I have quite a few clients in and around Oxford using Virgin Media Business broadband. I normally don’t recommend Virgin Media as a primary business broadband provider due to inconsistent and somewhat unreliable service (fine if you combine it with another non-Virgin broadband in a dual-WAN setup). Regardless, Virgin Media offers good headline speeds for a reasonable price so it’s not a surprise that some small businesses get tempted by their offer.

One other issue I recently came across (again) is an unusual limitation regarding Virgin Media Business broadband setup with a static public IP address…

You can buy a single or a block of static IP addresses with Virgin Media Business. You can also put the Virgin Media Hitron Chita router in modem mode (in order to use your own router / firewall). However, the modem mode is only possible if you have a dynamic public IP address or a block of static IP addresses. If you have only one static public IP, modem mode is not available! This is a technical limitation due to how Virgin Media implements static IP addresses (via GRE tunnel).

March 2024