Relatively new customer - Already 4x outages, looking for recommendations on best route to resolution

[Wadded]

Hi All,

I'm a relatively new Virgin Media broadband customer (end of Nov '21), switching over from Sky Fibre Broadband (55Mbps) to Volt Gig 1 based on looking for more bandwidth.

Whilst I was ultimately seeking more bandwidth and only Virgin could offer me that, I was concerned about the VM service reliability and as importantly customer service if things go south.  I thought at least I did my homework on the 1st part by getting seal of approval on the stability from 2x friends in my village who use VM without issue.

Here I am barely 2x months in and I've already experienced 4x outages, all of which I've noted days and times for the all important time when it comes to reporting to support.  This far exceeds any outages I experienced with Sky in years of use of their service.  I'm already regretting my decision to move, as much as I love Virgin Media when things work as they should.  So hoping the community can offer some help here!

I'm confident 2x of the outages I experienced are nationwide VM outages as were widely reported (02/12/21 4:30-6:30pm & 12/01/22 3:30pm - 4:30pm).  All be it ironically my 2x friends referenced above continued to work without issue.  2x additional outages then seem to be confined to just me (15/12/21 11:10am & 18/01/22 am and 9pm).  I suspect these issues related to my hub as explained below and or local area/cabling issue.  So I'm looking for advice on the easiest way to try and remedy without going through the pain of talking to a scripted call centre and ridiculous questions that even my kids would have ruled out before raising an issue.

I have been supplied with the Virgin Hub 4 and using it in Modem mode with a Ubiquiti Amplifi Alien Mesh Router kit.  The Ubiquiti kit is rock solid and I used without a single hitch with Sky Broadband.  

On each occasion I've had an issue as mentioned above the Virgin Hub status LED has changed to red and often a single reboot will fix it, other times I have to just sit and wait.  Additionally in this state my Ubiquiti kit will complain that it has no WAN IP address and I'm able to ping as far as the Ubiquiti Router and no further.

If using in Modem mode is there any easy way I could log into the hub at the point of the outage to capture logs or view any status?  I have this evening performed a remote status check via the Virgin Media website which errors out and suggest to try later?

If anybody is able to give me any technical advice on potential troubleshooting for future outages,  as well as the easiest route to try and get a resolution including an engineer visit to confirm my cabling and Hub is good as that's my gut feeling where the issue lies currently.

Many thanks in advance!

[japitts · Accepted solution]

If you don't already have one runnning, I would strongly recommend you setup a Broadband Quality Monitor - it takes all of 10 minutes to setup, then monitors your connection 24/7

It varies from being "interesting" the majority of the time, to providing invaluable evidence of connection issues if/when you have problems.

You can also post up your modem stats and one of the broadband gurus (I'm not one, plenty are) will take a look over...

Goto to http://192.168.0.1 (or http://192.168.100.1 - if in modem mode) but don't log in. Click on "router status", and copy & paste the data from each of the tabs.

[Wadded]

Many thanks!

I've signed up to the broadband quality monitor as wasn't aware of that.  I've also accessed the router/modem stats thank you.  Interestingly these messages are consistent with 2x reported outages if any of the mentioned gurus have any advice here?  I can also post router status if of any use, but bare in mind the router was reset an hour ago after the last failure.

SYNC Timing Synchronization failure - Loss of Sync;CM-MAC=e4:57:40:xx:xx:xx;CMTS-MAC=00:a2:89:xx:xx:xx;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.1

Lost MDD Timeout;CM-MAC=e4:57:40:xx:xx:xx;CMTS-MAC=00:a2:89:xx:xx:xx;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.1;

[Wadded]

Here is the cable modem status tab

Cable Modem StatusItem Status CommentsChannel Overview Downstream Upstream

Cable Modem Status	Online	DOCSIS 3.1
Primary downstream channel	Locked	SC-QAM
DOCSIS 3.0 channels	31	4
DOCSIS 3.1 channels	1	0

[Wadded]

Downstream tab but errors reset due to hub reset an hour before.

3.0 Downstream channels

Channel Frequency (Hz) Power (dBmV) SNR (dB) Modulation Channel ID

8	195000000	5.000000	37.636276	QAM256	8
9	203000000	5.400002	38.605377	QAM256	9
10	211000000	5.500000	38.605377	QAM256	10
11	219000000	5.599998	38.605377	QAM256	11
12	227000000	5.500000	38.605377	QAM256	12
13	235000000	5.400002	38.605377	QAM256	13
14	243000000	5.300003	38.983261	QAM256	14
15	251000000	5.300003	38.983261	QAM256	15
16	259000000	5.500000	38.983261	QAM256	16
17	267000000	5.599998	38.983261	QAM256	17
18	275000000	5.599998	38.983261	QAM256	18
19	283000000	5.400002	38.605377	QAM256	19
20	291000000	5.500000	38.605377	QAM256	20
21	299000000	6.199997	38.605377	QAM256	21
22	307000000	6.599998	38.605377	QAM256	22
23	315000000	6.599998	38.983261	QAM256	23
24	323000000	6.300003	38.983261	QAM256	24
25	331000000	6.000000	38.605377	QAM256	25
26	339000000	6.000000	38.605377	QAM256	26
27	347000000	6.099998	38.605377	QAM256	27
28	355000000	6.000000	38.605377	QAM256	28
29	363000000	5.800003	38.983261	QAM256	29
30	371000000	5.599998	38.983261	QAM256	30
31	379000000	5.500000	38.983261	QAM256	31
32	387000000	5.699997	38.983261	QAM256	32
33	395000000	5.699997	38.983261	QAM256	33
34	403000000	5.500000	38.983261	QAM256	34
35	411000000	5.199997	38.983261	QAM256	35
36	419000000	4.900002	38.983261	QAM256	36
37	523000000	4.400002	38.605377	QAM256	37
38	531000000	4.400002	38.983261	QAM256	38

3.0 Downstream channels

Channel Lock Status RxMER (dB) Pre RS Errors Post RS Errors

8	Locked	37.636276	0	0
9	Locked	38.605377	0	0
10	Locked	38.605377	0	0
11	Locked	38.605377	0	0
12	Locked	38.605377	0	0
13	Locked	38.605377	0	0
14	Locked	38.983261	0	0
15	Locked	38.983261	0	0
16	Locked	38.983261	0	0
17	Locked	38.983261	0	0
18	Locked	38.983261	0	0
19	Locked	38.605377	0	0
20	Locked	38.605377	0	0
21	Locked	38.605377	0	0
22	Locked	38.605377	0	0
23	Locked	38.983261	0	0
24	Locked	38.983261	0	0
25	Locked	38.605377	0	0
26	Locked	38.605377	0	0
27	Locked	38.605377	1	0
28	Locked	38.605377	0	0
29	Locked	38.983261	0	0
30	Locked	38.983261	0	0
31	Locked	38.983261	0	0
32	Locked	38.983261	0	0
33	Locked	38.983261	0	0
34	Locked	38.983261	0	0
35	Locked	38.983261	0	0
36	Locked	38.983261	0	0
37	Locked	38.605377	1	0
38	Locked	38.983261	0	0

3.1 Downstream channels

Channel Channel Width (MHz) FFT Type Number of Active Subcarriers Modulation (Active Profile) First Active Subcarrier (Hz)

159

96

4K

1880

QAM4096

424

3.1 Downstream channels

Channel ID Lock Status RxMER Data (dB) PLC Power (dBmV) Correcteds (Active Profile) Uncorrectables (Active Profile)

159

Locked

42

6.1

43557183

0

[Wadded]

Then upstream channels thank you in advance for any help!

3.0 Upstream channels

Channel Frequency (Hz) Power (dBmV) Symbol Rate (ksps) Modulation Channel ID

1	39400000	42.520599	5120 KSym/sec	64QAM	2
2	25800000	41.770599	5120 KSym/sec	64QAM	4
3	32600000	41.770599	5120 KSym/sec	64QAM	3
4	46200000	42.770599	5120 KSym/sec	64QAM	1

3.0 Upstream channels

Channel Channel Type T1 Timeouts T2 Timeouts T3 Timeouts T4 Timeouts

1	US_TYPE_STDMA	0	0	0	0
2	US_TYPE_STDMA	0	0	0	0
3	US_TYPE_STDMA	0	0	0	0
4	US_TYPE_STDMA	0	0	0	0

[Tudor]

Stats are all fine, let’s see what the BQM shows.

[SCA1972]

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@Wadded wrote:

Many thanks!

I've signed up to the broadband quality monitor as wasn't aware of that.  I've also accessed the router/modem stats thank you.  Interestingly these messages are consistent with 2x reported outages if any of the mentioned gurus have any advice here?  I can also post router status if of any use, but bare in mind the router was reset an hour ago after the last failure.

SYNC Timing Synchronization failure - Loss of Sync;CM-MAC=e4:57:40:xx:xx:xx;CMTS-MAC=00:a2:89:xx:xx:xx;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.1

Lost MDD Timeout;CM-MAC=e4:57:40:xx:xx:xx;CMTS-MAC=00:a2:89:xx:xx:xx;CM-QOS=1.1;CM-VER=3.1;

---

As @Tudor has said the hub stats look OK, but the errors listed above are not normal, if they are occurring a lot.  Might help to post the full network log so that we can see those errors in context with the rest of the log.

______________________
Scott

My setup: VM TV box, M350 Fibre broadband with Hub 3 in modem mode connected to a Netgear R7000 router. Telewest/VM user since 2001.

[Wadded]

Thank you @Tudor and @SCA1972. I'll be sure to post this again should any future outage occur. I did contact Virgin Media support this morning and much to my surprise they were reasonably helpful, although already having to jump through at least one hoop of a pin hole reset on the modem as a 1st port of call.

As mentioned should the problem occur again I'll be sure to post the full network log, BQM and any other counters prior to restarting the hub. Thank you for everybody's help and input so far, this seems a really helpful community!

[SCA1972]

Might be worth posting the log as it is now. It may already be showing symptoms of a dodgy connection before it drops and the same goes for the BQM so also worth posting.

______________________
Scott