Virgin Media Community

[tomlail]

This is a world I know nothing about !!

Usual problem of wi-fi being great downstairs - bit rubbish upstairs.

On the advice of my 16  year old son (always slightly dodgy) I bought a "TP-Link TD-W9970 N300 Wi-Fi VDSL/ADSL Modem Router" - not that I know what that really is 🙂

He's now speaking a different language about Coaxial and DSL connections and that I might need an adaptor.

I've decided to disown him and talk to you guys. 

Is what I've bought a waste of time or can I buy an adaptor to sort the connection - and allow me to respect him again?  🙂

Thanks a lot for any help

Tom

[Andrew-G]

When you have an interent connection, you need a modem to decode the signals from the incoming line.  A modem for VM is completely different to the modem for an Openreach wired connection.  You then additionally need a wifi router that allows all your devices, wired or wifi to connect to the internet connection provided by the modem.

An ISP hub is usually a combination of modem and router in the same box.  The modem/router you've bought is designed for the modem element to be used on an Openreach connection, that bit won't work with VM.  Usually you can configure devices like the one you've bought to run in router-only mode, and it could then be connected to the VM hub, with the hub running in modem mode.  But in all honesty, if you can you're better off sending it back as you're son is talking codswallop.

Your solutions to poor wifi upstairs are either VM pods if they're either free with your package (any Volt package, any package to which you can register an O2 pay month contract and claim Volt benefits), or if £5 a month seems a good bet for you.  Failing that invest in your own mesh wifi setup (£75-120), or consider if running an ethernet cable upstairs to an inexpensive wireless access point (like a Netgear WAC104) would solve the problem.

[jem101]

In theory you could use the TP-LINK you bought but it's all slightly more difficult to do that you might have thought. Firstly there is no adapter and you can't replace the VM hub, you have to use both together. Basically you put the VM hub into 'modem mode' which disables the router and wifi features leaving just the cable modem part working. 

A admittedly, very brief reading through the specs of the device you have purchased claims that it has a WAN ethernet port (I believe it uses one of the LAN ports for this), so you connect an ethernet cable from one of the ports on the VM hub (making sure that it is the one and only ethernet cable connected to it), connect the other end into the WAN port of your new router and configure it accordingly.

If you check through the Networking section of this forums, there are a couple of posts scattered around describing how to put the hub into modem mode and the somewhat counter intuitive order of which need to be power on first.

I do have to say though, that the device you bought isn't particularly good, and if you have one of the faster internet connections from VM, then it is likely to be a bottleneck in itself.

I'm sure your son will be able to get it all working though.😉

John