The Virgin Hub 3.0 is a popular sight in households across the UK, providing internet and TV services to millions.
However the device is now more than three years old. meaning a successor should be ripe for arrival, particularly with consumers looking to get more devices connected than ever before.
Now, a mystery new device listed on the manufacturer behind past generations of the Super Hub has been spotted online - so could this be the Super Hub 4?
- These are the best business routers
- Check out the best wireless mesh routers out there
- We rounded up the best VPN routers of 2019
Built by Arris - now owned by Commscope - the Virgin Media Hub 3.0, (or the TG2492LG-VM to give it its official name) is built around an Intel Puma chipset with 802.11ac and Gigabit Ethernet ports to make the most of its capabilities.
However, the increasing average number of devices connected to a wireless router (thanks to the growing popularity of devices like the Google Home or the Amazon Alexa) coupled with demand for higher bandwidth applications (like 4K videos) have exposed the weaknesses of the SH3.
Arris is likely to be the vendor supplying the successor to the Hub 3.0, now that it is part of tech giant, Commscope.
And the Hub 4.0, as it is likely to be called, could be the TG9442 (or a variant) which has just been released and is listed on the company's site now.
Ready for Gigabit broadband
Based around the BCM3390, a Broadcom system-on-a-chip (rather than an Intel one), the new device is a DOCSIS 3.1 system which enables multi-gigabit per second connectivity, ideal for the Gigabit-level services that Virgin Media has been trialing nationwide.
The TG9442 also features 4x4 802.11ax (WIFI-6) Dual Band wireless radios and has the ability to automatically configure Wi-Fi extenders to offer optimal on-premise coverage. It has three Ethernet ports, one fewer than the SH3. Two of them are Gigabit and the third one is a 2.5Gbps one.
It is worth noting that one of the unique selling points of this device is the presence of “multiple embedded processor cores” that are “designed to allow new applications to be deployed on the gateway”, according to Arris.
One of these applications could be a VPN and additional processor cores would come handy as VPN accelerators to improve performance.
- Best wireless routers 2019: the best routers for your home network
