Virgin Media SuperHub 3.0

[Jace007]

So i upgraded to Virgin Media SuperHub 3.0 all New white Hub and it sucks. as an existing customer you can upgrade to it for £10. This is the delivery cost & self install, otherwise it cost extra if you need someone from VM Team to come out and install it for you. Opening the Box to activating it took about 1 hour. When you 1st login to it it asks for your personal email address be that hotmail or watever, Why on earth do you need a Hub that asks for Email at registration is odd. The Hub (With the latest Firmware) has better 5Ghz coverage its got more antennas inside it, i streamed a Full HD to the otherside of the Garden and was great. Where it really lacks & disappoints is 1) When going into the Webpages its takes on average 20 seconds to get from 1 page to another 2) Its lacking advanced features or configuration pages to really create DMZ, easy port forwarding config, diagnostic / log information is poor, you can't turn off WPS, it auto enabled SSID 4 times even when you've Unticked the Box and hit Save 3) For gaming it sucks! my pings were 12 to 14 pings higher than the SuperHub 2ac i tried the usual items of disabling services but nothing helped. finally i had enough and went back to the older one. Once again Virgin Media lacking in the quality testing department

[watercooled]

I've heard most of these complaints before on the VM forums so they seem like fairly common problems. I also heard a firmware upgrade might be in the works to fix them so I guess we'll see.

In terms of modem-side improvements, the SH3 allows far more bonded channels than the 8 of the SH2 (24 IIRC) to make room for future capacity upgrades, but yeah the firmware definitely needs some work.

[burble]

Typical VM - they've always released SuperHubs with cruddy firmware. Eventually they get it right but it's a shame that they're so willing to use their customer base as the beta testers.

[Jace007]

Exactly Burble, They testing half bake hardware/software on their customers, leading to months of troubleshooting or lack of support. You would think it would be in their best interest to thoroughly test the product, make sure its properly working before they start to issue it. Most end users can wait extra month or two. Their forum is full of ppl with issues with the sh3. The tech support guy did say the SH3 will be supporting the soon to be release 300mb speed.

[kopite]

I currently have the superhub 2 and hadnt realised the new one was out..

Is port forwarding possible or is it just hard to get sorted? I need port forwarding for my server etc so it's a deal breaker if it doesnt work.

[watercooled]

I wouldn't worry about getting the new one yet, I'd wait for the bugs to get sorted out with firmware updates first.

[GreenPiggy]

Oh dear god, just buy a proper router and stick anything any ISP gives you(and especially VM) into modem mode and forget about it.

[watercooled]

Yeah that's what I've done all along TBH - I held on to a Motorola Surfboard modem for as long as possible until they finally allowed modem mode on the Superhub, just in time for our 'free upgrade' at the time.

[Jace007]

Yea it has port forwarding but the configuration of it isn't the best, but then maybe its new and hopefully Vm will update the firmware. Nothing major to gain from it, better off with a 3rd party router.
Gone back to my Superhub 2 all works well.

[ik9000]

Oh dear god, just buy a proper router and stick anything any ISP gives you(and especially VM) into modem mode and forget about it.

This ^, this with spades, bells and whistles. Got the VM superhub3.0, passworded it, turned everything off/maxed out security then threw it straight into modem mode. it now sits happily alone and long may it stay that way. the colour of the light changed the other day. Apparently there's a fault with my telephone signal. Whatevs, I don't have one!

[cappilio]

Not Sure about the Superhub 2, my 2AC worked fine with port forwarding,
however there is 100% an issue with the SuperHub 3 Firmware, which makes it almost impossible to forward ports,

there is a trick however;
It will tell you the port range is already open when you have opened a port range higher than the one you intended.

eg. I want forward port 80 but have previously port forwarded 8080 to the same ip address.

You have to delete the rules and then enter the port forward in ascending order.

eg. Ports 22,80,443,8080 in that order.

Hope it helps anyone else who is suffering the issue and hopefully the VM team can fix it properly.

[ToastQ]

What's so bad about theVM Superhubs? I have a Superhub 2 and it works pretty wel, though the range is pretty limited. What benefits would I get from switching to a better one?

[watercooled]

In my experience, like many ISP-provided routers, they just tend to be far less reliable than comparable routers and lack some features I consider important e.g. decent (or any) QoS.

The SH3 is another matter - it's universally affected by a fairly serious issue regarding the Intel Puma chipset and/or its firmware, see this article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12..._firmware_fix/

[Jonj1611]

Ironically I have never had the problems as described in that article with my Superhub 3 :-

[ik9000]

In my experience, like many ISP-provided routers, they just tend to be far less reliable than comparable routers and lack some features I consider important e.g. decent (or any) QoS.

The SH3 is another matter - it's universally affected by a fairly serious issue regarding the Intel Puma chipset and/or its firmware, see this article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12..._firmware_fix/

Thank you. I run mine in modem mode, but that could well explain why it keeps killing online games - even basic ones like backgammon/chess. Time for a firmware upgrade this weekend.

[watercooled]

Ironically I have never had the problems as described in that article with my Superhub 3 :-

As far as I know, every single SH3 is affected due to the nature of the problem; even OEM-branded Arris Surfboard modems (from which the SH3 is derived) based on the same chipset, which are sold in e.g. USA (where you're allowed to choose and purchase your own cable modems) are affected. Whether or not you notice it may depend on what you use your connection for.

Pingtest.net is not useful for diagnosing this problem. The following tool (or a longer test such as thinkbroadband's BQM) is much better at picking up on it: http://www.dslreports.com/tools/puma6

@ik9000: Do you have news about a firmware update? Last I heard Virgin hadn't even acknowledged it despite the manufacturer confirming they were aware and working on a fix.