one. 

You should also use a wifi analyser App (or the Airport Utility on iOS) to check which 2.4 channels are being heavily used around you and move yours to one of numbers 1,6,11 that is least so, but it wont help if there is other interference.

See if these changes help - you will lose any “seamless roaming” benefits but it may not matter - my Apple gear is autoset to swap to the 2.4 band when I move out of the 5GHz signall range.

And, you can always change the settings back by doing a " pinhole factory reset " if you prefer the way it was - or it doesn’t help.


--------------------
John
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I do not work for VM. My services: HD TV on VIP (+ Sky Sports & Movies & BT sport), x3 V6 boxes (1 wired, 2 on WiFi) Hub5 in modem mode with Apple Airport Extreme Router +2 Airport Express's & TP-Link Archer C64 WAP. On Volt 350Mbps, Talk Anytime Phone, x2 Mobile SIM only iPhones.

Thanks for the suggestions will give this a try. On the new thread thing I guess I thought it was useful to have all content on this issue in the same thread rather than having other people Walworth the same problem having to read multiple threads to find out what works and what doesn’t. 

Hi halltony

Thanks for posting and welcome back to the community.

Sorry to hear of any issues with the WiFi, were you able to try jbrennand's suggestions? Let us know if you need further assistance.

Best,

John_GS
Forum Team


Need a helpful hand to show you how to make a payment? Check out our guide - How to pay my Virgin Media bill

halltony
On our wavelength

I have followed all of John’s advice other than buying my own router. Unfortunately we are still seeing intermittent Wi-Fi drop outs. I might need to explore buying a router as the lack of reliability is very frustrating.

I a power line wired connection when working from home which is very good but we use Wi-Fi for streaming radio to Sonos and it has become much worse recently. 

I’m hoping that BT is going to cable my street soon and I will move to them as soon as they do. I’ve been with Virgin since the Blueyonder days over dialup and it saddens me that they are not providing quality routers to loyal customers. 

There's nothing you can do to fix this on your end, unfortunately. It's not a problem with your hub, it's a problem with Virgin Media's network. They've been having intermittent signal problems all over the country on and off for weeks. Virgin won't admit there's a widespread issue, but Twitter and sites like Down Detector show countless people experiencing the exact same problem. There are also dozens of threads in these forums with people asking for help with the connection drops.  

All you can do is either wait and hope they'll fix it, or switch providers.

halltony
On our wavelength

@HSW3K. Thanks for replying with this information. It’s curious that wired connections don’t seem to be as unreliable. I WFH a few days every week and don’t see disconnections or issues when using a VPN connection to my office. My neighbour has has his own router so I’ll see if he also has Wi-Fi issues recently. 

Had much the same problem Tried everything but nothing worked. Noticed that my iPhone worked fine when connected to my daughters Virgin router which was in the open .Moved my router from behind my very large tv screen into the open and hey presto problem solved ,the screen was blocking the wi fi , sometimes it’s the simple things!!!

 

Hey ks38, thank you for reaching out and I am sorry you were having some connection issues.

I am glad this has been all resolved for you, however we do recommend keeping your hub out in the open.

You can find some WIFI tips here. Thanks 

Matt - Forum Team


New around here?

My router is out in the open and I still see wifi droping on my iPhone when I move about a room. I am reluctantly coming to the conclusion that I need to buy a better wifi device as the hub 3 from virgin is not working well. 

Just to confirm I have already:

1. Switched off wifi optimisation

2. Separated the 2g and 5g networks

It’s sad that virgin do not reward loyal long term customers by upgrading their equipment when better kit becomes available. I guess they value shareholder profits over customer satisfaction. 

Thanks for coming back to us halltony,

Is it just your iPhone that is having the issue with connecting to the Wi-Fi in your home or is it the same with other devices? 

We appreciate you trying different diagnostics, however can we confirm if you have performed a pin hole reset? This sometimes resolved any issues with connection.

Please follow the link here https://www.virginmedia.com/help/broadband/reboot-or-reset-hub. Hold the pin in for 60 seconds not the 10 recommended.

Please try this and come back to us for further assistance.

Kind regards Jodi.