Help and advice Virgin Media wifi issue and router

[3 MORE YEARS]

Hi Guys,

I need some help and advice. If I say my worst broadband service has been with Virgin Media, I wouldn't be exaggerating. I have lived in my current house for more than 15 years, and in that time I have had broadband with various companies, and most recently with PlusNet. PlusNet wasn't great, but I didn't have to call them several times a week.

My wifi is terrible. It's not usable most of the time. I work in tech, although I am not a networking guy, so I am reasonably comfortable with technology. Even though the service is terrible in terms of wifi, virgin media won't release me from my contract.

After a lot of arguing and many calls, they sent me a replacement router, which was no better. Then they sent someone down to my house. The guy was honest enough to admit that the routers with virgin media were rubbish for wifi. I was shocked he was saying this given that he was a virgin media employee. Credit to him for being honest. He said there is nothing he could do to help me.

I work partly from home, so my wifi is essential. Half the time I can't browse web pages properly. We are not talking about watching videos or downloading music, just your normal browsing.

Now since virgin media won't release me from my contract, I have 2 options, either sign up with another broadband company, and also continue paying for virgin media or get a router of my own.

I am considering getting a router of my own. I want to invest in a router that also have 3G/4G capability. I want to know from other users who have had wifi issues if getting your own router solved the issue with virgin media wifi?

As far as I have been told, I do not know how true it is, but virgin media routers are supposed to be known for wifi issues.

Does anyone have a router make model recommendations? This is one I am considering: ASUS RT-AC3200 Tri-Band Wireless Gigabit Router (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00Y2NVH4O ) any good?

Any advice or recommendations would be highly appreciated.

By the way, I tried to post on virgin media forum about this, but they have paid forum employees pretending to be customers, who weren't very helpful.

Thank you.

 

[karmacomputing]

In addition to UKBF, taking a look at the resources on Kitz Forum is very recommended as a specialist forum for troubleshooting these matters.

 

[ffox]

The first thing to check is WiFi performance with the client device right next to the router.

There are many things that can impact on WiFi performance, including distance, thickness of walls and frequency interference.

Test with the client close to the router and see what happens before making expenditure. The visiting engineer should have tested this first, if he didn't, then you wouldn't be wise to depend on anything he said.

Another alternative with lower cost than a new router, may be WiFi extenders. Connect one to a mains power socket close to the router and another to a mains power socket close to the client device.

Or, you could try power-link devices. There connect to the router via Ethernet cable, plug into the mains and sent the network traffic through the main electrical circuits.

 

[The Byre]

Another alternative with lower cost than a new router, may be WiFi extenders. Connect one to a mains power socket close to the router and another to a mains power socket close to the client device.

Or, you could try power-link devices. There connect to the router via Ethernet cable, plug into the mains and sent the network traffic through the main electrical circuits.

BT sell a BT-branded combination that does both. You get one 'power-link' transmitter that plugs into the router via ethernet and two wi-fi transmitters that you can shove into any old main socket on the same phase. £70 from Pi$$y-World.
https://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/comp...ine-adapter-kit-triple-pack-10142650-pdt.html
These mains-based devices all suffer if you have faulty or noisy neutral lines and a poor earth, hence the many negative revues for practically all models.

As for your present woes, many UK electrical house installations are very, very sub-standard and suffer from having poor earths and even substantial voltage drops in many, many cases. If your lights dim even very slightly, when the immersion heater comes on or a large inductive load like a 2kW angle grinder kicks in, or if control lights on some devices sometimes flicker despite being turned off, then that could also explain the poor performance of your existing router.

Either that, or a poor line to the nearest curb-side box.

 

[3 MORE YEARS]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for your input. Almost everything I use is Macs, and most of the modern Macs don't have ethernet ports.

Secondly, regarding the house being an issue. If I have lived at the house for 15 years, and all the other routers with all other broadband companies have been fine, then wouldn't that eliminate the house being the problem?

The wifi is okay if you are in the same room (normally). But its not always okay in the same room. When you are plugged in using an Ethernet cable its fine. So this would normally tell me its the router.

 

[ffox]

The wifi is okay if you are in the same room (normally). But its not always okay in the same room. When you are plugged in using an Ethernet cable its fine. So this would normally tell me its the router.

If WiFi is intermittent in the same room, it probably indicates that there is intermittent interference. If WiFi is weak in other rooms, then a booster should do the trick for less that the cost of another router.

On the other hand a more powerful router may solve the problem, but you won't know until you try it.

 

[The Byre]

I may have been reluctant to place the blame on the router, as Virgin shift vast numbers of these, but there really does seem to be a problem with the SuperHub-3 and especially with the very high speed 200mbs or even 350mbs service. These are particularly acute (for no apparent reason I can think of) with Macs!

They seem to lose 'sync' with the router at the other end from Virgin.

There may be other issues, such as 'competing' signals causing interference, bad or noisy mains connections, but the message boards are full of page after page after page of complaints about the Virgin Media internet service, all describing the problems you are having. Reading them makes for amusing reading, as Virgin employees keep coming up with new and exciting reasons for it not really being Virgin's fault!

The standard response is "Everything's fine our end. Just restart your Superhub and see if that fixes the problem!"

You might have some joy by changing the wi-fi channel, but the nub of the problem is that the system seems to not be able to cope with the transmission speeds from the home router to the main router from Virgin and changing router or channel at your end does not always solve the problem.

The fault may (big 'may' here!) lie with the fact that the technology involved to send 200 or 350mbs down bits of wire is just not viable. The problem may be made worse by being on wi-fi and therefore reestablishing the link takes longer and the interruption is more noticeable. Certainly at those speeds any kind of cable, line voltage or interference problems are going to have a far greater effect than for standard broadband at c.a. 10mbs-up, 50mbs-down.

P.S. Here's a tasty quote from one of the dozens of complaint threads on their forum -
"2 weeks ago had the virgin "broadband expert" around - the 4th Engineer in a couple of months. Didn't even look at the system - told me he lived down the road and had the same problem himself! He told me that the system was just overloaded."

P.P.S. The problems seem to have started four years ago and have been spreading throughout the UK and are still going strong today, so I wouldn't hold out too much hope!

 

[3 MORE YEARS]

Hi, I have had the router replaced by Virgin. No luck. They had changed the channel at least 10 times. So its either a new router or new broadband company. The choice is between a router or another broadband company. If I get a wifi extender and it doesn't solve it, then I will need to get another router or an ISP.

So I would welcome router recommendations.

 

[ffox]

This is an old thread, but it may be of some use -
https://www.urban75.net/forums/thre...a-router-advice-needed-on-replacement.317668/

 

[The Byre]

So I would welcome router recommendations.

BT.

Since writing the above, I have been reading the forums and some of the tech reports within the film industry, where people have to move terabytes of data around the planet and it really seems that it's not the router and it's not the wires, but Virgin Media. Whether that is the case here, well, you decide!

These Utopian headline speeds of 200mbs and higher just do not work reliably without fibre-to-the-home and sufficient infrastructure.