VirginBroadband ssh timeouts

VirginBroadband

I attempted to upgrade to Virgin’s 50 Mbps Internet, so they replaced my old cable modem with their new SuperHub.

And immediately my ssh connections to remote servers started timing out after a couple of mins. Very annoying…

I’ve been on the phone to their support team and have so far been told:

  • “It’s a known problem with some hubs, we’ll send you another one.”
  • “It works for me. Can’t be a problem.”
  • “You’ve changed the hub’s IP address so that’s the problem.”
  • “It must be a problem with your computer.”

So now they’re sending me out an old-style cable modem. And in the meantime, I did some googling, and found this rather useful thread on Virgin’s forums.

So basically, yes it is a problem, their staff should be trained to know it’s a problem, but there’s a work-around using the ssh options ServerAliveCountMax and ServerAliveInterval which might save my sanity.