Does resetting Virgin router take a week to improve speeds?

I'm paying for the Virgin M500 package so assume I should be getting around 500Mbps. I'm a psychotherapist so need reliable broadband for online sessions but have been getting endless connection error reports and freezing during video calls. The error log for a 60 minute session this morning said: "25 slow connection warnings (high severity) detected on therapist device. These may have caused a noticeable drop or interruption in video/audio quality."

2 weeks ago I reverted to an ethernet connection assuming it would improve things and when it didn't tried running frequent speed tests. Sometimes I get the advertised speeds, but the tests often show around 95 Mbps for hours or even days at a time and it appears erratic.

I phoned Virgin this morning and spent 45 mins talking to support who got me to reset the router which took about half an hour to restart. The speed has remained at 95 or lower for the past 4 hours - but the Virgin support person who phoned back to check informs me it can take up to a week for a reset to 'take effect' and improve speeds.... Why? This sounds nonsense to me - unless it means Virgin have a week to look into problems behind the scenes and improve things....

Just to mention, I'm using a mini desktop pc with i7 processor and 32GB Ram, have restarted my pc several times. The ethernet cable sometimes shows 500+ Mbps so assume it is ok, but have ordered a new Cat 8 one arriving tomorrow just in case. From the guidelines I ought be able to have consistent video calls even with only 95 Mbps so what is going wrong?

Any thoughts appreciated...

Unless they have remedy work that is due to finish in that week, I think they are just playing delay tactics with you.

The old reboot, needs time to settle, are the sort of thing reps say to get customers of the phone.

What actually is the problem?

You said you tried using ethernet already with no improvement, this could mean its a virgin media network side issue, to help diagnose that because you have experienced customer services fobbing you off, it might be an idea to setup a think broadband monitor, to see if your data shows signs of peak time congestion, and also when you do these speedtests, log the time alongside the result, so you can see if there is a pattern related to time of day.

Here is the link for setting up the monitor.

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

There is other potential causes like noise ingress, or local problems like a bad cable or something. If you never ever see a result above 100, and assuming you on a package above that, you may potentially be stuck with a 100mbit ethernet connection somewhere.

There is a samknows test VM customers can use which can help diagnose if its LAN or WAN side, but I dont know the specifics on how to run that test.

Edited by Chrysalis (Tue 22-Oct-24 15:51:09)

In reply to a post by Templecloud24:

Virgin support person who phoned back to check informs me it can take up to a week for a reset to 'take effect' and improve speeds.... Why? This sounds nonsense to me - unless it means Virgin have a week to look into problems behind the scenes and improve things....

^^ this - I don't trust VM at all. None of rubbish! Nonsense!

You are wasting time and money on the Cat 8 cable. Cat 5e is more than enough.

How old is your i7 PC?

We have 40/10 mbps fttc and is great for video calls and works with Amazon Prime with their 4K films.

What programme/app are you using for the video calls?

Providing the Hub is in Router mode, and as noted by @Chrysalis, run the Samknows speed test on a wired device. Run the FULL tests and post a link to the results please
The website is www.samknows.com/realspeed
It would also be helpful if you can copy and paste the power levels, Pre and PostRS errors and the network log from the Hub.

Edited by Adduxi (Tue 22-Oct-24 17:26:22)

Thanks for responses everyone. It's certainly useful to have confirmation that what the Virgin support person was telling me about it taking a week was nonsense - which is what I told him at the time, but of course it didn't help resolve the problem...

Some additional info below:

Link to TB Quality monitor for today: Quality Monitor
There seem to be regular spikes at about 9am and 9pm and occasionally at other points in the day, from what I can work out usually at times when I am not using my pc.

Link to Sam Knows speed test: SamKnows speed test - this is the position at around 7 pm tonight, but the speed seems to vary without reason during the day, often slower in the morning although there are few businesses close. Looks as though the device is not the problem

Link to Think Broadband speed tests over the day TB speedtests

I'm not sure immediately how to find the other data you (Adduxi) suggested but will look into it once my evening sessions are over.

PC is about 3 years old. I agree it looks as though the ethernet cable is ok but the new one wasn't hugely expensive and looks stronger - it is a 20m distance to router as the room with TV and thus Virgin hub is on the 1st floor and my office on the ground floor. I have a wifi network with multiple extenders as it is a large Georgian house with thick walls but that never managed above 100. I agree it ought to be fine even with that speed.

The main platform I use is BilateralBase.com as I do EMDR sometimes, and that seems to have its own issues. But I also have problems on Jitsi.

Think there may be a problem with the ethernet cable. Looks like its dropping down to 100mbit/sec tbh because of poor connection from gigabit. May be packetloss etc on top of that which isn't obvious on a speedtest.

I would try another ethernet cable.

Edited by mr_mojo (Tue 22-Oct-24 22:38:09)

What on earth is that link for the Quality Monitor??

So the Samknows is showing the full 500 Tier to the Hub and to your device. However perhaps try at the times you say it is slow just for completeness.
As for the stats, go to http:\\192.168.0.1 and don't logon. There should be a link Router Status. This is where all the information is I suggested you post.
The BQM link seems to be broken, the link you need to post is the "shared graph" as this is live and we can see the circuit at any time.
It could be over utilisation on your circuit and that's not unheard of with VM.
A new Cat 6 cable may be a good investment as well, the Cat 8 has shielding I believe and wouldn't be earthed properly with the Hub 5, so may be causing problems?
The other thing to mention could be the NIC in the mini PC, it may need updated drivers?

As an aside, have you posted any of this on the VM Community Forum, https://community.virginmedia.com/ ? If not I would suggest you do. At least a VM Mod will have a look on the VM side for you.

Edited by Adduxi (Wed 23-Oct-24 15:22:22)

Link to TB Quality monitor for today: Quality Monitor
There seem to be regular spikes at about 9am and 9pm and occasionally at other points in the day, from what I can work out usually at times when I am not using my pc.

The spikes that you work out as being usually at times when you are not using your PC (I have not seen the quality monitor results) suggest something related to network adapter energy efficiency and/or idle settings. In addition, your operating system power settings might be set to conserve energy rather than for optimum/best performace. So it might be worth checking these settings on your PC. How this can be done depends on the various components involved (such as operating system, network adapter, and so on) so search online for these settings and how and what to change based on your set up.

Edited by teshy (Wed 23-Oct-24 16:04:09)