Having trouble with the Virgin Media Superhub not providing wireless access to the whole bungalow. Outside of the room the hub is in, access is very poor/non-existent.

At first we thought it may be a faulty piece of hardware. We got Virgin to send a new one out but there was no difference. We then had the hub moved more centrally in the bungalow. Again outside of this room acccess is very poor/non-existent.

The Virgin media technician said to try changing the channel the hub operates on to different values (default was 11) by going into the hub using the IP address printed on it. Still no joy.

He said if that did not work then configure the superhub to operate as a modem only and buy a separate wireless router connecting with an ethernet cable. We have not tried this yet but after popping into Maplins and speaking to the guys there they have some powerline adapter things that use the mains as a network and create a second wireless hotspot wherever you put the second plug in adapter. I’m thinking this may be better than the technicians advice. Both options look to cost about £50.

Does anyone have any experience of doing either of these options, or have any other helpful advice?

Cheers

We also have the SuperHub and I did find that a less busy channel helped to get a more consistent signal to the far corner of the house. By installing a WiFi Analyzer on my phone, I actually found 12 overlapping signals in that corner, mostly channels 3, 6 and 11.

I now have a Smart TV and I’m considering the external router idea – or just running some Cat5 down to where I need it.

I have to say that the SuperHub is otherwise faultless and is easy to configure.

yeah i get that – superhubs are rubbish – use a belkin wifi router now as well, would of kepy my old telewest modem, but it couldn’t cope with the 50MB speed.

I can confirm that the wireless on the ‘Super’ hubs is indeed crap.

I use it in modem mode with the old router doing the wireless duties, works much better.

Check what mode your PC is using, e.g a/b/g/n makes a huge difference

The powerline thing will achieve the same intent as the Virgin technician’s suggestion. It’s just more likely to work for you given what you’ve described. Are your walls particularly dense or have a lot of metal mesh under the plaster? Or is your ‘bungalow’ really enormous?

Mine covers whole of 3 bed house with no problems at all, am using a macbook with the N network

The superhub is no worse than many other wireless router/modems.

We had a similar problem, most of the house is upstairs, with one room downstairs. Hub is upstairs. Getting 55mb upstairs, 1-2mb downstairs. Called Virgin, they said there was a fault with the signal into the building (signal to strong apparently?!?) so sent an engineer out. He did some fiddling to sort the signal issue but still only had 8-10mb downstairs. He switched to modem mode, grabbed a wireless router from his van and set it all up. Still only getting 15-20mb downstairs. He downloaded some software for our XP desktop that vista and 7 already have to optimise wifi. This helped a bit but he eventually said that the wireless card was knackered. Off to the van again and he’s got a wireless dongle. This set up on an extension lead so the dongle was on the desk (tower under desk) and some more settings fiddled and we now get 50ishmb everywhere.

So the best part of two hours work, a load of hardware and the best news is this cost us NOTHING!

Previous experience with Sky when we couldn’t purchase movies was ‘We might not be able to fix it but there will be a £50 whether we can or not’

Hope this helps,
Matt

Thanks for all the helpful advice. Walls are very thick which I think is causing most of the problems.

I will try the WiFi analyser thing, as well as the laptop settings. Might try and borrow/get an old router off a mate to try first.

Cheers

Or the alternative is a wireless repeater, basically its another wireless box that picks up your wireless network and transmits again, thereby increasing range…

But as stated before I would check your PC is on the “N” network as it will be by far the cheapest solution.

Something like this repeater might be worth a try…

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Huawei-WS320-Wi-Fi-Repeater/dp/B007SU0BJU/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

Thanks for the link. Certainly cheaper than the options I had considered!

If you try, do let us know how you get on!

I certainly will. It needs sorting – had to move the superhub back to the old location this morning in order to work from home!

Wireless on Superhub is indeed crap.
With my high-spec works Dell precision laptop sitting right next to the router, & any non wireless “N” devices off, I still only got 20Mb/s from our 100Mb/s internet.
Plugging in with an ethernet cable sees >90Mb/s every time, last test it was actually 101Mb/s.

Yep same problem, tried those plug things didn’t work though as back of house is a different electrical circuit to th front (had a big extension built) a Belgian wifi extender had better results but iPhone etc kept flicking between the two. Turned the super hub through 90 degrees and that’s improved it to workable levels. Next step is to change channels etc

Superhub here, it’s situated on the ground floor in a corner of a 3 storey Victorian terrace (ie built to survive the apocalypse) I get coverage everywhere, albeit a bit weaker on the 3rd storey, at the back of the house etc. I have an wireless repeater to get full coverage all over the house, but haven’t installed it yet.

We have one of these to extend our VM superhubs range. Works a treat
http://www.amazon.co.uk/TL-WA830RE-300Mbps-Wireless-Range-Extender/dp/B006BBYXPA/ref=sr_1_26?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1356975201&sr=1-26

Superhub is complete rubbish. We had the same problems and in the end put it into modem mode and connected a TPLink router to it and not had a problem since. If you search for Superhub problems you’ll find many others have had the same problem.