Home Hub 5 WAN Port - Virgin

Hi all, is there any way of using a Virgin SH3 in modem mode with a BT HH5. On it's WAN port it's always looking to connect over PPPoE.

I've seen plenty of posts from people who are using the HH5 as a Wireless access point but the Virgin SH3 has excellent wireless......just a terrible router.

You may be wondering "WHY a BT HH5" I was given it and overall it does a better job at routing traffic than the piece of unfinished rubbish that virgin gave me, I can't justify spending any money on a new router right now

Any ideas?

To avoid confusion, as I am confused - presume this is a virgin media cable service and thus a cable modem needed (hence superhub in modem mode), in which case there is no simple Ethernet router only mode on the HH5, it has an Ethernet WAN port but will always be trying to do some authentication, rather than a simpler router mode that you need.

Never used a SH3, what's actually wrong with it?

I used a SH2AC without many issues and overall was much better than the HH5 for reliability, uptime and range.

The SH3 is terrible at basic routing functions, doesn't allow traffic through even when port forwarding rules are set up. The configuration page software on it is completely unfinished...........takes 30-40 seconds to load every time you click anything, setting a port forward takes nearly 20 minutes. There are plenty of guides on using a BT HH5 as a wireless access point but to be fair the SH3 has really good wifi. After doing a load of reading it seems that whilst the hardware is there, BT software is completely locked down.

To be fair I might just complain complain complain to Virgin as their Vivid 200 isn't that great, they block most usenet ports and the single thread download speed never really exceeds 80Mbps. Is it too much to ask to download at 200Mbps when it's what you're paying for and is whats advertised?

my multi-threaded was 14Mbps on weekends, so 80Mbps single threaded is a lot better than I had.

Honestly the HH5 has a fair few issues, the Type B in particular has issues with throughput dropping below 10Mbps on 5Ghz, their new smart hub is a lot better.

I came from 150Mbps with virginmedia and down to 55Mbps with BT. I do not download anything very often, my usage is mainly netflix, youtube and casual web browsing. My experience is much better on the slower connection.

For you to get compensation virginmedia need to have your area down as "high usage which is service affecting." Service affecting is things such as netflix, which needs only 6Mbps, buffering. Skype calls breaking up. Pings being a lot higher than they should be. You can call and they are able to check if your area has this classification.

My area was classified as service affecting, every weekend I had 14Mbps max on a multi threaded download speedtest and 1-3Mbps on a single threaded download. I struggled watching netflix, sky on demand TV, youtube, even iphone audio facetime would break up. Even here they said my area was not a priority since utilisation was often only 95%, I got a discount of 50% off and eventually they allowed me to terminate the contract.

At 80Mbps, I doubt it will be classified as service affecting, since at that speed you are able to do virtually all online activities, and if multiple users downloaded at the same time in your house, you could probably use the full 200Mbps. There is also a grey area whereby the ISP can claim it is the source, not them, causing the restriction at 80Mbps. It is worth checking nonetheless.