Virgin Media Community

[Seajga]

I’ve had Virgin Media broadband for many years but have only recently acquired a booster for upstairs, due to working from home via Microsoft Teams. 
I’ve received different advice from 2 Virgin engineers over the phone regarding the best position for this booster. The room I use for work only has one socket and, unfortunately, it’s the other side of a single divan bed. The first engineer thought the bed might block the signal and therefore suggested I plug the booster into the box room nearby. However, although I keep the door of the box room open, during video meetings, I need to close the door of the room I’m in to block out noise from downstairs. As a result, the signal has to come through a closed door, which the second engineer suggested was worse than having a divan bed in the way.  
The room is too small for the bed to be moved into another position and both engineers agreed the booster wouldn’t work at all if plugged into an extension.  Since having the booster, the signal has dipped on one occasion when using Microsoft Teams.
Any thoughts?

[Andruser]

Could you be clearer about the problems you're experiencing with MS Teams?  Can you confidently say these do not occur if you work downstairs?

[Seajga]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.  The issue I occasionally get with Teams is a sudden freeze of a student’s camera and/or sound, accompanied by a notification of a weak WiFi signal.  I should perhaps explain that I teach at a university.  Class sizes are between 10 and 14. The sessions are interactive training sessions (not one-way lectures).  We therefore ask students to switch their cameras on while we’re in gallery view and they make individual contributions to the discussion.  Cameras can be turned off for screen-sharing and when split into breakout rooms/sub-channels.

I know it’s not my device as I upgraded my laptop on discovering my older, cheaper device didn’t have the capacity to cope with Teams at all.

I don’t know if I’d get the same issues from downstairs as I’ve only ever worked from the second bedroom owing to another family member being in the house. However, I’d explained the issue to the person persuading me to renew my Virgin Media contract in Aug (having dragged me away from signing with BT at the very last minute) and they had first suggested a booster as a solution to this issue.

Thanks.

[Andruser]

OK, thanks for that.  The "bed" and "door" issues I don't think are material - wireless signals are not heavily attenuated by wood or plasterboard, and if the booster were in the same room, even a metal bed frame wouldn't normally be an issue unless the metal frame were right up against the booster.  VM field technicians sometimes don't seem to know a lot about wifi, unfortunately.

This could be wireless, or it could be your VM broadband, so bear with me whilst we check the easy to check stuff first (and my suspicion is more towards the broadband than the wifi, but I could be wrong).  I suggest we start off looking at the hub's status data to see if there's a problem there. Connect to the hub by clicking on this link http://192.168.0.1/  That should pull up the log in page for the hub.  But don't log in, just click on the link "Check router status"  That'll bring up a window with five tabs.  All we need is the contents of the three titled Downstream, Upstream, Network log, and if you can post that as text not screenshots it will help.  Open the Downstream tab.  Select all the text (Ctrl-A if using a keyboard), copy it (Ctrl-C), then paste it (Ctrl-V) into a reply here.  Post that, do the same for the Upstream and Network log.  You'll get an error message when you post the Network log, just click on "post" a second time.

This may show nothing, but it helps rule out power or hub-recognised noise problems.  If all looks good we can move on to a quality check of your broadband connection using a Broadband Quality Monitor.  But that will take 24 hours to give us a set of meaningful data, and then you would need to post a link to shared graph in a reply here.

Also, do you know if the socket used by the upstairs booster is on the same circuit as the downstairs unit?  They usually work best on the same circuit, and if they aren't you might find performance improves with the booster in the room below where you're working.  But that will only help if the problem is the wifi.

[Alex_RM · Accepted solution]

Hi Seajga,

Thanks for posting and welcome to our community 🙂

I'm sorry to hear you're having some issues with your boosters.

I've been able to locate your account using your forum details, I've run through diagnostics, and it's advising an engineer is required as the hub may need replacing. 

You can view the time and date of your appointment via your online account here

Please let me know how things are after the visit.

Alex_Rm

[Seajga]

Hi Alex,

Things were much better for a while but then the same issue started happening again.  It seems to be when my partner is on his laptop (but not using a conferencing platform) at the same time as I’m teaching via MS Teams.

However, surely this can’t be normal as there are many households where couples are both working from home - and therefore where at least one will be on Teams at some point.

Each time I’ve tried re-booting the hub - until the same thing has happened again.

Please advise?

Many thanks

[-tony-]

am interested to know what @Alex_RM has seen that suggests a change of the hub will solve things other than you have a very old SH1 - that apart its a long time since i looked at the docs for the booster but does the wifi one not also have a connector for a lan connection - not as convenient but can you not connect the laptop with a lan cable