Sky Q and Mini Boxes wirelessly on WiFi 6 Mesh

[Magicman12345679]

Hi, I currently have Virgin Broadband 350Mb set in modem mode fed into an Amplifi HD plus mesh points,. I also have Sky Q with 4 Mini Boxes, which are all connected wirelessly to the Amplifi network. It works okay. 

I tried installing a Tenda Nova AX3000 to utilise WiFi 6. It doubled my WiFi speed, but try as I might I could not get the Sky Q and Mini Boxes to retain a stable connection. I know the advice for third-party mesh systems is to connect all the boxes by Ethernet and turn off the Sky WiFi but that is not an option for me.

Does anyone know a WiFi 6 mesh system which can be configured wirelessly to work seamlessly with Sky Q? If so, could they please explain how it needs to be done. I'm no expert, as you can tell, so apologies in advance for any errors

[nigea99]

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@Magicman12345679 wrote:

Hi, I currently have Virgin Broadband 350Mb set in modem mode fed into an Amplifi HD plus mesh points,. I also have Sky Q with 4 Mini Boxes, which are all connected wirelessly to the Amplifi network. It works okay. 

I tried installing a Tenda Nova AX3000 to utilise WiFi 6. It doubled my WiFi speed, but try as I might I could not get the Sky Q and Mini Boxes to retain a stable connection. I know the advice for third-party mesh systems is to connect all the boxes by Ethernet and turn off the Sky WiFi but that is not an option for me.

Does anyone know a WiFi 6 mesh system which can be configured wirelessly to work seamlessly with Sky Q? If so, could they please explain how it needs to be done. I'm no expert, as you can tell, so apologies in advance for any errors

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hi @Magicman12345679 

If your wifi is not SKY then the minis will use wifi generated by the main box & not your mesh - hence the need to connect main & minis via Ethernet if wifi connection (to the main box) is insufficient

[Chodley]

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@Magicman12345679 wrote:

Hi, I currently have Virgin Broadband 350Mb set in modem mode fed into an Amplifi HD plus mesh points,. I also have Sky Q with 4 Mini Boxes, which are all connected wirelessly to the Amplifi network. It works okay. 

I tried installing a Tenda Nova AX3000 to utilise WiFi 6. It doubled my WiFi speed, but try as I might I could not get the Sky Q and Mini Boxes to retain a stable connection. I know the advice for third-party mesh systems is to connect all the boxes by Ethernet and turn off the Sky WiFi but that is not an option for me.

Does anyone know a WiFi 6 mesh system which can be configured wirelessly to work seamlessly with Sky Q? If so, could they please explain how it needs to be done. I'm no expert, as you can tell, so apologies in advance for any errors

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As @nigea99  says - this can't have been happening.

Maybe the new mesh is trying to overlap frequencies / channels too much with the Q mesh?

[Magicman12345679]

Thanks. Yes, I assumed there was interference on the 5GHz band, which seems to be what the Q uses between its boxes,  80MHz on channel 36. I did try changing the channel of the Tenda Nova  5GHz WiFi , but it still didn't give me stability. The general advice is so strong to use Ethernet to connect the Q boxes that I was wondering if there might have been more to it than that.

[Magicman12345679]

Sorry, I didn't pick up on what you highlighted in bold. Thanks for the reply. Yes, I do now understand that the Sky Q box and mini boxes are connected with each other on their own network, not the Amplifi one. Nevertheless, I don't feel the issue is not range. The Tenda Nova equipment is more powerful, as shown by the better WiFi performance and coverage. So I think it must be interference on the 5GHz  band. And that's why I asked if anyone else could recommend a mesh WiFi 6 product and how it should be set up. In particular, what bands and channels appear to give stability

[nigea99]

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@Magicman12345679 wrote:

Sorry, I didn't pick up on what you highlighted in bold. Thanks for the reply. Yes, I do now understand that the Sky Q box and mini boxes are connected with each other on their own network, not the Amplifi one. Nevertheless, I don't feel the issue is not range. The Tenda Nova equipment is more powerful, as shown by the better WiFi performance and coverage. So I think it must be interference on the 5GHz  band. And that's why I asked if anyone else could recommend a mesh WiFi 6 product and how it should be set up. In particular, what bands and channels appear to give stability

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You nay be right that it is not a range issue but more an interference issue. 

Unfortunately not something I can assist with - although hopefully others can help you. 

[Ecosse]

I had this when I introduced a BT Disc to my setup.  All 3 mini boxes pretty much immediately went on vacation and only returned after powering down the Disc.  They do not like any overlap.

[Chodley]

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@Magicman12345679 wrote:

Sorry, I didn't pick up on what you highlighted in bold. Thanks for the reply. Yes, I do now understand that the Sky Q box and mini boxes are connected with each other on their own network, not the Amplifi one. Nevertheless, I don't feel the issue is not range. The Tenda Nova equipment is more powerful, as shown by the better WiFi performance and coverage. So I think it must be interference on the 5GHz  band. And that's why I asked if anyone else could recommend a mesh WiFi 6 product and how it should be set up. In particular, what bands and channels appear to give stability

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I could never get it to behave alongside my mesh - impressed you got the Amplifi one to play nicely with it. I ended up using powerline ethernet for both minis and Q-> mesh node over ethernet.

[Magicman12345679]

Thanks. I'm sure it was more by luck than judgement, but as long as I set the backbone on each Mesh Point Connection to 2.4GHz I don't seem to have any issues. Maybe steering clear of the 5GHz band and leaving it to the Sky gear is the trick

[Yorkshire+Bloke]

I need to look into that, I have unifi Aps here and my sky won't connect to the WiFi off them, 2.5 or 5g, well, it doesnfor 30 seconds or so then disconnects. So I still had to keep a WiFi network from my sky router for the skyq to connect to

[PandJ2020]

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@Yorkshire+Bloke wrote:

I need to look into that, I have unifi Aps here and my sky won't connect to the WiFi off them, 2.5 or 5g, well, it doesnfor 30 seconds or so then disconnects. So I still had to keep a WiFi network from my sky router for the skyq to connect to

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As noted above, Q won't connect reliably to a 3rd party mesh - it connects and then stops shortly afterwards.  The Q's have to be connected to the mesh nodes via Ethernet.  (You can disable the WiFi on the Q's to be sure)

[Magicman12345679]

I've spent some time on this, and agree that Ethernet connections to Q miniboxes or a separate subnet are the most stable choices. But if they are not possible, the following works for me:

I'm using a Virgin router in modem mode, connected to an Amplifi HD mesh system with several mesh points. First I set the 5 GHz channel on the main Amplifi HD to 48, as far from the 36/40 used by the Sky Q as possible. Then I set the Backbone Mesh Point Connection on each mesh point to 2.4 Ghz.

Then I connected the main Sky Q box wirelessly to the Amplifi mesh network. Then go into the engineer menu, settings, 0,0,1 and turn off 2.4Ghz (I also set a unique static IP on all boxes but that may not be necessary). I have four miniboxes and I set up each in turn, turning off 2.4Ghz once connected.  

My system with four miniboxes has been stable for a month. No dropouts. Obviously avoid rebooting your Sky box or router where possible, to avoid issues, but as long as you steer clear of the 5Ghz band that Sky Q requires you can get it to work wirelessly. At least, it works for me, and I'm no expert. 

I've tried powerline adapters to provide the Ethernet connection, but I find them flakier than the above setup. I've also tried a Sky Booster, but it caused far more problems than it solved. Good luck

[Dieselbex2024]

@Magicman12345679  Please can you give more detail on how you solved your mini box issue. I have a main q box and 3 mini boxes and everyday they drop Out say there is a technical fault or no satellite or broadband connect but the main box is fine.  We have virgin fibre but have a tp -link deco ac1900 3 unit mesh system attached because our WiFi upstairs was so poor. The main sky box is attached to the main deco box by Ethernet cable. The problem only really started when we introduced the 3rd mini box  but is now a daily issue in all the mini boxes. Also the new mini box won't do any downloads from on demand or sky cinema it keeps telling me the subscription needs upgrading (which it doesn't ). Would really appreciate your help as tried calling sky and they get me to reset and then the next day it's happens again.