Welcome to part 3 of my journey to getting Virgin Media’s (nexfibre) XGS PON FTTP.
In part 1 I talked about the pre sales process and then in part 2 covered the pre install.
In this blog I will cover the install of the service and initial testing.
Just a reminder that if your interested in getting Virgin Media you can get £50 cashback using our referral link.
Install Day (at last)
After a 2 week delay on Friday 5th July I got a call from Dara a VM installer the same one who came 3 weeks ago to do the site survey.
He called ahead to let me know he was on the way which is a nice courtesy.
At just after 13:30 (only 30 mins into the 1-6pm window) Dara turned up to do the install.
Dara was kind enough to let me film the install so rather than a lengthy blog post here is a video of the install : (If the video does not show below then you can view it here
I would like to say a huge thanks to Dara for allowing me to film him and for doing a grand job on the install.
Initial testing of the service has shown that the Modem Mode is still not properly implemented on the Hub 5x and getting it to work is very hit and miss and when it does work only works on port 1 which is a 1Gbps port limiting the connection to 945mbps.
Modem Mode does not appear natively in the web gui but you can get to it by going to
http://192.168.0.1/?page=modemmode
You may have success using this again only on port 1 its worth trying to disable DMZ,DHCP and UNPNP before enabling it.
The double NAT trick does not work for me as the 192.168.0.0/24 subnet the hub 5x uses for LAN conflicts with my own subnet and there is no way of changing this on the hub 5x which is very locked down.
I urge anyone from Virgin Media reading this to sort the Modem Mode out on the Hub 5x so it works properly and on the 10GbE port as well there are a community of users like me that prefer to use our own routers.
Modem Mode issue aside the service delivers 1.2Gbps speeds both directions.
You can bypass the Hub5x router to properly use your own router by following our guide here
I will shortly be releasing a full review of the service so keep an eye out for that.
Review of the service
I have now released a video reviewing the Gig 1 symmetric XGS PON based service which you can see below (or link here)
Just had the external work done here.
How far did you have them put the wire on the outside of the house from the external box before it enters the house?
If they went straight through the wall where they installed the external box here, there’s no power sockets for quite a distance and i don’t want wires everywhere!
Hi Matt,
I would say its around 10M run between the ETB and internal faceplate on my install. They are usually pretty flexible worth discussing it with them on install day.
Had my install a week or so ago. VM had, several months ago, installed a small cabinet around the corner at the end of this row of houses, then run their own cables (might just be straws, I now realise) under the paving stones to a tiny access panel between each pair of houses. Odd, as we’ve got underground openreach ducting here, with a chamber directly outside.
I never saw or heard from anybody doing a survey or pre-install visit. Engineers just turned up on install date, patched into the port on the pavement, drilled through the garden wall, and fed the new straw up the inside of the fence to the house (as they’ve done for all the installations along here.) Box on the house external wall, then they took the fibre up and through above the door, and into existing trunking which led them right to where i needed the router.
Took them maybe a couple of hours total, put everything where I asked them to, and were polite and efficient.
Shame about the hub 5..