Real noob question about Virgin Super Hub and router

[SFJnet]

Hi, Apologies for what may be obvious but I would be grateful for some advice if possible. We have had a Virgin Media Super Hub for a couple of years now. When we first got it the wifi around the house via the Super Hub seemed very patchy and weak, and I was advised that I might get a better signal if I connected a separate modem/router to the SH. I read that a cable modem was required for this but, just messing around, we connected an old Belkin N1 ADSL router instead and just plugged it in one of the yellow ports on the SH as if we were connecting a PC. To our surprise it worked beautifully - the wireless signal now went all around the house and we were getting about 20 to 30 mpbs on average. Since then all has stayed the same, however apparently we have been upgraded by Virgin for free to some superfast connection (max 80 mbps or 100 mbps?) but we don't see anything like that speed increase in reality. Now I'm aware that the promised super-fast speeds are often just marketing and many can't get close to those, but I'm wondering if our Belkin router could be throttling the bandwith and if we could get faster speeds with a different router or some other solution. Any ideas? Thanks!

[kalniel]

Yeah - the old N is likely to only get around 50Mbps, and that even at very close distances only.

[SFJnet]

Thanks!!! Could you possibly suggest a reasonably priced sort of router that would be a decent replacement?

[AlSomething]

Hi

It will most likely be the wifi speed limiting you, not the router itself. Your router is wireless N, but you can get wireless AC now which is faster. So you can upgrade you router to wireless AC standard for faster speed, but you devices will also need to be upgraded as it need to be AC at both ends to work. I would stick with what you have got until you have more devices with wireless AC standard.

If you want to take advantage of the extra speed plug your computer into the router as wired performance will be at least 100mb if not 1GB. That way you will notice the speed difference.

Alex