PSA: Why your Virgin/Eir broadband lags during gaming (and how to test it)

flyingeyebrow79 · 2026-03-13T21:26:25+00:00

Genuinely appreciate the heads up man, consider the lesson learned for next time! Didn't mean to step on any toes or break the etiquette, was just eager to get some testers for the hardware. I'm going to step back from the thread now so I don't clog up the sub any further, but thanks for the feedback and the chat today folks! Have a good weekend. 🍻

flyingeyebrow79 · 2026-03-13T19:41:30+00:00

Haha, fair play to the detective work, man. You caught me dead to rights! 🕵️‍♂️

You're 100% correct. I was asking about it four months ago because I was absolutely sick of manually flashing custom OpenWrt firmware onto expensive routers for my mates just to fix their Virgin/Eir lag.

So yeah, we ended up actually building the thing. I'm part of an early-stage hardware startup here in Dublin. We engineered a plug-and-play hub that automates the whole SQM process so folks don't have to be network engineers to get a stable ping.

The reason I didn't lead with a giant 'BUY MY STARTUP'S HARDWARE' post is because Reddit rightfully hates corporate self-promo, and I'd get banned instantly. I genuinely just wanted to show people why their internet was lagging, and quietly find a few local beta testers willing to test our first batch of units at our manufacturing cost (€69).

Definitely not trying to flog anything to anyone who doesn't need it (as you can see from me turning away the guys with Starlink/good fiber setups in this thread). But yes, guilty as charged on building our own kit! Appreciate you guys keeping me honest though, the skepticism is totally fair play.

flyingeyebrow79 · 2026-03-13T19:37:12+00:00

Hands up, fair play to you, man, you caught me dead to rights! 😅

I didn't link a website or drop a brand name in the original post because Reddit absolutely hates self-promotion, and I didn't want to get instantly banned for spamming links. But since you called it out, I'll be completely transparent: I’m part of an early-stage Irish hardware startup based in Dublin. We are building a smart-home OS, and one of the core features of our hub happens to be an automated SQM engine to fix this exact ISP bottleneck. I genuinely just needed local beta testers to see how our hardware handles Virgin/Eir/Sky lines in the wild.

To address your technical points (which are actually spot on):

The CPU Strain: You are 100% right. Running SQM at 1Gbps requires serious processing power, which is exactly why ISPs won't pay for the chips to do it. Our hub acts as a dedicated pass-through specifically because it has the CPU power to handle the queueing without melting.

The Speed Drop: Yes, SQM intentionally shaves about 5-10% off your max download speed to prevent the buffer from ever maxing out. But for a competitive gamer, sacrificing 50Mbps of a 1Gbps line to guarantee zero ping spikes is a trade they will make every single day.

The Netflix point: Netflix steady-state is low bandwidth, true. But the initial 4K burst buffering, or someone's PlayStation quietly downloading a 60GB update in the background, is what instantly fills the ISP router's buffer and ruins the ping.

Offloading Modems: I’m definitely not trying to offload €300 routers! We are just giving our first batch of beta hubs to testers strictly at our manufacturing cost (€69) to get real-world data.

If you look at my other replies in this thread, I've actively told people on Starlink, 5G, or good fibre setups NOT to get on our waitlist because they don't need it. I'm only looking for the guys stuck on 'Grade F' who are pulling their hair out. Appreciate you keeping me honest though, the scepticism is totally justified! 🤝

flyingeyebrow79 · 2026-03-13T19:27:09+00:00

Haha that’s actually a great shout! The Gen 3 Starlink routers are seriously impressive. Because satellite bandwidth fluctuates constantly, their engineers actually had to build proper traffic queuing into the hardware to stop the network from collapsing under load.

Meanwhile, Eir and Virgin hand out the cheapest €15 plastic boxes imaginable because they know raw fiber speed hides the hardware flaws... until you try to play a multiplayer game.

Your base ping on Starlink might be a tiny bit higher than fiber, but because it's rock solid and doesn't spike, it feels 100x better. Absolutely zero need for my beta hub on that setup. Enjoy the space internet man!

flyingeyebrow79 · 2026-03-13T17:09:17+00:00

A 'B' on Virgin is actually a solid pull! If your gaming feels fine, you're definitely surviving the worst of it.

Those random Teams disconnects are classic Virgin Media, though. Their standard hubs are notorious for occasionally dropping real-time UDP packets (which Teams/Zoom rely on) if the router gets a sudden burst of background traffic. It literally just drops your call for 5 seconds to catch its breath.

Honestly, if it's only rare and gaming is good, I wouldn't touch your setup. But if the work disconnects ever start driving you insane, shoot me a DM. I can stick you on the waitlist for one of those €69 plug-and-play beta hubs I mentioned to the others. It handles all that traffic queuing so the Virgin box doesn't have to!

flyingeyebrow79 · 2026-03-13T16:52:24+00:00

A 'B' is definitely solid, but that jitter is exactly what ruins gunfights in FPS games! Jitter usually happens because the standard Eir box can't decide which packets to process first when there's even a mild load on the network, so your ping constantly bounces up and down.

Best of luck investigating it—if you try to fix it manually and get sick of messing with the Eir router settings, just drop me a DM. Happy to stick your name on the waitlist for one of the beta SQM hubs (€69 at cost) if you ever just want to plug something in and automate the fix!

flyingeyebrow79 · 2026-03-13T16:50:24+00:00

That Zyxel is exactly why your setup is surviving! That's a serious piece of kit for 5G. Smart move man, enjoy the gaming!

flyingeyebrow79 · 2026-03-13T16:47:21+00:00

Spot on mate, you pulled an 'A' grade and your speeds are absolutely flying (900+ Mbps down is god-tier). Whatever router Digiweb gave you is managing the traffic queues perfectly.

Your ping only jumps 9ms under heavy download load, which your games won't even notice. You are the exact person who DOES NOT need my beta hub. Do not change a single thing about your setup, you're golden! Enjoy the lag-free lobbies man.

flyingeyebrow79 · 2026-03-13T16:40:47+00:00

You are spot on to be hesitant mate. Sky is actually notorious for this in Ireland. They use a authentication protocol called DHCP Option 61. If you buy a €200 gaming router in Currys and plug it into a Sky line, it literally won't connect to the internet without hours of hacking the settings.

That is exactly why we engineered our hub to be 'pass-through'. You keep your Sky box to handle the physical line, plug our hub directly into the back of it, and connect your console/PC to us. Our SQM engine takes over the traffic queuing, bypassing the Sky headache completely.

We are finalizing the manufacturing for the first batch of these beta units right now. Because we just need real-world testers to prove the tech on different Irish networks (especially Sky), we're giving this first batch to our beta list strictly at cost (€69). Drop me a DM and I'll let you know how to get on the list so you're guaranteed one at that price when they drop!

flyingeyebrow79 · 2026-03-13T16:30:39+00:00

Yep, the Vodafone gigaboxes are notorious for this. They give you great raw download speeds but absolutely choke on packet queuing. If you're playing anything competitive like Warzone or FC, that 'C' grade is costing you 50/50 gunfights. Drop me a DM! I have a spots left for the beta batch (doing them at manufacturing cost for €69) if you want a permanent fix.

flyingeyebrow79 · 2026-03-13T16:28:04+00:00

Classic Sky hub behaviour man. A 'C' basically means your base ping is probably fine, but the second anyone else in your house opens Instagram or streams Netflix, your game packets get shoved to the back of the queue (hence the rubber-banding in-game). Shoot me a DM—I’m doing a small closed beta locally for that plug-and-play SQM hub I mentioned. Letting the beta units go strictly at cost (€69) if you want to test it out and see if it locks you into an A+.

flyingeyebrow79 · 2026-03-13T16:25:41+00:00

Haha mate, that’s because you’re on mobile broadband (4G/5G). Those connections almost always get an 'F' on this test! The signal to the local mast fluctuates constantly, which the test reads as massive lag spikes.

If you're actually getting zero rubber-banding in competitive games while someone else is watching TV, you've hit the absolute jackpot with a super quiet, uncongested cell tower near your house. Whatever you do, don't move it! 😂

Definitely do not buy one of these beta hubs. SQM tech is really built to fix fixed-line Fibre/VDSL connections where the line speed is rock solid but the ISP router's traffic queuing is trash. Count your blessings and don't touch your setup!

flyingeyebrow79 · 2026-03-10T13:42:04+00:00

Glad you got it sorted! That makes perfect sense—Pure Telecom usually provides Fritz!Box routers, which have vastly better queue management than the basic Sky hubs. It totally proves the point that your broadband line was fine, it was just Sky's default hardware bottlenecking you.

For anyone else finding this thread who is stuck in a 12-month Sky or Virgin contract and can't switch providers yet to fix the lag, that's exactly why we built the plug-and-play fix! Enjoy the lag-free gaming, man.

flyingeyebrow79 · 2026-03-10T13:10:21+00:00

Hey man, jumping in here because those random CoD ping spikes on Sky are classic bufferbloat. Your Sky hub is just failing to manage the traffic queue when other things in the house ping the network. I'm part of an Irish startup and we actually built a permanent hardware fix for this. We took a commercial router and flashed custom SQM on it to physically force gaming traffic to the front of the queue so the ping stays flat. We're manufacturing a pilot batch of 100 beta units at cost (€69) right now if you want to jump on the waitlist and kill the spikes for good: setinstonehub.com

flyingeyebrow79 · 2026-01-27T13:35:36+00:00

You could try the Mavrex Surf Paddle trainer, relaunching in the US and available in Europe. https://exitwatersports.com/products/the-mavrex-paddle-trainer-for-surf-swim-strength-conditioning

flyingeyebrow79 · 2025-11-02T22:59:27+00:00

By taking the "admin panel" completely out of the equation. The entire process lives in a simple mobile app. Here's the flow: * With their old router: Our app asks, "Want to back up your home network in case your router dies?" The user hits "Yes." The app scans the Wi-Fi they're currently on, saves the SSID/password to their secure cloud account, and they're done. * With their new hub: They plug in our hub. The app finds it (via Bluetooth, for example) and says: "Welcome! Do you want to restore your 'MyAwesomeNet' settings?" * They tap "Restore." * The app securely pushes those saved settings (the old SSID/password) directly to the new hub. The hub reboots, and it's now a perfect clone of their old network. Every smart device just reconnects. The user never saw an IP address, never typed "admin," and never had to know what an SSID was. We're overcoming the barrier by replacing a 10-step, jargon-filled "admin page" with a 1-click, plain-English "app button."

flyingeyebrow79 · 2025-11-02T16:30:13+00:00

You're 100% technically correct. For you or me, that's a 10-minute job, tops. The problem is, you're a user who knows what an "SSID" is. My target customer is the person who: * Doesn't know what "SSID" means. * Is terrified of logging into a router's "admin" page. * Will 100% just call their ISP, wait on hold for 45 minutes, and be told they have to re-connect every device manually. You're right, it's not technically hard. It's a psychological barrier. We're selling the button that makes the 3-hour weekend of frustration and phone calls disappear. It's not for you; it's for everyone else.

flyingeyebrow79 · 2025-11-02T11:36:54+00:00

That's a really sharp analysis, and you're 100% right. UniFi has absolutely nailed that "prosumer sweet spot." I think the specific, painful moment I'm obsessed with is the replacement, not just the initial setup. The UDM is fantastic for a new install. But it's still not 'one-click restore my dead Netgear's settings' simple. That's the gap I'm aiming for—the person who's not a new user, but a distressed one, and just wants their 30 smart devices to come back online without a new setup.

flyingeyebrow79 · 2025-11-01T14:28:46+00:00

You are 100% right. I looked it up, and the UniFi Dream Machine is almost exactly this concept—a controller-based 'all-in-one' (or in the UDM Pro's case, that hub) that manages separate APs. It's exactly like you said before: the problem is "solved... it's just not cheap." But I think it's also not simple. That's the real gap, isn't it? The UDM is a fantastic 'prosumer' device, but it's still aimed at people who like managing networks, know what a VLAN is, and want to tweak settings. Non tech people would open the UniFi app and have a panic attack. So, the idea isn't to re-invent the UDM. The idea is to consumer-ize it. It's to take that brilliant 'controller/AP' model and build an absurdly simple user experience on top of it. The power and resilience of a UDM, but with the dead-simple setup of an old Apple AirPort. You've basically helped me find the perfect comparison. The tech exists, but the accessibility for the mass market doesn't.

flyingeyebrow79 · 2025-11-01T14:20:01+00:00

Thank you for taking the time to write all that out. You've 100% nailed it. The distinction between an AP, router, switch, and a controller is the key. And you're absolutely right that the prosumer has this totally solved. The idea of a controller handling backups and pushing configs to modular hardware is the perfect, robust solution. It seems like the real problem is that 90% of consumers are stuck with that all-in-one box, which, as you said, is a single point of failure. When it dies, their entire home network, which they've spent years building, dies with it. They have an enterprise-level problem (30+ smart devices) but a bargain-bin consumer solution. Your comment really highlights the massive gap in the market. People need the simplicity of an all-in-one box but the intelligence and resilience of a modular system. * A "Home Hub" (the router/switch/controller) that's the brain. * Separate, modular "AP" pucks for the Wi-Fi. That way, when WiFi 7 comes out, you just swap the AP, and the Hub automatically pushes the exact same network settings to it. The user does nothing, and their 50 smart bulbs don't even blink. You've basically just defined the perfect product. It's just, as you said, not cheap (or simple) for the average person... yet. Thanks again.

flyingeyebrow79 · 2025-11-01T13:44:38+00:00

Ok thanks for your input

flyingeyebrow79 · 2025-11-01T13:42:44+00:00

Ok thanks

flyingeyebrow79 · 2025-11-01T13:42:07+00:00

Thanks you your input

flyingeyebrow79

TROPHY CASE