topic Re: Starlink and Sky Q in Sky Q

Starlink and Sky Q

Stu24041973 — Mon, 13 Mar 2023 10:41:39 GMT

Hi all

Thinking of getting Starlink but have seen that some users have issues when connecting to Sky Q, wanted to know if this is still the case and if so what work around were used.

many thanks

Stuart

Re: Starlink and Sky Q

Chodley — Mon, 13 Mar 2023 10:48:56 GMT

Where did you see that some people have issues?

Re: Starlink and Sky Q

Stu24041973 — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 08:55:44 GMT

On this forum and when googled sky q and Google.

Re: Starlink and Sky Q

Stu24041973 — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 08:56:52 GMT

@Chodley On this forum and googling sky q and starlink

Re: Starlink and Sky Q

Chodley — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 10:20:02 GMT

Hmm. Ok. Hadn't heard that.

Re: Starlink and Sky Q

lettice — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 11:34:45 GMT

I can tell you from someone I know that has been running Sky Q and Starlink without issue since early Summer 2021.
They have been getting a reliable speed of 150-170 mbps download and 25-35 mbps upload.
Their latency is around 20ms, occasionally up to 30ms.
They have a Sky Q main and Sky Q minis set up with the Sky Q mesh allowing the extra value of hotspots for those wifi extremities.
Mind they get pretty good wifi coverage across their large property and garden, so really probably do not actually need the extra the hotspot mesh gives..

Re: Starlink and Sky Q

Godfrey — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 11:34:27 GMT

@Stu24041973 wrote:...Thinking of getting Starlink but have seen that some users have issues when connecting to Sky Q, wanted to know if this is still the case and if so what work around were used.

The latest advice to Sky installation engineers that I can find is this;

Although in its design to be in our lower orbit(and publicises lower ping rates), like most other satellite broadband services it can suffer from Latency issues - This is a measurement of the time it takes to send data and receive a response - For example telling the Sky Q box to download content or access an app or any other internet based services.

Another issue which could lead them to not get along, is we as a business also have in place a geographic location setting preventing our content being accessed outside of our known footprint. If the connection is in lower orbit in theory it could look like the connection is outside of this geo-fence, so not inside the UK or Ireland.

Engineers have tried to install Sky Q with Starlink, and altered the DNS to try and get round the issue, this won't work, as the latency issue will still remain.

Here lies the tricky bit, as an engineer you cannot simply cancel a job because these or any other ISP don't get along (after all they can still use it with no BB connection), all you can do is connect to their hub on your iPad, run a speed test and check the Ping Rate - Ideally it needs to be under 25ms, and consistent, by this we mean to run several tests to ensure the ping rate is stable.

If it's higher than 25ms, then you need to inform the customer of the potential issues, such as:

Call to upgrade message when attempting to access Catch Up and On Demand.
Missing tiles within the on demand content.
Programmes stuck in the download queue.
Failed on demand downloads..

It's then the customer's choice to determine if they still want to go ahead with the install

Re: Starlink and Sky Q

Chodley — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 16:16:53 GMT

The idea that there is any network comms a Sky box needs to do which is as latency senstive as that blows my mind. Do they think they're writing Call of Duty: Moonraker edition?

as for geofencing and low orbit - I think someone made that up after a particularly heavy night on the Absinth 😉 Yeah maybe there could be an issue if starlink as a global provider assigned you an IP in a range that looks like it's outside the UK. No idea why changing DNS would help.

I always said Q's networking was whack.

Re: Starlink and Sky Q

Stu24041973 — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 16:17:09 GMT

Thanks @lettice it's good to hear that it can get along and from someone that knows someone that actually uses both services.

all the best

Re: Starlink and Sky Q

Stu24041973 — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 16:20:18 GMT

Thanks for sharing this @Godfrey

Re: Starlink and Sky Q

rscott — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 21:47:09 GMT

@Chodley wrote:

The idea that there is any network comms a Sky box needs to do which is as latency senstive as that blows my mind. Do they think they're writing Call of Duty: Moonraker edition?

as for geofencing and low orbit - I think someone made that up after a particularly heavy night on the Absinth 😉 Yeah maybe there could be an issue if starlink as a global provider assigned you an IP in a range that looks like it's outside the UK. No idea why changing DNS would help.

I always said Q's networking was whack.

If the box is making multiple requests in quick successsion, even for small items, high latency can make it appear very unresponsive. Eg scrolling through an on demand section with large numbers of thumbnails.

That's not particularly Q specific - even browsing an image intensive website on a high latency connection isn't pleasant.

Re: Starlink and Sky Q

Chodley — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 23:06:51 GMT

@rscott wrote:
@Chodley wrote:
The idea that there is any network comms a Sky box needs to do which is as latency senstive as that blows my mind. Do they think they're writing Call of Duty: Moonraker edition?

as for geofencing and low orbit - I think someone made that up after a particularly heavy night on the Absinth 😉 Yeah maybe there could be an issue if starlink as a global provider assigned you an IP in a range that looks like it's outside the UK. No idea why changing DNS would help.

I always said Q's networking was whack.
If the box is making multiple requests in quick successsion, even for small items, high latency can make it appear very unresponsive. Eg scrolling through an on demand section with large numbers of thumbnails.
That's not particularly Q specific - even browsing an image intensive website on a high latency connection isn't pleasant.

30ms isn't particularly high and you would stream in and pre-cache the next block of resources as people move down . Low bandwidth would be a much worse experience than an extra 20ms (or 40) for the data to start flowing.

and this in the text Godfrey quoted isn't talking about "clunky", it's talking about not working.

Re: Starlink and Sky Q

TimmyBGood — Fri, 17 Mar 2023 10:41:05 GMT

@Chodley wrote:

The idea that there is any network comms a Sky box needs to do which is as latency senstive as that blows my mind.

Not sure it's an actual functional issue: I suspect it's more about detecting Q boxes which have strayed beyond their country of installation.

Re: Starlink and Sky Q

coowill — Fri, 24 Nov 2023 21:30:18 GMT

I would like to share my experience on this:

I recently got Sky Q installed after having Starlink for a while and my Sky signal quality drops randomly from 90 to 30/40 - this results in losing HD channels and numerous other channels. It's extremely annoying.

Seemingly the only deduction to be made after numerous investigations is that it's the fault of Starlink. But I can't prove it. I still hope there's something simple that's being overlooked.

I've had engineers come check it out a few times but Murphy's Law the signal quality is 90 when they are here.

I live in a new build in a place with zero obstructions and in a densely populated village so there should be no issue getting a strong quality signal all the time.

Re: Starlink and Sky Q

Chodley — Fri, 24 Nov 2023 21:38:42 GMT

Why would the population affect the expectation of signal?

Is the starlink dish anywhere near the line of sight of the sky dish?

Re: Starlink and Sky Q

coowill — Fri, 24 Nov 2023 22:22:17 GMT

Population as in there are several others in the village with Sky that works perfectly.

the Sky dish is on the side of the house whereas the Starlink dish is on the back of the house.

Re: Starlink and Sky Q

Chodley — Fri, 24 Nov 2023 23:40:14 GMT

Well satellite signal, other than at the northern and western geographical edges is largely the same UK wide so other than obstructions, if it works for me it should be ok for you, as much as someone else in the same locality. (Edit: just seen in your other thread where you are. Ok that is extreme western edge of the satellite footprint. We have an office there 😁)

Wonder if starlink has some other effect which can cause an issue. Is the problem predictable enough that it would be possible to turn it off to see if it goes away?

Re: Starlink and Sky Q

Stu24041973 — Mon, 18 Dec 2023 13:01:52 GMT

Thanks @lettice sorry for late response

Re: Starlink and Sky Q

NoName — Tue, 02 Jan 2024 13:56:49 GMT

I've been having this issue with sky q and starlink - my sky box is plugged in to a managed switch via ethernet, which then bounces to our primary router/firewall. This then uses a WAN connection to connect to my neighbours router (ethernet again) and we share the starlink (which is connected via ethernet to my neighbours router).

Not sure why the latency would be an issue - every connection I have is through super fast gigabit ethernet, and the starlink is very low latency. I concluded the latency discussion is a red herring here - mostly because conditions on the web backbone routers can sometimes cause latencies to go through the roof whether you have a fat fibre pipe or not (for histories sake, do a google search for black hole routing negotiation in internet design - routers on the internet are designed to route around broken nodes, and this usually involves a spike in latencies and packet loss).

So I figured it had to be the DNS. My router has its DNS default to Googles servers, as they tend to be reliable.

The Sky Q connection however, whether it be ethernet to your router, or the built in (and frankly terrible) wifi the sky box uses will have a DNS server default that is pointing to what I assume is skys own DNS server (mine was 162.252.172.57). These servers are vital to any communication on the Internet, as routers don't understand our language centric names for servers - they use numbers. In order to get these numbers, they need to consult a DNS server lookup table., and preferably one that as complete as possible as quickly as possible (anyone who has set up a web servers DNS entry will know it takes some time for the record to propagate over the Internet- typically up to an hour, which tells you not all DNS servers are created equal). DNS server interrogation will generally have far bigger waiting time than connection latency, especially if the one you are using has to point you at another node because it doesn't have the info requested - far easier to just go to the fastest and most regularly updated to begin with.

So, changing the DNS setting on your sky q box:

1) Work out which DNS server is likely to work best - googles are good (8.8.8.8, and 8.8.4.4), but if you want super quick, cloudflare and WARP have set up a faster one (it's at 1.1.1.1 - if you type that into your browser, it takes you to their page where all is explained).

2) On your sky q box remote, hit the home button, and scroll down to "settings". Press "OK" twice on the remote, then scroll down 1 item to the "Network connection", and select the "Network setup" button. Select "Advanced settings", and then "set manually".

3) You'll now have a page with headings of "IP address", "Subnet mask", "Router", and "DNS server". All of these will be set, as the auto config uses your routers DHCP, so you can ignore the first 3 (although taking a photo of all the settings can only be useful, so do that with your phone, or write the info down).

Drop the selection box down to the first box of "DNS server"(it will go black, and you won't be able to see the numbers as you enter them - not sure why sky decided this should happen), but if you press the number 1, and then the right arrow on the remote, it will enter it into the 1st box, and move to the next. If you.have another address you need to enter, just hit the numbers for each octet (the numbers separated by the dots).

Here is how mine looks when done

Hit the confirm button, and it will give you a list of your manual IP settings like this

For no sane reason the DNS isn't listed but will be in the edit page.

4) Exit the menus, and then check the network setup page to confirm you are all connected.

5) I'd recommend you set your sky box with a fixed IP address in your router - you'll need to consult your router manual for this, as they all use different means. The reason for this is so the routers DHCP server doesn't assign the fixed IP address you are using while your sky q box is off (you can also set your router DHCP address range so ot leaves unassignable addresses, and then set the IP of your sky q to one of these addresses).

6) If you find you have an address conflict when you turn the box on due to something else having been assigned the box's IP address, reboot your router while the box is on, and it should clear.

As an aside, if you change your connection back to automatic, the software on the box will rewrite the old DNS address in place of what we've just set, so you'll have to go set it again (back to square 1.....)

My box has been running beautifully since doing this - just downloaded an hour long program in about 30.seconds flat, and all the thumbnails etc load swiftly (but more importantly, my box now no longer tells me it has no Internet connection all the time,so swearing over 😄 ).

Re: Starlink and Sky Q

Godfrey — Tue, 02 Jan 2024 15:49:59 GMT

@NoName It will be interesting to see how long your suggested setup when using Starlink remains trouble free without triggering their 'geo-fence'