Virgin Media Discussion Thread

Ayahuasca · 22 Nov 2019 at 16:03

They're laying cable in my town at the moment, doubt I'll switch to them though despite the speeds they offer!

Colonel_Klinck · 25 Nov 2019 at 13:27

Hi all, without wading through pages in some different threads here, I have Virgin but their hub is dog poop for wireless. What is a good wireless router I can buy to plug into the Virgin Hub?

Steveocee · 25 Nov 2019 at 13:34

Colonel_Klinck said:
Hi all, without wading through pages in some different threads here, I have Virgin but their hub is dog poop for wireless. What is a good wireless router I can buy to plug into the Virgin Hub?

UniFi AP. Job done.

Colonel_Klinck · 25 Nov 2019 at 15:35

Steveocee said:
UniFi AP. Job done.

thanks I’ve ordered one.

Dishcleaner · 26 Nov 2019 at 07:44

I was wondering if anyone could answer a question that has been perplexing me. I’ve had my virgin media service for a little over a year and a half, in this time it’s been relatively stable. Whilst I would love to have Hyperoptic again, virgin have a agreement with my building giving them exclusive rights for the first 5 years. For the past two months I have had packet loss sitting around 20%-30% constantly, with many micro-disconnects, my upload speed hovers between 0.1 and 6mbps, my download speed changes based on my upload speed due to overheads and such, Virgin have claimed this is a SNR issue but I am in a brand new FTTP build with the fibre terminating in my own home. Where in this network topology would a SNR issue become apparent, because SNR in fibre is only possible by three things from my knowledge, curve radius, damaged/severed fibre, and bad splices of which would almost entirely been seen many months ago or would have cut service entirely.

Would they really infill a new FTTP building of around 160+ properties into an old VM hub that is Coaxial?

Colonel_Klinck · 28 Nov 2019 at 15:09

Steveocee said:
UniFi AP. Job done.

After a few days I have to say I am not impressed. The speeds are worse than my virgin super hub wifi unless I am within a couple of meters of the device. The range is terrible compared to the Virgin device and my PC which has a good wifi card Asus PCE AC56 Dual Band doesn't even see the 5ghz signal where it sees the Virgin one just fine. Unless I am missing something in the settings I think it will be going back. It is in the same room as the Virgin hub a couple of meters away from it.

Kol · 28 Nov 2019 at 15:48

How have you mounted it @Colonel_Klinck ? They are supposed to be ceiling mounted. That said, the one in my living i've not got around to mounting and I still get the full 380mbps from my VM connection in neighbouring rooms. Jump into the Ubiquiti discussion thread; the group will help you there.

Thread is here: https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/official-ubiquiti-discussion-thread.18726947/

Steveocee · 28 Nov 2019 at 16:06

Colonel_Klinck said:
After a few days I have to say I am not impressed. The speeds are worse than my virgin super hub wifi unless I am within a couple of meters of the device. The range is terrible compared to the Virgin device and my PC which has a good wifi card Asus PCE AC56 Dual Band doesn't even see the 5ghz signal where it sees the Virgin one just fine. Unless I am missing something in the settings I think it will be going back. It is in the same room as the Virgin hub a couple of meters away from it.

They're not a magic bullet. Make sure it's set up correctly and it'll knock the spots off your hub. @Kol has linked the thread below, it's basic stuff but needs doing correctly.

Kol said:
How have you mounted it @Colonel_Klinck ? They are supposed to be ceiling mounted. That said, the one in my living i've not got around to mounting and I still get the full 380mbps from my VM connection in neighbouring rooms. Jump into the Ubiquiti discussion thread; the group will help you there.

Thread is here: https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/official-ubiquiti-discussion-thread.18726947/

Colonel_Klinck · 28 Nov 2019 at 16:51

Thanks guys. At present it’s on a shelf. I’ll get a longer cable and ceiling mount it.

Avalon · 28 Nov 2019 at 17:33

Colonel_Klinck said:
Thanks guys. At present it’s on a shelf. I’ll get a longer cable and ceiling mount it.

If you put it in a poor location, you will get poor results, this is true of any AP, especially one optimised for a certain type of install. Also if you are that close to the hub, why haven’t you just run a cable and got full speed?

Colonel_Klinck · 28 Nov 2019 at 17:58

Avalon said:
If you put it in a poor location, you will get poor results, this is true of any AP, especially one optimised for a certain type of install. Also if you are that close to the hub, why haven’t you just run a cable and got full speed?

I'm not close to the hub. I'm in another bedroom. I've put a post in the thread Kol posted above.

Razor-BladE · 29 Nov 2019 at 13:46

I'm moving in my first house (yay) this weekend, and have VM engineers to come and set up for 2 weeks time (property hasn't had VM before). Managed to get the 100Mbps + weekend calls package for £25 a month with is better than the £27 a month 50Mbps at the moment, so happy with that.

The property currently has the Sky connections, is it worth just leaving that in place, or removing it so that VM can go in the same place?

Vertigo · 29 Nov 2019 at 21:00

So, VM have announced that Reading and surrounding areas are the next place to be upgraded to the 1gb service.

Except they explicitly mention Pangbourne which doesn't currently get VM service at all.

Is this a mistake or are VM extending their network, not just upgrading it?

xb8browney · 29 Nov 2019 at 21:28

They are both extending and upgrading afaik

Vertigo · 29 Nov 2019 at 23:40

xb8browney said:
They are both extending and upgrading afaik

I'd love to find some corroborating info on Pangbourne but can't see anything.

Gigaclear are supposed to be servicing most of Pangbourne but have been dragging their heels for years so if VM are moving in it would be surprising but obviously welcome.

Ali195 · 1 Dec 2019 at 20:49

Praetorian said:
Nice! It's normally a straightforward install:

Hook up the Hitron to the COAX cable that's already there;

Confirm the line stats and fit any attenuators/boosters needed (if the engineer has them, see note below!)

Engineer (won't be the normal VM guys as they're "apparently" not trained for VM business installs) will phone the business activation line;

Upto 60 minutes for the activation to be successful (the engineer will stay there until it's online);

Two or 3 speedtests (through good old Speedtest.net) and the results will then be phoned back to the activation line as a reference;

Clean up

Nice and simple! The static IPs take a while to filter through unlike the Dynamic ones though due to the GRE tunnel but the engineer won't leave until its on. One thing is that you "may" not get full speed out of the install straight away - the initial speedtest only gave 20-30mbps but gradually increases to the maximum over 30-60 minutes.

Note: May be worth getting some of the attenuators from ebay as VM don't hand them out to their engineers anymore - any that are used now were already with the engineer or "taken" from other client installs Bit cheeky to be honest. If not, they'll install another piece of kit (not sure of it's name as engineer didn't need one) that will take some of the upstream bandwidth to put onto the down speed. Surprised them by having a full collection of all the attenuators

Bit worried about VM Business 350/20 with 1 static IP and the Hitron in Modem Mode. Heard stories about this not being possible for 1 static IP but this my package.

Intended use with Ubiquiti dream machine acting as DHCP, wireless etc. Currently using Hub v2 in modem mode no problem.

Phreaky · 2 Dec 2019 at 00:58

Is the 1gb service on DOCSIS 3.1? anyone seen any updated TBM graphs to see if the latency is any better?

2013 · 2 Dec 2019 at 16:18

Did anyone else not get the price hike discount applied ?

Even after messing about and speaking to VM during the mid contract price hike and getting it back down to the original agreed price, it seam they never applied the discount, so i'm paying a extra £3.50 and I cant do anything about it. they refused to acknowledge I spoke to anyone about it.
I can't get a discount and I need to pay £250 I want to cancel my contract or get the agree price if i sign up to a new contract.

ill be glad when the other broadband providers catch up in terms of speed in my area.

VM is only good as long as you dont need to call them.

peige · 5 Dec 2019 at 12:00

I'm out of contract now, started June 2018. Now paying 69 a month for some sort of mishmash bundle. Fun TV, 200mb and talk weekends.

I've done the first call and was told there is nothing they could offer me and they were happy to cancel, but it would have been the 4th of Jan so I'm going to leave it till later in the month and cancel, play the game. I could scale the TV right back as we don't watch anything over the standard freeview chanels but the box is good. All they keep trying to do is get me to have a blooming mobile phone!

I could go sky if needed, I think the people who were here before me had sky and standard broadband. I like 200 but hardly ever cane it..

Simon42 · 5 Dec 2019 at 15:34

peige said:
Now paying 69 a month for some sort of mishmash bundle. Fun TV, 200mb and talk weekends.

I was offered £62.50 a month for staying on our existing 350/35, 200 channel and talk weekends bundle post the September upgrade so that seems expensive.

I had actually phoned up just asking for options for an upgrade so I wasn't exactly pushing for a deal on the existing package and eventually went with an upgrade package also with a discount. So either they're tightening up on discounts or perhaps you got someone at the end of a long day or the wrong call centre.