Help Understanding BQM? - VirginMedia

Hey guys,

I originally made a post over on the Virgin Media Community hoping that someone could help me there but I haven't had any luck, I've copied the original post to repost here, hopefully someone can help, and/or let me know if the BQM looks OK/correct?

Thanks!

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"Hello,

Since around Christmas time our WiFi signal seems to be dropping almost every day, constantly losing connection on our devices (phones, Xbox, Alexa etc)

I did a chat with someone from VirginMedia support last week and they said they would push some update/settings to our SuperHub2 to try and help with the issue but it hasn't improved.

I've been running a Broadband Quality check via thinkbroadband.com since the middle of January, but I'm not entirely sure how to read the data, or if it shows any errors?

I have included a screenshot showing the check from the last 5 days."

BQM - 12th - 16th Feb 2018


A VirginMedia forum team member said the connection looks good...(and then never replied again)

"Hi, thanks for the reply.

If the connection looks good and it's just a wireless issue, what does that mean? Is there a fault with the SuperHub?

This is the Quality check from yesterday and today (so far) Several spikes and drop offs?"

BQM - 22nd Feb 2018

...and here is a link to the latest BQM result, 2nd/3rd March

This is pretty much what my daily monitor looks like every day, give or take a few red bars.

Can anyone let me know if this looks OK?

Thanks!

Looks normal for Virgin Media

Remember the BQM is only monitoring between our pingbox and your virgin media modem, so it is NOT testing your WiFi

What the BQM shows is the usual yellow jitter from a cable service, some increase in average latency around 4:30pm, i.e. when you start using it a lot or others in area do

The big top to bottom spikes may just be a large app update delaying the BQM packets

Hi can you help explain my graphs attached?

About just over 1 month ago we upgraded our Virgin media Hub from the SH2 to SH3. I was skeptical to do this at first because I've heard lots of issues for last 2 years about latency issues and problems with the internal chipset. The main reason for the upgrade was to get the new V6 TV box and wasn't expecting the new SH3 but it came with the TV box.

Ever since we received the new SH3 and installed it we've experienced daily issues of our devises losing internet access especially during the middle of VoIP calls or trying to login to our work's servers via VPN and work on documents.

at 8pm last night I called them up they told me to turn the hub off, wait a minute before turning it back on and then they did some FW upgrades they said and that I shouldn't have any issues for 2-3 days. Odd because I shouldn't have any issues at all. In any case I soon experienced a problem around 10:30 pm

Below are some links for two graphs and the first graph is our new SH3 and it's evident packets are dropping at times we are not even using the internet (between 00:00 and 02:00).

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

So I called Virgin up and they said it that an "upstream power level issue is seen and possibly due to the Coax cable. " They will send an engineer on Friday to sort it out or test. Problem is this is the second SH3 and when the engineer cam last time he said sometimes these boxes are faulty. They did some quick test and didn't see any issue so replaced it.

Ironically enough another colleague of mine has the new SH3 but he has the white version and did a graph test but hasn't seen any issues at all. I can't imagine the white boxes would be any different then the black SH3 box I have.

While I was speaking to Virgin I asked them if I could connect my old SH2 which I still had. They said they needed to enable to MAC for that and disable the MAC for the SH3.. They did this and when I got home I swapped out the hubs and since then I've had no issues with the internet.

In any case the second graph link is of my SH2 but all it shows is dropped packets despite me having no issues at all. Can you explain this?

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

Cheers,

Your new graph with the SH2, solid red is probably one of two possible causes.

Either the hub needs to be set to respond to ICMP pings, or your IP address has changed. This link copied from the main site Tools will tell you your current IP address, and that should be the same as the one you have set up for your BQM.

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 18-Apr-18 21:42:13)

Thanks Roberto. The IP was correct but the ping was disabled on the SH2 box. I just assumed it was on by default like the SH3 box.

Below is the graph for the SH2 since the ping was enabled and not a single dropped packet.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

I noticed the Max latency is lower on the SH2 graph than what the SH3 graph. So certainly something not right with the SH3 as it's quite a difference even though it is in ms.

Steve

Difference is the well known Intel Puma chipset issues that affect the SH3

My SH3 BQM is linked below

*with the updated Puma6 fix

Edited by BuckleZ (Tue 24-Apr-18 20:50:08)