topic Re: Puck Not Holding LAN Connection in Sky Stream

Puck Not Holding LAN Connection

Spasmcasm — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 13:26:57 GMT

Hi,
Had SKY Streaming for a couple of months and initially had the new toy burst of enthusiasm which over the last couple of months has worn off and I've found issues I can't resolve.
On our second puck which has the same issue as the original.
So, we're unable to connect the puck to routher via an enthernet cable because of the house configuration. We originally connected via wifi, but had issues with lip synching. Our broadband is 100-150meg.
We couldn't resolve the lip synch issue so eventually sky sent an engineer to the house to test the connections, speeds and wifi performance. His advice was to hardwire the puck to a sky wifi extender which he supplied. (The white hexagonal type) Our routher is a new white one as well. He was happy with all connection speeds.
We were sent an uprated ethernet cable by sky and we connected the puck to the extender. We then went to settings and turned the wifi off. We then changed the connection mode to ethernet and eventually it found the connection and gave an IP address.
All seemed fine, the lip synch issue went.... Happy days.
Then, after turning it off and going to bed, next day turned it back on and the puck does not pick up the ethernet connection. It defaults back to wifi and when you go into settings, the wifi has been turned on.
Because it's still hardwired, you then get the blue screen of death where it says there is no connection. Going into settings shows wifi turned on and no connection. It does show an ethernet IP address but it doesn't connect.
The sky engineer said he thought the puck was faulty and to request a replacement, which we've received, but nothing has changed. The new puck doesn't pick up the ethernet signal either. The engineer tried a hard reboot with the ethernet cable connected and it found the connection and worked, but again, as soon as you turn it off for the day and then turn it back on next day it doesn't connect to anything, settings show the wifi turned back on and IP adresses for both wifi and ethernet. It just goes back to the blue screen saying no connection.
What am I doing wrong? (If anything!)
It seems the puck won't default to ethernet despite having wifi turned off and connection preference being ethernet....
TBH, SkyQ was much easier to navigate, was much more intuitive and was proven. It seems to me that sky are just learning as they go with this technology, It's hugely annoying. SKY have been helpful but cannot resolve this.

Re: Puck Not Holding LAN Connection

TimmyBGood — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 13:29:39 GMT

@Spasmcasm wrote:

We were sent an uprated ethernet cable by sky and we connected the puck to the extender.

I'd imagine that's an unfortunate interaction between Stream and a Max pod. I've found Stream works very well on 'real' ethernet cabled back to the router.

Re: Puck Not Holding LAN Connection

Spasmcasm — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 13:35:04 GMT

Unfortunately, because of concrete floors, room configuration and where open reach put the incoming white box we can't physically get the router anywhere near the puck. The engineer advised ethernet to the booster was the only option.

We can get a WiFi connection but it's unstable and leads to lip synch issues.

Re: Puck Not Holding LAN Connection

Nigelb1972 — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 20:53:15 GMT

@Spasmcasm can you not run a long ethernet cable?

Re: Puck Not Holding LAN Connection

Spasmcasm — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 21:36:11 GMT

No, it's impossible.

The puck needs to do what it's told and remember it!!

Re: Puck Not Holding LAN Connection

Jporch316 — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 07:11:58 GMT

Have you tried powerline adapters ?

Re: Puck Not Holding LAN Connection

Spasmcasm — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 20:14:55 GMT

No, the sky engineer said their own boosters were as good as any and will provide all the signal I need.

The issue is that the puck keeps reverting to a WiFi connection not the ethernet connection, even though you turn the WiFi off in settings it defaults back to it when turned off and then back on.

Thanks for the suggestion though 👍

Re: Puck Not Holding LAN Connection

Chrisee — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 08:02:09 GMT

@Spasmcasm Sky have a policy not to recommend powerline adapters quite why has never been explained but is probably linked to ssues with early Q boxes which had a primitive powerline capability built-in Sky never supported. However these adapters do work in the vast majority of homes and are likely to be a better solution than your current lash up. The newer adapter use all three conductors and when plugged into wall socker=tsxshould deliver at least 30% of their rated speed.

If you do decide to try thisxalternative buy the kit online as then you haave 14 days to send them back if they don't work in your home.

Re: Puck Not Holding LAN Connection

lettice — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 09:00:10 GMT

Just to clarify, you are doing the following.

Not, turning the power off to the puck overnight. It is not wise to power off the Puck overnight as this is when it receives firmware, app, UI and OS updates.

Just let it drop to standby mode with the remote.

When doing the ethernet switch and turning wifi off, make sure you then do the restart from settings. This ensures, you keep the wifi off setting. A power restart may not do it.

Also, before doing the restart, change the following settings:

Set Network standby mode to ON and Overnight power saving is OFF.

So,

From a puck startup.

Remove your ethernet cable. Plug it back in, get an ip address.

Toggle on and off the wifi option.

Do the network standby and overnight power saving settings changes.

Go to Settings>Systems Management>Resets & Updates

Select Restart device.
Your Sky Stream puck will perform a reboot. It will take a few minutes to complete.

Re: Puck Not Holding LAN Connection

Spasmcasm — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 09:05:15 GMT

Thanks!
I've done all those things apart from the reboot from settings.
I'll give that a go and let you know!
Thanks!!

Re: Puck Not Holding LAN Connection

Pompey+Lad — Fri, 07 Mar 2025 07:17:36 GMT

I have the exact same symptoms on 2 sky pucks, however my puck is cat6 cabled back to a 1Gb router. Taking a speed test on the cable connected to the puck I get 900mbps. DHCP on my router issues addreses perfectly to >100 network connections only these 2 devices misbehave & I've tried everything advised in this thread.

Is tgere an engineer menu? Could fixings the IP overcome the problem?

Re: Puck Not Holding LAN Connection

Skull+Treaty — Fri, 07 Mar 2025 08:25:58 GMT

@Pompey+Lad wrote:
I have the exact same symptoms on 2 sky pucks, however my puck is cat6 cabled back to a 1Gb router. Taking a speed test on the cable connected to the puck I get 900mbps. DHCP on my router issues addreses perfectly to >100 network connections only these 2 devices misbehave & I've tried everything advised in this thread.

Is tgere an engineer menu? Could fixings the IP overcome the problem?

@Pompey+Lad

The Stream Puck only has a 10/100 network port, the max it can take is 100 mbps (though you'll probably only see circa 80-90 mbps).

What speed are you getting when you run the speed test via Netflix (using the app on the Stream Puck)?

Re: Puck Not Holding LAN Connection

Pompey+Lad — Fri, 07 Mar 2025 07:36:42 GMT

Nice feature, unknown to me. 79.25Mbps

Re: Puck Not Holding LAN Connection

lettice — Fri, 07 Mar 2025 07:42:29 GMT

@Pompey+Lad wrote:

I have the exact same symptoms on 2 sky pucks, however my puck is cat6 cabled back to a 1Gb router. Taking a speed test on the cable connected to the puck I get 900mbps. DHCP on my router issues addreses perfectly to >100 network connections only these 2 devices misbehave & I've tried everything advised in this thread.

Is tgere an engineer menu? Could fixings the IP overcome the problem?

That would be impossible to get 900Mbps via Ethernet as the Sky pucks ethernet only has a 10/100 port as mentioned above.

The max speed you would expect using Ethernet with a cat 5 cable or above, would be about 90Mbps, which is fine for a Sky Stream puck to work efficiently, depending on how busy your local network bandwidth is.

To see the speed your puck is receiving, do a network speed test on your Pucks.
Launch Netflix on your pucks (you do not need to be logged into it, if you do not use netflix) and scroll down the left menu to Get help.
Choose Check Network.
Would suggest running the test a few times, say a few minutes between tests.

If using ethernet, make sure you change your pucks to the following recommended settings set in the Puck Settings

Turn wifi OFF under Network if connected via ethernet.

Set Network standby mode to ON and Overnight power saving to Off..

Re: Puck Not Holding LAN Connection

Jporch316 — Fri, 07 Mar 2025 07:51:48 GMT

@Pompey+Lad wrote:
I have the exact same symptoms on 2 sky pucks, however my puck is cat6 cabled back to a 1Gb router. Taking a speed test on the cable connected to the puck I get 900mbps. DHCP on my router issues addreses perfectly to >100 network connections only these 2 devices misbehave & I've tried everything advised in this thread.

Is tgere an engineer menu? Could fixings the IP overcome the problem?

If you have decent wifi coverage why not switch to using wifi ?

Re: Puck Not Holding LAN Connection

Pompey+Lad — Fri, 07 Mar 2025 08:17:20 GMT

Update: I reset network on the puck then connected WiFi, router dhcp issued ip address ending 162.

Inserted the ethernet cable.

Went into standby & then home.

Puck connects without blue screen nonsense.

In network settings puck is using ethernet address ending 166.

It seems that puck first looks for wifi, loads settings up then selects ethernet as a preference over wifi.

Weird, but solves the problem.

Re: Puck Not Holding LAN Connection

Spasmcasm — Sat, 08 Mar 2025 10:27:59 GMT

I've basically given up with it TBH. The puck user experience isn't anything like I thought it would be.
When we first got it up and running it seemed ok, but then we started getting the latency and freezing issues as I've previously sought help with. All the well meaning advice given on here was tried and even hours (and I mean hours,) of calls to customer service still can't get the puck to pick up a wired LAN connection to the booster from turn on. Without going back into it all, we can't hardwire the puck to the router because of the house layout. We can't run cables, so sky gave us 2 x boosters as the wifi in each room falters so the wifi connection between the puck and router isn't stable.
We'll see out the the remainder of our sky contract and probably go to Virgin. We've already been assured by them that the entry point for the house cable will be where we want it (not where Open reaches contractor said we had to have it, hence the issues above) so the cabling issue will be resolved.
We don't find the interface or user experience to be anything like as intuitive as the old Q box. Still, each to their own!!

Re: Puck Not Holding LAN Connection

Jporch316 — Sat, 08 Mar 2025 10:38:27 GMT

@Spasmcasm wrote:
I've basically given up with it TBH. The puck user experience isn't anything like I thought it would be.
When we first got it up and running it seemed ok, but then we started getting the latency and freezing issues as I've previously sought help with. All the well meaning advice given on here was tried and even hours (and I mean hours,) of calls to customer service still can't get the puck to pick up a wired LAN connection to the booster from turn on. Without going back into it all, we can't hardwire the puck to the router because of the house layout. We can't run cables, so sky gave us 2 x boosters as the wifi in each room falters so the wifi connection between the puck and router isn't stable.
We'll see out the the remainder of our sky contract and probably go to Virgin. We've already been assured by them that the entry point for the house cable will be where we want it (not where Open reaches contractor said we had to have it, hence the issues above) so the cabling issue will be resolved.
We don't find the interface or user experience to be anything like as intuitive as the old Q box. Still, each to their own!!

Boosters are not the answer for sky stream ..... you'd be much better off getting a decent wifi mesh system which create a stable and much larger wifi zone. All a booster does is take an already weak signal and attempt to grab it and move it on .....

Re: Puck Not Holding LAN Connection

Anonymous — Sat, 08 Mar 2025 10:51:06 GMT

Seconded @Jporch316

I use an Eero mesh and can get UHD working flawlessly in a conservatory, with a brick wall between the puck and the router. On EE's standard router I can barely get signal in there.

A modern mesh network with well placed points does wonders.

Re: Puck Not Holding LAN Connection

Jporch316 — Sat, 08 Mar 2025 10:53:33 GMT

I use to use the original Google mesh system - worked great for me. Since swapping to VM I use their own mesh pod system which does the job .....