Superhub : Better placement of antenna or upgrades?

[Stephen]

and yet my original Superhub from back in the beta trials still works perfectly with no issues, and the new one I got a couple of months back for my 100Mb is also working fine, apart from weak wireless signal, but then I live in an old Glasgow Tenement building with super thick solid walls.

It seems totally hit or miss with the SH, either works great or hardly works. Seems to be no middle ground.

[bunglehaze]

Originally Posted by Stephen

and yet my original Superhub from back in the beta trials still works perfectly with no issues, and the new one I got a couple of months back for my 100Mb is also working fine, apart from weak wireless signal, but then I live in an old Glasgow Tenement building with super thick solid walls.

It seems totally hit or miss with the SH, either works great or hardly works. Seems to be no middle ground.

I entirely agree, it is either one case or the other and no - one size fits all solution- which is was marketed as.

My house is an old 1900's terrace, we have a lot of congestion around here on the frequencies and I can pick up at least 6 other superhubs from other houses that get a relatively good signal - just not the one that is in MY property

A few of them here are using auto channel by the looks of things as their SSID bounces all over the channels - this will not be helping anyone.

I appreciate that wireless range is limited by environmental factors but the cable company product should be able to cope with the broadest range of customer needs, being wireless it needs to be able to punt a signal from the room the SH is in at the very least, but it cannot. I had an old tplink 300mbps router that would just about get a decent signal to my bathroom and attic, enough to class my house as having wifi coverage where needed

Anyone saying the superhub is fine, it was supplied by VM, it is not the be-all and end-all, dont rely on it, buy your own equipment are kinda missing the point when you should not have to when you are sold a product. I am a businessman, I understand profit and loss, I understand budgeting and price setting per acquisition for hardware, I do not understand why anyone in the buying department would continue to OK a piece of hardware that fails to perform for a large percentage of its users - ordinarily this would equal a recall. I also don't understand why the VM PR department have not stepped in and said - we need to address this...

[qasdfdsaq]

If it had simultaneous dual-band, it'd actually be useful.

[kwikbreaks]

Originally Posted by bunglehaze

I do not understand why anyone in the buying department would continue to OK a piece of hardware that fails to perform for a large percentage of its users - ordinarily this would equal a recall. I also don't understand why the VM PR department have not stepped in and said - we need to address this...

Money. There must be well over a million of these things in circulation now and replacing them all would be very costly. Far better to bury your head in the sand and advertise them as the best cable hub available which of course they are because there's no other hub they'll allow on the network.

[bunglehaze]

Originally Posted by kwikbreaks

Money. There must be well over a million of these things in circulation now and replacing them all would be very costly. Far better to bury your head in the sand and advertise them as the best cable hub available which of course they are because there's no other hub they'll allow on the network.

I would be surprised if the cost per unit of the superhub was more than $12USD from china based on volume discount and knowing how cheaply these things can be made, in money terms that is not massively costly when the negative company image being developed as a result is likely to cost more than that over the long term with cancellations (or retention costs)

Imagine the marketing boost - we tested other hubs in the UK and decided to wipe the floor with then - introducing the superhub2 - designed to cope with our doubled download speeds.

Please excuse the above, as I say, I am a businessman so it is in my nature

[kwikbreaks]

Sounds to me like you specialise more in marketing

I'd say you aren't far off with the cost of the hubs but handling and shipping them to customers would add to that $12 and I don't think the improved sales would pay back what probably would amount to ~ £20m costs.

People that want better kit will always buy their own routers anyway and those that don't will use whatever they are given. I doubt that offering a better hub would generate much new business at all. You are projecting your personal opinions onto the huge swathe of technology illiterates that make up the bulk of VM's customer base.

[adduxi]

Originally Posted by kwikbreaks

People that want better kit will always buy their own routers anyway and those that don't will use whatever they are given. I doubt that offering a better hub would generate much new business at all. You are projecting your personal opinions onto the huge swathe of technology illiterates that make up the bulk of VM's customer base.

Agree, and I wish Virginmedia could have seen this as an opportunity to offer 'geeks' a good, solid performance modem and left the rest of the networking to the user.
The broad base of 'non-geeks' would just carry on getting the SH.
Now don't start me on different Broadband packages for 'gamers' and 'others' ..........

[bunglehaze]

Looks like this is all going to get even more expensive Now I am looking at the price for a gigabit switch, cat6 cabling from modem to router and back again to the switch - which will actually need to be placed where the SH is now anyway - all this to move the router to a more central location to the house (ie next to the inner wall)

I will test the router as it comes of course, hopefully there will be no need for all the extra kit.

Kwikbreaks, marketing used to be my thing, yes. I understand what you man about people wanting better kit will buy their own, being supplied half decent kit in the first place will negate this for a great number of users and be much less frustrating to non-geeks too as they wont have a scooby what is wrong in the first place.

Adduxi, offering mixed packages is never cost effective, isn't the SH a decent enough modem already though, if you take off the wireless? I was under the impression it was not too bad.

In terms of broadband packages, at the speeds VM offer there should be plenty to go around, I dont like the STM setup, mainly because I can fill mine incredibly quickly, and legally, and peak time is most likely when I will do so (ie sat with laptop on my knee after dinner time, trying to finish off the day)

Streaming vidoes can polish this off rapidly too...

[adduxi]

Originally Posted by bunglehaze

Adduxi, offering mixed packages is never cost effective, isn't the SH a decent enough modem already though, if you take off the wireless? I was under the impression it was not too bad.

True in one respect, but it would be an excellent differentiator for Virgin? An ISP for the Techno Elite?

As for the SH, I'm still waiting for the final verdict on R36, and my SH is sitting next to the VMNG300 all ready, or maybe not .....

[kwikbreaks]

Originally Posted by adduxi

As for the SH, I'm still waiting for the final verdict on R36

R36 offers a different and imo better GUI but no new features other than no longer rebooting every time you change the reserved IP table and avoiding the need to manually enter MACs.

VM claim it is more stable although there are still reports of it rebooting itself and sometimes reverting to defaults. There are also instances of needing to reboot it to get WiFi devices to re-connect.

I've seen a report of it dropping WiFi encryption which I think I'd have investigated very thoroughly before releasing it generally.

There were plenty of TBB charts showing a marginal but real decrease in jitter after it was installed.

Wireless range was unchanged and still grim by my observation. Others claim it's OK so there are maybe hardware differences - it only has a cheap and cheerful plugin card of the same type you'd get in a laptop.

[Woo82]

Pre R36 firmware my mobile phone would pull 250kbs wireless and that was at full bars sitting next to the hub.

Post R36 firmware my mobile phone will now pull almost 300kbs, well done VM you have managed to spend millions on creating a new firmware that will give me 50kbs more.

Superhub was placed straight back into modem mode and my Netgear WNR2000 router put back in, my phone now pulls a constant 7mbps...

I have ordered this so my older equipment can run on 2.4ghz and everything else can run on 5ghz

ASUS RT-N66U - 900Mbps Dual Band Wireless N Router

[bunglehaze]

My RT-56U has made a huge difference so far, stable, fast connection in the same room - then in the room above it halves, I can sometimes get a decent connection at the far side of the house too.

[sniper007]

I've looked inside a superhub and noticed the slightly inadequate antannae too, but it still works. Best thing I ever did to mine was put it to 140mbps as opposed to 300. All my problems went away after I did that. Signal range is not brilliant, but it still covers my entire house no problem, and out into the garden a fair few meters.

[mc6701]

Looking to mod / upgrade the antenna on the Virgin supperhub but can't get into it.

I can see that there a 2 screws on the back and a 3rd at the bottom. Looks like the 2 on the back hold the stand in place and the one on the bottom once removed will allow the front to slide up and off........but cant seem to get the stand off to get to the bottom screw.

Any help will be great.

[craigj2k12]

Two screws either side of the ethernet ports hold the stand on, once you take those out, the stand comes out (with a bit of force)