Virgin Media Community

[etekin0517]

Hi

i'm writing this after spending days on useless whatsapp chats with VM contact centre and having one engineer visit who told me there's nothing he can do as there's no real 1gbps connection and VM keeps marketing it as if it's possible. I am still hoping there are some VM employees out there who have a logical way of thinking and who still cares about customers. Here's the issue :

- I have recently upgraded to 1gbps with Hub 4 

- Previously i had 500mbps with Hub3 and had similar performance issues which was fixed eventually by a senior engineer (until then i was told many times that wifi test results can never get to 500mbps due to various interferences) - as i recall he changed channel configurations on the hub but i can't recall what exactly.

- I have a degree in Computer Science so although I won't call myself a techie, i know it's unrealistic to expect the same speed consistently so my expectation here is not 1gbps but something close to it - at the moment despite multiple tests, i see 550Mbps max at Samknows - the incoming speed to router is shown as 1147mbps - so this seems to be an issue with the devices

- The engineer who visited me today told me with 1gbps bb service, it's not possible to get more than 500-550mbps on a device but instead 1gbps is the total added speed i'll get across all devices (which is b.s in my opinion but anyways, i didn't try to convince him)

- With my previous 500mbps connection, when i do a Ookla test on my Iphone 13 pro over wi-fi after a hard reset of iphone; i could see easily 400-450mbps ranges - this is over wi-fi , me standing next to Hub 

-When i do the same with Hub4 now, i see 500-550mbps maximum. 

- i don't have an ethernet port in my laptop so can't do an ethernet test - i didn't have it before either but could have reasonable speed test results with my iphone 13 pro over wifi 

So where do i go from here ? what do i need to check ? is 1gbps really the sum of all the speeds delivered to each connected device as the engineer told me ? i feel like i need a senior engineer visit to sort out the issue but this is impossible to arrange over VM contact centre so i am hoping this post can help.

thanks

[jem101 · Accepted solution]

Well, firstly, your instincts about what the engineer told you re. the one gig provision was entirely correct - ie it was a load of old rubbish.

Also, no, you absolutely should expect reasonably consistent speed results - but the VM hub 5 is a WiFi 5 device and as such, (and with the number of aerials it has etc), 500-550 Mb/s is about the maximum you are ever going to get.

As you probably know, WiFi is a bit of a black art and most of the claims are little more than marketing speak. You need to get yourself an ethernet adapter and try a speed test on a wired connection. But I'm afraid if you upgraded expecting to magically get anywhere close to gigabit performance over wifi with a hub 4, then you have wasted your money - won't happen. Theoretically the Hub5 might get close as it is WiFi 6 (not 6e alas), but that is still in a trial phase and not generally available to customers.

[etekin0517]

very interesting...so it's more an issue with Hub4 being a wifi5 device ? so this means i have 1147bps coming into the router but it can only dispatch 500-550mbps of it max to a device.... if this is the case then Virgin is selling the wrong hubs with 1Gbps - which gives us as consumers to seek our rights i suppose as the promise vs the reality doesn't match!

i'll try the ethernet conenction but my experience so far tells me it's not mandatory and speed test over wifi also provides reasonably consistent results - much lower than ethernet of course , which is fine with me.

[carl_pearce]

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@etekin0517 wrote:

very interesting...so it's more an issue with Hub4 being a wifi5 device ? so this means i have 1147bps coming into the router but it can only dispatch 500-550mbps of it max to a device.... if this is the case then Virgin is selling the wrong hubs with 1Gbps - which gives us as consumers to seek our rights i suppose as the promise vs the reality doesn't match!

i'll try the ethernet conenction but my experience so far tells me it's not mandatory and speed test over wifi also provides reasonably consistent results - much lower than ethernet of course , which is fine with me.

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Incorrect. There is no-where that states you will get full speed to one device.

Gig1 is designed to be shared across multiple devices concurrently.

[etekin0517]

Now this is more interesting - you are then suggesting what the engineer told me is correct. I don’t know what to believe in tbh

assuming it is correct; what’s the logic behind this??? I have not seen anywhere that 1gbps is designed to be shared acorss devices - even if so, why call it 1gbps then - it’s nothing but confusing

[carl_pearce]

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@etekin0517 wrote:

Now this is more interesting - you are then suggesting what the engineer told me is correct. I don’t know what to believe in tbh

assuming it is correct; what’s the logic behind this??? I have not seen anywhere that 1gbps is designed to be shared acorss devices - even if so, why call it 1gbps then - it’s nothing but confusing

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VM supply 1Gbps+ over their network to the HUB, which is what they agree to in your contract.

It's impossible for an ISP to guarantee full speed to one device due to the 100's of standards of wireless:

https://www.duckware.com/tech/wifi-in-the-us.html

[etekin0517]

That’s a different topic. I am not asking them to guarantee any specific speed but if you are marketing 1gbps and the max you get a from a device is 500 then that’s a problem

why did we not have the same problem with previous speeds then? I.e i had very close numbers to what i was promised with 500mbps and 200mbps before that - it doesn’t have to be exact 500 or 200 or consistently the same speed but it has to be close…if it’s never close to the marketed value then that’s a problem

[carl_pearce]

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@etekin0517 wrote:

That’s a different topic. I am not asking them to guarantee any specific speed but if you are marketing 1gbps and the max you get a from a device is 500 then that’s a problem

why did we not have the same problem with previous speeds then? I.e i had very close numbers to what i was promised with 500mbps and 200mbps before that - it doesn’t have to be exact 500 or 200 or consistently the same speed but it has to be close…if it’s never close to the marketed value then that’s a problem

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You got full speed to one device on your previous contract as the HUB and device was capable of it.

With faster contracts the technology isn't really keeping up when considering one device, that's why VM and all other ISPs do not guarantee it.

If you download across multiple devices concurrently you will see 1Gbps+.

[etekin0517]

Ok so this confirms the initial response about the issue being with the technology - the hub -

and to be honest, nobody from VM explained this clearly to me like you did which is super annoying especially when you spend hours on the chat and waiting over the phone 

i hope someone from VM here can confirm the same and provides some insights on how they are planning to address this going fwd (i.e HUB 5?)

[carl_pearce]

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@etekin0517 wrote:

Ok so this confirms the initial response about the issue being with the technology - the hub -

and to be honest, nobody from VM explained this clearly to me like you did which is super annoying especially when you spend hours on the chat and waiting over the phone 

i hope someone from VM here can confirm the same and provides some insights on how they are planning to address this going fwd (i.e HUB 5?)

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Even if you had a HUB 5 do you have WiFi 6 devices?

Even then you may not see full speed to one wireless device.