Virgin outages/customer service

andy

Normally you can log into the admin side of a wifi router. The default is something like <em style="font-style: normal; font-family: arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small; ">http://168.192.0.1, which you can type into your browser. The default login is often admin/password. Find out who your ISP/Browser is a google how to log into it. If there is an admin side, it will let you muck about with the broadcast settings. Some ISPS don't let you do this, though.</em>

boxrunner

We're with Virgin.  We had a spate of problems with broadband, tv, and phone between July-October, and eventually got around £35 compensation from them.  Not massive, but it helped.  They said (eventually) that there appeared to be structural problems in the area that they needed to investigate.  I've no idea if this is true or if they did investigate.  It's been fine for us for the past month (touch wood).<br><br>

gardener-joe

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harpistic

Do try OpenDNS. I used to be on O2, and their service was flaky every weekend, OpenDNS was the only way I could have a consistent service. <br><br>It would be so very nice if Virgin could update their firmware so that their routers could self-restart if anything goes wrong, it would make such a huge difference!<br>

Ian

@boxrunner - same here. Had engineers round all the time but they conceded it was network issues. Also got money off plus they dialled up my broadband to 50meg and let me onto the free Spotify for 6 months deal. <br>

harpistic

This has just been published - oh so appropriate for this thread!<br><br><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/dec/04/wifi-signals-overload-home">http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/dec/04/wifi-signals-overload-home</a><br>;

Al

<P>This might be of interest  Virgi  don't come out too bad</P> <P><A href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/20/ofcom_q3_complaints_report/">http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/20/ofcom_q3_complaints_report/</A></P>; <P> </P>

SimonB

<div>If your wireless network connection is dropping or weak then Andy is right - you might be inadvertently receiving interference from your neighbours.</div><div><br></div><div>Technically there are 13 broadcast channels, but since they all overlap you really want to be choosing either 1, 6, or 11.</div><div><br></div><div>Many routers will by default be set to either 1 or 11</div><div><br></div>If you want to know what wireless channels your neighbours are using,<a href="http://www.metageek.net/products/inssider/"> download inSSIDer</a> - see the screenshot below:<div><br></div><div><img src="http://ubuntuportal.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/inssider.png"><br><div><br></div><div>Dark blue = Channel 1 (+ overlap), Yellow = Channel 6, Light blue = Channel 11</div><div><br></div><div>I was having random drop outs all the time so I used inSSIDer and saw that I was competing with at least 4 others with channel 1 ... switched to channel 6 (exclusively) and haven't had a problem since!</div></div>