Confused Virgin Gigabit and Deco X55 ax300
I have Virgin Media Gigabit and recently bought a Deco X55-AX3000 (triple pack) to avoid running an Ethernet cable from downstairs to upstairs. I set my Virgin Media V4 router to modem mode and enabled router mode on the Deco X55 in my lounge. I then placed another Deco X55 in my office, which is directly above the lounge—about 15 feet apart.
To be honest, the speeds I’m getting are atrocious. My Virgin router used to provide strong coverage, but for some reason, the Deco mesh system is performing significantly worse. I can’t run an Ethernet cable between the units, and I haven’t installed the third Deco yet because I’m not happy with the performance so far.
I was expecting at least 500–600 Mbps on Wi-Fi, given that I have a gigabit connection, but I’m lucky if I get 80 Mbps. I’ll share the exact speeds shortly. Is there any way to get proper technical support or optimize my setup? I don’t understand why the performance is so poor.
Hi David,
Thanks again for your help — I really appreciate it.
So here’s where I’m at. I’m on Virgin Media M500, but because I’ve got Volt (as I’m also with O2), that bumps me up to gigabit speed — and to be fair, I have been getting gigabit at times.
I’ve put the Virgin Media hub into modem mode and connected the Deco X55 as my main router. All the speeds I’ve posted so far have been over 5GHz — I’d already disabled 2.4GHz — and all testing was done from upstairs, connected to the satellite Deco.
Unfortunately, I’m disabled, so getting up and down stairs isn’t the easiest for me.
Following your advice, I went ahead and turned off QoS, and to be fair — that made a noticeable difference. So that was a really useful tip, thank you.
That said — and I know some people might say I should be happy with what I’ve got — I was expecting slightly higher speeds than this. Not massively, just a bit more consistency.
I haven’t yet tested a wired connection from the upstairs satellite Deco to my Mac via Ethernet, but I’ll be doing that shortly.
Now, here’s something I noticed: I ran your TALS app and have attached a screenshot. It shows my broadband as M500, and I’m not sure whether that’s based on the actual detected speed or if it’s pulling that from Virgin’s backend info. It’s not entirely clear.
I’ve also attached a speed test screenshots. The first (faster) one is when I was connected to the main Deco downstairs, from upstairs. The second (slower) one is when I connected to the satellite Deco upstairs from upstairs . Which doesn’t really make much sense, as you’d expect better speeds from the closer unit. That said, things have improved — just not quite as much as I hoped.
Because of my disability, I rely heavily on the internet for work, file transfers, and daily life in general — so getting this running right is important to me.
Any thoughts or suggestions on how to further improve performance would be greatly appreciated.
One final note: I’m actually leaving Virgin at the end of the month and moving over to Sky’s 900Mbps full-fibre package — their highest tier. From what I understand, their infrastructure tends to be a bit more stable than Virgin’s, so I’m hopeful that might also help improve things.
Thanks again,
Dunc
