Guide - Getting the most out of your high speed Virgin Media (UPC) 240mb/s service

After playing around with an inherited TP-Link C20i and discovering its WAN/LAN shortcomings, I decided to upgrade to a gigabit capable dual-band router.
I picked up a TP-Link C2 from Komplett for €54 delivered.
Put my UPC router into bridge mode, hooked up the C2 and all I can say is.....
I should have done it years ago!
My wired network is no longer crippled with the Ubee 10/100 bug and the Wifi performance is transformed.
Averaging @120mb down and 24mb up on 5Ghz and @6-65mb down and 24mb up on 2.4Ghz, with a huge improvement in coverage and quality.

gtaking111 wrote: »

Are you on the 120mb or the 240mb package? Would this router give me the full 240 over 5GHz? I'm looking for a cheap Wireless router that can give the full 240mb over wifi and do 2.4GHz and 5GHz simultaneously, thanks.

I'm on the 240, and yes this router can do up to 433mb on 5ghz wifi(but wifi card in the laptop peaks at 300-wifi N)
That's a theoretical limit, and usually you can expect to get a maximum of 50-60% throughput, with the receiving hardware and the number of devices connecting to the router being a limiting factor.
I am running it in dual mode with 4 wired clients and @14 wireless and find it more than adequate.

Just ordered an Archer C8 thanks to this post
Some great info here
One thing I couldn't see is (and i've looked), when you disable the WiFi on the horizon box, does the WiFi stay disabled?
Meaning, when it goes into standby or it's power cycled.

Thanks

Great guide BK! Thanks to this guide I ordered an Archer C8 router myself on Saturday, due tomorrow. (Amazon.co.uk)
Have 247mb down on ethernet with UPC but only 40-55mb on wifi (100mb using 5ghz, but some devices in the house need 2.4ghz and the router is not simultaneous dual band).

Quick question about step 6 in your original post.

My current setup with the UPC thomson router assigns IP addresses in the single digits between 2-15 approx, 192.168.1.7 etc . Consequently I have ports forwarded/opened for these specific addresses so I can just set the relevant open port in uTorrent depending on what IP any device has been assigned. Do I need to now open ports for 192.168.1.100 to 192.168.1.115 etc on the UPC router to match the port assignemtn on the Archer you recommend in step 6?
The UPC router is still the one where the ports will be forwarded/opened right, not the new one?

Thanks

Update:
On my experience upgrading my Thomson UPC router to the Archer C8 on the 240mb UPC package.

One suggestion I have might be to check/update the firmware after you first plug in your router. The latest Archer C8 v1 firmware is from March 2015, but mine came shipped with September 2014 firmware. I just downloaded the appropriate firmware file for my router from http://uk.tp-link.com/
There were several bug fixes in the changelog. It resets the router to default settings when you update the firmware so best to do it before you start your setup.

I followed the steps in the first post and had no issues. I setup new SSID names and passwords for both bands 2.4ghz and 5ghz. My Nexus device could not see my 5Ghz. I chnaged the country.region to Ireland (from USA default) and it was fine. I think hte 5ghz use different channels in the USA.

The card in my laptop is an N rated card up to 300mb max. So I get about 130-150mb wireless 5ghz which I'm ok with. (I get 248mb consistently when using ethernet). I never got more than 45-50mb with the old UPC router on 2.4ghz. No doubt my next laptop will have an 'ac' network adapter so will be able to take advantage of the router to an even greater degree. My phone (Nexus 5) now also gets 125mb down on 5ghz and it previously got 45mb. I use the uTorrent android app so this is very helpful too.
I can also have the 2.4ghz band available simultaneously for a couple of older devices which I could not do with the Thomson.

On uTorrent on my PC, I could not get the "Network OK" symbol until I went into the C8 settings and opened a port under the Forwarding/Virtual servers setting. I opened one port for the IP associated with my laptop 192.168.1.100. I know this is a dynamic IP but only my phone and laptop are on 5ghz so I don't see it changing often.
Once the port was opened the "Network OK" icon appeared in uTorrent and torrent download speed increased well up into double figures (used to be 3-4mb max).
I'll watch for any (double nat) issues associated with opening a port on the C8 and revert if there are.

Overall, a really good upgrade experience thanks to the guidance in the first post. Thanks BK.

Great write up.. I have just purchased the C9 and I have Broadband only, assuming I have the Cisco EPC3925 supplied Router.

If I follow this guide and Bridge the Router where do I get the connection (Internet) into my Switch, the Cisco EPC3925 or the C9?
Am I right in assuming the C9 will be doing the DHCP?

Also once the Router (Cisco EPC3925) is in Bridge Mode and I have my second C9 attached, will I be able to plug the phone into the phone connection on the Cisco Router?

Thanks for the help!

Foxtrot Tango wrote: »

Looking for some more help on this subject. Following advice on this forum to get the most out of my 240 mb UPC package I bought a C8 router and hooked it up to the UPC modem. I disabled the wifi in the UPC modem via the web interface. At first everything worked great, I was getting 220 Mbps on my laptop wirelessly with the new router, I was very happy ! But then after a short time we noticed that the wireless was dropping off. So it will work for 15-20 mins at high speed and then stop altogether , after 5-10 mins it will come back. I've tested a laptop wired and I still have connectivity via a cable when the wireless drops off, so it seems that the signal into the house and out of the UPC modem is fine. I've switched the Ethernet ports I was using to connect to the C8 and that makes no difference. It's almost as if there's a fault in the C8 but it's brand new out of the box so this seems unlikely. Before I hooked up the c8 the wireless was working ok, it was variable and would go very slow and even drop off altogether at times ( which is one of the reasons I bought the c8. ) but not as frequently as is is doing now. Any advice most welcome. Thanks

Is it only happening on the laptop or are other devices affected also?

You could try connecting another device wirelessly when the laptop connection fails .... if it connects OK then I would be looking to the laptop for the problem.

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Is it only happening on the laptop or are other devices affected also?

You could try connecting another device wirelessly when the laptop connection fails .... if it connects OK then I would be looking to the laptop for the problem.

It's happening on all devices, laptops, iPhones, iPads , we've numerous devices connected at any one time and all of them go down

Google...

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=UPC+DNS

From the first result:

Select “Use the following DNS server addresses:” and type the following Preferred DNS server address: 89.101.160.8 or alternatively 89.101.160.9 Press OK to save the new settings. Your DNS has now been changed and the Chorus ntl service page will no longer be shown to you.

Foxtrot Tango wrote: »

Looking for some more help on this subject. Following advice on this forum to get the most out of my 240 mb UPC package I bought a C8 router and hooked it up to the UPC modem. I disabled the wifi in the UPC modem via the web interface. At first everything worked great, I was getting 220 Mbps on my laptop wirelessly with the new router, I was very happy ! But then after a short time we noticed that the wireless was dropping off. So it will work for 15-20 mins at high speed and then stop altogether , after 5-10 mins it will come back. I've tested a laptop wired and I still have connectivity via a cable when the wireless drops off, so it seems that the signal into the house and out of the UPC modem is fine. I've switched the Ethernet ports I was using to connect to the C8 and that makes no difference. It's almost as if there's a fault in the C8 but it's brand new out of the box so this seems unlikely. Before I hooked up the c8 the wireless was working ok, it was variable and would go very slow and even drop off altogether at times ( which is one of the reasons I bought the c8. ) but not as frequently as is is doing now. Any advice most welcome. Thanks

I got the C8 yesterday and I am experiencing the exact same. Initially it worked like a dream but I am now seeing the issue where over wifi the internet just dies (despite looking like getting full strength) on all devices, that is Macbook, iphone and ipads.

I set it up to the point of the static address. I didn't have time last night to do bridging, and never updated the firmware, so could be the likely candidates. I'll be trying that later and will let you know if it improves.

**EDIT**
Updating the Firmware did not fix the issue and I continued to see frequent disconnects.
However, after bridging my Technicolor TC2700 everything seems to be holding firm. Connecting is solid and fast.
Hopefully it stays that way, but it does seem that bridging was needed, for me anyway.