Virgin super hub - how good?

wazza

For the past week the internet was very slow. I rang the virgin helpline who stated that I am on 10Mb and that I will be upgraded to 20Mb for free. He then contacted technical dept to check if there is no problems in my area. He came back to me saying that the modem I have is very old. They are going to upgrade me to 30Mb and send me a superhub all free of charge. As usual will be tied in to a years contract.

Have been reading about superhub and the trouble customers have had. Has all the issues ben sorted?

Have made notes on how to reduce speed from 300 to 145 and also how to make the unit act as modem only.

Going to try the unit as supplied and make any adjustments when needed.

Any other advice?

DUTR

wazza wrote: »

For the past week the internet was very slow. I rang the virgin helpline who stated that I am on 10Mb and that I will be upgraded to 20Mb for free. He then contacted technical dept to check if there is no problems in my area. He came back to me saying that the modem I have is very old. They are going to upgrade me to 30Mb and send me a superhub all free of charge. As usual will be tied in to a years contract.

Have been reading about superhub and the trouble customers have had. Has all the issues ben sorted?

Have made notes on how to reduce speed from 300 to 145 and also how to make the unit act as modem only.

Going to try the unit as supplied and make any adjustments when needed.

Any other advice?

After you recieve the hub, keep a keen eye on your bills for a good 3 months, cos they will try and charge you, I was on 10mb supposed to be doubled to 20mb but required the hub, once the hub arrived , oh did they try and charge me, but I was having none of it, all seems to be settled now. As for in use, it is much improved over the Moto modem and belkin router (g) , the devices are connected at a higher d/l u/l speed than before and connection is stable, only ever a handful of resets since December.

Nilrem

I believe that the superhub works fine as a modem, it's only when you use it as a modem/router it can have problems (it seems not everyone does, or have varying problems*).
The main problem with it at the moment seems to be it's poor wireless performance (poor range/disconnections/unreliable especially with apple gear).

My brother in law has one and it seems to work fine as a modem and wired router (he uses an old router in "access point" mode to give him wireless).

From what I understand, it seems that at least part of the problem with the superhub is that it's basically underpowered** to do all three jobs (modem, router, wireless) at the same time, as it requires some processing power in it to do each of those jobs, which combined with dodgy firmware when it comes to the wireless side of things isn't good for performance.


*IE some might have wireless issues, others performance issues (but at 30mb performance issues are unlikely imo, as my 8 year old Linksys router coped with 20-30mb fine).

**No doubt as a result of making it cheaply.
IIRC my Asus 66U router has more ram and much more processing power for it's routing and wireless than the Superhub, but cost £100ish, and still needs a separate modem.

DUTR

Nilrem wrote: »

I believe that the superhub works fine as a modem, it's only when you use it as a modem/router it can have problems (it seems not everyone does, or have varying problems*).
The main problem with it at the moment seems to be it's poor wireless performance (poor range/disconnections/unreliable especially with apple gear).

My brother in law has one and it seems to work fine as a modem and wired router (he uses an old router in "access point" mode to give him wireless).

From what I understand, it seems that at least part of the problem with the superhub is that it's basically underpowered** to do all three jobs (modem, router, wireless) at the same time, as it requires some processing power in it to do each of those jobs, which combined with dodgy firmware when it comes to the wireless side of things isn't good for performance.


*IE some might have wireless issues, others performance issues (but at 30mb performance issues are unlikely imo, as my 8 year old Linksys router coped with 20-30mb fine).

**No doubt as a result of making it cheaply.
IIRC my Asus 66U router has more ram and much more processing power for it's routing and wireless than the Superhub, but cost £100ish, and still needs a separate modem.

I only use mine wirelessly, use it with my desktop, ipod touch, xperia z, xperia ray, HP Netbook and HP photosmart printer.

Buzby

They appear to have trapped all the major issues as apart from them trying to overcharge me (a £10 delivery fee for a 'free' upgrade) it was worked flawlessly for the last year, no issues whatsoever.

laurel7172

Had one installed two days ago. Having severe issues with broadband slowing (almost to a stop). Have just followed as many of the instructions as I can on this post from the Virgin forums (some things seem to have changed):

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Wireless-Networking/Superhub-problems/td-p/1164023

and changed to 5Ghz frequency. It's currently as nimble as it should be, but the problem is intermittent, so fingers crossed!

ryan92

I used to have sky broadband and was at a poor 2mb. 2 months ago I moved to Virgin Media and their 60mb package and that's exactly the speeds I'm getting.... massive difference. I do know that Sky was only ADSL though so it's kinda uncomparable really.

The superhub is reasonably good ; the wireless range can be a little poor at times but apart from that, good

thor

I had a whole heap of problems when I first started using my superhub about 3 months ago but I have manged to get them down to 3.

1. I use opendns and this requires a router setting changing. I can't remember if it was dns, dhcp or something else but unlike my previous belkin router, the superhub does not allow it. This meant I had to go round changing the corresponding setting for all my connected wireless devices instead.

2. There is no manual. You have to go to the help pages on VM's site and it is not very comprehensive.

3. I want to connect a nintendo ds console wirelessly using it's wep security but even though the superhub is supposed to offer this as an option I find that the wep radio button is always greyed out and is unselectable.

Apparently a lot of the problems were fixed by a firmware upgrade at the end of last year so I 'm hoping that VM are still working on another one in the near future.

usignuolo

We upgraded our line speed (Virgin cable broadband) and had to have our reliable router replaced by a superhub. It works OK on both fixed cable and wifi - although we use our old router "in line"for wifi and lots of people locally have had a lot of problems with wifi and been advised to used fixed cable.

Also previous poster is correct that you are advised to configure it as a modem for best performance.

My big beef is that Virgin seems to have quite a different definition of a home network to us. Virgin's definition of a home network is that each user can connect to the internet via a port on the router. We used to use our home network (when we had the previous router) for peer to peer communications ie I could open images on my husbands PC (subject to the right permissions) and vice versa. We used this facility a lot for working on a small magazine I used to edit.

After the installation of the superhub we could not manage to configure our network to do this. If my OH wants access to an image say on my pc, I have to email it to him! Or give it to him on a usb stick etc. Previously if I allowed him permission he could look directly at it on my hard disk across the network and vice versa.

Also of course as everyone knows, Virgin's Indian Call Centre is, as they used to say, pants.

Lagoon

We had our Superhub installed earlier this year, and it's not great but we eventually got it working well enough.

We connected a lot of devices. Two laptops, two tablets, multiple games consoles, phones, one PC. Our old router (O2) could manage this, but we found that the Superhub couldn't. My Internet on my PC slowed to around 4, when we were expecting 60. The PC is important as it's in my office. We eventually realised that it had been the last device we connected. OH and I ended up resetting the router, prioritising our devices and connecting them in order. The later ones to be connected have a slower connection.

Additionally, as others have said, the wireless range isn't excellent. In my office I had to move the PC tower to the floor and to a certain part of the room to avoid the signal dropping every few minutes, but I found the right spot and we're now happy!

kwikbreaks

If your needs are simple and you don't expect to hammer the wifi then the Superhub will work well enough. You can always put it in modem mode and continue to use you existing cable modem with it.

I have recently changed mine over to modem mode and added a cheap dual band gigabit cable router (a Tenda N60 I got on eBay for just a tad over £30). Prior to that I had few problems which I suspect was mainly because I only use WiFi on tablets and phones. The latest firmware change was to fix a memory leak in the wireless card driver - that would explain why so many people reported them crashing left right and centre.