Short story, three possible fixes:
- Downgrade your SuperHub 3 or SuperHub 4 to a SuperHub 2.
- Wait for a firmware fix from VM / Modem Vendor.
- Alleviate the issues by running in router mode. (But I am really against this!).
Longer story for those interested: (Grab a cuppa!)
Yesterday morning VM visited and tried to replace my Superhub 4 with a new... Superhub 3 - argh! super frustrating as I had tried 2 different SuperHub 3's already through previous engineer visits and we had agreed the week before that they had a Superhub 2 to send me. Eventually the misunderstanding was untangled and a different engineer turned up with a SuperHub 2. He really didn't believe the Superhub 2 would improve this issue as its technically inferior, and tried to understand the fault in more detail (Clever chap - I agree with him, it does sounds crazy to downgrade to older tech, with less network capability!).
The instinct from most folks at VM seems to be to look at speed problems, wifi, or VM network issues, but this isn't any of those and I can hit headline speeds no problems. My problem was demonstrably within my house! - connectivity issue between the PC and the Modem(Hub) over Physical cable, not onward to the internet.
Back to the saga.. hey presto! Within minutes while the engineer was watching i was able to demonstrate that I could no longer replicate the issue and he left us with a decent 200Mb broadband service that seems way more reliable- hurray! The modem management user interface stays 100% available via Ping, and HTTP no matter how much UDP traffic I throw out :).
Skype & Teams calls today have also been stable with no dropouts, so not failed over to the backup ISP line.
Few replies:
@Topbloke wrote:
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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.
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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?
I'm hopeful a firmware upgrade will fix it otherwise its an awful waste of hardware out there! I do wonder how many people have this problem / fault condition and don't realise. Any households where multiple people do Skype or teams calls simultaneously are sure to I would imagine as it affects Superhub 3 and 4.
As for who to talk to - to be honest I've spoken to so many individuals at VM about this issue now, there isn't one particular one. The best way is keep on escalating and don't let the complaint slide or close as you know more can be done. I don't think the technical people alone can help you without first escalating and a complaint being logged. Even after I had a complaint logged I found it impossibly hard to talk to a human who didn't want to reboot my router or upgrade my service to a faster speed because "my bandwidth is too low for what i need to do". I received a letter acknowledging but contained no human contact number on, which pointed me back to the same super-frustrating text-support service which just sent me in loops burning my time.
Key I guess is keep on, follow the process, and just escalate if you don't get an appropriate response.
In the end we looked up the exec team to email the CEO & Deputy and explained our complaint in human words on the impact rather than my geek speak (ok the wife did, she's cleverer with words than I am!) (https://www.virginmedia.com/corporate/about-us/management-team), Severina responded in minutes and we had a call back from someone the next day who was able to progress things. They are not technical though and details do get lost in translation between the engineers that visit, so be prepared to re-explain your problem a few times (I found it calming to have an A4 printed crib-sheet defining my problem!).
@dinth wrote:
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
Unfortunately they wouldn't give me a ticket reference number, I have my complaint reference number but I'm told that is unique to me and tied to my complaint only. I tried to ask for another ticket number for other customers to reference who have the same issue but were told they would have to log their own complaint reference number. 😞
I feel your pain as I had to explain so many times that it drove me somewhat crazy, that it really isn't a wifi issue, wifi is totally unrelated as I run it in modem only mode, with a wire. I was asked to reboot my hub so many times that i eventually said I refuse to reboot it, as it won't change anything and just causes me an unbelievable additional 10 minutes downtime per reboot! I'm sure the person asking me to reboot it was keen and eager to help, but their previous 5 colleagues had all done exactly the same! 🙂
@Topbloke wrote:
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2020/10/virgin-media-uk-offering-free-upgrades-to-hub-4-router...
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.
Sadly I don't think a SuperHub 4 will fix the issue, as high utilisation area is unrelated. This particular issue seems to affect superhub 3 and superhub 4 modems running in modem only mode in exactly the same way :(. Your only option right now is a downgrade, or wait for a firmware fix.
@jgtimperley wrote:
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.
Good spot - looks almost certainly related and exactly what i experienced. I don't think I was a customer during that previously firmware version though. 🙂