Virgin Media ... Heads up about a new router

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I had the VM engineer out this morning and I was politely expressing my unhappiness over the SH3. He told me that sooooooo many people are complaining that finally the powers at VM are starting to get the message. He told me that a SH4 is being developed but has no date when this will be completed but they had to do something and that something is in progress. Unfortunately there are no SH2ac left and everyone is getting a SH3 at the moment regardless if they are a new customer or if it is a replacement.

At least they put gigabit ports on their router not like sky's 100mb ports.
 
Soldato
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Got virgin being installed in a couple of weeks, read a bit about latency issues with the SH3 chipset and promises of a new firmware release.

If I were to use it in modem mode with my Asus AC68U would that resolve the issue?
 
Soldato
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Got virgin being installed in a couple of weeks, read a bit about latency issues with the SH3 chipset and promises of a new firmware release.

If I were to use it in modem mode with my Asus AC68U would that resolve the issue?

Im in the same boat as you, tempted to call up and cancel it and stick with my rubbish 3.5MB ADSL, atleast thats stable even if it is slow, reports of the VM SH3 having horrendous packetloss and latency issues puts me off as i pretty much only play Online only games :(
 
Soldato
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I had the VM engineer out this morning and I was politely expressing my unhappiness over the SH3. He told me that sooooooo many people are complaining that finally the powers at VM are starting to get the message. He told me that a SH4 is being developed but has no date when this will be completed but they had to do something and that something is in progress. Unfortunately there are no SH2ac left and everyone is getting a SH3 at the moment regardless if they are a new customer or if it is a replacement.

Sorry, but that's just an oft-repeated rumour. Anyone who knows won't be saying anything, and the likes of engineers and customer services are deliberately kept in the dark so they don't leak to the public. There's certainly been no rumours or evidence of actual hardware, just this "they should be bringing something soon" rumour to placate customers who complain about the Puma 6's poor latency and jitter.

It's worth noting that Puma 7 also exhibits similar problems, and certain parts of the cable industry seem to be getting tied into these faulty Intel products because of certain functionality (like VOIP built into the chips), and the usual way that Intel is swamping, undercutting and incentivising the market to buy their products.

In short, don't believe it until you see it.
 
Caporegime
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Do Virgin even 'develop' their own hardware? I thought they just rebranded off the shelf solutions? it's probably easier for them to just bring SH4 forward than try to fix SH3 but like anything with them don't expect anything to happen fast.
 
Soldato
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Do Virgin even 'develop' their own hardware? I thought they just rebranded off the shelf solutions? it's probably easier for them to just bring SH4 forward than try to fix SH3 but like anything with them don't expect anything to happen fast.

That's correct. SH3 is made by Arris, SH2 was made by Linksys. They use an existing product, and pay the manufacturer to customise the firmware. This usually involves removing features to make it easy to support and less complex for the customer. It's the reason why most power users put the superhub in modem mode and get a fully featured router to plug into it.
 
Soldato
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It’s been over a year since the first reports of issues, no firmware fix in that time tells you all you need to know. When 2 is out of stock, 3 is broken and you can’t fix it, then new hardware is inevitable.
 
Soldato
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Whilst there is no denying the SH3's are causing some problems, the masses feed this stuff to epic proportions. Just read the VM thread, there are people who are affected and there are some who simply aren't. Lets not forget the Virgin architect a self restricting network that is constantly over subscribed so you can't say that these latency spikes are exclusively caused by your own device.

Whats more is that here HAS actually been movement in terms of a firmware upgrade to try and sort the problem. If you use your common business sense, what's more cost effective, replace every piece of hardware at customer premises or roll a firmware that suddenly makes them good. Maybe it's a plot from VM to stop people moaning about the shoddy network they have? It certainly has worked.
 
Soldato
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Whilst there is no denying the SH3's are causing some problems, the masses feed this stuff to epic proportions. Just read the VM thread, there are people who are affected and there are some who simply aren't. Lets not forget the Virgin architect a self restricting network that is constantly over subscribed so you can't say that these latency spikes are exclusively caused by your own device.

Everyone is affected, but some people's usage (such as gaming) causes this problem to be critical to them. People who just do a bit of web browsing and email aren't going to notice. People on the lower speed tiers where less channels are bonded aren't going to notice as much. Obviously the people affected are angry about being given a faulty device that performs worse that what it replaced.

Whats more is that here HAS actually been movement in terms of a firmware upgrade to try and sort the problem. If you use your common business sense, what's more cost effective, replace every piece of hardware at customer premises or roll a firmware that suddenly makes them good. Maybe it's a plot from VM to stop people moaning about the shoddy network they have? It certainly has worked.

AFAIK there hasn't been any firmware deployed to any customer at Virgin. There was rumour of a test firmware that went out to a US ISPs business customers, but that did nothing but attempt to hide the problem for pings and DNS lookups but did not fix the actual problem for standard UDP or TCP packets. This firmware was never deployed outside of OEM testing and a few business modem/routers, so the consensus is that it was never put forwards for other ISPs or domestic routers because it would be instantly labelled as a transparent attempt to fool the customer without fixing the problem.

It really seems it's faulty hardware as if it was fixable in firmware, there's been a lot of time to fix it for someone, somewhere in the world.
 
Soldato
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Everyone is affected, but some people's usage (such as gaming) causes this problem to be critical to them. People who just do a bit of web browsing and email aren't going to notice. People on the lower speed tiers where less channels are bonded aren't going to notice as much. Obviously the people affected are angry about being given a faulty device that performs worse that what it replaced.

I have an SH3 on Vivid200 and have 2 gaming PCs, 3 kids' tablets, wife doing college work on Laptop, NZB downloads, Crashplan uploads, 2 Gaming servers, Web Server, ADS-B server and a Plex server serving media to remote locations. I have no issues at all.
 
Soldato
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I have an SH3 on Vivid200 and have 2 gaming PCs, 3 kids' tablets, wife doing college work on Laptop, NZB downloads, Crashplan uploads, 2 Gaming servers, Web Server, ADS-B server and a Plex server serving media to remote locations. I have no issues at all.

Then you are very lucky. I also have very little issues and have much better test results than most people, but the problem is still there if you look for it. My area recently had major work done (like no broadband for a day while VM upgraded the area), and it's done wonders for both my signal levels and TV image quality. Most of the VM network isn't lucky enough to be on the latest equipment, and they are suffering because of it.
 
Soldato
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Whilst there is no denying the SH3's are causing some problems, the masses feed this stuff to epic proportions. Just read the VM thread, there are people who are affected and there are some who simply aren't. Lets not forget the Virgin architect a self restricting network that is constantly over subscribed so you can't say that these latency spikes are exclusively caused by your own device.

Whats more is that here HAS actually been movement in terms of a firmware upgrade to try and sort the problem. If you use your common business sense, what's more cost effective, replace every piece of hardware at customer premises or roll a firmware that suddenly makes them good. Maybe it's a plot from VM to stop people moaning about the shoddy network they have? It certainly has worked.

It’s really nice of you to take the time to tell everyone how you think a company I worked for for over a decade and was involved with migrations, software upgrades and closed beta’s works, but it really doesn’t work like that in reality.

Obviously if it could be resolved with a firmware update, it would have seen a firmware pushed to the beta testing groups. It hasn’t, it’s been over a year, it’s highly unlikely that a firmware update will ever resolve this issue. To suggest it’s anything to do with capacity is laughable, do really you think ISP’s run a 1:1 contention ratio on residential services or that Virgin would choose to ride out the negative press, increased churn and increased call volume if they could avoid it? Every ISP using the same hardware has the same issue, surely you don’t think they’re all trying to hide capacity issues?
 
Soldato
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It’s really nice of you to take the time to tell everyone how you think a company I worked for for over a decade and was involved with migrations, software upgrades and closed beta’s works, but it really doesn’t work like that in reality.

Obviously if it could be resolved with a firmware update, it would have seen a firmware pushed to the beta testing groups. It hasn’t, it’s been over a year, it’s highly unlikely that a firmware update will ever resolve this issue. To suggest it’s anything to do with capacity is laughable, do really you think ISP’s run a 1:1 contention ratio on residential services or that Virgin would choose to ride out the negative press, increased churn and increased call volume if they could avoid it? Every ISP using the same hardware has the same issue, surely you don’t think they’re all trying to hide capacity issues?

You’re exaggerating points I made. It’s a common known fact that the coax Network was never built to handle the load it is doing and that it is oversubscribed

My point was that many people knew jerk to the chipset issue when in fact there may be contention issues underlying which is just convenient for VM to blame the router rather than spend millions on infrastructure.

I apologise if you were the spokesperson for VM for the 10 years you worked there as otherwise you just may have been kept in the dark as much as others.

There was a thread on this very forum which linked to some info regarding intel developing a firmware regarding the chipset issue.

Regarding your contention ratio comment, I work for one that genuinely DOES deliver uncontended services to both business and residential regardless so unless I’m dreaming and I’m actually jobless. Yes I do believe that.
 
Soldato
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Regarding your contention ratio comment, I work for one that genuinely DOES deliver uncontended services to both business and residential regardless so unless I’m dreaming and I’m actually jobless. Yes I do believe that.

Who do you work for that provides 1:1 residential connections, that sounds pretty awesome?
 
Soldato
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Great, have just had vivid 200 and a SH3 installed. Haven't moved in to the property yet but will be wanting to game online and stream sky Q multiroom around the house so good latency will be crucial for me. Browsing from my phone and wifi seem ok so far though. My parents have a SH2ac, I wonder whether Virgin will allow us to swap?
 
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