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Virgin Hub 3 Modem Mode slow

Taylordrift21
Joining in

Hey everyone sorry this post may be long winded, I am speaking on behalf of a friend of mine. My friend has the superfast fibre broadband from Virgin 350meg Download and 37meg Upload. The question I have has been asked a few times but I can't find the answer or solution hence why I am joining this forum. As many people know the Virgin Hub 3.0 lacks a lot of features in terms of QoS etc so I advised my friend to purchase another router which is a Netgear Xr300 Nighthawk pro gaming router and run it along side the hub 3.0 by putting the hub 3.0 in modem mode. Having everything set up the problem seems to be his download speed has went from 350 - 100mbps. Even with QoS disabled doesn't seem to have any affect. When the Hub 3.0 is put back into Router mode he gets his full speeds back. I have seen previous posts about this and people are saying a faulty Hub 3.0 however when my friend phoned them they said it wasn't their equipment and said they could put him through to the gadget team for £25 to put the router in safe mode? Is that right enough or were they fobbing him off? does anyone know or have any solutions that may help? As far as I am aware there are no settings as such that can be restricting the speed on the Netgear router, I also have another friend with an ASUS router having the exact same issue with the hub 3.0 in modem mode so there has got to be an issue with the Virgin side surely? Any help would be appreciated. Thank you 🙂 

31 REPLIES 31

Roger_Gooner
Alessandro Volta

First thing to do is to check the speeds of the hub in modem mode, connect only a device such as a laptop to it in this mode and measure the speeds using speedtest.net.

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Hub 5, TP-Link TL-SG108S 8-port gigabit switch, 360
My Broadband Ping - Roger's VM hub 5 broadband connection

legacy1
Alessandro Volta
With the hub in router mode connect the Nighthawk WAN to the hub and test speed by wire on a PC connected to the Nighthawk see what you get.

Get new CAT6 cables and check your link on your PC is 1Gb.

If you have done the above @Roger_Gooner and you get good speed connect the PC to the Nighthawk and load the UI go to WAN settings and use the clone option to copy the MAC to the Nighthawk then connect it to the hub in modem mode.

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Hi Roger, unfortunately I am having no luck connecting a laptop via ethernet cable to the hub 3, when typing in the IP address for the hub in web browser nothing happens, I have tried all LAN ports on the back of the hub 3 and still nothing. I can access the hub via the Netgear router but that's it. I have also reset hub 3 back to factory default then set it back to modem mode and I still can't connect to the hub once it's back in modem mode. Any ideas why it won't connect to hub directly from laptop? I did try manually setting the IP address on the laptop to suit the hub which is 192.168.100.1 and laptop I set as 192.168.100.25, DHCP is enabled as well while in modem mode. Thanks 

Hi Alessandro, could you be more specific in terms of doing the last part of the test ie cloning MAC address? Just so that I have understood you correctly, if I set the hub 3 in router mode, connect my Netgear router via WAN port to the hub 3, should any other settings be altered for it to get an IP address? And would it be required that I should do a factory reset on the Netgear router before I connect it as it is connected now from hub in modem mode (not sure if there would be an issue with IP addresses is why I ask) . Then once I have established the connection with hub (router mode) and Netgear test with a wired connection for speed and if all is good, then copy the MAC address from my Netgear. Put my hub 3 back into modem mode ( will this change the IP on the Netgear?) should I paste MAC address on Netgear before I connect it back to the hub? Sorry for all the questions, I just want to make sure I am clear of what needs to be done before I do it. Thank you 

Lets start with the hub in router mode connect the Nighthawk WAN port to the hub and a PC on the Nighthawk LAN ports then do a speed test.

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Okay I will try that and get back to you. Thanks 🙂 

@Taylordrift21 

Firstly just forget all the stuff about MAC address cloning, it occasionally has its uses but mostly (and in this case) it will achieve precisely nothing.

Let's look at this logically, we know that your friend gets the full speed when connected up with the VM Hub in router mode so we can deduce that the basic internet feed is working perfectly. Next we want to double check what it does in modem mode - incidentally I'm confident that the issue will be with a setting on the Nighthawk router, you've tried QoS but look for anything mentioning hardware NAT acceleration.

So just connect a PC/laptop directly to the Hub in router mode and see what you get. The PC will get a DHCP address of something like 192.168.0.10 - test the speed and then log into the Hub's web interface, switch it to modem mode and let it reboot. Check that the light on the bottom is a sort of red/magenta colour. Test if you have internet connectivity on the laptop, remember that you might not get a good DNS server assigned so just see if you can ping  8.8.8.8, if you can then, basically the internet is working. If not reboot the PC and check what IP address it has picked up from DHCP. If it starts with 169 then it hasn't worked, we are looking for an IP address something like 82. something. Again open a command prompt and see if you can ping 8.8.8.8 and if so can you ping www.bbc.co.uk? If both these work then the internet is up and DNS is working. Now try a Speedtest and see what you get.

If the values are good then the Hub is working perfectly well in modem mode and the issue is with the Nighthawk.

Factory reset the Nighthawk, disconnect the PC and connect the WAN port on the Nighthawk to the port on the Hub that the PC was in. Wait about 2 min and then (very important) reboot the Hub.

When the Hub reboots in modem mode again, (lookout for the magenta light), connect the PC to one of the Nighthawks LAN ports and test speed again. If there is still a marked reduction then the issue has to be a setting on the Nighthawk (outside chance that it could be faulty but not very likely) and you will need to systematically go through all the settings to check what is causing it.

I had a Netgear XR300 that wouldn't get anymore than 250Mbps on my 500Mbps connection when connected to a SH3 in modem mode.  Tried everything, wired/wireless etc.

Purchased an Asus RT-AC86U and hit 500Mbps+ right out of the box.  

Might be just coincidence but strange that the XR300 had issues for both of us?

Hi mate, yeah that is kind of strange, however it’s not even going above 100 meg and secondly my other mate who is also with virgin having the same issue he is using an ASUS AC68U. So it’s my thinking is it must have something to do with the SH3? For 2 of us having the same issue Is very odd.