UDP issues on SuperHub3 - collective thread
Hi. I decided to open a collective thread for UDP issues on SuperHub3, as it seems that many users are pestered by them, the impact is high and Virgin Media is not aware or fails to acknowledge the i...
Forum Discussion
Hi @Topbloke and thanks for your post.
I have switched my Mullvad to TCP only and indeed it improved things a lot *WHEN* i'm using Mullvad. Unfortunately i dont have an option to switch to TCP only with my works VPN nor Teams for example. Actually, i could do my work from home forever, but now im forced to commute to the office for 2 hours one way every day because my 350Mbps (and unlike some regions, i do get stable 350Mbps to my house) VM connection is not able to handle a simple MS Teams videoconference.
What is interesting though, is where the "cap" comes from? For me it caps between 200-300 and 5kbps on two different modems i have tried, but other people report that it caps at 1Mbps for them
Yeah that cap seems to vary, I have looked into this issue for a year and lots of VM customers are aware of the UDP and Hub 3/4 fault, sadly I don't think VM will address it or fix it fully I think it's a hardware fault in the Router but can not be 100%, and they probably only say it effects a small amount of users anyhow.
The general suggestion on reddit was to set the hub 3 in modem mode and then connect it to a better more powerful router to let it do all the workload so routers such as the Asus AC86, it does help but the issue is still there since its from the hub 3.
I would suggest other workarounds if you can?, maybe cheap 5G routers and cheapest data 5G plan or 4G or use your mobile phone as an internet connection provided you have a good data plan for those moments you need a fault free connection. I have not used Ms teams before, only zoom and gotomeet but noticed its fine with my hub 3.0 connected to my Asus AC86 Router while running VPNs like mulvad with openvpn etc.
One guy on reddit explained a similar fault where his packets during online gaming would show packet loss and cause his ping to spike and disconnect, luckily an actual VM network engineer was there at the call centre and knew exactly of the issue and replaced his hub 3 with the hub 2.0 model and re-synced it to his account and this fixed all the guys issues.
I did not notice such faulty packets or this UDP fault glitch with my hub 2.0 and stressed to the VM engineer I am only booked for a cable box replacement, unfortunately he sneaked off to his car and replaced my hub 2.0 with the hub 3 and drove off with it and naturally call centre have no way to supply or go back to hub 2.0. The hub 2.0 actually apparently still has this UDP issue also but its handled better and does not cause a 60-90% cap in broadband performance.
The general suggestion on reddit was to set the hub 3 in modem mode and then connect it to a better more powerful router to let it do all the workload so routers such as the Asus AC86, it does help but the issue is still there since its from the hub 3.
I would suggest other workarounds if you can?, maybe cheap 5G routers and cheapest data 5G plan or 4G or use your mobile phone as an internet connection provided you have a good data plan for those moments you need a fault free connection. I have not used Ms teams before, only zoom and gotomeet but noticed its fine with my hub 3.0 connected to my Asus AC86 Router while running VPNs like mulvad with openvpn etc.
One guy on reddit explained a similar fault where his packets during online gaming would show packet loss and cause his ping to spike and disconnect, luckily an actual VM network engineer was there at the call centre and knew exactly of the issue and replaced his hub 3 with the hub 2.0 model and re-synced it to his account and this fixed all the guys issues.
I did not notice such faulty packets or this UDP fault glitch with my hub 2.0 and stressed to the VM engineer I am only booked for a cable box replacement, unfortunately he sneaked off to his car and replaced my hub 2.0 with the hub 3 and drove off with it and naturally call centre have no way to supply or go back to hub 2.0. The hub 2.0 actually apparently still has this UDP issue also but its handled better and does not cause a 60-90% cap in broadband performance.
I also don't remember ever having the issue on a SH2. Oddly I only have the issue on my SH3 periodically (modem mode), I can go for weeks without seeing the issue but once it's triggered I can barely browse the web.
Hello!
Thanks so much for this thread! I thought i was going mildly crazy before I found it! I've been encountering very similar issues resulting in Skype apparently overloading the Superhub and stopping it processing all traffic for 1-2 minutes, resulting in a brief internet outage. Very frustrating after initially being super excited about Virgin Media rolling out faster broadband in our area, then discovering that actually my previous fibre service appeared far more reliable. (Uno, Plusnet never had these issues).
I couldn't replicate the exact symptoms that caused Skype to do this, but while investigating this one thing I did find I could replicate 100% of the time is making the superhub become unresponsive at 192.168.100.1, and 192.168.0.1 (Running in modem only mode) by sending many DNS requests.
To replicate:
- Open a terminal window and ping the superhub, ping 192.168.100.1 (keep it open!)
- Launch a loop of constant DNS requests, in unix: while ( true ) do host www.google.co.uk 1.1.1.1; done
- Boom - the first terminal window will stop responding to ICMP pings within a few seconds.
Note: Thanks & Apologies to Cloudflare for the DNS spam during my testing (owners of 1.1.1.1) but I think you can take it! 😉
Make sure you cancel the loop of DNS requests - your modem will recover but most of the time not immediately, it seems to take it a good while to 'get over' having a high number of UDP packets thrown through it. During this time the modem management page will be intermittent or unavailable.
I managed to escalate this to VM, and one of their clever folks has replicated this in the lab, and so will log it with the Superhub vendor. It appears to affect Superhub3 and Superhub 4 (I've tried both). VM are sending me a Superhub 2 AC, so I'm hopeful I'll then get stable connectivity for a while until a new firmware is released!
I'm hoping this issue, and the poor UDP handling issue / Skype dropouts are linked!
Any update @fordy? Superhub 3 here on 200Mb. Long time modem-mode user but had to switch to router mode to reduce MS Teams/Zoom etc glitching during calls. I'd like to go back to modem mode really, but am unable until this issue is fixed. From my point of view, things were mostly fine at the start of the year (albeit with the occasional glitch), but started to get noticeably worse when my hub got the 9.1.1912.302 update, which was around the start of October. Not sure the issue is fully fixed in router mode, but it definitely seems better, and Teams/Zoom etc are actually usable.
Just for info, recreated with different routers, all tested using wired Ethernet, speedtests show the full 220/21, power levels well within spec on both upstream (4 channels at QAM64) and downstream (24 channels), BQM good and showing no packet loss etc. Switching to my 20Mb down, 3Mb up 'backup' line fixes the issue immediately for both me and my wife, so that also rules out computer issues.
A possibly related issue is documented here.
