Router recommendation

Inquitus

I have a Virgin Media Hub 4 for my Gigabit broadband plan, it's the one that looks like the picture below. It doesn't seem to be able to cope with the myriad of different Wifi devices in the house and even over LAN to my gaming PC and my sons Playstation the ping can be erratic and packets are being dropped, often making things unplayable. Just to note I never had this issue with the Virgin Media Hub 3 that was used prior to the "upgrade"!

I have to use the Virgin Hub, that's non negotiable, but I can set it into modem mode and have it pass off all the routing to a seperate router, obv no modem is required in the router. None of our Wifi devices are suffering much and my main aim is to stabilise the LAN connections.

Anyone have some good bang for buck router only recommendations so I can redo my setup and see if it improves things. I'll probably try and find a good deal with Amazon on Black Friday!

Tnx a mil!

Andrew76

I have the older Virgin hub and found the wifi not great, ordered the below NetGear Nighthawk R7800 router at the back end of 2018 and haven't looked back since. Put the Virgin hub into modem mode (they needed to swtich it to IPv4 first iirc) and let the NetGear handle all connections.

https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B01AJI18WQ

Not sure if there are newer models these days but the above has been brilliant for me.

Overheal

My recommendations would greatly hinge on your living environment. If you live in a detached single family home that's one thing, vs. living in an apartment complex with ample wifi interference, or even a home constructed with radio absorbing/reflecting materials (namely reinforced concrete).

I bought the TP-Link Archer C5400X because I live in a congested wifi complex and I needed the extra LAN ports, it's a bit pricey but if you did something that was Wifi 5 or 6 it will be a while before you need to replace it again. Nice bells and whistles, the app support for the router is great, the ability to test nertwork status over bluetooth is priceless.

For a larger home I'd do more research into a Mesh Network.

Inquitus

Overheal wrote: »

My recommendations would greatly hinge on your living environment. If you live in a detached single family home that's one thing, vs. living in an apartment complex with ample wifi interference, or even a home constructed with radio absorbing/reflecting materials (namely reinforced concrete).

I bought the TP-Link Archer C5400X because I live in a congested wifi complex and I needed the extra LAN ports, it's a bit pricey but if you did something that was Wifi 5 or 6 it will be a while before you need to replace it again. Nice bells and whistles, the app support for the router is great, the ability to test nertwork status over bluetooth is priceless.

For a larger home I'd do more research into a Mesh Network.

So a google mesh pair or 3 pack, with a switch to give more LAN options, and the house Wifi and LAN should be good, as long as the problem is not with Virgin, to be fair though I need better coverage throughout the house anyways, so even if the problem is with Virgin, this solution won't be a waste of money as I can get them to fix any issue (or try )

Metric Tensor

I've a Ubiquiti Edgerouter Lite combined with two Ubiquiti Wireless Access points. It was a costly set up but absolutely bullet proof.

Just in case you want to investigate other options.

Luck100

Metric Tensor wrote: »

I've a Ubiquiti Edgerouter Lite combined with two Ubiquiti Wireless Access points. It was a costly set up but absolutely bullet proof.

Just in case you want to investigate other options.

I'll second that recommendation. Edgerouter Lite is just simply bullet-proof. I've never needed to reboot it in the years I've had it, other than to do a firmware upgrade.

Cuddlesworth

Whats your budget?
What type of house is it?
Willing or able to run cabling or get a person in to run cabling?

1gig broadband is a bit of a waste of money but if you want it, you might as well invest into a proper network in your house.

Inquitus

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Whats your budget?
What type of house is it?
Willing or able to run cabling or get a person in to run cabling?

1gig broadband is a bit of a waste of money but if you want it, you might as well invest into a proper network in your house.

I have LAN Cables run to the main Computer and the PS5, the rest of the devices are wifi and they work plenty fine. Issue is the Virgin Wifi does not extend to the back rooms of the house, a 4 Bed Semi, so I do need a mesh network to resolve this. The house is old enough and bar the one run of LAN cables I have done I have no intention of doing further runs. The PC and PS5 are the ones that need the bandwidth and they have it.

On that basis I am considering a Mesh Network, a Gigabit Switch and using my required Virgin Media Hub in modem only mode. Google Nest Wifi only supports 1 LAN out, hence the need for a switch to split the cable between the Cable Box, PS5 and PC in the back room. As I say the rest will be serviced by Wifi and the hardest thing they'll have to do is receive a Plex stream from the PC on LAN, something that any decent Mesh Wifi solution should support the required speeds for. Ubiquiti or Google Nest Wifi would both do the job, the Ubiquiti routers do support more LAN points though, so they may have an edge, will have to see what Black Friday prices are like!

Cuddlesworth

Inquitus wrote: »

I have LAN Cables run to the main Computer and the PS5, the rest of the devices are wifi and they work plenty fine. Issue is the Virgin Wifi does not extend to the back rooms of the house, a 4 Bed Semi, so I do need a mesh network to resolve this. The house is old enough and bar the one run of LAN cables I have done I have no intention of doing further runs. The PC and PS5 are the ones that need the bandwidth and they have it.

On that basis I am considering a Mesh Network, a Gigabit Switch and using my required Virgin Media Hub in modem only mode. Google Nest Wifi only supports 1 LAN out, hence the need for a switch to split the cable between the Cable Box, PS5 and PC in the back room. As I say the rest will be serviced by Wifi and the hardest thing they'll have to do is receive a Plex stream from the PC on LAN, something that any decent Mesh Wifi solution should support the required speeds for. Ubiquiti or Google Nest Wifi would both do the job, the Ubiquiti routers do support more LAN points though, so they may have an edge, will have to see what Black Friday prices are like!

Mesh has drawbacks, I'd consider a AP at the back of the house using the existing cabling and router replacement at the front. I doubt it would cost anywhere near what a proper mesh system would.

I'd also avoid buying into any google eco system. They like to bring out hardware, then kill off support for it in a short space of time. Whatever you put in should really last for 5+ years at minimum.

Inquitus

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Mesh has drawbacks, I'd consider a AP at the back of the house using the existing cabling and router replacement at the front. I doubt it would cost anywhere near what a proper mesh system would.

I'd also avoid buying into any google eco system. They like to bring out hardware, then kill off support for it in a short space of time. Whatever you put in should really last for 5+ years at minimum.

A 3 Pack of Google Nest Wifi is €300 I am not sure I'd get 2 quality routers for that price, I may be able to make do a pair pack (router + wifi). I got Virgin to check the line and did a factory reset on the router, will see if that improves things at all ahead of Black Friday.

Cuddlesworth

A unifi dream machine and UniFi 6 Lite Access Point(with included POE adapter) would be roughly the same price. The unifi mesh system is 300 quid as well.

A single AP would be 80 quid and would probably have the same effect if installed in the back of the house on the cable run.

Again, just warning you against buying google hardware. Networking bugs happen, will happen with a system like mesh wifi and they really don't like to give any sort of support.

Inquitus

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

A unifi dream machine and UniFi 6 Lite Access Point(with included POE adapter) would be roughly the same price. The unifi mesh system is 300 quid as well.

A single AP would be 80 quid and would probably have the same effect if installed in the back of the house on the cable run.

Again, just warning you against buying google hardware. Networking bugs happen, will happen with a system like mesh wifi and they really don't like to give any sort of support.

I can't see any pack deals or anywhere selling into Ireland which has the Unifi Dream Machine Router at less than €300, with an AP costing an extra €80-100 apop. Where are you seeing them at comparable prices to Google Nest Wifi. It would be a better solution for me but there seems to be a massive cost diff, Google are selling from their store a dual pack, router + AP, for €204.

Thanks all for the thoughts and feedback.

user1842

Buy two or three of the below and put them in mesh (would currently work out a lot cheaper than any other solution):

https://www.amazon.de/-/en/HONOR-Router-Gigabit-Control-Enhanced/dp/B08F25S6C1/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=honor+router&qid=1605888511&sr=8-5

€9 delivery to Ireland

Black Friday deal

Cuddlesworth

https://eu.store.ui.com/

You can wait for the v6 AP to come back into stock, then run a short cable up the wall and mount the AP to it. Then ethernet cable from switch to POE power block(which plugs into power point), then cable up the wall to the AP. They have slightly older models for sale too(AC-lite 69 quid, AC-pro 120).

The new virgin modem isn't exactly the worst, its probably just lacking in 2.4ghz power. I would put money that a single AP on the other side of your house, hardwired into your cable run, with the same SSID/password would solve the problem.

Inquitus

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

https://eu.store.ui.com/

You can wait for the v6 AP to come back into stock, then run a short cable up the wall and mount the AP to it. Then ethernet cable from switch to POE power block(which plugs into power point), then cable up the wall to the AP. They have slightly older models for sale too(AC-lite 69 quid, AC-pro 120).

The new virgin modem isn't exactly the worst, its probably just lacking in 2.4ghz power. I would put money that a single AP on the other side of your house, hardwired into your cable run, with the same SSID/password would solve the problem.

The main problem I am having beyond the lack of Wifi coverage at the back of the house is with dropped packets and a ping that spikes to over 1000ms, on the LAN, making gaming nigh on impossible at times. The only thing I can blame for this is the Virgin router, or the Virgin line which they tested today and said was fine. I never had this issue before "upgrading" from the older white rectangle Virgin router to the one pictured above. Will see if the factory reset I did on the router does anything, I would expect the Virgin router to be fine over LAN, like the old one was.

user1842

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

https://eu.store.ui.com/

You can wait for the v6 AP to come back into stock, then run a short cable up the wall and mount the AP to it. Then ethernet cable from switch to POE power block(which plugs into power point), then cable up the wall to the AP. They have slightly older models for sale too(AC-lite 69 quid, AC-pro 120).

The new virgin modem isn't exactly the worst, its probably just lacking in 2.4ghz power. I would put money that a single AP on the other side of your house, hardwired into your cable run, with the same SSID/password would solve the problem.

Android phones tend to have a problem switching APs, they tend to sit on a low strength AP even if a high strength AP is close. This happened in our house with two APs. Two different model android phones would not switch to an AP they were right beside because they could still get a signal (unusable) from the AP on the other side of the house.

We thus switched to a mesh setup.

Cuddlesworth

user1842 wrote: »

Android phones tend to have a problem switching APs, they tend to sit on a low strength AP even if a high strength AP is close. This happened in our house with two APs. Two different model android phones would not switch to an AP they were right beside because they could still get a signal (unusable) from the AP on the other side of the house.

We thus switched to a mesh setup.

Protocol wise, I can't see why that would make a difference. The device picks the wireless signal(apple OSX is the worst for this), a mesh network is just a bunch of AP's to the endpoint.

Inquitus, thats a ****storm I aint touching. And VM have told me my modem was working fine when I knew my entire estate was down. On 3 separate occasions.

user1842

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Protocol wise, I can't see why that would make a difference. The device picks the wireless signal(apple OSX is the worst for this), a mesh network is just a bunch of AP's to the endpoint.

You are right it should not make a difference. A mesh network will not help with device hand-offs.

But it is working now, for some reason (could be that we upgraded the router too).

TheDoc

Inquitus wrote: »

The main problem I am having beyond the lack of Wifi coverage at the back of the house is with dropped packets and a ping that spikes to over 1000ms, on the LAN, making gaming nigh on impossible at times. The only thing I can blame for this is the Virgin router, or the Virgin line which they tested today and said was fine. I never had this issue before "upgrading" from the older white rectangle Virgin router to the one pictured above. Will see if the factory reset I did on the router does anything, I would expect the Virgin router to be fine over LAN, like the old one was.

I'm having this exact issue. Over a month trying to resolve.

Latest phonecall today (about my 9th) is now they want me to remove my own router and use theirs only for the weekend. They plan to collate stats and ring me back Monday to see how it went.

Granted your on the 1GB I think which is fraught with problems, I'm on the 500mb pack. They even sent a line engineer to my house for a chat (they normally don't deal with customers).

they all keep saying they've fixed something, but not 'really' telling me what the problem was and what they'd done. Only one guy was informative saying there was a frequency imbalance on my downstream vs upstream

Inquitus

TheDoc wrote: »

I'm having this exact issue. Over a month trying to resolve.

Latest phonecall today (about my 9th) is now they want me to remove my own router and use theirs only for the weekend. They plan to collate stats and ring me back Monday to see how it went.

OK, that's somewhat disheartening, so you had already put the mandatory Virgin Cable Modem, into Modem only mode, and tried your own router and still have the same issue I am experiencing. That sounds like I could spend a bunch of euros on something that is not going to fix the problem. So appeasing Virgin aside, the issue is with your line, not with Virgin router, as you have already removed it as far as possible from the equation.

I suppose the good news is I do need a Mesh solution to resolve the wifi issues, so it might not necessarily fix my primary issue, but it will improve my wifi.

My son is going to lose his mind if we don't get this sorted, its ruining all his online gaming. I'll update this thread as and when I get more results. It is immensely frustrating!

Quandary

Just recently got a TP link archer C7 AC1750

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00CEB53MS/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Also got the range extender

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B013SYHHI2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

My house is a modestly sized detached house and every area, upstairs and downstairs has great coverage.

I think these are excellent value. I've always used TP link stuff and it has never let me down.

Inquitus

The router Factory Reset seems to have done the job thankfully, no lag spikes, no packets lost and no dropped connections for the last couple of days, my Son's mental health is recovering and he is again climbing the FIFA 21 leagues! and back at it in NB2K21. I was seeing some weird stuff coming out of the router previous to the reset, it kept changing the Subnet Mask from 255.255.255.0 to 255.255.255.255 which made no sense to me, and it seemed to coincide with the loss of connection, when I used static IP's configured on the Wifi devices they did not hold for some reason and it kept changing back to assigned by DHCP. I would defo recommend doing a factory reset on the router if you are having similar issues to me.

As mentioned above, my cheapest option now might be to just place a router in the back room to cover the back of the house, either that or get a Google Nest Wifi Pair and go down that route, I will have a think on it! Thanks for all the advice and contributions!

Dhenalau

I have been using the RT-AC86U from Asus since I got fed up having so many issues with the Hub 3 Virgin Router.
I have no problem whatsoever, plus you can use a boost up version of the Asus firmware (Merlin Project)
I can only recommend it.
It can be a bit overwhelming at start with all the options and settings, but it is very stable.