WiFi Problems

[OspreyO]

Having problems with my VM Hub 3.0

Had it in bridge/modem mode for last couple of years. Have two WiFi routers hanging off it.

Been having dropouts on the WiFi of those two router lately. This morning can only get internet via ethernet. If I connect to hub or either WiFi router using ethernet I get internet. If connect using WiFi zilch.
Hard reset it back to router mode. Then switched it back to modem mode. The Hub WiFi works etc. But still when I connect my other modems only ethernet is working.

Checked and I'm still IPv4. I'm baffled.

After resetting a couple of times I'm back in modem mode and one of my WiFi routers is now working with it. The other nothing. The other is a kid filtering router it can be picky about routing.

My current theory is the WiFi frequencies are congested. Perhaps by some not broadcasting SSID.
But when I check with WiFi Man on my Mobile I don't see too much overlapping of channels.

Currently my ethernet speeds are fine at the router. I've a good few powerline adapters in use. They see the usual drop but general good. Its just the wifi. Any ideas.

 

[WJA96]

I don’t know if you’re still having issues but it does sound like you’re running a series of technologies (cables, power lines, WLAN) so it might be worth fully describing the topology of your network?

I’ve never used the Superhub as any contracts we have with Virgin are on Voom with the Hitron router operating in Modem mode and there the LAN can only be plugged into (I think) port 4 on the Hitron. So my query would be how is everything connected so it’s possible to see what is acting to dole out IP addresses and what’s doing the routing in each case.

I suspect that you’ve got more than one DHCP server running on the same subnet (192.168.1.x or 192.168.0.x probably) and that’s causing the issues.

 

[OspreyO]

Basically the hub only worked intermittently for about 5 days even the ethernet stopped. Couldn't hard reset the hub. It would reboot then freeze.

Then it came back on Sunday morning and has worked perfectly(ish) I think an update corrupted it. Eventually another update fixed it.

Didn't get a response from support for 7 days then they basically said it's working fine now, they can't see a problem or history of a problem. End of.

My system is simple. Hub in modem (bridge) mode. Two WiFi routers connected into that. One router is unconfigurable as it's basically a child filtering service.

Since coming back the I've left the hub in router mode. And only connected back the child filtering router. The child filtering modern only works if I turn off the firewall on the hub. Before it worked with the firewall.

I'm a bit reluctant to switch to bridge mode on the hub again in case it screws up again and support is so bad from VM.

 

[WJA96]

I'm a bit confused by the terminology you use and that's fine.

A WiFi Router is actually (at least) two separate components - a router and a WiFi (WLAN) access point. It may also have a switch and a modem built into it.

As I understand it, you want to feed the internet (WAN) to two internal systems, both of which will supply wifi (WLAN) to users.

If the Superhub is running in modem mode (you call it bridge) it simply passes the internet traffic (and it's IP address) to the WAN port of whatever you plug into it. I don't see how it can do that for more than one internal network port.

The device that is plugged into that device generally then does network address translation on it turns the one WAN IP address from the modem into multiple internal (provate) LAN addresses (usually on the 192.168.1.x or 192.168.0.x subnets). This is routing. You can generally only have one router on a network at a time otherwise you risk having two PCs with the same internal (private) IP address.

The trick to what you're doing is to get one router either addressing the wifi access points on your wifi routers or to allow the two wifi routers to act independently while still getting a WAN feed from the modem.

What I think is currently happening is that your Superhub is acting as a master router giving out IP addresses to the other wifi routers so one is probably 192.168.1.2 and the other is probably 192.168.1.3.

The two wifi routers are then trying to hand out their own private IP addresses and route that traffic back. The one that works is probably routing it's private addresses to 192.168.0.x and the one that doesn't is probably on the 192.168.1.x subnet as well.

To test this, you can obviously log into each wifi access point and check which IP address they have as their WAN IP address and what their DHCP range is set to. If it's set to the same subnet as the WAN IP address you need to change it to a different subnet.

So if the WAN is 192.168.1.2 and the DHCP range is 192.168.0.2-192.168.0.254 then that's fine and it will work fine. But if it's set to 192.168.1.2-192.168.1.254 then it won't work because it's conflicting with it's own WAN address. The third number has to be different on the Superhub (that defaults to 192.168.1.x, the first wifi router and the second wifi router.

If you can feed that information back then I'm certain we can get this working very quickly.

 

[OspreyO]

It worked like this before last week for years.

I can't access the DHCP settings on the Child filtering router. You only have access to SSID password etc.
In modem mode you can't access the settings on the VM hub. Its a "dumb" modem.
It maybe acting as master router as all the lan ports work.

This is all moot now as its all working. I'm not sure what you think I should fix.

On the older cable modem gear before we had the virgin media hub, you had set up with the local subnets to use your own router. We all wanted to do this because the company supplied wifi and routers were rubbish. By using your own you could have much better performance. Even with the Virgin Media hub, my own wifi route has far better performance and more reliable than the virgin gear.

 

[WJA96]

What is the child filtering router? A router you can't access the settings on sounds very... interesting.

I was under the impression from your post that only one of the two downstream routers was working. And from the sounds of it, you still don't know why they broke in the first place.

But if you're happy, I'm happy.

WA

 

[OspreyO]

I started the thread 8 days ago. I had a week of it not working then it it fixed itself.

What threw me is my neighbours said they had no issues, and because I couldn't reset the hub I can only assume it was the hub.
Because I couldn't log into the hub I couldn't check the signal levels etc. Now thats its working there no indication of any problems.

I assume there is some log in VM media but the support drone I got, (chat bot then real person on whatsapp) hadn't a clue about IT.

 

[OspreyO]

Since you went to bother of drafting a lengthy response, (much appreciated) I was obliged to give an update. I should have made it more obvious it was fixed.

Well other than the firewall. But think I wasn't using that anyway in modem mode.