Upgrade to 50Mb vm300

[MPH]

Hi all I have a couple of questions I hope someone can help me with..

I have previously been on 50Mb with the vm300 modem then downgraded to 30 when the new £18.50 tariff came in .. want to give 50Mb ago again so have an engineer booked in a couple of weeks.
I am a pretty regular reader of this forum & have read no end of problems associated with the suberhub.
As I understand the R30 firmware has fixed some of this issue but I want to know where I stand with requesting I hold onto the wm300 modem in case I have any issue moving forward.. I currently use a Netgear N600 router which I find excellent, if all else fails will the superhub in modem mode be exactly the same as my current wm300/N600 setup??
I also run a windows home server (2011) on this setup I wonder if anyone else is running a superhub
With WHS without issue?

Any advice would be appreciated

Cheers

[thenry]

whats your power levels like mate? if there within spec call 150 > 1 to confirm your account > 5 > 2 'thinking of leaving' - tell them to cancel your tech upgrade booking and to upgrade you over the phone.. once they do the upgrade from their end reboot your modem and you should be away with 50Mb

that said more channels are being put on BB services so you'll need the SH at some point.. not sure though, theres better personnel on here that can answer whether thats coming quicker than expected.

[Sephiroth]

The chances are that the engineer attending your 50 meg upgrade will give you a SH (put it Modem Mode as you suggest) and will take the VMNG300 away saying it's VM's property.

In modem mode, the SH should behave as well as the VMNG300.

[Peter_]

As the rollout to 8 downstreams gathers pace the is little point trying to hang onto outdated equipment when the Superhub in Modem Mode is equal if not superior in performance.

[Chrysalis]

When I see this pace I will switch, until then I keep what I got. My area is still on 4 channels not even 5 yet.

[morley04]

When I had the Super hub up and running I was seeing 5 Channels in the LE3 area.

[Chrysalis]

I am waiting for the signs that work has been done, its not on my port yet.

[craigj2k12]

when my line card was swapped, i got quite a long outage, I had to power cycle the modem to connect, I then had a whole new set of channels, both up and down, as well as a new IP

[MPH]

Thanks the the reply’s all sounds promising then .. I believe I'm on the Hayes UBR so as Masque pointed out I assume they will be upgrading the number of channels so I guess I'm fighting a losing battle trying to hold onto the older tech.
While I don't think I need more than 50Mb down I can always use a faster upload speed ( I use the WHS a lot to pull data off while at work etc.) see how it goes in a couple of weeks.

[Chrysalis]

Whilst its inevitable channels will be at some point upgraded it doesnt mean its going to happen soon, My main issue is that every single time I have used the superhub my jitter has significantly moved upwards. So for me to switch back would either be if I am forced to by VM or I see hideous download speeds.

[davidthornton]

If you're on 100Mbit with a VMNG300, how will you know if/when your UBR has been upgraded to use more than 4 channels? Loss of speed?

[Sephiroth]

You'll be provisioned according to your modem. It is tempting to suspect, however, that VM might ensure that only SHs are present for DOCSIS 3 use to maintain some sort of symmetry on the bonded channels.

But given the unpredictability of what people do with their bandwidth, it seems hardly to matter to me.

Maybe Igni thinks otherwise.

[thenry]

what do you mean seph?

[craigj2k12]

You'll be provisioned according to your modem. It is tempting to suspect, however, that VM might ensure that only SHs are present for DOCSIS 3 use to maintain some sort of symmetry on the bonded channels.

But given the unpredictability of what people do with their bandwidth, it seems hardly to matter to me.

Maybe Igni thinks otherwise.

nope, i was using VMNG when 5 downstreams were available, it was my own choice to activate the superhub

[Chrysalis]

If you're on 100Mbit with a VMNG300, how will you know if/when your UBR has been upgraded to use more than 4 channels? Loss of speed?

I would expect an outage and power level changes.

Also it helps if you know someone with a superhub on the same port as you.

[qasdfdsaq]

You'll be provisioned according to your modem. It is tempting to suspect, however, that VM might ensure that only SHs are present for DOCSIS 3 use to maintain some sort of symmetry on the bonded channels.

But given the unpredictability of what people do with their bandwidth, it seems hardly to matter to me.

Maybe Igni thinks otherwise.
Tempting, but that means they would have to issue new Superhubs to the majority of 50mb users out there which is unlikely to happen. Given the free upgrade to 100mb soon to come out, this means unless they get replacements, a large proportion of 100mb users will also be on VMNG300's.

[Sephiroth]

I actually agree with qasi - because 4 channels or 5 - it doesn't matter in the wider scheme of things.

[MPH]

Ok update which might be of interest, engineer was booked for Sat 14th AM, I did assume I might be waiting around all morning but no.. Virgin chap arrived at 8.40am !! he tried to just uses the old power supply from my existing VM300 which some people have advised may cause issues. I then tried to chat about the potential issues I may have with the Superhub but he seemed totally unaware of any issue with the hardware.. but hang on I then said how please I was with the speed doubling rollout .. he had no idea OMG !! I said the TV ads .. Bolt, funny beard etc. ? not a clue ! how can that be.
That aside the guy was very quick & pleasant was all sorted in 15mins.
Getting solid 50Mb down just under 5Mb up .. wireless is not as good as my old Netgear WNDR3700 but OK. Our kids both have laptops which are both getting good speeds other HW in the house (iMac,PC,PS3 Wii) is all hard wired (& the kids have Gigabit sockets in their rooms should it be a issue) so overall pretty happy.. if anyone is Interested my WHS running 2011 seems to work fine with the Superhub as well. I did assume I would have to run the Superhub in modem mode from day one... of course it might be too early to judge & I no doubt will be back on here moaning if it all goes horribly wrong but for now the Superhub /Virgin gets a "tick"

[MPH]

Hmm OK it's 4 days in & my connections has started to drop out & the speed fluctuate .. family trying to access the internet getting fed up .. so I have put my old Netgear router back on & turned the hub to modem mode. Not happy, but lets see how it goes.

[AndyCalling]

You do realise there's been a major network outage affecting everyone today don't you?

[MPH]

Heh, ironically I did just spent the last 10 mins or so plugging back in the netgear & then posting my message. I then went on to read "major network outage" at the top of the forum page, so no didn't know there was an issue, but might have just settled down where I am but seems ok now ... suits me better just to use the superhub .. less wires
& only one router/modem on 24 x 7 .. I will see how it is in a few days. I guess one of the problems with these forums is you always hear people problems & I must admit I almost expected the superhub to be problematic :0( .

[Sephiroth]

Hmm OK it's 4 days in & my connections has started to drop out & the speed fluctuate .. family trying to access the internet getting fed up .. so I have put my old Netgear router back on & turned the hub to modem mode. Not happy, but lets see how it goes.

Keeping my family off my back is more important than having the wretched SH doing router stuff badly.

Modem mode is the way to go with a decent router.

[MPH]

I can't help myself, always like to tinker so just went back to superhub (unplugged the Netgear WDNR3700 turned off modem mode) to see if it's ok & at the mo seems ok. I'm playing a dangerous game a family are in the middle of maths homework !!!