Best modem for Virgin Media, need some advice please.

Soldato
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Having been a customer with BT for at least two decades, our dsl service began to get really bad. We had 20mb for years and then it went down to 8mb for no reason and has never gone back up.

They also failed to give us FTTP 900 when it was stated many times they could install it! (drawn out saga with the kelly openreach enginneers) and we were not happy to go with FTTC 50mb.

So we decided to join Virgin Media and order M500 fibre. Now I am aware there is not a lot of love for their modem hubs and the wifi is rubbish on them. Our daughter wifis everything so this has to be working as best as it can! not expecting lightning fast just reliable connections.

I have been attempting to gen up, read and watch youtube videos about how you can switch the hub3 into modem mode and the chuck in your own cable modem.

So, has anyone here with virgin media got a recommendation for the go-to modem that you would buy without thinking about it? I am a bit annoyed this has to be done but if this makes it all work as it should then its worth it.

I have been leaning towards Asus and Netgear, netgear more as they appear to be excellent.

I was looking at this one:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/netg...wifi-6-dual-band-gaming-router-nw-27a-ng.html

Tia.
 
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A wireless access point in a strategic place would save you a lot of money, got a sh3 my desktop is connected via ethernet but everyone else uses wireless dont hear that many complaints i was expecting it to be worse, but depends on your house ours is all stud walls.
 
Soldato
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A wireless access point in a strategic place would save you a lot of money, got a sh3 my desktop is connected via ethernet but everyone else uses wireless dont hear that many complaints i was expecting it to be worse, but depends on your house ours is all stud walls.

We live in a 3-bed 1940's+ semi.

The hub3 will end up in the far corner of the living room, as the virgin point is there on the wall.

Currently the old bt hub is under the stairs pretty much central in the house. When the dsl finally shuts off was thinking of just replacing it with something that can boost the signal from the hub3.

Sorry I am not 100% on all this. Which option would just make the signal better? Access point or range extender? I would rather not have to run a cable.

It has been a fair few years since I had to mess with all this stuff.
 
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I have been leaning towards Asus and Netgear, netgear more as they appear to be excellent.

I was looking at this one:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/netg...wifi-6-dual-band-gaming-router-nw-27a-ng.html

Tia.
That Netgear should be decent enough though I would recommend either the Netgear RAX120 or Asus RT-AX86U, both of which are top performing routers on smallnetbuilder.com. They are both WiFi 6 routers but will also improve speeds on legacy clients (WiFi 5 and older) due to using the latest and greatest BCM/QCA WiFi chipsets.
 
Soldato
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I have the VM router in modem mode. Then I use an HP thin client with pfsense on it for th router and have a few UniFi APs around the house. Works perfectly.
 
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We have virgin cable internet and with the included router it would drop out in the evenings leaving us with no internet from about 7pm till about 11pm 3 of 4 times a week and we struggled to get 20meg of our 80 meg connection nearly all the time, and each time we contacted them for support they would get us to reset the modem which would fix it for 15 mins (long enough to get us off the phone!) and then it would go down again.
The solution in the end was to disable the internal wifi part of the router and cable a Eero pro wifi 6 router to it, and for the last 7 months (touch wood) its been spot on 100% reliable and always speed tests at 75-81 meg download, so we are finally happy with Virgin, but i have to say that their tech support is completely useless and the people they employ will give you any old flannel just to get you off the phone as quickly as possible.
 
Soldato
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So we decided to join Virgin Media and order M500 fibre. Now I am aware there is not a lot of love for their modem hubs and the wifi is rubbish on them. Our daughter wifis everything so this has to be working as best as it can! not expecting lightning fast just reliable connections.

I used the Asus AX92 and purchased more if i hit a dead spot. I ended up needing three to hit M600 speeds all over the rooms and i daisy chained them using whats called an Asus AI Mesh, setup took about an hour.

If you want to go cheaper, the Google Wifi kits are smashing and dead easy to setup and extend, if you can get them on special is well worth it but the speeds top out at around M300 speeds. I have seen them for £68 each.

If you want M500 speeds around the house you will need the more expensive Asus kit.

I am moving away from Virgin Media now, after some happy years using their service and Asus kit.
 
Last edited:
Soldato
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I am liking this one! If I can attach this to the hub3 (modem mode) and then have this AX92 as the main router, then my daughter gets the wifi I will be happy!

The budget even allows me to get two and mesh them :)

Is the setup pretty easy?

dead easy,
it’s even easier if you download the Asus mobile application to your phone and do the setup that way.
 
Soldato
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29 Dec 2002
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A few points:

VM will install (within reason) in any room you want, the stipulations are generally simple, they won’t lift carpets/laminate/floorboards or put them back down, remove skirting or go in your loft etc. If you want to arrange for cable to be dropped off and run it yourself prior to VM arriving, this should still be an option and allows you to do things they can’t, such as runs via loft.

If you are concerned about wifi performance, then why not run a cable to a central
point upstairs and put an AP on the end? It’ll likely give you better coverage and cost less than anything else you are considering.

ASUS have a horrible history when it comes to networking (and pretty much everything else they have done in the last 20 years). Fake test data, ignoring security issues for years despite knowing they were leaving users data available to everyone until large retailers threatened to remove the products from sale, fines and having to agree to external auditing, shoddy production with switch/wifi dropping off over successive generations, modems that they promised to get working and then just ignored because it was easier. I wouldn’t suggest that’s the way you want to go, though I admit it’s been a few years since a lot of that happened.
 
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