To all Virgin Media customers.

General Discussion
1

I took the free upgrade to a 60MB line and got a new “superhub”.

Now I have all kinds of problems.
I regularly have to reload pages, sometimes 4 or 5 times to get them to appear. Updates have to be canceled and restarted 4 or 5 times. Streaming flash video is all but impossible - the playback stalls after a few seconds and will not restart. Download speeds are awesome - I can pull a CD ISO down in under 3 minutes, it’s just that it takes several attempts to get the page with the download link to load properly.

I put the superhub into “modem mode” so it sent the data to the old router - that worked. For a while. Then it reset itself so I went back to ordinary mode. It hasn’t reset itself since but the connection is flaky and unreliable.
The Virgin Media forums have quite a few posts from people screaming about problems, some the same, some far worse and none addressed satisfactorily.

Has anyone else here experienced the same?
Has anyone found a solution?

2

If you go through my history of posts for Virgin, or even use the search bar, you’ll find that I was once an ex-100MB Virgin Media customer. I loved that connection like a fatboy loves cake. But the not so “super” “Superhub” is one of the worst routers I ever had to deal with.

Before the R30 firmware upgrade, people used to be able to SSH into the router and actually manually turn on modem-mode. Virgin soon caught on to this trend and that’s were the R30 firmware upgrade came from. They locked down the availability of SSH’ing on port 21 for the router.

What people found was extraordinary though. Virgin has excluded so many rich features from the routers GUI, and it goes to show just how much control they want over their customers. Once you’ve signed that contract, your just another customer. Not the target-demographic. Customer support is shoddy, any engineer you call will go down as a charge on your bill, even if you’ve requested / begged for them not to send one out, they still do.

I truely loved my connection, but it was far too expensive, and I wasn’t putting up with the sh*t bin router.

Their implementation of “modem mode” was rather shoddy as well, nothing compared to the full on, proper, modem mode you used to be able turn on manually through SSH. The old way solved the routers problems, and people stop complaining for a while, well that was until they found out, the Superhub has a script in it, which gathers a log of your activity every 4 hours or so, and then sends it back to VM. It checks sites, ports, servers, everything. It’s all detailed in that little (spot the sarcasm) log.

So what do you end up with? Well, a breech of privacy, a sh&$!y router, but a connection you love but is just over-priced. Oh and once you leave / terminate your contract, about a year later they come to collect their equipment.

Just another co-operate company hungry for money. Now who would’ve figured. ::slight_smile:

I’m now with Sky and even though I don’t have the speeds, the router is decent and I don’t have any problems with it. I used to have a lot of problems with Sky before at my old house, which is why Virgin was the first choice when I moved, but since then I’ve been with Sky for now just over 6 months, which is the last month I get my internet for free.

But the good thing is, the router isn’t as problemic. Locked down a lot more than the Superhub, granted, but I don’t have problems with it. It does it’s job, and it does it well. Just a shame BT routed my telephone line a stupid way, otherwise I’d be getting somewhere in the region of 8-10mbps. I’m only getting 1.7mbps atm, but my connection is solid as a rock and very consistent.

3

Interesting.
I had been thinking “these people are spying on me” but was inclined to think it was paranoia. There’s a site I use, where I get missed TV episodes from. The download speeds are awesome, but getting to the site is hard work. This “behaviour” only started after the new router was installed.

I can’t be doing with Sky for political reasons.
Which leaves BT, who also have a reputation for aggressive “traffic shaping”, throttled connections and spying, or a smaller company using the BT line.

:frowning:

4

Which area in the UK are you in? If your in either:

Carlisle
Irvine
Kilmarnock
Lancaster
Morecambe
Troon

You’ll be able to get Small World Cable which is also a 60MB fibre optic broadband provider at cheap rates too! They also do TV, etc.

There’s always, BE, or even TalkTalk. Still plenty of options. Check SamKnows. :slight_smile:

5

Alas, I’m in Birmingham.

6

Oh, your a Brummy. Nice! ;D

Like I said, check Sam Knows. Best place for everything ISPs.

7

Maybe this will help:-
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/guide/fibre-broadband.html

In particular look at the Hyperoptic 100Meg Unlimited offer … dunno how good they are though, and aint read the small print.

I would have said check out Zen, but their Fibre Optic connections are all capped :frowning:

8

I’m having a crisis. 1Gbps for £50 a month!!? #FML.

9

Egg-Zactly :o

I’d never heard of Hyperoptic before … not that we’d get fibre optic down here in the sticks anyway.

10

The Reg just put up an interview with one of the founders of Hyperoptic. Turns out, they only started up 9 months ago, and it’s the same people who started up BE Unlimited. ::slight_smile:

11

Well BE were highly regarded … so looking good … just wish the had fibre optic down here :slight_smile:

12

Well BT wants to push FTTC because it’s cheaper, but K&C are simply saying “no” because it’s just not good enough. We’re behind the times as it is, most of the world, especially newly developing countries such as India, UAE, etc, all have fibre lines.

Same with the US, places like Washingston, and NYC are all kitted out with fibre lines.

I just hope that Hyperoptic bring their service up here to Scotland. I have registered my interest for their 1Gb/s service so we’ll see how it goes. Hyperoptic is trying to push FTTP which is good!! BT should be doing the same!

13

I’m lucky if I get 1MB here in the hills of Wales.
More often than not it’s only 350Kb but what are you going to do.
With BT I only got 150Kb.
I’ve honestly considered moving just to get better broadband.

14

Ouch … I feel for you … I’m out in the sticks of Cornwall, but still get 7 → 8 Meg (though was promised 9 -->16) … no chance of fibre optic ever coming this way though, at least not in my lifetime.

15

Well most of the UK should have some form of fibre by 2016. I’m sure you have a few more years in you yet. :slight_smile:

I was promised 20mbps, but of course BT have funny ways of routing phone lines, and mines just happens to be one of them. :frowning:

16

I’ll believe it when I see it … I think the operative word here is “most” … which if calculated per capita (and it probably is), could just mean a handful of the largest cities.

17

The issues seem to have gone away completely. The constant dropping of connections has stopped. Video is streamable. Somebody fixed something somewhere.

18

Happy to hear it’s sorted itself :slight_smile: … it would be interesting to see if the superhubs logs show a firmware update, because if they do, Virgin must have been aware of the problem, and maybe you could claim some off your bill :wink:

19

No such thing shows up in the logs.
:frowning:

20

Oh well, twas worth a shot … though I’d still be bitchin at them … at least Virgin can’t try to blame BT and say it was a line issue :wink: