topic Re: Completely new to UK broadband, can I put my Sky Hub anywhere in my appartment ? in Broadband

Completely new to UK broadband, can I put my Sky Hub anywhere in my appartment ?

KevinCB — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 18:33:52 GMT

Hi, I just moved in the UK for the first time and I subscribed to Sky broadbad (100Mbps).

My activation date was today but I feel like I'm missing something.

PHOTO 1 and PHOTO 2 : I connected an RJ45 cable from the OpenReach Hub to my Sky Hub (Port 4, WAN). I have internet, that's wonderfull. However, my OpenReach Hub is near my electrical board inside my appartment. It means that I can't connect any of my devices through an RJ45 cable and has to use Wifi. In other word, with this configuration, If I want to connect other devices with an RJ45 cable, I'm doomed.

PHOTO 3: There are RJ45 plug in my living room or my different bedroom, which is a good sign I guess. I tried to connect an RJ45 cable here, pluged the other end on my sky HUB but it's not working, Sky Hub persist to show red LED.

PHOTO 4 : I feel like I need to connect a cable from the purple plug on my Sky Hub to the RJ45 plugin my living room but I have no such cable for that??

I am french and what I used to do is to connect my Hub into the wall with small RJ45 cable and then I had internet (Fiber). Can I do that here ?

TLDR ; I want to put my Sky Hub on my TV cabinet and connect different devices with an RJ45 cable (Xbox, TV...) but my skyhub is only working with a direct connection with Openreach hub through a RJ45 cable.

Thank you for helping a desperate new comer in the UK 😅

Re: Completely new to UK broadband, can I put my Sky Hub anywhere in my appartment ?

TimmyBGood — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 20:04:35 GMT

@KevinCB

The purple socket on the Hub is for the internal VDSL (FTTC) modem: it has no involvement in FTTP.

The additional ethernet sockets on the Openreach ONT have no function: they are for a deployment topology which never happened, and later models only have one RJ45 socket.

If you have a cable route over in-wall cabling, you can go ONT ethernet port 1 to wall port, then wall port to Max Hub (ethernet port 4) in another room but that must be a contiguous connection.

Re: Completely new to UK broadband, can I put my Sky Hub anywhere in my appartment ?

KevinCB — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 19:06:53 GMT

Thanks for answering !

The thing is, I don't see any RJ45 plug in the room where my Openreach hub is so I can't do that I think ? I only have this plug near my Openreach hub

Re: Completely new to UK broadband, can I put my Sky Hub anywhere in my appartment ?

TimmyBGood — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 19:26:03 GMT

@KevinCB

Unfortunately that's a 'BT jack' phone socket for analogue telephony, not a data connection. Sadly you'll find that British builders have very little understanding of such things, and have a very bad habit of designating entirely inappropriate locations and cable specifications for equipment housing.

Re: Completely new to UK broadband, can I put my Sky Hub anywhere in my appartment ?

KevinCB — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 19:20:15 GMT

@TimmyBGood

So... I can't install my SkyHub on my TV cabinet by using the RJ45 socket that is on the wall of my living room ?

Re: Completely new to UK broadband, can I put my Sky Hub anywhere in my appartment ?

TimmyBGood — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 20:06:25 GMT

@KevinCB

Only if you can figure out where the other end of the cable behind the socket is, and patch that back to the Openreach ONT.

This is assuming there's actually a contiguous cable in the wall, though: unfortunately it's quite possible it's not there, is unterminated at the other end or just runs pointlessly between two arbitrary locations.

My suspicion is builders and refurbishers put ethernet sockets in as a minimal cost 'value add', but without a legitimate topology it's useless.