R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/...-p/1210345#M73

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

thanks Ben, signed up

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

I logged into to my superhub and found some thing wierd i only found 1 Downstream channel instead of 4 can any one tell me why this is happened ?

Locked QAM256 203 55616000 Kbits/sec 307000000 Hz 1.9 dBmV 38.8 dB Hybrid

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

have you tried rebooting?

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

i did yesterday

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

if a reboot doesn't bring back channels, try the pinhole reset

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

No fix for domain blocking?

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

Heh heh :D

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

Just signed up, thanks

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

I have none of those problems so I guess that would be a waste of time signing up...

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

Why? Every test needs a control group even if it's just to make sure that no new problems are introduced

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

Signed up here too

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

I don't game, nor am I signed up to the VM community forum. However, I am a househusband with a great deal of time to waste (sorry, apply myself to ensuring that my wife has clean laundry etc). I would be happy to give feedback if it will help.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

i am going to sit back and say nothing for once and wait in anticipation of having a good belly chuckle

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

What General? When it all breaks and we're using our mobiles instead? :)

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

Okay, I can't resist.

I'm happy to announce we're two to three weeks away from launching the beta test of the R35 Super Hub firmware. This includes the following changes:

- Updated wireless drivers: A fix for issues with multi threaded download applications you mean you are going to fix something that should have worked from the start so everyone can use the "lightning fast" internet connections you are advertising and the wireless which everyone household uses for multiple devices these days and you also advertise in the adverts in front of x-factor showing a family in a house all doing different things at the same time

- General improvements related to the Super Hub rebooting or resetting to factory settings sounds like a pretty big issue which should have been fixed during the "rigourous testing" the shub went through before it was even released

- A fix for iPlayer problems on the XBox 360 Oh, another increasingly frequent activity users are performing and wasnt picked up on



I don't actually think it is funny and I am not moaning either. I actually think it is quite sad. I feel like I am watching one of those films where a local football team from some outback village in Africa come over and try to compete with the major leagues with no resources and no money. These are all stupid common functions and features which should have worked from the start. It is as bad as me trying to make my own router, send it to everyone, and then spend the next three years with everyone telling me what is wrong with it and me fixing it as I go along. It is pathetic.

I honestly do hope they do some major fixes to make it more stable for everyone but knowing their track record, I can't see them fixing the wireless so it works 100% (or as reliable as other routers) and I can't see them fixing the shub rebooting; probably only the one or two major causes of it falling over.

Good luck and keep your fingers crossed.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

Bit difficult to test something in 2010 that didn't exist until March of this year

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

:gpoint: Well 3 - oops 2 - just seen the VM man's response.

Mind you the other 2 should have been nailed before it was ever released.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

Well the superhub is the only router I know of to have issues with xbox iplayer, no other router needed a firmware update for iplayer to work, so while it would be hard to test, the bug shouldnt have been there in the first place

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

Didn't various apps on iPhones and Androids cause the same problem? Or am I thinking about a different one...

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

Utter rubbish.

An application running on a device should never be able to crash a router.

It's poor software on the Superhub - plain and simple.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

Don't disagree, but that wasn't my point

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

You made a good point but i think we are both right and both wrong. Once again it all boils down to soddy workmanship (sp) and stinks of cheapness. If other routers had the same problem and needed an update to fix it then fair enough, but once again, the shub cant do what every other basic router can

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

My lips are sealed

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

Regardless of old wounds and people sniping at each other, it seems that the beta firmware will be available for those who are interested in trialling it. I am one who is happy to do so. If there was no feedback available from anyone, then how would it be possible to give a balanced (and hopefully fairly unbiased) opinion on how it works or not. I'm a newbie to networking, however I can look at the log and post the pertinent details.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

No good telling us here sir - you need to register for the trial and report any bugs found over on the VM community board (where they'll probably just ignore them as they have in earlier trials).

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

I have kwik, just waiting with bated breath to discover if I might, just might, be one of the Chosen :D

I said bated not held, blue doesn't suit me apparently.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

apart from random peeps telling them whether it is stable or not, they need people to trial it who suffer with the problems they are supposedly curing so we know whether it works or not

I can't sign up yet :( vm are sending me a new hub for Tommorow l

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

After participating in one trial where they put a firmware on general release even though there were bugs reported in the testers private forum and later just no response at all from VM to a series of reports from people I rather think the trials are just eye-candy. They'll probably just rely on the same internal testing which resulted in the release of the thing in the first place with a shedload of bugs. Investigating customer reported bugs (which may not be bugs at all half the time) costs money.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

i am using my Draytek 2580n so did not sign up

ANY ONE WILL TEST THE BETA let us know is still handle better jitter and packet flow in the 450??
is close to the stability of 300 now?
thanks

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

dont think thats going to be included in this update

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

^^ we can only hope that it is and there are other fixes hidden within the update that they are not specifically saying about because they want the main issues to be tested.

I just signed up, hoping to get accepted.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

Signed up, initially I was getting amazing speeds over the shubs wireless, that didn't last and the connections still dropping so anything I can do to help.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

When they say Blizzard I assume they mean the games company because I had a right pain trying to download and get that game working

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

There must be quite a lot of fixes, mostly undocumented it would seem publically anyway.

Because it has been quite a number of months since the last update, and they seem to of taken a big jump from R30 to R35

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

Well I would say the increased jitter a lot of people seem to get on the shub is just as urgent to get fixed as the wifi issues. In fact thats all I really care about, as its the only thing I hate about it. Mines rock solid in modem mode with my buffalo router, so its staying that way.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

R31: Came to work
R32: Couldn't be arsed
R33: Went for lunch
R34: Needed the loo
R35: Thinking about fixing wirless 2 years late

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

Of course if there was a changelog issued alongside the firmware as is done with most professional software there'd be no need to guess. I personally doubt that there's anything more in it than they've actually announced - it took an awfully long time to do very little indeed during the last phase of firmware updates.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

The HTC One X (Android smartphone for those not familiar) has had two firmware updates since it came out.

That phone had similar wireless bugs on its release (intermittent slow speeds, and drops outs for some people) and HTC fixed it in less than a month.

Less than one month to fix and replace the wireless driver, on a device where the wireless isn't even its core function.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

Someone mentioned, although I can't remember where, that the Superhub has had 11 firmware revisions to date :(

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

It should be remembered that the vast majority of VM's Superhub users don't have problems. If the Ssuperhub were universally faulty VM wouldn't be able to use it.

So there are some things that a minority of customers find don't behave as they want. I suspect that those users who have problems are generally amongst the heaviest rather than average users and are somehow pushing some aspect of the system to a limit.

There seems to be an unjustified complaint that VM are trying to fix these problems with new firmware. Weird. Ever since Windows was first release, Microsoft have been patching it. The Battlefield 3 game released only last October is already on PC server version 22. Unfortunately it seems that in the world of tech, things are tested behind closed doors, and then in a limited form via betas but it's only if they get released publicly, and new ways are found to use it but a small number of those public users not envisaged during the testing that a new issue comes to light.

So the current Superhub firmware is R30 and this beta is R35. That does to me indicate there is a continued effort behind the scenes to both make improvements, but equally important, not to introduce new problems by rushing out something that isn't ready.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

I think if you ask there are more people here complaining that the many shortcomings of the Superhub haven't been fixed.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

Similarly, it should be remembered the vast majority of HTC One X users don't have problems, but they still fixed it in one month

Same could be said of the One X's problems, the wifi was only buggy (in my experience) on 5Ghz 450mbps wireless networks. Still, fixed in a month with a new wireless driver, not the two years it's taking VM.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

Not really the same.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

Thing is you don't know how long HTC were fixing the issue. It could have been known about but since it would only affect a few users was released anyway. They then released a fix fairly quickly that was already in the pipeline when they got complaints. Maybe they found how to isolate the fix and release it early. So many maybe's.

With any release like this there is always the trade off that a bug fix in one area would impact another. It may sort your issue but suddenly another group of users is affected adversely and if that second group is larger than the new "happy" group the vendor is in bigger doo-doo that before.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

The problem symtoms and resolution were the same, what would you say was different?

---------- Post added at 11:19 ---------- Previous post was at 11:16 ----------

They acknowledged the issue had been brought to their attention and they were investigating it on the 11th May. Still, since the phone only finished development a few months ago, there's a limit to how long it could have taken.

Good job they tested it well enough that that didn't happen then.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

For a start I'd say there is at least one extra company level in the process with the SuperHub, if not more.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

Perhaps on the hardware side, not on the software (firmware).

VM depends on Netgear to produce the OS code and Broadcom to produce the drivers, but depend on Netgear for the hardware
HTC depends on Google to produce the OS code and Qualcomm to produce the drivers, but design the hardware themselves

But in neither case is the hardware actually the problem.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

If that was true it wouldn't be so funny because Virgin Media have released new firmwares for the superhub in the past (R25), even after testing found issues with it. Online streaming did not work properly at all for at least 6 weeks until they had another firmware update to fix it again. I remember that quite well. Online radio streams kept stopping with the need to keep pressing play. I think some video streams had the same issue too. I believe downloads were prematurely stopping also.

I hope they learned from that and will listen to testers information better.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

Except for HTC I'd expect its:

HTC-Google
HTC-Qualcomm

i.e. they have a direct path to both

Whereas for the SuperHub it's:

Virgin Media - Netgear - Broadcom

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

That's how it stands now, yes, however HTC *could* rely on Google to integrate the Qualcomm drivers into the OS, they choose not to. They decided Google's solution wasn't good enough and improved on it themselves.

VM could do the same if they wanted to, but made a business decision to rely on Netgear to do all the work.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

As far as I know, none of the broadband CPE released by Virgin or any previous incarnation has had the firmware maintained in house

So it's not a case of a decision to let Netgear do the work, it's a continuation of the support model that applies.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

While I'll agree it's consistent with what VM have done in the past, I don't believe that's adequate justification to continue the practice indefinitely. Particularly if it means it takes VM years to fix something that others can do in a month.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

From my post of four days ago...

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

I have been sat here waiting for that, I am amazed it took so long. :LOL:

Well i registered for the beta just hope i get picked.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

I was in the last beta.

Didn't it go through several "release candidate" style versions, all with a new RXX version number but only with show-stopping bugs found at the last minute?

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

Not sure if it has been asked before, but is there any value in offering to Beta test if I only use Modem Mode?
I mean, would it be like a 'control' set of users?

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

Bugs exist in modem mode too, as could regressions. Don't see why it wouldn't help.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

I have a strong vibe that this version of firmware will also fix the upstream bonding support.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

Nice this signup starts just as my Superhubs power button has screwed up.. waiting for my new hub... XD

Might just keep the VMNG on, I'm really enjoying the lower jitter/pings

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

what the vmng300?

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

Nope this firmware is for the superhub not the VMNG300.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

I meant to say "what about the vmng300?" Any news on the firmware for it?

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

To be honest i think you have little chance of an upgrade as its an obsolete device. When was the last time VM released software for its other obsolete modems ??

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

Cheers, I'll nip over to the VM Forums and sign up. :)

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

wait hang on when was that ever getting an update?

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

When hell freezes over.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

I would hire Mr Freeze if that were the case :D

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

I take it you missed ignition's post suggesting its got one on the way.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

you lot have got awful memories. Despite Ben's assertions that VM hate the vmng300 and cant wait to get rid of it, Igni said a couple of months ago that they were sorting out new firmware for it to enable upstream channel bonding, hence my request for updated info

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

<offensive image removed>

---------- Post added at 21:15 ---------- Previous post was at 21:14 ----------

[/COLOR]it already bonds 4 channels though?!?!?!

If they update it to include 8 downstreams then the above image may need enlarging :D

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

Well it will be the first i have heard of it, I could well be wrong but i have not heard anything from my normal internal contacts.

---------- Post added at 21:16 ---------- Previous post was at 21:15 ----------

Is that for the VMNG300 or the Superhub ?

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

What assertions?

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

He's got you confused with that masque/peter____ character. He's the one always blathering on about how the VMNG300 is unloved and will be ditched faster than a fast thing being ditched quickly.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

The VMNG can't be updated to support 8 downstreams as the tuner only supports 4 channels..

I don't get the issue with upstream bonding though as its meant to handle 4...

But that's getting off topic..

Is the VMNG300 based on Broadcom or TI Puma 5? Would be nice to know why they are quite different jitter/latency wise and weather Netgear can iron out the kinks..

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

sorry I did it again. It was Masque who was always saying that it was obselete and VM want it off the network asap. That is why I was surprised and delighted when Igni said they were working on fw for it.


Igni said it needs a firmware update for the upstream bonding to work. It can't support 8 ds channels but would need an update for it (which I would love) but I don't think they'll be doing one any time soon.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

I'd posit the networking problems are because the network stack on the Superhub is 11 years out of date.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

Old Kernel version you mean? If so then it's pretty common for Broadcom equipment XD

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

No, network stack.

eCos really isn't common for broadcom equipment.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

They are using eCos on it? Dang..

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

VM have pulled the plug on the test of this firmware:

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/...1236175#M21917

This did not surprise me at all to be honest! :/

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

that is great, I really am laughing my ass off :rofl:

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

I guess pulling the plug is better than releasing stuff known to be dodgy which would be pointless. Strange that they made a call for triallists before they'd finished their internal testing though as pulling it like this just invites criticism.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

Hilarious

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

What great publicity this is for Netgear.

:LOL:

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

do you think they pull out the trial due to supposed routing issues or is strange both take time the same time???
i am just saying my thought and i don't mean bad way

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

:clap:


I would not have a netgear router even if you paid me to use it. I have still got modem mode selected on my shub and therefor its working great.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

look you all need to calm down. cost cutting has caused this and as a result theres only 1 chimp working on this...

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2012/06/25.jpg

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

At least he has two displays, don't forget 2 monitors increases productivity by 30-40%

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

I think that sums up VM's handling of the shub from day 1

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

this is what seperates them from proper HW vendors.

a HW vendor would have gone ahead with the test but just listed the known bugs before hand to the testers,

Beta testing does not need bug free release's its why its called a beta test.

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

^ this ^

unless its incredibly unstable and/or posses security risks ?

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

If they just went to Cisco none of these updates would have been necessary, what is the cost to all the firmware updates? tech visits to change the speed from 300 to 145, superhubs repeatedly being sent out and they are just as bad, buzzing psus?

In the long run it must be cheaper to get a proper piece of kit from a decent manufacture

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

VM heads know that they should have gone with Cisco. I've been told that directly! Why they then opt for someone else in the boardroom is beyond me. have people lost the power of speech when in a meeting and instead looks purely at figures and not reality, consequences?! like i said before, COWBOYS!!!

re: R36 Firmware Beta Test (was R35)
 

But they released the current firmware? It's dodgy and pointless