Virgin Router - Too Many Devices

[s_kinton]

I have a 50mb connection with Virgin and use their Superhub 2 at the minute. Over the past few weeks its been persistently dropping the internet connection needing a reboot to get it working again. Sometimes the connection holds for 5 minutes, sometimes for a day.

I spoke with Virgin and they're telling me I have too many devices connected to the router and that its causing the drops, also that I should consider upgrading my connection speed!? Has anyone heard or experience these drop outs with a high number of devices? Surely this shouldn't happen

We have around 10 devices connected; 4 phones, server, TV, two laptops, a Surface Pro and a couple of switches for extra ethernet. I had my house networked with CAT 5e is all rooms hence the need for the switches.

Any ideas on this? I'm considering buying a replacement router for the SuperHub - suggestions welcome?

[ik9000]

Draytek http://www.draytek.co.uk/products/comparison

[ik9000]

you can check how many devices are allowed to connect at one time in the router settings. If you have it set to too few say 5 then when device number 6 tries to connect it will either be told it can't or else device #1 (or whichever is most idle) will be booted off.

Obviously they have an interest in trying to sell you a new connection. Whether you need it depends on how many of those devices are using it at the same time, for how long, and doing what. I would get your connectivity stable before worrying about bandwidth. Stuttery you tube is one thing, being kicked off the router quite another.

[shaithis]

It's probably not the number of devices, it is probably just the shoddy router part of the firmware. Many consumer grade devices are like it and the SH is one of the most flaky. Like most of these devices though, if you turn on bridge mode (which essentially turns it into a modem with no router functionality) it becomes very stable. You then just need any non-ADSL router device to plug into it. If you want something cheap, look at the TP-Link devices with Gigabit ports.

[s_kinton]

Thanks all. Its kicked me off around 5 times in the past hour. I checked the data transferred in between me rebooting and it dropping back off and it was a miserly 33mb!

Most of the devices connected are not pulling much bandwidth. In the day, its just two people VPN'd into the company networks, emailing and saving documents etc so hardly taxing.

I've done a factory reset and will see how it goes before switching it to modem only and getting an aftermarket router

[ik9000]

if you have rountinely VPN going on I'd look to have a decent router for that.

[Dareos]

shub 2, or shub2ac? change the 2.4GHz channel to 1, 6 or 11 and see how it goes from there, any further problems then pm me your mac and i'll look at it next time im in work.

ps: not too many devices, i currently run about 30 devices off mine, 10 at any one time

[s_kinton]

if you have rountinely VPN going on I'd look to have a decent router for that.

Two different VPN connections active most days, both mine and my wifes (different companies). Her's via PPTP and mine some other way. Its been solid for a while now, but aftermarket is looking tempting.

shub 2, or shub2ac? change the 2.4GHz channel to 1, 6 or 11 and see how it goes from there, any further problems then pm me your mac and i'll look at it next time im in work.

ps: not too many devices, i currently run about 30 devices off mine, 10 at any one time

Thanks for that. Its the shub2 rather than the new ac version. I gone from 6 to 11 which has helped and used WifiAnalyzer app on Android to look at conflicting networks - 11 looks the buiest section and 6 the least, but 11 appears to be more reliable!

[Quinnbeast]

Too many devices connected? Upgrade in service? That smells of blatant up-selling to me.

Lots of devices can of course mean sluggish connection *if* several people are downloading/streaming content, but that would not explain the connection dropping, otherwise my poxy 12mb connection would fall over on it's arse on a daily basis. If the DHCP pool is limited to a set number of devices then that should be something you can change on the router setup page, but again that shouldn't affect the connection itself - just the number of simultaneous connections to the router.

Is it possible to upgrade the Virgin Hub firmware before you go throwing money at a new one? Their equipment should of course be sufficient, although buying your own unit can bring a lot of benefits.

[Dareos]

wifi analyzers only show wifi networks and not other sources that can be causing interference, so sometimes what appears to be a highly congested frequency can be the most stable

cant upgrade the firmware, its all done automatically and everyone should be on the same firmware.

As said, if you still encounter problems after wifi channel changes, pm me your mac and i'll check it out.

[Meladath]

Sounds like typical virgin. I used to think they were the best ISP there was, until my router was faulty twice in a row. They replaced the first one, but the second one died a couple of months after. They would not do a single thing, ADAMANT that it was perfectly fine (even though it clearly wasn't). Ring up and complain again and again, also post on their forums, I tend to find you get a better answer on the forums, not some random indian call centre worker reading from a cheatsheet.