Intermittent Virgin issues — torrenting causing it? Can a new router help?

Associate
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22 Mar 2017
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291
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UK
We've had ongoing issues with Virgin Media broadband for several months now. It cannot maintain a connection and is constantly dropping for 15 minutes or more several times a day. There's no correlation to busy network times and even when it's up the connection is very unstable. All connections are wired on 1GbE with Cat-5E and all cables have been tested. We're on the 350 Mb package (1Gb still not available here) and we get close to advertised speeds when it's working.

On of us is a university lecturer teaching remotely over Zoom. Suffice it to say several connection drops during a lecture is not acceptable. The other has fast-paced work where being 30s late can often mean the difference between success and failure and also requires uploads of 100 GB files to Google Drive 2-3x a week (these have to be restarted when interrupted). Constant drop-outs are also having a huge impact.

I have spoken to Virgin multiple times and spent dozens of hours on hold and on the phone to them. They have replaced our Hub twice and two engineer visits have added an attenuator, replaced all cabling inside the property as well as the splitter and hardware in the street cabinet.

Our internet looks like this on a good day:





And like this on a bad day:





As a comparison, my neighbour a few doors down also has poor latency but is more or less fine.



I thought it might be the router struggling with high numbers of connections (we do torrent a few files a week) and latency noticeably increases when the client are active but there's no clear correlation.

I'm hesitant to throw money at the problem especially given Virgin have been so clueless but if I buy a Ubiquity router & AP or pfsense routers do you think there's any chance of it having an effect? Or what else could be causing it and how can we resolve it? It's impossible to keep on like this.
 
Man of Honour
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29 Jun 2003
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Wiltshire
There should be a page with the down and upstream signal strength and things. If you could post those stats we can see if they look ok. I don't know the exact name of the page as I have a SH2ac not a 3 :)
 
Man of Honour
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Downstream power level is a little high although its technically within the limits. Which attenuator did the engineer put on the coaxial cable on the modem? It should say on the side such as -3dbi, -6dbi etc.
 
Associate
OP
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22 Mar 2017
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291
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UK
Jesus those graphs are terrible, have you tried the virgin community forum? I've found them great in the past.
Yes have tried everything.

Posted on the forums. Included graphs and the router status. They told me they'd flagged it for staff and to wait because it could be a few days.

That was three weeks ago.

Also have tried making contact on Twitter but replies only come every few days and keep starting from the beginning saying things like "are you still experiencing issues?" We have been experiencing issues for months! Even the suggested text number doesn't work. I have sent texts multiple times from my registered mobile number and never even received so much as an automated reply back.
 
Man of Honour
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It's 4 dB.
OK for the sake of £2 on an auction site I would try a 6 or 9dB one (to replace existing 4 dB). Guessing the cable from your modem to the wall socket is all good btw? Could try swapping that out if not already (guessing you've done this if they've sent out a new modem).
 
Associate
OP
Joined
22 Mar 2017
Posts
291
Location
UK
OK for the sake of £2 on an auction site I would try a 6 or 9dB one (to replace existing 4 dB). Guessing the cable from your modem to the wall socket is all good btw? Could try swapping that out if not already (guessing you've done this if they've sent out a new modem).
Yeah the cable has been replaced recently too (although it is far too long).

Can the power level really cause what I'm seeing in the graphs? There was no noticeable change after they installed the 4 dB attenuator.
 
Man of Honour
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How long is the coaxial cable? Can you make it shorter?

Apart from not torrenting for a week to see if its that or badgering VM I'm not sure what else you can do?
 
Caporegime
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
26,098
5m extra cable vs. having an amateur (no offence intended) reterminate it after shortening is not a tradeoff I'd consider to be worth making.

OP - give up torrenting for a week and see how you get on. I'm sure this is related to the amount of UDP traffic going through the Hub. Also do a pinhole reset of the Hub and leave it to reprovision.
 
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