Trying to hard wire sky max pods with cat5 cable

[Stevo_99]

Trying to extend my WiFi signal out of the house to a cabin in back garden by hard wiring 2 sky max pods with a cat5 cable but not connecting. Had the same set up with BT and it worked fine. Any ideas?

[Chrisee · Accepted solution]

@Stevo_99 when you say two pods are you connecting the ethernet between two pods as I suspect they may need to be wired back to the hub. Unfortunately there is little info from Sky on how the pods work. They are using technology from Plume but Sky's set up is different. 

When I had the pods I noticed that they take time to configure themselves so leaving them connected to see if they then behave.

[Stevo_99]

Pod connects ok across the wifi but as soon as I try to hard wire it to an extra pod it starts to drop out. I've noticed it does take a while for the connections to behave tirelessly too

[Chrisee]

@Stevo_99 as I said the connection may have to be back to the router rather than another extender. 

[Stevo_99]

Thanks, will need to see what I can do with the cabling

[MS31]

I'd be curious to know how you got on. Before I was on sky, I used powerline adaptors to extend wifi to office shed. Since switching to sky, I can use an ethernet connection thru powerline, but still have no wifi in shed. I was wondering whether I could relay on a few pods to extend wifi to shed? (not thinking about hardwiring them in, as I don't even know what that means....)

[TimmyBGood]

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@MS31 wrote:

I was wondering whether I could relay on a few pods to extend wifi to shed? 

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Sky won't supply 'a few pods' for that purpose: one may be loaned after a telephone diagnosis and up to two more fitted during an installer visit which wouldn't include an external building within its remit.

[MS31]

Hmmm - thanks. It's really frustrating as I've used powerline adapters in the past, which worked a treat in the shed. But they don't work now that I've switched to Sky (well, not for wifi anyway - they provide an ethernet connection).  Wish I knew that before I switched, as I likely wouldn't have bothered then!!

[TimmyBGood]

@MS31 

There's no reason why generic powerline with WiFi adapters should work with other ISPs but not Sky, but they may need a factory reset and set-up from scratch to do so.

[Chrisee]

@MS31 powerline adapters stopping working is not likly to be caused.by a change in ISP. You can connect a powerline adapter by ethernet to any Sky hub my iMac is networked from my Wifi Max hub using a pair of Devolo powerline adapters. In a  outside building you can simply attach a third party wifi access point to a powerline adapter if you want wifi. 

The Wifi Max set up is designed to provide whole home wifi not to extend to out buildings.  While the pods may work in a bridge set up they are not designed for that purpose they normally link back to the Sky Wifi Max hub by a third wifi signal. 

[MS31]

Thanks all! There is minimal wifi off the TPLink powerline adaptor that I'm using the shed (I use an ethernet connection off it for work, but need wifi too). The wifi off the powerline isn't enough to allow for teams calls, etc.  That's great advice - I'll try a third-part wifi booster! Thanks again.

[Stevo_99]

Sorry it's been a busy few weeks. Now all set up, ran a cat 5 cable from the main sky router in the house to a pod in the outdoor cabin. Bit of a hassle getting a route out of the house but all working now.

[Richard91]

Hi, I noticed your plight whilst checking my own new set up.

I have a fairly large home which struggles with WiFi.  I have just started with sky and got them to send me

a

pod which covers a great new of our home but not all (they are sending an engineer today to 'map it out').

My son have a recording studio in own large garden which we had run cat 7 cable

to, and ran ok using a WiFi adaptor. I have placed the pod in the kitchen, plugged in the cat 7, and still using the WiFi adaptor in the studio, we appear to get pretty good speed. You could try that and only use the pod at the home end?

hope this works for you. Good luck

Richard

[Jamalam1]

Hi, So...Reading your posts..gives me hope. Sky tech have washed their hands of my issue. Basically, previous owner of my new house had a BT hub with hardwire Ethernet. When I moved in...I discovered an additional ethernet cable. Here's the setup:

ONT box, Ethernet cable straight from ONT box into port 4 in Sky max 6 router.  Broadband works great..145 mbps. There's a grey Ethernet cable already plugged into one of the available Cat 5 ports and I've plugged it into Port 1 (back of router) however, there's no way to get connection down into the lounge, where there's a Ethernet cable with a Cat 5 box attached to an exposed Cat 5 connector. The cable then runs outside along the house fence and into an external garage/office and back into the garage. This is where the previous owner connected his BT booster.  I'm confused in how to gain connection from inside the lounge to the garage. Sky have sent me an Extender but this is unable to help through x2 external walls. Please help!!