topic Re: Gigafast Wifi weak signal in Broadband

Gigafast Wifi weak signal

Jo.so.jo — Sat, 13 Jul 2024 10:09:56 GMT

Hi,

Had the new gigafast service installed but am finding the wifi signal shockingly bad, if i test the speed while im next to the router its fine and normally over 700Mb download, however, on my Apple TV which is ~10 foot away I'm getting ~300-400Mbps and in my office I'm getting ~50Mbps and my sons room around ~80Mbps

What can i do to fix this?

Thanks

Re: Gigafast Wifi weak signal

GD1 — Sat, 13 Jul 2024 10:51:00 GMT

@Jo.so.jo You could try the steps here https://www.sky.com/help/home/broadband/my-broadband-speed/improving-wi-fi-signal-to-my-devices/articles/improve-the-wi-fi-signal-to-your-devices

Re: Gigafast Wifi weak signal

Jo.so.jo — Sat, 13 Jul 2024 11:03:03 GMT

Hi,

I appreciate the reply.

I've gone through these steps as they were suggested in the my sky app.

The signal seems too weak in parts of the house where i would have hoped it would be a lot stronger and i don't have any boosters so can't look to extend it in any way. I'm testing the speed on the same device in each area so its not device related either. The engineer was happy with how the router is setup too, its out in the open, I've tried turning off devices like speakers etc. but that seems to make no difference.

I'm not sure what else to do?

Re: Gigafast Wifi weak signal

Jo.so.jo — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 11:18:01 GMT

Are there any sky reps on here offering support?

Re: Gigafast Wifi weak signal

TimmyBGood — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 11:47:24 GMT

@Jo.so.jo

No, this isn't a point of contact with Sky support itself.

Sky loans wireless booster hardware free under the terms of the 'WiFi Guarantee' element of 'Broadband Boost' and the 'Enhanced Wall to Wall WiFi Guarantee' part of the 'WiFi Max' subscription supplement: they don't otherwise provide or sell them except to resolve issues with Sky Q. Inevitably some have leaked onto a certain auction site, but Sky won't offer support with using these.

Confusingly the 'Wall to Wall WiFi Guarantee' doesn't actually provide booster hardware, and is essentially a sales lead generator for the supplements mentioned above.

Re: Gigafast Wifi weak signal

Jo.so.jo — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 14:02:13 GMT

Oh wow that's crazy, all their help pages inevitably end up here but they don't in fact monitor this or provide any help through here, I'm starting to wish i hadn't signed up for their gigafast now!

Do you know if there are any online chat services through Sky, i can't find any but most other providers seem to have one so seems a bit backwards imo.

Re: Gigafast Wifi weak signal

jamesn123 — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 17:02:03 GMT

@Jo.so.jo

Those speeds over WiFi at those distances are good and Sky will not be interested whatsoever in helping you if your getting those speeds. Their best addon package states a speed of 25mbps or more over WiFi requires no further action. The only time Sky would be interested is if your ethernet speed is below your minimum guarantee.

Re: Gigafast Wifi weak signal

Jo.so.jo — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 17:51:04 GMT

I understand that but signing up for 900Mb and ill only get that speed if I'm sat less than a foot from the router is ridiculous, my guess is that the router they provide isn't fit for purpose.

Any recommendations on a router that would work and provide a decent wireless signal?

Re: Gigafast Wifi weak signal

jamesn123 — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 18:16:58 GMT

@Jo.so.jo wrote:

I understand that but signing up for 900Mb and ill only get that speed if I'm sat less than a foot from the router is ridiculous, my guess is that the router they provide isn't fit for purpose.

I disagree. Any typical client device would never make use of that speed over wireless. What are you going to be doing that requires that kind of speed? Any such task that would make use of that speed e.g. Large downloads, cloud backups etc should really be connected via ethernet anyway.

Additionally you'd need devices that are capable of WiFi 6, 6e or 7 to even achieve 900mbps consistently from a compatible router in ideal conditions.

Re: Gigafast Wifi weak signal

Ryan+H — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 19:29:05 GMT

I agree with James. Speed will drop quickly the further you are away from your router - WiFi signal can be impacted by numerous things in its local environment. These packages are designed for multiple devices connecting at anyone time and the speeds you have recorded in different rooms of your property are more than adequate for daily activities.

Re: Gigafast Wifi weak signal

Jo.so.jo — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 19:47:32 GMT

I disagree completely.

Firstly, its completely irrelevant what I'm using the speed for, what I'm questioning the significant degradation in the signal quality at such short distances from the equipment, what's the point in having a super fast connection if i cannot benefit from the increase in speed?

Secondly, at no point have i said that i expect to get 900Mb on all devices throughout the house, but 50Mbps is a hell of a. Lot lower than I expected, granted it will do for most things but its not what I'm paying for, and my son getting 80Mbps on his PS5 is definitely not what i signed up for, i would expect him to be able to download game a lot quicker than he is and not experience any lag when gaming on the connection that we are on.

So, assuming the router isn't performing, are there any recommendations for an alternative?

Re: Gigafast Wifi weak signal

Anonymous — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 21:24:55 GMT

If you are achieving Wi-Fi speeds of 700Mbps near the router then I assume you have the White WiFi Max router? This can deliver good WiFi speed over 600 Mbps, unlike the hub 4.2, but only over a good clean 5ghz connection. Any devices connecting to this hub on 2.4 GHz will peak at around 70-80Mbps.

This is where device limitation, distance, and in home environment can have significant effect.

It's worth checking that their are no third party WiFi extenders which are bottlenecking the connection.
Check the which band the PS5 is connected to and change to 5ghz if on 2.4ghz.

Ultimately the main benefits of a Gigafast connection come when devices are connected over Ethernet (cat 5e upwards) and even then are limited by the servers they are pulling data from. The other benefit is overall bandwidth available throughout the home.

If you need a fast connection, and especially low latency / ping then hardwire it. Otherwise gigabit speeds are wasted in a lot of homes, and most houshold wifi devices cannot make use of it.

Re: Gigafast Wifi weak signal

Anonymous — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 21:31:45 GMT

To add to my post above, any devices which are achieving dl speeds of 300 to 500 Mbps are likely to be Wi-Fi 5 / 802.11ac.

And finally, if running speed tests on the devices you are usually testing the speed of a devices to a particular server which may have its own limitations.

Re: Gigafast Wifi weak signal

Jo.so.jo — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 11:07:19 GMT

Hi,

All speed testing is done on the same device and i've been running multiple tests throughout the day etc.

There are 2 PS5's one in my sons room and one in my husbands office, my sons room is further away and getting the speeds mentioned, my husbands is close and getting a better signal (Still low imo at ~120Mbps), they are both on 5ghz (2.4 is off on both consoles)

I do understand that Ethernet will give me the top end but my house isn't wired up and don't really want the expense of having it wired up, i would much prefer a wireless solution that doesn't degrade so much

There are no extenders in the house and no boosters, is it a case that i need these? Or is there a better router that i could use? My ask is around what's out there that's not going to cost a fortune but will enable me to strengthen the signal throughout the house and provide a better service in the rooms that are suffering, I'm asking on here purely for compatibility confidence, I don't want to spend money on something that turns out to have comapatibility issues.

I would also like to understand how the Sky boosters and/or extenders fit into all this, how would i go about getting these? The help documentation seems to assume that i will already have these?

Thanks

Re: Gigafast Wifi weak signal

TimmyBGood — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 11:15:54 GMT

@Jo.so.jo

Confusingly the 'Wall to Wall WiFi Guarantee' doesn't actually provide booster hardware, and is essentially a sales lead generator for the supplements mentioned above.

Re: Gigafast Wifi weak signal

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 18:09:47 GMT

@Jo.so.jo Your last paragraph leads me to think that you may have Broadband boost. This is a package which includes 'wifi guarantee' amongst amongst things, where you can receive boosters if your coverage is poor. But the wifi guarantee with Boost is only 3mbps in every room.

More significantly this would mean that you have the black Hub 4.2?

This is only a Wifi 5 router and not capable of anywhere near gigabit speeds.

If you have Sky Q with the hub 4.2 then this will add a further wifi bottleneck as the mini boxes for instances are only capable of around 150 Mbps over wifi.

If wanted to use your own router then you need to look for one which supports DHCP option 61, and there is a little config you have to do which means they are not ideal for anyone who isnt tech savvy.