Virgin 1Gb now available.

Manc-Red_

1GB router has been a game changer for my home with the additional antenna boosting the signal across the house and in the garden.

It's the 1GB V2 we got sent. Classy piece of kit. No dropouts at all in 3 weeks, had nothing but issues on the previous one.

MugsGame

Thanks, the 1GB V2 Hub seems to be the equivalent of the UK Superhub 4, rather than the 5, which is a shame, as the 5 has a 2.5 Gbps port.

bk

FYI you don’t need to sign up to 1gb to see those sort of improvements in Wi-Fi performance. Just get a decent quality third party Wi-Fi router and you will get the same Wi-Fi performance and reliability improvements or even better.

The v2 isn’t anything to write home about, the Superhub 5 is where you might see some real improvements.

Manc-Red_

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120220634#Comment_120220634

I'd say in my case I had a 5 year old router costing me almost 90 quid pm, and they offered me a better one for less with extra speed.

You really shouldn't have to purchase a third-party router to get the service you pay for.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120220650#Comment_120220650

Why was your router costing you €90 per month?! Is that a typo?

The third party router cost me just €110 once off.

The 360mb service costs €60, while 1gb costs €80. So my third party router is paid off after just 5.5 months. And my router is still much better then the v2, in particular the v2 uses the crappy intel cpu and only supports Wi-Fi 5, while my router supports Wi-Fi 6 and has many extra features (it is an Asus).

The point I’m trying to make, for other people, is that you don’t need to upgrade to the 1gbps service and pay more, just to get better Wi-Fi.

I get what you are saying, but I have never seen any ISP give a good router, they are usually somewhere between complete trash to only ok, compared to a third party one.

MugsGame

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120216141#Comment_120216141

So IPv4 carried over to the new modem on my account, but so far I'm getting worse speeds. Have contacted support!

Before I upgraded, my Superhub 3 could reliably exceed 500Mbs down/50Mbs up to speedtest.ie on 1Gbps wired ethernet. Once my account had been provisioned for 1Gbps yesterday, my old white Superhub 3 renegotiated and was serving 800Mbps down / 55 Mbps up. Putting it into modem modem, my better Wifi 6e router was getting this on the Superhub 3.

After upgrading to the black 1Gbps Hub V2 (which arrived yesterday), I achieve only 200Mbs down/20Mbs up, using the same cable and ethernet connection.  I have tried restarting the new modem, and repeating the test at various times of day/night (have also turned off my Wifi 6e router and tried a wired connection direct to the VM modem, and tried the new coax cable in the modem box). I cannot revert to the white Superhub V3, as it seems to have been disabled on the VM end.

When I look at the new modem web console, I see that only 1 upload channel is configured/negotiated, and the upstream power is 64.3 dB. I’d expect to see 4 upload channels and lower power needed.

The other difference is that the V2 modem has negotiated a DOCSIS 3.1 downstream channel, which the old Superhub was stuck on DOCSIS 3.0.

To add insult to injury, I went out for a walk after the initial poor upgraded tests yesterday and noticed 5G was now available in my area. This is what my phone pulls on 5G outside my apartment:

Looks like it might be worth bonding 5G with cable/fibre to get higher upload speeds when I need them.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119647761#Comment_119647761

I thought that areas that already have Virgin BB (like mine) would be way down the priority list for SIRO?

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120225725#Comment_120225725

Well SIRO is a commercial operator competing with Virgin and Eir. So they will definitely be competing in the same areas. Sure you are right in that it makes sense for them to start by competing in relatively dense suburban areas with no Virgin, but there are only so many of those areas and now they seem to be expanding more widely at least in dense suburban areas which often already have Virgin.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120225751#Comment_120225751

We live in hope.

dam099

I've had SIRO going on nearly 5 years in an area that was already served by Virgin. Also got a flyer from Eir the other day saying OpenEir is now available at our address to so spoiled for choice with 3 Gigabit networks serving us (two of which offer 2Gbps).

bk

Yeah now that I think of it my, parents can get Eir fibre, Siro and VM!

LOL they are on VDSL, such a waste!

They actually have almost 100mb VDSL as the Eir box is just 5 meters away, so they aren’t much bothered, it is fine for their needs and they have a monitored alarm working over the phone line which they would have to spend a lot to replace if they upgraded.

Meanwhile my sister living in the middle of nowhere has 1gbs Eir. While I live in Dublin City where my only option is VM! Sigh…

kippy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120224945#Comment_120224945

You don't need them....

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120229533#Comment_120229533

I hate you.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120231464#Comment_120231464

I hate your parents.

Kevrano

What happened with VM's 10gbps upgrade that was announced late 2021? https://www.virginmedia.ie/about-us/press/2021/virgin-media-ireland-announces-national-fibre-network-upgrade/

heavydawson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120251846#Comment_120251846

They're just calling out the capabilities of the Fibre tech they're using - XGS-PON. It's unlikely they'll offer 10gbps straight out of the gate, but rather they'll just look at what the market is offering and offer that or slightly better.

Right now, the 2gbps is the premium product, so all they'd need to do is offer that or slightly better than that. The gradual deployment of Wifi 7 will justify the rollout of 2gbps+ packages, but right now most devices cant benefit from it.

Kevrano

Is 2gbps going to be available on VM? I agree that 10gbps is overkill at the moment, but in years to come, when hardware catches up!

EarWig

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120261115#Comment_120261115

Once it becomes widely available from fibre ISPs, then VM will have to compete.

heavydawson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120261115#Comment_120261115

In areas where Virgin is using SIRO as backhaul, it may well already be available:

https://www.bonkers.ie/blog/broadband-phone/virgin-media-and-siro-announce-new-partnership/

TCP/IP

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120261751#Comment_120261751

I am currently on Siro 1gb and got a note in the door to say Virgin 2gb coming to my area soon. Currently don't have access to any Virgin products.

heavydawson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120272350#Comment_120272350

For people looking at 2gbps, I would strongly suggest holding off a few months. Many CPEs will be upgraded to Wifi 7 which will in turn more or less necessitate a 2.5gbps (or greater) WAN port (and hopefully LAN ports).

Ozvaldo

Anyone recommend a good router for this as said above the router is sh1te -wouldnt mind getting my moneys worth on this

micks_address

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120274310#Comment_120274310

yeah i can't see there being much benefit to 2gbps.. hopefully it drives down the price of 1gb offerings

heavydawson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120274627#Comment_120274627

I suspect the price won't budge until they discontinue the 500mbps service and make 1gbps the new entry-level service. And that will likely be driven by the likes of Eir/Siro and the wholesale arm of Virgin moving first on that. NBI have a speed bump on their latest roadmap

They may decide to keep the product range simple and discontinue the 500mbps service at that point. Or they may introduce a 4th speed tier. Will be interesting to see what the next jump above 2gbps will be. 3gbps, or a bigger jump to 5gbps?

schmoo2k

Any word on symmetrical bandwidths - the current VM upload is annoying at times...

feargantae

I'm in a non VM area and the website says I can get 2Gb "soon", on the OpenEir site it says 2Gb is available to me but on SIRO the max is saying 1Gb!

I'm assuming that means SIRO will soon offer 2Gb in my area?

TCP/IP

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120274310#Comment_120274310

I already have Aruba enterprise Wifi 7 based solution with 10gb lan so am ready for 2gb will just be bridging the modem and configuring it into my existing network.

freeze66

This would be a blessing if it came with same up and down speeds for the link. My home server is crying because I live in a relatively new building in Cork and my only broadband option is from Three which has okay ish dl speeds but upload is horrendous. Only viable option for streaming from my Jellyfin container is doing it on my home network or downloading them to my phone's local storage because it's impossible to watch unless its 480p.

heavydawson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120280368#Comment_120280368

Which Aruba model is that? Their leadership has been adamant that they don't see wifi 7 as a priority?

MugsGame

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120231473#Comment_120231473

How do you know my upload needs? I'm regularly uploading large files to work, and separately to YouTube and cloud storage. I've actively shied away from hosting anything locally because of upload limits.

50 Mbps is laughable - although I would have killed for it back in the days of DSL, let alone dial-up (my first modem was 1200/75 bps. I've written DSL modem firmware and programs that talked to banks over X.25, so I might know something about my comms needs).

kippy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120295320#Comment_120295320

Which would suggest that 50 up is perfectly adequate.

A lot of the services you are uploading to would actively throttle uploads from a single source above a certain speed or indeed wouldn't be able to handle them in the first instance - right now, there's very little justification for that level of upload speed.