topic Re: Deco's affecting mini box channel changes in Sky Q

Deco's affecting mini box channel changes

AldoMontoya — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 12:03:08 GMT

My setup looks like this:

BT Broadband Hub - wifi disabled, hard wired into a switch

Deco X75 mesh (3 units) - hard wired to same switch as router

Sky Q 2Tb - hard wired to switch (note, both wifi channels turned off via engineering menus)

3 x Sky Q mini boxes, all hardwired to switch (as main box, all wifi turned off on Sky Q minis)

It all works, however over the past 2 months channel changing takes between 10-30 seconds on mini boxes. Had an engineer around, we replaced main box and minis, still happened. Unplugged all Decos, the problem went away. Even with no mini boxes (or main) wired through a deco, just having the decos on the network causes this problem.

I've had this setup for over a year (initially put in to get around my Playstation Portal issues) and it's worked fine for the majority of the time. Any ideas? Sky's mesh is rubbish so that's not an answer. I'd prefer to not have to invest in yet another mesh system though.

Thanks in advance!

Re: Deco's affecting mini box channel changes

AldoMontoya — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 19:14:43 GMT

An update (with more to come):

In the Deco app i disabled Smart DHCP and Beamforming - I havent' had a chance to try which made the difference, but suddenly all mini's working instantly again.

Still no idea why this changed, the system worked fine for over a year...

I'll test which makes the impact tomorrow and respond in case it helps anyone.

Re: Deco's affecting mini box channel changes

Chodley — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 21:32:41 GMT

Very interesting

What does SmartDHCP do?

Re: Deco's affecting mini box channel changes

Clobberhand — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 21:57:08 GMT

Considers giving out an IP Address, but decides against as it feels the task is beneath it 😉

Jokinng aside I think it is for setups with mutiple networking devices, automatically configures them to work in the most effective way with the DHCP on the network (depending on how they are connected).

@AldoMontoyaNot strictly a sky question, but other than your little blip, how do you find your Deco system? Due an updgrade at some point soon and got a very similar setup to yourself from a sky perspective, so interested assuming you have cured the problem if you would recomend?

Re: Deco's affecting mini box channel changes

AldoMontoya — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 08:37:37 GMT

SmartDHCP seems to be the culprit. works fine with that off.

@Clobberhand - no worries.

Overall, they've been excellent. Things that didn't work properly on the sky mesh (HP Printer, Playstation Portal, SONOS devices, NAS) just work on the Deco. The first issue I've had is the one above with the Sky Q minis.

My only complaint is that they're pretty locked down, there's not a huge amount of customisation you can do. Maybe this is for the best, but I like to tinker 😉. I've not yet been brave enough to use it as the modem yet, but it works just fine in AP Mode.

Re: Deco's affecting mini box channel changes

AldoMontoya — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 10:29:44 GMT

Sadly I seem to have prematurely identified success here...the problem is back. It seems during reconfig the decos rebooted which was when I saw the problem dissapear. Soon as they're back on the network fully, slow channel changes again.

Back to the drawing board, still open to suggestions!

Re: Deco's affecting mini box channel changes

Chodley — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:00:20 GMT

Is the physical layout such that you could try hard wiring the sky mini boxes to the mesh nodes?

Re: Deco's affecting mini box channel changes

AldoMontoya — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:09:48 GMT

That's exactly what's happening - I have the decos connected to the central switch and the sky q mini's connected to the deco. I tried the other way, so ran a flylead from the switch to the minis and the same thing happened.

Soon as I turn off the decos, the problem goes away...

Re: Deco's affecting mini box channel changes

Chodley — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:17:22 GMT

Ah ok. Didn't know the "3 x Sky Q mini boxes, all hardwired to switch" was a temp / secondary arrangement.

I reckon it's some sort of broadcast storm which the decos are happily propagating. What if you switch them on one by one and see if they start to misbehave with 1, 2 or 3

Re: Deco's affecting mini box channel changes

AldoMontoya — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 15:42:06 GMT

That's a good idea, to see if it's something with how they communicate with each other.

What's more weird is it isn't consistent across the 3 mini boxes...damn networks...