50M : Superhub is nowhere near as bad as people say!

[pip08456]

Originally Posted by jb66

Before the superhub I was NEVER called out for wifi issues. Now I have about 2 a day, none of which I can fix. The call center get me out with jobs like "downstream 8db" and when I turn up the agent has told them I will stop there wifi dropping. Not possible you have a superdud!

If jb's post is typical of what is happening then NoPanic can have as many graphs, piecharts and figures as he wants. If the SH problem is being reported as a different fault then his figures will be inheritantly wrong.

If it is happening with one engineer who posts here how many others is it happening to?

Extrapolation from a single source is not a valid statistical methodology....

Whilst Nopanic has the collated stats, which are more likely to reflect reality.

[pip08456]

That's why I used the word IF!

[Chrysalis]

Hugh we can hardly call what nopanic states as evidence based on that VM tech support appears flawed in that they dont acknowledge issues correctly, evident by jjb66 attending faults thinking its a SNR issue when its a superhub issue (so not logged), and on top of that the fact I dont trust what nopanic says. At best he is posting an honest opinion as foddy said.

[Daveoc64]

Originally Posted by Masque

I have unticked everything and unticked everything and still I have had no issues with browsing, speed, Youtube or even downloading because it just works and this is what most people see with their connection

If that's the case, why is Virgin Media rushing out a fix just before the weekend of Easter?

I'd love to know what magical thing you've done to make it "just work".

[sniper007]

I'm torn at the moment... intially I stuck up for the superhub as it seems a really nice all in one effort from Virgin. OK so it doesn't have advanced features found in some routers like QOS, but I think people who complain about that are expecting too much for a generic all in one. You can hardly compare it to an open source Linksys running DD-WRT or Tomato for example.

Then....the problems began.

First of all wireless. The range is not as good as other routers. Despite the range reporting as solid, it seems flakey. The most current problem I am facing is that my clients struggle to connect and stay connected for literally seconds before dropping out, then they will retry and so on in a loop. The only fix is a superhub reboot.

I generally find perhaps once a week something will not be working properly and it will need a reboot. The thing is, that's unacceptable for me. A reboot is a headache if I have stuff running/downloading/streaming. This is designed to be the central hub for my home network and it fails as that primarily because it's unreliable.

I have had issues (know issue) where I have had to disable IP Flood detection or the router "spaz's out" (technical term) with traffic and shafts the connection with a huge latency in ping and more jitter.

Other people have had to turn the firewall off to stop issues.

And then the last straw, the rushed R25 firmware despite testers on VM forums pointing out the issues. Virgin rushed this out introducing a major problem. It looks like they rushed it to cover up a security hole with SSH access which was available in previous firmwares which would have given people major low level access to the hardware internally. I understand why they reacted quickly to that, but it kind of stinks that they ignored beta testers highlighting major issues.

Now R26 is said to have been pushed to testers again and there are already talks of this going live by possibly even tomorrow. Call me synical, but I'd expect a longer test period than that and releasing before a bank holiday weekend is risky. Having said that they need to fix the issue asap so it is a tough call.

I now read of issues with internal Gigabit ports hating large file transfers....sigh.

I need to do more testing basically.

[Chrysalis]

its been suggested by someone elsewhere that the superhubs may have different internals, so multiple revisions of the product out there, a theoretical explanation as to why some people seem to have had no issues.

[pip08456]

R26 is being pushed out only to fix intermittant download and streaming issues which it appears to do.

The other issues you report still need to be resolved.

[Chrysalis]

yeah R26 is just taking us back to where R24 was really. Still be various bugs left and a distinct lack of features. I do wonder if R26 is even R24 with ssh disabled that change ignition said was to do with BSR monitoring is also gone in R26, it is back to the best effort scheduler.

[Skie]

Originally Posted by Nopanic

No, as always he doesn't.

I however have access to all the fault reports for the last year, broken down by device, OS, service, region and date .. in a lovely selection of pretty graphs and pages of figures ..

The Superhub overall, is a success.

I've phoned twice about my hub, and never have they acknowledged it was a fault with the hub. Having to restart daily to get wifi working wasn't its fault, nor were the low speedtest results (IP Flood). Data is only as good as those entering it, and we all love offshore

[TJS]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

its been suggested by someone elsewhere that the superhubs may have different internals, so multiple revisions of the product out there, a theoretical explanation as to why some people seem to have had no issues.

I was wondering about this, because my homehub says Hardware version 2.

But im not sure if there ever was a 1 or if that was a different modem or what.

[Mick Fisher]

My superdud is hardware version 2.

When I was an active plumbing/heating installer I loved my work and took great care to do the best possible job I could. One day while I was cleaning flux residue from my pipework a builder said "I don't know why you bother so much, as long as the radiators get hot is all people care about".

I suspect the same may be so for the majority of VM's BB subscribers.

So long as they can browse the Net, get on Facebook, get their mail on probably a single PC is all they care about. Lots even have no idea what speed tier they are on so do not know if their connection is working well or not.

And even if they do have a clue and phone in a fault they will only get to speak to India. They will then be bamboozled by fatuous rebooting and stupid speedtesting for hours only to be told their is No problemo and they have a virus. End of.......

Of course I suspect the main purpose of the off shore support is to fob people off and NOT to escalate faults in order to make VM look better than they are.

Again only opinion based on my own experiences but just as valid as the opinionated "It works for me so it's a brilliant piece of kit" responses.

[arcimedes]

Originally Posted by Mick Fisher

My superdud is hardware version 2.

When I was an active plumbing/heating installer I loved my work and took great care to do the best possible job I could. One day while I was cleaning flux residue from my pipework a builder said "I don't know why you bother so much, as long as the radiators get hot is all people care about".

I suspect the same may be so for the majority of VM's BB subscribers.

So long as they can browse the Net, get on Facebook, get their mail on probably a single PC is all they care about. Lots even have no idea what speed tier they are on so do not know if their connection is working well or not.

And even if they do have a clue and phone in a fault they will only get to speak to India. They will then be bamboozled by fatuous rebooting and stupid speedtesting for hours only to be told their is No problemo and they have a virus. End of.......

Of course I suspect the main purpose of the off shore support is to fob people off and NOT to escalate faults in order to make VM look better than they are.

Again only opinion based on my own experiences but just as valid as the opinionated "It works for me so it's a brilliant piece of kit" responses.

The only thing I disagree with is your comments on fault reporting. I think a few years ago this was true and they made you go through the script and re-booting all and sundry. Nowadays they actually do listen to you and believe what you are saying.

[Mick Fisher]

Originally Posted by arcimedes

The only thing I disagree with is your comments on fault reporting. I think a few years ago this was true and they made you go through the script and re-booting all and sundry. Nowadays they actually do listen to you and believe what you are saying.

I'm glad to hear that you have had a better experience with the offshore support than I.

[TJS]

Also another point that might be irrelevant, I am using Apple Mac computers with 802.11N wifi (i think the wifi chips in macs are broadcom)