WiFi router for sky Q

[Steve (sdh2903)]

I know there are sites out there for this kind of stuff but they tend to all talk in a techy language I don't speak! 

 

We have sky Q and sky fibre broadband. 

 

The WiFi is crap. I ring sky they get me to tweak some settings in the router (sky hub) it gets marginally better for a couple of days then its crap again. Teams meetings keep dropping out and the lad is complaining of his online xboxing being slow. 

 

So any of you techie people out there, can you reccomend me a replacement router that will be better than the sky hub that will be OK working with sky Q? We also have 2 Q minis (one is hardwired one is WiFi) I believe these run off a mesh?

[Blatman]

Replacement router won't help. You need a wifi access point (some will say wifi extender) wherever you need the wifi to be.

I could get technical but here's the laymans... all wifi routers are pretty much the same signal strength so they all have the same transmit power. That's why swapping to a different one won't work. There is no such thing as a "more powerful" router despite what the adverts say. Transmit power is limited by law to a maximum of 100Mw (100 milliwatts).

Your phone/tablet/laptop will have much less transmit power so the issue may not be the router, it may be that the device you are using doesn't have enough power to reach back to the router. 95% of wifi problems I encounter are this and nothing to do with the network or router.

Any router will work with SkyQ but to get a better understanding of what is going on I'd need an idea of the layout and how you want it to work. I'm betting the devices are too far apart or there are too many walls between the devices causing the signls to weaken (attenuate) on their journey from the device back to the router/SkyQ box.

I'd recommend getting some homeplugs to overcome the defficiencies. Leave the router alone.

https://www.hughes.co.uk/blog/review-tp-link-powerline-adapters/

 

My experience/expertise? I've been a Cisco engineer for about 15 years and I'm really good at wifi. My last wifi project was this, and believe me for marine applications, wifi is a big challenge! This particular vessel has something like 60 wifi access points in use, none of them are mesh and you can walk from bow to stern on any deck without losing connectivity.

 

 

[Rob Hunter - Club Secretary]

We use TP link plugs around the house too with the Sky Q router

 

No more huffing teenagers (well, for that reason anyway! 😂) means they're money well spent 👍

[Steve (sdh2903)]

2 hours ago, Blatman said:

all wifi routers are pretty much the same signal strength so they all have the same transmit power. That's why swapping to a different one won't work.

 

Cheers for the reply. 

 

We've never had issues before in the same house. Although granted this one is running the skyq as well as the normal WiFi stuff. 

 

The signal strength seems fine. Downland speeds are fine whenever checked. But it just seems to randomly disconnect. My daughter is doing zoom and teams for her Uni stuff and it just keeps cutting out.

 

We don't have a huge house. It's 20yo so no big stone walls etc. The router is downstairs reasonably central but off to one side (opposite to staircase)

 

We also have a sky booster at the back of the house but whether on or off it doesnt really make any odds. 

 

Ill look into the plugs in order to try and stop the ear bashing from the weans. 

[Blatman]

Do you know if the walls are insulated? I don't know precisely how long foil backed materials have been in geneal use but these days they're very common which can make life difficult. 

I have a friend who was using the SkyQ "mesh". I convinced him to convert to homeplugs and it's been a huge improvement.

In the day job the very first thng we do with SkyQ is disable the wireless and either use wires or connect the boxes to the dwelling wifi rather than let Sky make it's own mind up.

[TableLeg]

Could it be your neighbours signal interrupting yours?

What channels are you transmitting on? I used to get this due a neighbours WiFis on the same channel. I manually set it to a different channel and didn't get the issue after that. Just a thought.

[Steve (sdh2903)]

We have converted the integral garage to a bedroom which does have foil backed insulation,but the rest of the house doesn't have it. That's the room that has the q mini box hardwired to the main Q box. This is the lads room that also has issues with gaming. I'm led to believe the q mini should act as a WiFi hot-spot which it does as signal massively improved. But I guess its not enough to keep up. 

 

3 hours ago, TableLeg said:

Could it be your neighbours signal interrupting yours?

What channels are you transmitting on? I used to get this due a neighbours WiFis on the same channel. I manually set it to a different channel and didn't get the issue after that. Just a thought.

 

I guess this is a possibility, I think the last time I spoke to sky about it this is what they had me do. Marginal improvement but only temporary. 

[Blatman]

3 hours ago, TableLeg said:

Could it be your neighbours signal interrupting yours?

 

Very unlikely in a normal house, even a small terraced house. Not unheard of, but unlikely. Below is a screen grab of both wifi frequencies and the wifi networks I can "hear" from where I am sitting now. Even though some of them are quite strong, they don't noticably interfere.

Worth noting that of the 5Ghz operators, no-one has bothered to move their frequencies.

Any signal weaker than 85db (signal strength is an inverse logarithmic scale, the higher the number the weaker the signal) can be ignored.

A scan of the channels in use with a free wifi tool like Wifi Analyzer or Wifiman from Ubiquiti (my current favourite) will give a quick and dirty look. Remember that most modern devices use 5.0Ghz frequency. This has both more channels and less range (because the signal is more easily attenuated) than the "traditional" 2.4hz frequency so there is more "room" and more speed on 5Ghz but at the expense of a small bit of signal range. 

 

The problem with moving channels is that if the neighbours routers are interfereing (unlikely) and are set to dynamically change channels when they detect interference above the level that will trigger them to search for a less congested frequency, they'll move. So you end up chasing them around all the time. I have never yet found a router or wifi access point, even an enterprise grade device, that manages this "channel hopping" even slightly well.

 

Here are the pics I mentioned. Guess which is my wifi and why did I choose channel 11?

 

 

 

[Blatman]

9 hours ago, Steve (sdh2903) said:

We have converted the integral garage to a bedroom which does have foil backed insulation,but the rest of the house doesn't have it. That's the room that has the q mini box hardwired to the main Q box. This is the lads room that also has issues with gaming. I'm led to believe the q mini should act as a WiFi hot-spot which it does as signal massively improved. But I guess its not enough to keep up

 

It's inside a metal box. It just won't work. You're trying to pass a signal through a faraday cage. Remember wifi is just a glorified two-way radio. If one half of the transmission is blocked neither side will work. Wifi is NOT full duplex. It looks like it bcasue the technology is fast, but it's half duplex only.

Hard wire it if you can with some homeplugs and disable it's (the SkyQ box) wifi and you'll never have to touch it again... well not for wifi anyway. It'll still crash once a week but that's nothing to do with the network/internet  

[Steve (sdh2903)]

With regards to the homeplugs do they need to be in the same ring to work or does it not matter. 

 

When your talking about disabling the WiFi is that the WiFi on the Q box? So the sky hub router would still do the general WiFi but not the TV? 

 

Would something like this be what I'm after? One plugged in at each Q mini box and then that would boost WiFi into the insulated room as well?

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/TL-WPA4220T-KIT-Powerline-Broadband-Configuration/dp/B07N1HDMFR?ref_=ast_sto_dp&th=1&psc=1

[Captain Colonial]

They don’t have to be on the same ring as long as they are on the same meter.  I’ve got two TP Link extenders on two different circuit breaker boards (one for upper house, one for the basement man cave, but both going into the same supply for the whole house) and it works fine.

 

Also, the extenders  must go direct into a wall socket - they won’t work if you plug them into four-way strips, etc

 

The only thing that annoys me is one or the other of the extenders lose the plot once a fortnight and I need to shut them off for ten seconds and back on again - frustrating.

[neptune]

I've had issues with split load consumer units that have a separate RCDs . They work fine on multiple circuits supplied by a single RCD but wouldn't work between circuits on different RCDs.

[corsechris]

3 hours ago, neptune said:

I've had issues with split load consumer units that have a separate RCDs . They work fine on multiple circuits supplied by a single RCD but wouldn't work between circuits on different RCDs.

Me too. 

[Stuart]

I just replaced all our powerline adapters with a mesh system. They just dropped out too often in our 1955 thrice extended house. Wouldn't connect at all from some plugs. So far the mesh is stable and I now have fastest possible WiFi all over the house

[Blatman]

8 hours ago, Steve (sdh2903) said:

When your talking about disabling the WiFi is that the WiFi on the Q box? So the sky hub router would still do the general WiFi but not the TV? 

 

Your TV was never doing wifi...

Yes disable the wifi network on all SkyQ boxes and connect them to the wifi coming from the Sky Hub. As long as the SkyQ boxes can receive and reply to the Sky Hub then they'll be fine. BUT I suspect part of the issues is that one or more of them are already too far away from each aother AND the router. Adding homeplugs with wifi capabilty in the correct places will inprove wifi and if it was me, I'd hard wire the SkyQ boxes through the homeplugs. Leave wifi to devices that are incapable of taking a wire.

 

8 hours ago, Steve (sdh2903) said:

Would something like this be what I'm after? One plugged in at each Q mini box and then that would boost WiFi into the insulated room as well?

 

Yes the little one by the router, the other two where you want wifi. BUT if they are in the same room as the SkyQ boxes then use an ethernet cable rather than wireless for the SkyQ.