Virgin Broadband drop-outs

dkh

dkh

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Not sure if the title is allowed but this is driving me mad!!!! I switched last week from Plusnet - had very, very few issues with except telephone charges were getting a bit on the large side.

Now, almost every 5 minutes, my internet drops. this is directly connected via a ethernet cable. Virgin sent out a new router last week as they thought it was that - same issues with the new box!

Anyone know what to do (apart from ditching)?
 
dkh said:
Not sure if the title is allowed but this is driving me mad!!!! I switched last week from Plusnet - had very, very few issues with except telephone charges were getting a bit on the large side.

Now, almost every 5 minutes, my internet drops. this is directly connected via a ethernet cable. Virgin sent out a new router last week as they thought it was that - same issues with the new box!

Anyone know what to do (apart from ditching)?
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I left Virgin a while ago because the Internet was constantly down. They eventually admitted it was due to oversubscribing and until they had upgraded their infrastructure over the course of 9 months it wouldn't get any better. They did offer things like £10 refunds etc but for me money wasn't an issue, I just wanted Internet.

Leaving them was painless and I went with BT who have been faultless, but I'm sure plenty of people have had problems with BT.
 
Which router, the new Hub 3 connected over cable?
Ours needed a booster fitting after an engineers visit, even though remote support said it was fine.
 
Join the support forums, if you have not already done so, and post there

Here is a link to the support forums: CLICK
 
Is this a complete drop, so everything fails? I ask this because we had problems with certain remote sessions dropping on VM, but it wasn't a complete drop.

In our case the explanation was that the "super" hub is not very super and the NAT connection tracking table it maintains is very small, which means certain protocols that are low traffic and can have large gaps between packets (SSH is an example) can have the router drop the connection, unless the client is set to send keepalives (this should not be necessary per the TCP/IP spec, but it become necessary due to the router being rubbish). Since we all need SSH shells where I work, the router part of the super hub on our VM connection is a right pain in the arse, and we can't put it into modem only mode and use a proper router as VM also implement static IP addresses (which we have and need) in a completely arse backwards way, by constructing a GRE tunnel from the router part of the superheb back to their gateway. No other ISPs do this and no ordinary routers can do it either, short of some enterprise grade Cisco kit.

And yes I used "arse" a few times in that post, but it's my opinion of VM from using them at work (software development company) for the last two years.
 
Sorry, was talking computers in the talk computers forum :/
 
I recently dumped Virgin and went to BT Infinty.

The Virgin service, although fast sometimes, slowed considerably at times and finally gave up completely and reverted to a speed slower than dial-up.
Despite assurances that "Our engineers are working hard to repair the problem" it took 19 days for them to restore my service.
When it worked, I got 55mbps from Virgin, but a few minutes later you could test it again and it was down to between 10 and 15mbps.
BT Infinty is only 37mbps, but it's usually the same whenever I test it, and my upload speed is double what it was with Virgin.
I just ran the speed test program on BT and I'm getting 31.6mbps download and 7.44 upload. I was lucky if I got 3mbps upload with Virgin.

I kept getting promises that Virgin were going to raise my download speed, but when they can't deliver a reliable service, who cares how fast it is?
 
Update - I am going to leave due to the issues of slow upload (6mbps) but, had engineers around today and the first was stumped as me. He suggested as a last resort that they replaced the V3 hub with a V2AC hub and the engineer put it down to the new firmware that was released last week. 95% of the customers use wireless so they aren't affected!

It seems the new firmware has incompatibilities with either windows 10 (tried laptop and desktop) or the router part just doesn't keep connections.

I'm getting 100mbps downloads using 1GBit ethernet cable / connection. Uploads are pants so I'm looking at Vodafone with 72mbps down and 20 up.
 
dkh said:
Update - I am going to leave due to the issues of slow upload (6mbps) but, had engineers around today and the first was stumped as me. He suggested as a last resort that they replaced the V3 hub with a V2AC hub and the engineer put it down to the new firmware that was released last week. 95% of the customers use wireless so they aren't affected!

It seems the new firmware has incompatibilities with either windows 10 (tried laptop and desktop) or the router part just doesn't keep connections.

I'm getting 100mbps downloads using 1GBit ethernet cable / connection. Uploads are pants so I'm looking at Vodafone with 72mbps down and 20 up.
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What broadband package are you on?
 
The upload speeds are pretty clear before sign up. Even my 150mb cable only has 10mb up (by design) . Not the end of the world unless you're uploading masses of data to cloud based backup.
 
If this was a bit problem. I could have helped being an openreach engineer, but if you have issues in the future, let me know :)
 
dkh said:
Update - I am going to leave due to the issues of slow upload (6mbps) but, had engineers around today and the first was stumped as me. He suggested as a last resort that they replaced the V3 hub with a V2AC hub and the engineer put it down to the new firmware that was released last week. 95% of the customers use wireless so they aren't affected!

It seems the new firmware has incompatibilities with either windows 10 (tried laptop and desktop) or the router part just doesn't keep connections.

I'm getting 100mbps downloads using 1GBit ethernet cable / connection. Uploads are pants so I'm looking at Vodafone with 72mbps down and 20 up.
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Even on the 200Mb virgin system you only get 12mb upload max, on the 300Mb you get 20Mb upload. On the 100Mb download package I believe it is a 6Mb upload, so you are getting what you pay for. What were you expecting?

Edit - Sorry thats with a home line. You can buy a business line which will give you more, but thats significantly more money a month.

And no, there's no firmware inconsistencies with a V3 Hub and Windows 10 - where did you hear this? I'm running several machines directly connected and others over wireless and over powerline connectors on a V3 Hub without any issues. Theres no talk of this on the forums.

What there is with the V3 hub is the need for a decent clean signal - I needed a booster despite not needing one with the V2 hub. Also the admin software is very, very slow and poor compared to the old netgear hub.
 
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I don't know what sort of hub I had, it was just called a "Superhub" and made by Netgear.

One of the "cures" that Virgin tried for my inconsistent service was to fit an attenuator between the cable and the hub.
Reducing the signal level to cure the problems seemed counter-intuitive to me.
 
Keith W said:
What broadband package are you on?
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100MB Fibre Unlimited

PixlData said:
If this was a bit problem. I could have helped being an openreach engineer, but if you have issues in the future, let me know :)
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Good to know!

Oliver Pohlmann said:
DKH - not read the whole thread, but I had drop outs with BT a while back. Literally every fifteen minutes. It wasn't the service but a broken cable running from the phone port to the router. Replaced that and it's been fine ever since. Took me ages to diagnose the issue.
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Tried multiple cables also the engineer who came tried multiple cables as well as a laptop simultanously.

Byker28i said:
And no, there's no firmware inconsistencies with a V3 Hub and Windows 10 - where did you hear this? I'm running several machines directly connected and others over wireless and over powerline connectors on a V3 Hub without any issues. Theres no talk of this on the forums.

What there is with the V3 hub is the need for a decent clean signal - I needed a booster despite not needing one with the V2 hub. Also the admin software is very, very slow and poor compared to the old netgear hub.
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Again, virgin engineer told me they'd rolled out a new firmware last week or so. He also reported this to the head engineer.

Byker28i said:
Interesting - have you checked for a DDOS attack
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.ph...ttack-can-hammer-virgin-media-superhub-3.html
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I didn't check but the engineer might have.

I have the V2AC hub here right now with no drop-out issues and downloads confirmed around the 100mbps with speedtest.net and broadband speed checker. Both confirm 110.xx download and 6.xx upload. This is using the same cables (ethernet).
 
that's what I was getting at when I asked what package he was on

I guessed from what he was saying it was the 100mb one

By your own admission, and as others have said, you are getting what you paid for - 100/6
 
Keith W said:
that's what I was getting at when I asked what package he was on

I guessed from what he was saying it was the 100mb one

By your own admission, and as others have said, you are getting what you paid for - 100/6
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Fortunately for me, I only had it installed last week - have had two modem / routers and now a third. I say fortunately because I am within my 14 day cancellation period and this is why I cancelled.

I wasn't getting what I paid for. To suggest I was is daft!

I was getting a connection drop-out every 5-8 mins for between 2 and 10 secs. I paid for 90+% uptime. This uptime is based on what I got when I was with Plusnet. I am getting it now but after I cancelled. I went to virgin's forums and found a number of users from since the V3 routers release complaining of exactly what I was experiencing. They found the only solution was to revert to an earlier router. This solution is what I have found to work.

The modem batch was different in both cases - the only thing the engineers could put it down to was that firmware update that occurs when the router is connected online. To test this they connected an RJ45 cable to a router straight out of the van that hadn't been connected online and powered it up - there was zero dropage from the indicator on the back of the router for 20 odd mins. That router was then connected online and 30 mins later it started the exact same drop-out sequence.
 
dkh said:
Update - I am going to leave due to the issues of slow upload (6mbps)
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dkh said:
I wasn't getting what I paid for. To suggest I was is daft!
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dkh said:
I have the V2AC hub here right now with no drop-out issues and downloads confirmed around the 100mbps with speedtest.net and broadband speed checker. Both confirm 110.xx download and 6.xx upload. This is using the same cables (ethernet).
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This is what @Keith W was talking about.
You said you're going to leave due to the slow upload (the v2 router evidently fixed the issue of dropouts), but you have the 100mbps package which only has a 6mbps upload by design.

Are you going back to plusnet then?
 
I went with Virgin for quicker download (up from 76 to 100). I didn't realise I would have constant drop-outs so I cancelled my contract within the 14 day trial period. After cancelling, I was given the option to try the V2AC hub to see if it did 'fix' the drop-outs as a 'guinea pig' and as a favour to me really because my new contract and service with Vodafone didn't start til two days later.

I reported back to Virgin that the V2 fixed the drop-out issue. Somewhere in this, I learned of the 6mbps upload speed and this made my choice to go with Vodafone more easier plus free evening and weekend calls instead of just free weekend calls.
 
I have to admit that when my Virgin worked it did give in excess of the advertised speeds at around 156Mbps but o would never make use of it all. Even downloading from Steam I would get about 7MBps whereas with BT I'm getting almost 6MBps so nearly the full bandwidth and HD on the box will still play fine, although never tried Ultra HD when also downloading.

But as said the performance is completely irrelevant if it's down all the time.
 
Regardless of the technical performance, I would be very reluctant to go back to Virgin because of their absolutely appalling "customer service."
 
Brian G said:
Regardless of the technical performance, I would be very reluctant to go back to Virgin because of their absolutely appalling "customer service."
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I spoke to them a week or two ago about the cost of my Internet, they were actually pretty useful and knocked £5/month off.

OP has gone Vodafone now though, customer service at its absolute worst.
 
Im with virgin 100mb service,im connected by the connecter dropouts for a few secs occur somwtimes.,am i misunderstanding that the wireless connection is less liable to dropouts
also im on a mac,would i be better using an apple router or no?
Thanks for any advice.
 
SsSsSsSsSnake said:
Im with virgin 100mb service,im connected by the connecter dropouts for a few secs occur somwtimes.,am i misunderstanding that the wireless connection is less liable to dropouts
also im on a mac,would i be better using an apple router or no?
Thanks for any advice.
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are you connected to 5Ghz or 2.4Ghz?

is the router channel set to auto?

depends what the issue is but there is no reason why an apple branded wireless device should work any better.
 
I've been with virgin a year now and it's only dropped off once in that year! I work from home so would know if it kept doing it! Standard package too!
I do run two Ethernet cables for my laptops dock! Does that make a difference?????
 
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I can add a bit to this, i ama long term virgin user and all my wired stuff is pretty reliable but two of my wireless items a laptop and a tablet that plays my internet radio can be flaky like this.
i blame the old router i have and will be contacting virgin to ask for a more up to date one.
 
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