Well… I'm about to find out! Despite my well-publicised annoyance with Virgin Media, they are the only fibre provider in my area. They've also recently merged with O2 - my old employer⁰ - and are offering a free speed boost to any joint customers.

I had an old pre-pay O2 SIM, so spoke to Virgin and cheekily asked for a free speed boost. They said yes! Wye, shy bairns get nowt!

A few days later, Virgin sent me an upgraded VM SuperHub 4 (my current "3" can't go up to 1Gbps, and I didn't get on to the trial for the "5").

I'd already been sent some of their Plume Mesh Network pods, and they didn't need any extra configuration - more on that later.

Let's dive into the important stuff!

Speed Tests

Virgin's offer is 1130Mbps average download speed and 52Mbps average upload speed. What's that in the real world?

With a direct Ethernet connection: 942Mbps down, 52Mbps up, 10ms ping.

For contrast, my old system got 550Mbps down, 37Mbps up, and 9ms ping on a wired connection.

5GHz WiFi sat next to the router: 591Mbps down, 52Mbps up, 11ms ping.

And, of course, that's part of the problem with "Gigabit speed"! Great if you're wired in with some CAT6. But you're never going to hit the limits on a single WiFi device. My PS4 - wired in - can only get about 350Mbps from Sony's servers.

Of course, if you have multiple devices all streaming at once, that's when you'll notice the difference.

Thoughts on upload speed

I'm annoyed that the upload speed is still so low. The Internet is an inherently "sucky" medium; people download far more than they upload. But with competitors like Hyperoptic offering symmetrical speeds, it's a little disappointing. Frankly, I would rather have doubled my upload speed than download speed. The Virgin gigabit network is DOCSIS 3.1 which is theoretically capable of gigabit upload speeds.

But it looks like it doesn't use DOCSIS 3.1 for upload, which is weird. For general use, 50Mbps is fine. But when uploading a video to YouTube or sending large files to friends, it is a bit of a barrier.

Installation & specs

It was a self installation. Literally just unscrew the coax cable from the old unit and screw it into this one. Then wait a few minutes as it booted up and connected to the network. It uses a different power connector to the old version, which is slightly annoying - and the power cable is slightly shorter. But the overall design is much nicer - it's smaller and has a thermal vent at the top.

One irritating thing is the light on the device. The old 3 model had a small LED which could easily be covered. The 4 has a light bar which stretches around the the top and requires a long bit of tape if you don't want to dazzle yourself. Thankfully, there's a manual control so you can dim it, or turn it off: The SuperHub 4 is an 802.11ac device. If you want WiFi 6 (802.11ax) you'll need the SuperHub 5. I don't have any AX devices, so it doesn't bother me.

There are 4 Gbps Ethernet ports. If you choose to use your own router and place the hub in "Modem Mode", then only one of them will work.

Weirdly, there are 2 telephone ports. That's for a landline VoIP service. Frankly, I think they're useless. Would have been better to replace them with USB ports for printer / file sharing.

There's a WPS button for "easy" WiFi sharing. And a plastic card containing the default username and password.

Configuration

I'm really not sure how I feel about this... Virgin know my SSID and the passwords. They used them to preconfigure my Intelligent WiFi Plus Pods. So why isn't it the same here? Once the hub was plugged in, I expected it to start broadcasting my old WiFi name so all my old devices could connect to it automatically.

I manually set everything up, and my old devices connected just fine.

It's pleasing to note that the software has been updated to allow Emoji SSIDs! That means you can follow my tutorial: "HOWTO: Make a Doctor Who "Bells of St John" Style WiFi Name".

UI

It's well known that ISP supplied kit is a bit crap. It's usually mass market junk with a UI that barely works and few scheduled security updates. The SuperHub 4 is has the same poor interface as the older model.

There are a few welcome improvements. It doesn't need to reboot when you change the SSID, and the whole interface is a lot faster. Hopefully you won't need to spend too much time with it. Setting up port forwarding and fixed IPs is a bit of a chore. And there's no local domain name resolution. You can set up some rudimentary MAC filters, to keep devices on a specific SSID if you need.

But, in general, it's a bit of a horror-show.

IPv6?

LOL Nope! Customers have been asking for this for 11 years. Although there are signs that IPv6 is being worked on.

Final Thoughts

There's no need for Gigabit speeds… yet! Even on my "slow" 500Mbps connection I was able to stream 4K HDR Surround Sound Netflix. Downloading gigabytes of games is limited by the console providers' infrastructure. My wife and I could make simultaneous video calls with a tenth of the speed we have now.

But tomorrow… Will VR/Metaverse require stupid-fast speeds? Will hundreds of IoT gadgets want to burn through my bandwidth? Probably not, no. But I'm a geek and I crave the newest, shiniest, fastest tech that I can get my hands on.

If you live in a Virgin area, and can live with the slower upload speeds, and you don't mind the SuperHub's half-baked interface - this is a cracking service. Especially given the free speed upgrades available if you're also an O2 customer.

Promotion

We both get £50 if you sign up to Virgin media using this link. Enjoy!

My yearly contract with my ISP has just come to an end, so it was time to shop around for a better deal. They presented me with the following monthly options:

1. Drop to 100Mbps for the same price I'm paying today (£44)
2. Keep at 350Mbps for a tenner more (£55)
3. Rise to 500Mbps for a fiver more (£49)
4. Go to GIGABIT for a lot more (£60)

Mmmmmm GIGABIT...!

Obviously it's classic anchor pricing. And obviously I fell for it. And obviously I negotiated a £50 bill credit for signing a new contract. But I only went with the half-gig option. Even then, I feel like I've bought a sports car and use it to pootle to the village shop and back.

Netflix reckons that 25Mbps is good enough for its 4K service. Even if my wife and I are both watching super-high-def-hdr-surround-sound-smellovision - what do we do with the other 450Mbps?

Once in a while we might download a 60GB video game (!!!). At 350Mbps, that'll take 22 minutes. At 500Mpbs, 16 minutes. That's six whole minutes saved (!!!). Going to 1Gbps means the game is downloaded in 8 minutes. But that's assuming the game company's CDN can sustain that speed. It probably can't.

Now we're in the land on constant video calling, the faster upload that we get is nice. Sadly it's hard to get symmetric speeds in the UK - so we're stuck with "only" 40Mbps up. But, again, even with both of us streaming 720p laptop-cam footage, it's not really taxing the connection.

It's nice when I have to upload a large file to, say, YouTube. But most of my work is now "Cloud Native" so I'm rarely emailing megadocs to my colleagues.

Perhaps VR is the thing which will consume this data? I don't really know much about it - but strapping two 4K monitors to your face, surround audio, and positional metadata doesn't sound like it is going to tax my fibre connection.

I suppose if you're a family of 10, then having 100Mbps each is handy. Delivering Gigabit is essential to the future - and I'm sure something will come along to gobble it all up. But what?

I'm not quite so thick as to say 640k ought to be enough for anybody. But right now I'm struggling to think what I can do to take advantage of this glut of bandwidth.

Any suggestions?

Using my SamKnows monitoring box, I'm able to see regular snapshots of my broadband performance. My 152Mbps service is usually rock solid - there's very little variation in its performance. Last week, however, it shot through the roof.

(Download Speed .csv file)

Whoa!

The only fly in the ointment with Virgin's speeds is their lack of decent upload bandwidth. When I was on BT's FTTC, I was able to get 20Mbps up. Pretty decent for streaming video conferences, uploading to YouTube, etc. Virgin's best upload speed is 12Mbps. But, last week, this was boosted to 16Mbps.

Upload Speed .csv file

Because I'm a geek, I've set up a script to monitor my cable modem's power levels (no, you need a hobby. Shut up!)

Interestingly, there was no significant change in power or SNR. Additionally, the modem was still only using 2 upstream channels.

My script isn't set up to see if the modulation has changed.

The 152Mbps is a somewhat arbitrary speed limit. As far as I can tell, it was chosen to be exactly twice as fast as BT's 76Mbps service. This 322Mbps service is, presumably, a response to BT Infinity 4's speeds of 300Mbps.

Although, yet again, the upload speed is slower. If Virgin would only activate all four upload channels - rather than the current two - they could double the speed to at least 24Mbps and finally be faster than BT.

The Official Response

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Are @virginmedia testing a 300Mbps service, or is my @samknows box having a moment of wishful thinking? pic.x.com/jpe7rmgi3d

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Virgin Media ❤️

@virginmedia

Replying to @edent@edent We're just testing out some new speeds, Terence! :) Make the most of it for now! Tweet if we can help ¦ AJ

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Last year, I noticed that the SamKnows website were looking for volunteers to take part in their European broadband survey. The product is the rather uninspiring named "Whitebox".

The SamKnows Whitebox is an industry-approved measuring device, designed to measure performance of your broadband connection. It has been developed to enable you to accurately measure the performance of your ISP. The European Commission selected SamKnows in 2011 to measure broadband performance across all member states within the European Union.

It really is simple to set up - as my unboxing video video shows.

The box works by downloading approximately 3GB per month and uploading around 1GB. It senses when the wireless and wired connections are being used so as to make sure that the tests are fair and don't interrupt your browsing.

Technical Details

The box runs the GPL'd OpenWRT firmware. SamKnows haven't skimped on their obligations under the GPL - all the code can be found at https://files.samknows.com/~gpl/.

A quick nmap shows that the box is indeed running Linux. It has port 2222 open for the Dropbear SSH daemon. This fits in with their FAQ which says

By default the device does not allow any remote access to it. For troubleshooting we may ask you for permission to access the device via a secure SSH tunnel. This will not give us access to your home computers.

Reporting

I'm supposed to be getting 16Mbps on an ADSL2+ line (theoretical max of 24Mbps). I'm reasonably close to the exchange and all our local boxes have been upgraded for FTTC.

I'm reasonably pleased with the speeds I get, but I'd love to know how consistent they are. When I've got a slow YouTube video - is the problem with YouTube, my ISP, or my WiFi?

SamKnows have a fairly comprehensive testing suite and, after a month, I'll be able to view my report online and, eventually, via my smartphone.

This is a really welcome development for the ISP industry. After years of misleading adverts and dodgy speed provisioning, we may finally start to get some transparency.