Virgin BB - how to make it better?

AshleyC

AshleyC

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Ok i did have BT which was fine, gave me a rock solid connection upstairs constantly, just a shame it was pretty expensive. So i swapped to Virgin back in November since they had a good deal on for their fastest fibre. They finally got round to installing it on saturday! Anyway, ever since the wifi connection has been dropping out every few minutes or so making it next to impossible to work from home today.

Before i call virgin and cancel, is there anything i can do in the modem setup to make a better connection. I see it has a dual band connection, does one or the other make for a better connection? is there anything i can change in there that would make a difference?
 
The first think to do is separate the 2g and 5g channels. If your laptop/pc has 5g, try that out and see how it goes.

A work colleague had issues with WiFi so bought another router which is plugged into to the VM hub and that has improved his WiFi round the house. In addition to this he has a tp link WiFi extender which gives him 100mbs on the 5g channel in the kitchen with the router being up stairs.

For a hard wired connection you can look at using powerline home plugs.

Or if you still have you BT hub you can use that as the router with the hub set to modem only.
 
Run an ethernet cable. Really, just do it. That is the solution, wifi and homeplugs are horrid bodges.
 
We had 75Mb BB with Virgin up until 18 months ago when we switched to Sky.

We chose the fibre unlimited at 37Mb as we don't need the speed but you know what?

It's faster.

I wouldn't go back to Virgin now. They throttle the speed at peak periods (from a friend working for Virgin).
 
onomatopoeia said:
Run an ethernet cable. Really, just do it. That is the solution, wifi and homeplugs are horrid bodges.
Click to expand...
I agree running a cable is the best solution, but sometimes we do not want to do that as there is no neat way of getting the wire where it is needed or you need to get someone in to drill holes to take it out and back up.

I currently have Plusnet which is at 60mbps and am using 200mbps home plugs and get 40mbps ish at my pc up stairs. So if I was to update to the 600 or even 1200 homeplugs I think I would get better connection to what I have now.
 
2g WIFI is stronger but slower 2.4ghz
5g WIFI is faster but doesn't go as far
that is your 2 channels
once you get beyond that then you can use WIFI repeaters but they can be pretty poor.
I would run an ethernet cable to the part of the house that struggles then setup an Access Point.
The home plugs are ok, not terribly fast but if you shop arround you can get the 500mbs ones for about £11 each in packs or even used.
I quite like home plugs especcially for SONOS stuff, I have a Sonos Connect in my hifi on one and its rock solid
 
One thing to do is to login to your router menu via your browser and choose an appropriate channel. You can use the following to map your local wifi sphere (yours and neighbours etc). It's best to choose a channel that is the least populated and furthest from strong interfearing signals.

WiFi Analyzer
 
Red Base Black said:
One thing to do is to login to your router menu via your browser and choose an appropriate channel. You can use the following to map your local wifi sphere (yours and neighbours etc). It's best to choose a channel that is the least populated and furthest from strong interfearing signals.

WiFi Analyzer
Click to expand...


very true that especially if you live in very built up areas.
 
As above try different WiFi channels if you have lots of competing networks around you.

No real other reason it should just drop, presumably it just disconnects rather than running out of signal.

Imo vm are better than the majority of bt backed services. Mines been solid and reliably fast at all times. I'm cursing having to go back to bt at our new house.
 
AshleyC said:
...Before i call virgin and cancel, is there anything i can do in the modem setup to make a better connection. I see it has a dual band connection, does one or the other make for a better connection? is there anything i can change in there that would make a difference?
Click to expand...
Use a cable for your main compootah.
 
Virgin Broadband is, in my experience at least, very good. Rock solid, fast, and in my area doesn't seem to suffer too badly from contention.

That said, the Wi-Fi provided by the standard Virgin Superhub (any version) is at best 'adequate'. The best solution in my opinion is to put the Superhub into "modem mode" and invest in a decent Wi-Fi router of your own choosing.

Personally, I use a two Google Wi-Fi puck solution. The first one is connected to the Superhub (as modem) and a cheap Netgear Switch for wired connection (TV, Tivo V6, Xbox, PC etc). The second puck is upstairs and forms a wi-fi mesh with the first giving great wi-fi speeds all over the house.

The reason I went the Google Wi-Fi route was that the hardwire ports on the mesh pucks can be configured as hardwire LAN ports which is great for out bedroom smart TV and second Tivo box.

If you have a bigger house it easy to add more pucks and extend the mesh. For me, it has 'just worked' and is really stable. I think I have had to re-boot it once (from my smartphone) since getting it.
 
I have been a VM customer since before Richard Branson was born ... well not really but you get the meaning. It was Telewest at the time.

Their WiFi from their last 3 iterations of router has been woeful - plenty of speed if your close enough but the siganl becomes patchy the further you get from the router. I've tried WiFi extenders and home plugs and neither work very well. My desktop is hard wired and I get more than 200Mb/s all the time - I've never experienced any form of throttling. For my ancient (8 year old) laptop I purchased a TP-Link wireless dongle and now get 100Mb/s+ everywhere, but we live in a bungalow to distance isn't an issue.
 
My 2ac was always pretty good considering the 30s thick walls in our medium size house. Only reason I moved to a multi node system was to fill in a few dead spots.

Milage of any wifi will vary however depending on size and construction of the structure around it.
 
neil_g said:
Imo vm are better than the majority of bt backed services. Mines been solid and reliably fast at all times. I'm cursing having to go back to bt at our new house.
Click to expand...
Avoid the poundland grade ISPs and go with a proper one like A&A or Uno.

"You only get what you pay for" is never more true than with internet service provision.
 
My friend and neighbour is with VM, he averages 2 outages a year and seems to suffer from contention ratios as he can never download at his connected speed.
I switched to BT infinity 2 in December 2013, connection speed was 76kbps and I could constantly download at 7.6mps.
I moved 1/4 of a mile in 2017, due to the previous VM installation, their enigineer had pushed the cable down and the openreach engineer couldn't make the connection.
I had to wait for BT to get permission from the council to dig up the path outside my place so they could run a new cable.
This process took a month but BT paid for a 4G connection so that I could use the net.
Once connected it settled down at 55kbps but I expected this as I was further from the green box than I was at my previous address.
A few weeks ago I switched from BT to plusnet saving myself £23 per month and I now have a constant connection at 76kbps and again I can happily download at 7.6mbps as well.
I can't explain why my connection has gone up with Plusnet but as they are owned by BT it wouldn't surprised if they are using BT kit at the exchange rather than their own.
I have never experienced any outages with the service and it's been rock solid.
I don't like most of the routers ISP's supply so I use a TP Link router than has performed really well.
Personally I wouldn't touch VM with a barge pole and anyone with a clue who uses p2p knows to stay well away from them as they cap the speeds.
All of the companies using BT's FTTC service offer a truly unrestricted experience and as far as I am aware, VM are the only ones who throttle any service.
 
Thanks for the replies peeps. I've been away for a few days but am back now and will try a few suggestions listed here. I do still have the BT router. Running a cable isn't really a desired option though.
 
Like @Bristolian I’ve been with Virgin since before they were Virgin - and for 20 years I’ve heard some people slag them off (mostly not VM customers but ‘experts’ who know a VM customer), the bottom line is that the only time we’ve been visibly throttled was when we had 2 teenage boys who had some questionable download habits. Our wired and wifi speeds perform as promised at a minimum. Just checked the 5g and it’s 204mbit.
 
WiFi on VM hubs is flakey at best. I`ve been with them since the NTL days, and have power lines, and an Asus router, for convenience. It`s easy enough to put the hub in modem mode. I`m generally pretty happy with them.
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Plenty of help over on cable forums (was nthellworld back in the day).
 
I has Virgin Media installed and cancelled after 4 days, iy literally worked until the engineer left my street. I was left with a phone not working and 200mb broadband working at 2mb, was 200mb when engineer was on site. Rang customer service and told had to nearly a week for an engineer to come back. 10 minutes after putting the phone down the 2mb I had working then stopped. So rang customer services again and wasted it was my fault as I had connected 8 devices. At this point I decided to cancel and got back to BT and got a new customer deal!!!!
 
I've been with vm for around 4 years, never had an issue
 
I've been with VM for comfortably over 2 years
Downtime has been minimal - constantly reach 30 or 40 days without interruption
Downloads have never been throttled ... speed tests always come in at over 200Mb/s
Top notch quality peering

On first installation, the connection was kapput. Within 48 hours VM replaced the superhub and all was well ish.
I was using the Superhub 3 in modem mode. Seems there was a fault with it where by it would drop the connection every 37 minutes. 48 hours later, a Virgin Engineer replaces the Superhub 3 with a Superhub 2ac.

I think within about 6 months, the Superhub 2ac was replaced again because of a connection issue - again VM had an engineer out to me within 48 hours.

Now compare and contrast that with the aDSL providers I've had.
- Constant down time (I'm lucky if I see a week without interruption)
- Literally months to get wet joints in the street replaced and a corroded tap in the end of street cabinet replaced

Endless support calls, hard to get an OpenReach engineer to turn up that knows that shiz and will do a proper job.

One day I'll look at upgrading the aDSL line to vDSL. aDSL has had it's day and is pretty poor to begin with - but it's the customer service and times to get things resolved with various aDSL providers that's been most shocking.

I've never used the Superhub's WiFi so I can't comment on that. And whatever flavour of Superhub my 'rents have is awfully locked down (I wanted their network in a non-default IP range and had to resort to putting it in modem mode and using an alternative router). But for customer service and quality engineers, Virgin win hands down.
 
In terms of actually analysing the Wi-Fi issues, I'd recommending installing a WiFi analyser on your phone and doing a site survey. Search for deadspots and contention with neighbouring access points on both 2.4G and 5G. From there you can make the best choices about WiFi channels etc.

Are you sure it's the WiFi connection dropping? Or is the WiFi actually okay and it's the internet connectivity dropping?
 
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