Virgin Media "upto 60mb" - apparently you HAVE to use their superhub router?

Originally Posted by Paul the 6th

that was my thinking Oli, unless like spank speculated that the super hub was a bespoke bit of kit doing some fancy switching and processing (the technical shiz is beyond me at this point btw) must just be a money spinner...

It's not that. It's just that the virgin stuff connects direct to the fibre TV cable so I couldn't say either way what you could or couldn't connect to that but everything after that first box you can definitely chop and change.

[Paul the 6th]

sweet cheers dude, I'll report back once it's all connected

Out of interest is there anyway to speed up the TV box connection as my Youtube on tv lags a bit. And +2 customers with poor wireless capabilities. Anything beyond 5m in my mums makes internet a no go and in my house about 10m. Both on the new boxes. Didn't think about the extra router idea tho.

PT6 -I have recently upgraded...well if that's hat you can call it. Fisrt off, I had no connection, or very spurradic. Then the just out of school tech came around to "fix" the problem (regret doing it last thing on a Friday as he seemed to be in a rush to finish!) all he did was replace the router and twiddle some wires (I did more to try and fix the problem than he did). That one also failed to work to which the tech/installer said it was a signal issue. I found this a little odd as I had 58-59meg when connected with a cable!

I swiftly turned off the internal WiFi and used the old router which worked perfectly, giving me 20-30meg. After a brief call to Virgin, the lovely girl informed me the automatic channel switching, isn't automatic so I should try switching that. Apparently it needs to be switched off and back on to change channels when one is too clogged!

Now to my issues. Torrents takes ages as it appears the new superhub has more invasive throttling for this type of data (this may just be a coincidence) and my wireless still gets far too slow at peak times so I need to change channels again. This is really annoying when the old one just worked out of the box!

I think I may run the old router with the new hub as it's more reliable, though this kind of defeats the point of an all-in-one box!

Originally Posted by Spank86

have to change the router settings and at the very least set up fixed IP between them.



often changing the wireless security solves that.

May give this a try, then I can run a cat6 cable downstairs and use the second router to hardwire all the TV/consols/amps to the network as well as have the more reliable wireless signal close to the areas it's used most!

Originally Posted by thefallenangel

Out of interest is there anyway to speed up the TV box connection as my Youtube on tv lags a bit. And +2 customers with poor wireless capabilities. Anything beyond 5m in my mums makes internet a no go and in my house about 10m. Both on the new boxes. Didn't think about the extra router idea tho.

possibly not. Is it connected with ethernet, wireless or powerline(mains) adaptors?

things to try with poor wireless include changing the channel and unplugging your microwave to see if its an interference issue. 5m would be ridiculous for 10 yr old wireless routers in the absence of interference.

Originally Posted by phil24_7

I swiftly turned off the internal WiFi and used the old router which worked perfectly, giving me 20-30meg. After a brief call to Virgin, the lovely girl informed me the automatic channel switching, isn't automatic so I should try switching that. Apparently it needs to be switched off and back on to change channels when one is too clogged!

common problem.

You can get a free program called Inssider which will show you what channels the routers in your area are on. you can use that to pick a free channel but beware if they're all on the same channels then it may be because the others are stuffed. Channel 11 used to be the common one they were auto set to.

6 seems to be the new one. I changed to 13 first (I think) but that was nearly as bad, on 9 now but still crap at peak times! Will look at inssider to make a better choice, cheers.

yeah, others did default to 6.

Interestingly american routers only go up to 11, ours expand further and 13 is a ways away from the rest in terms of spectrum so may be worse.

the reason for defaulting to 6 was it was central and 11 was it wasn't 6.

TBH "peak times" shouldn't affect wireless unless you've got interference or A LOT of hubs in your area.

Microwaves are the big one but old cordless phones, strip lighting and basically anything with a transformer can affect it as they get older.


You can get spectral analyzers for a few hundred quid but Inssider is free and gives you a bit of an idea.

[Littlepeahead]

I tried reading this thread but it made my brain melt.

I'm on Orange and when they switched to EE they sent me a cardboard box with a plastic box inside and a leaflet about how much better it would be. That was a few months ago. Currently it's in the cupboard under the TV next to the old Orange hub whatsit. Still in the wrapper. Should I bother swapping them over?