Static IP with Vigin Media UK

Hi guys. I'm not a teccy by any stretch of the imagination so please bare with me. I'm in the UK and my ISP is Virgin Media. A few times in the last couple years, there has been a district outage. When Virgin eventually comes back online, my hub goes bananas and changes IP address, so does a few of the WIFI devices I have (led strips) . My HE+ dashboards stop working because the IP addresses don't configure.

So I've read that a static IP address is more reliable, I don't particularly understand what this means and I certainly don't know how to do it. Can anyone in the UK using Virgin Media advise me with screenshots please..... Appreciated... Stu

If the ISP provided routers in the UK are like the vast majority of consumer level routers in the US, this sounds like an issue with your hub’s local IP address being changed when your router reboots after an outage.

What you probably want is to set DHCP reservations for your hub and other devices like LED strips. Which is technically different than static IP addresses.

Does your router have a settings page to login to?

You don’t need a static IP with Virgin Media. Although the IP your hub has is DHCP, it’s locked to the MAC address of your hub. Virgin Media hub external IP addresses can change but very rarely do. They may change (but don’t always) if they send you a new/replacement hub or if they reconfigure their network. The latter has only happened 2 or 3 times in the last 5 years.

The issues you’re having are more related to not having reserved IP addresses for your LED strips and possibly your Hubitat hub. The former will stop those devices working until you update the IP addresses for the LED strips, while the latter will make your dashboards inaccessible (because they’re looking for the hub at it’s previously assigned address). It’s easy to resolve.

  • Browse to your VM Hub at 192.168.0.1. What you see depends on which model of hub you have (2AC, 3, 4 or 5) but they’re all vey similar.
  • Log in (the settings password is on the label on the bottom of the router)
  • It’ll ask you to change the password but you can just click ‘skip’
  • In the DHCP reservation section of the menu (you may need to click advanced and ok a ‘are you sure’ prompt) find your hub in the list.
  • Select it and add a reservation then apply/save
  • Repeat that for your WiFi LED strips.

The above will ensure that whenever your devices or the hub reboots, they will always be assigned the same DHCP IP addresses. If you get e replacement hub or press the reset button, you’d need to do the above again. It’s important to note that if you call Virgin with an issue, they may ‘press’ that reset button remotely without informing you.

John this is extremely helpful. I've managed to accomplish this. Albeit the Virgin media page is a bit clunky, I'm now in business :slight_smile:

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I'm with Virgin Media and every thing that can connect to my hub, HE, Sonos, Tado etc. I assign a static IP address to save any issues.
My hub is a 3.0.
Here is how to do it with this type of hub.
Log On.
On the left hand menu click on Advanced then DHCP.
You will now get a list of attached devices.

Summary

Find the device you want to put a reservation on by looking at the mac addresses if it says unknown.
Click on the radio button associated with the device and it will automatically fill in the Add Reserved Field. You can also pick an IP address if there is a specific one you want to use.
Make sure it is not already being used though.
Then click on Add Rule.

Summary

It should now appear in the reserved list.

Summary

When you have reserved everything you need, click an Apply changes at the bottom of the page.

EDIT: And what John said above. :blush:

EDIT2. You can also backup your router config to a PC when you have made your changes.
My router went faulty recently and I didn't have a backup.
But to save me having to log on to all my various wifi devices again with a new SSID and password, I changed these settings to be the same as my old hub. Saved a lot of work as devices only look for an SSID name/password. It doesn't matter whether the router has changed or not.

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Outstanding and ice yet again. You guys are so helpful

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Just remember if it should go screwy in the future, log back in to the hub and check the reservations are still there. Virgin would only reset the config if you call them with a problem, but they've been known to do that and not explain to the customer what they've done. They'll just tell you the hub is rebooting and to try it again after 10 minutes. There's no way to prevent them doing that unfortunately if you're using their hub as router. Using your own router and putting their hub into modem mode gets around it (until you report an issue and then they tell you they can't perform diagnostics until you put the hub back into router mode....VM customer service is the worst!)

"they may ‘press’ that reset button remotely without informing you."

As I have found out with my ongoing problems with them

Yeah the first time I saw it, I'd set up/adjusted the WiFi channels and password for a mate. He called me some time later as he 'couldn't get any internet'. They'd reset it when he reported an issue and I found that the WiFi password had been restored to the one on the label. Subsequently I've had a number of customers contact me reporting no access to their CCTV and when I attend I've found the port forwarding table empty of rules I'd created. Modem mode combined with your own router is the way forward.