Virgin Media Community

[purplecam3l]

So having moved to Virgin from BT and moving from Infinity with a max 50 Mbps to Virgins 1gig connection I was hopeful I'd finally be able to browse, stream and download things within the same day. Low and be-hold I knew I wasn't going to be off to a good start when my engineer advised me I had an apparent black spot upstairs and on the left side of the house???

I mean my BT was setup here and I thought well okay maybe that's the reason it that was so poor. However with d/l speeds as low as 8mbs from Virgins 1 gig line I knew this black spot can't of been fully to blame, I was getting 20 from BT. Anyway I got one of those Mesh devices as I don't hardwire upstairs and it jumped up to the 20's briefly.

Okay I thought what other expense can I put myself too to try and help.so I invested in a new 1200mps wi-fi receiver and antenna. This got me a jump upto 200+ Mpbs for almost a full week. Great I thought. Now I'm back down to anywhere between 10-20, constant buffering and disconnects and almost wishing I stuck with BT. I've already had to deal with a land line issue. Not been a good start so far seeing as I only had installation on 23rd December.

I'm not expecting or looking for 1 gig speeds, I'm on wi-fi but I would at least expect a solid, stable 100+ mbps connection from my 1gig broadband.

Regards

Paul

[jb66]

If your house cant be covered by just one router and If you want virgin to deal with your WiFi Blackspots then they rent out WiFi boosters.

Otherwise I'd return what you have bought and some of the forum members could recommend a semi decent WiFi mesh system to give your home better coverage.

[purplecam3l]

Thank you for the response, I have little to no interest in paying Virgin additional money to help provide me with a service I'm already paying them for. I am somewhat limited by my tech knowledge with regards to know what I'm doing when looking for mesh systems, I tend to resort to searching by highest reviewed. 

Most talk about disabling my current routers wi-fi etc, I'd be a little concerned I would be working beyond my abilities with setting them up. 

[Adduxi]

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@purplecam3l wrote:

Thank you for the response, I have little to no interest in paying Virgin additional money to help provide me with a service I'm already paying them for. <snip>. 

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Depending on which 1GB contract you are on, you may qualify for up to three free wifi Pods.  You need to check with VM and see.  Otherwise it's £5 p.m. to rent the Pods.

[purplecam3l]

Hi,

I'm on the package that allows me 3 pods free. The Mesh device I was referring to on my original post was the 1st of my allowed wifi pods. It's sat probably not even 5 metres away from my PC. Do I need to try another so I can actually have one in the black spot and use my current one as a bridge between the router and what would be the black spot one? 

It's so frustrating, because I don't understand networking, wi-fi setups enough to know if it could be some other setting I can play around with too. I mean I get occasional messages pop-up during the constant disconnects that say a network change was detected, I have no idea what that means or how I would even go about remedying that if it was even something I needed to do on my end.

I just know I didn't have these additional issues with my last provider so they have arrived with the new broadband.

Regards

Paul

[Adduxi]

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@purplecam3l wrote:

Hi,

I'm on the package that allows me 3 pods free. The Mesh device I was referring to on my original post was the 1st of my allowed wifi pods. It's sat probably not even 5 metres away from my PC.<snip>

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The Pod does not go in the black spot.  That is a common misconception.  The Pods relay the wifi signal to the black spot, so they need to be approximately halfway between the Hub and the black spot.  If the distance is too great then another Pod will be required to relay from Pod 1 to Pod 2 and to the black spot.

Hope this makes sense ? 

[purplecam3l]

I assume the router would be the one I was given by Virgin and would be updated at least to be adequate given I've only had an install for a couple of months. I don't know what bandwith throttling is, how would I know if that's the cause and if so remedy it?

[purplecam3l]

My hub is downstairs in the living room (right side of house), the wi-fi pod is plugged in directly at the top of the stairs. (centre of the house) and is about three foot from my bedroom door. The black spot seemed to be literally the moment the engineer crossed the threshold into the bedroom. So it is currently sat just outside. I also have a TV box in my room which also occasionally drop wi-fi connection; I attribute this to the same black spot/wi-fi signal issues. 

Yesterday I played around with a few settings, no idea what any of them meant. Switch to metered connection, then back off metered. I seemed to have two Wi-fi connections. Wi-fi & Wi-fi 2. No idea why I had two, wasn't sure if my wi-fi pod had created the second one??, anyway I turned "Wi-Fi" off and ran a SamKnows speed check and it came out at 200mbps+ d/load again. I thought I had cracked it, I've just ran it again, it's back down to 35mbps. 

It's a head scratcher for sure. I mean I don't even know my wi-fi pod is working as I can't see any light or indicator and no way to run a speed test for that device to make sure that in itself is receiving a good signal in the 1st instance.

I appreciate all the help and advice I'm receiving, 

[Akua_A]

Hi @purplecam3l,

Welcome back to our forums and sorry to hear you are having ongoing issues with your wifi service. 

We can understand the frustration caused and what to best help. In this case, are you able to troubleshoot your wifi pod and let me know if this helps https://www.virginmedia.com/help/virgin-media-intelligent-wifi-pods-faqs. You may also find the following link useful in terms of WIFI bands https://www.virginmedia.com/help/broadband/turn-off-wifi. 

Thanks, 

[purplecam3l]

Hi,

The only thing from all of those in the help guide for the pod that I thought relevant was the SSID one. It looks like I only have one SSID which looks like this.

Image removed - Not sure if any info can be used for naughty things. But info I thought relevant:

Network Band: 5ghz

Link speed (Receive/Transmit) 585/585 (mpbs)

I've just ran the Sam Knows thing again and it came out at 1039 to the router and download of 257mbps. Upload of 36.9mbps. Which I'm more than happy with. 

The thing that's frustrating me most is that come tomorrow, I may have a day of constant disconnects and speeds of no more than 30mbps. That's the part I'm puzzling over. What's causing those breaks, is it a hardware issue: if so, is it on my side or with the virgin equipment?. It's impossible to diagnose when it's up and down on a daily basis and know where to start to try and make it consistently right.

Regards

Paul