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
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, and so both get fixed! 🙂
Thanks fordy you have nailed the exact issue I have and every Virgin customer for that matter.
Your test is much better and technical though, I got the same exact issue using multiple torrents, it simply causes the hub 3.0 to have a mild heart attack, after a few minutes the blockage clears up and it goes back on as normal.
During this time the internet is unusable and the hub 3 is not accessible, my gut tells me its still the puma faulty chipset in the modem since it sounds very similar only one other guy on reddit mentioned he had the same issue but mac cloned his hub 3 to a 3rd party Cable router and fixed the udp issue.
But you are perhaps the first on the entire planet to even get Virgin to admit the problem exist and there is confirmation the hub 3 is faulty.
Maybe a router firmware may solve it or help it, but till it is torrents or anything with high UDP packets or high connections like skype and similar may get these drop-outs problems.
I do not know how you got the Superhub 2 AC, I asked several members of Virgin Media staff and got the same answer from management, help desk, customer services, as in the item does not exist. Clearly it does still exist since you confirmed it !
Do you have any direct email or way to contact this staff member at the VM technical dept, if you can pm I would be grateful?
Your test is much better and technical though, I got the same exact issue using multiple torrents, it simply causes the hub 3.0 to have a mild heart attack, after a few minutes the blockage clears up and it goes back on as normal.
During this time the internet is unusable and the hub 3 is not accessible, my gut tells me its still the puma faulty chipset in the modem since it sounds very similar only one other guy on reddit mentioned he had the same issue but mac cloned his hub 3 to a 3rd party Cable router and fixed the udp issue.
But you are perhaps the first on the entire planet to even get Virgin to admit the problem exist and there is confirmation the hub 3 is faulty.
Maybe a router firmware may solve it or help it, but till it is torrents or anything with high UDP packets or high connections like skype and similar may get these drop-outs problems.
I do not know how you got the Superhub 2 AC, I asked several members of Virgin Media staff and got the same answer from management, help desk, customer services, as in the item does not exist. Clearly it does still exist since you confirmed it !
Do you have any direct email or way to contact this staff member at the VM technical dept, if you can pm I would be grateful?
Also fordy would you be able to share the ticket/reference number of your issue with VM. I'm trying to explain VM customer service that my issue has nothing to do with weak wifi signal and being able to reference your ticket would be super helpful
"At the time the wider, albeit still very limited, distribution seemed designed to benefit areas suffering from weak WiFi or high utilisations (i.e. where local lines are being heavily used). The HUB 4.0 can bond 32 channels together, while the HUB 3.0 can only do 24 (i.e. the new router can be harnessed by those on slower packages to deliver an improvement, provided the operator supports the bonding change in those locations)"
Interesting since I am in a high utilisation area, maybe the hub 4 may help improve my issue, I would be happy to try this if a Virgin media staff can assist in this free hub4 router upgrade, if it is I can test if the UDP packet loss issue is still there, at least then others have a potential solution to this issue.