Poor VM service

Started having intermittent problems a few days ago within a week of installation. I thought it might be my local configuration as virtually all connections are wifi and I have additional switches. Even their website says there are no issues with my service in the area and everything is OK. Now they want 5 days for an engineer to come around to fix it. This is appalling. I hope I can cancel the contract and my old provider, for which I had never any issues will have me back. Broadband speed is not everything if it doesn't work.

Still having problems and not great support from Virgin. I managed to get a stable connection for about 12 hours after a town wide power outage, but this morning WiFi speeds were stuck at around 1/20th of my 500Mb/s. I managed to recover the speeds by disconnecting from WiFi and reconnecting. Is there anyone who can explain to me what is happening?

I had a flakey service with VM when I moved to the Gig 1 service, random packet loss - resetting router would resolve it for a few days then it came back, games would freeze , video calls would freeze, everytime a reboot of router sorted it.

Had a replacement router, and 2 engineers telling me everything was fine (speed) which it was.

I got out of the contract only a few months in.

Make sure to set up a BQM here to show them the quality of the connection.

Please also test with a direct ethernet cable.... WIFI can be unreliable on any connection due to lots of factors.

Go back to basics and remove everything other that the kit Virgin supplied (e.g extra switches) and then test with one device via ethernet. The fact you said 'I thought it might be my local configuration' makes me think you need to be 100% sure its not your extra kit or configuration before complaining how long it takes Virgin to come out.

At the time I think complete loss of service was a good reason for them to come out. An engineer did ring me up and told me to check all their wiring to see if there were braid shorts on the centre wire of all cables from the box outside the house, told me to remove the push fit wall to Hub/VM TV los with a screw fix one (he didn't like the push fit plugs) to remove the isolator, and run the modem without the TV box connected. I did try disconnecting all hardwired connections to the hub, but it made little difference. When it was at its worst they did offer to someone round but cancelled it without telling me and VM had no record of why the visit was cancelled.

Thanks for the suggestion to setup a BQM test on this website. Could be very useful.

I think I may have tracked down what may be happening to my low download speeds for both WiFi and possible Ethernet, to the Hub 4. Note, upload speeds never affected. If the computer/laptop/phone has not been connected for a while (i.e. asleep) then when the device is reawaken it often connects at a slower speed. This seems to be persistent until I disconnect and reconnect the WiFi or Ethernet. For the computer I had to change to the second ethernet port. Is this an issue others have had?

Edited by zanc (Sat 12-Mar-22 12:15:17)

With WiFi could easily be caused by radio congestion from other houses nearby.

With Ethernet this sounds very odd, and I would suspect the Ethernet cable between the computer and the Hub 4.

Well an engineer came around an replaced Hub, cabling and reassigned my connection in the cabinet. Impeccable service by the guy.

However, WiFi is still an issue. I NEVER had any problems with Zen Internet and its Fritzbox or my other 2 Apple Airport products connected to the same network. Devices do get connected to the HUB and are assigned an IP address. It just takes up to minute before any data flows often requiring turning WiFi on devices off and on. I've tried changing DNS servers on the devices (Not available on the Hub) but to no avail.

Unless anyone has any other explanation, it would seem there are serious problems with the Hub 4.

As a last attempt, I mat try turning of the WiFi functionality in the hub and use my older Fritsbox and Apple routers.

Damn! Just lost connection again when trying to post this reply.

VM do not guarantee wifi speeds for this very reason.

IMHO, do yourself a favour and stick the Hub in modem mode and buy your own wifi kit. In all the many, many years I've had VM Hubs, they always go straight to modem mode as I have my own networking kit.

I know users don't like the idea of spending extra money on something they see as "should work". However it will save your sanity in the long run.

Just for information I use a Draytek Router and a couple of TP-Link PoE AP's for Wifi.

In reply to a post by Adduxi:

VM do not guarantee wifi speeds for this very reason.

Seconded, I have a Hub 3.0 with the 200 Mbps service, in modem mode to an ASUS RT-AX88U WiFi 6 router. I prefer to manage my own security boundary, not leave it up to the ISP.

Well, I seem to have sorted out my problems. I decided to get a couple of Airport Extremes and wired them up with the Hub 4 in modem mode. Problems with device reconnections after "sleeping" such as my laptop or Naim Mu-So speaker device and slower initial speeds after a reconnection seem to have disappeared. Since the Hub 4 was replaced all I can think is that there is something not quite right with the WiFi on the Hub 4.

Totally agree. That is what I have just done. Everything now works a treat. I can't fault the engineers who came around to install and check the issues I had. They were very conscientious. I think Virgin would be better sorting decent equipment which would, in the longer term, save them money.