My experience with the new Sky Broadband Hub

[andytoll]

Hi Barry

not really, My sons X Box is connected and playing on line quite a few hours a day. My sky Mini's dont have an issue working and one is in a loft conversion 

[lettice]

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@andytoll wrote:

Thanks

Is it really worth getting the new hub, as i have over 40 devices connected to my Hub and it will take a lot of resetting all my devices that are connected?

Any opinions

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The wifi gain from this hub is well worth the upgrade.

That is a lot of devices. Do you have those all connected at once?

I have about 20-25 connected at any one time, but have had 35 connected.

I have my own wifi connected cctv that accounts for 4-6 of those, rest are phones/tablets/desktop/laptops TVs/sky q kit and a number of other IOT stuff.

It took me less than half hour to walk round and get them all connected.

[Barry+Mc+Kelvey]

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@jamesn123 wrote:

I have been sent the new Sky Broadband Hub to test so I thought I'd report back here to let everyone know what kind of performance you can expect and what kind of upgrade it is (if any) from the previous hub. 

The new hub is officially called 'The new Skybroadband Hub' its model number is the SR203

Unboxing

Immediately you notice that the packaging is a lot larger than the old Hub 3 so it certainly will not fit through a letterbox which I don’t think is the end of the world to be honest. Upon opening the box you’ll find two separate boxes, one containing the hub and the other containing power lead, ADSL lead and VOIP lead. The hub 4 noticeably doesn’t come with a microfilter as I assume the hub is aimed at customers who may be using it for FTTP & VOIP.

No sign of plastic packaging whatsoever and it seems all the cardboard is fully recyclable which is a great plus

I forgot to grab a picture of the rear of the hub, i'll add this to the thread later but for those who are wondering it has 4 x ethernet ports as well as the standard RJ11 connector and a telephone connection which I can only assume is there in preparation for a possible Sky VOIP service.

The setup guide included is fairly basic but that is all it needs to be as setting up the hub is very easy. Once turning the power on the hub was ready for me to use in under 10mins which is excellent considering some routers on the market take a good 30mins-1hr to update firmware and then setup.

Its worth noting that the format of the admin login has now changed. It used to be username: 'admin' & password: 'sky' however its now username: 'admin' & password as your WiFi key. 

Performance

So firstly I took some base readings with the current hub in place. For consistency I used the same device during the whole test (Samsung S10) and allowed both old and new router to select their own channels (both selected the same one).

The speeds shown are from a maximum possible line speed of 70Mbps download and 14Mbps upload

These are the scenarios I tested;

• Both 2.4Ghz & 5Ghz SSIDs synced together with main Q box & Q mini switched on
• Both 2.4Ghz & 5Ghz SSIDs synced together with main Q box & Q mini switched off
• 2.4Ghz only with Q boxes off
• 5Ghz only with Q boxes off
• File transfer between two WiFi connected laptops over the LAN as this would test the fastest possible throughput when multiple devices are hitting the WiFi.

These are the locations I tested in;

• Same room as hub (Lounge)
• 2nd floor bedroom
• Garden

I've compiled the results into one table but I do have the separate results table if anyone wanted to see that

Hub	Location	Setup	Download	Upload
Hub 3	Same room	Synced SSIDs Q Mesh ON	43.1	12.5
Synced SSIDs Q Mesh OFF	41	12.7
2.4Ghz Q Mesh OFF	6.5	8.6
5Ghz Q Mesh OFF	44.1	12.6
Upstairs	Synced SSIDs Q Mesh ON	20.6	10.4
Synced SSIDs Q Mesh OFF	20.1	9.9
2.4Ghz Only Q Mesh OFF	1.1	0.7
5Ghz Only Q Mesh OFF	36.7	12.8
Garden	Synced SSIDs Q Mesh ON	14.5	10.7
Synced SSIDs Q Mesh OFF	8.4	8.2
2.4Ghz Only Q Mesh OFF	0.6	0.2
5Ghz Only Q Mesh OFF	36.6	12.5
Same room	LAN test between two WiFi connected laptops Q Mesh ON	23.1	18.4
Hub 4	Same room	Synced SSIDs Q Mesh ON	47.6	14
Synced SSIDs Q Mesh OFF	50.5	12.3
2.4Ghz Q Mesh OFF	27.7	12
5Ghz Q Mesh OFF	51.2	12.3
Upstairs	Synced SSIDs Q Mesh ON	36	12.7
Synced SSIDs Q Mesh OFF	39.1	12.4
2.4Ghz Q Mesh OFF	24	13.9
5Ghz Q Mesh OFF	43	12.3
Garden	Synced SSIDs Q Mesh ON	37.1	13.2
Synced SSIDs Q Mesh OFF	45.6	12.3
2.4Ghz Q Mesh OFF	19.3	13.7
5Ghz Q Mesh OFF	43.3	12.3
Same room	LAN test between two WiFi connected laptops Q Mesh OFF	45.6	67.4

Observations

From the tests we can see straight away that there is a big improvement to speed in all areas. Most notably the 2.4Ghz WiFi space where I saw around a 20-25x performance increase from 1.1Mbps upstairs to 24mbps upstairs. This is likely the factor of two things, firstly that the Hub 4 has better WiFi interference control as my area is quite high in interference. Secondly I measured the signal strength output between the two hubs and the Hub 4 showed a 15db improvement upstairs which would have contributed to the increased speed.

We can also see that the LAN test was around 2-3 times quicker which shows the Hub 4 can handle a higher sustained load from multiple devices.

A few other notable things were that after changing the SSID and password of the new router to the same as the old one all devices reconnect except for the Q boxes which was a little strange. I had to go through the WPS process with both Q boxes. I also had a browse through the web admin interface of the hub to see if there were any differences between the two, I didn’t find any.

One thing that I was happy about though is that the auto logout for the admin user does actually work now so you don’t get stuck with that annoying message ‘another administrator is already logged into the hub’. Previously on the Hub 3 if you didn’t logout the next time you tried to login you’d get that message and just be stuck, the only solution was to reboot the hub. Now it does actually log you out!

All In all the new hub seems like a decent step up. All 3 of us in the house had no complaints and nobody noticed any issues. 

For anyone who is curious about anything I would be more than happy to take questions/run a test. 

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Hi

Ive only got about 12 devices connected and my Broadband comes to a crawl, doesn't effect Sky Q though 🙂

Thanks

Barry 🙂

[andytoll]

I would say about 20-25 at any one time. 

I have just spoken to Sky about the new hub and i currently get the Boost for free, they said that the Boost will now cost £5 per month extra and £9.95 postage?

i dont really get issues so is it really worth an extra £60 per year?

[Giggsy1977]

@jamesn123 - thanks for the review of the new hub. I'm having one delivered myself this week. Just a couple of questions of you'd be kind enough to answer them?

1. Have you noticed an increase in connection speed at the hub from the previous version? I'm not sure what chipset the new hub uses? 

2. Have you been able to connect an old sky router to the new 203 hub to act as an access point and extend your network and WiFi as that is something I would need to do? 

Many thanks 👍

[DaveLloyd]

Rang Sky earlier to try to get one of these new hubs but as I am out of contract and currently on Sky Fibre Max I was told that I would need to recontract for 18 months onto the Superfast Fibre Package but would have to pay £48 admin fee ..  was happy to recontract but not if I had to pay £48 for the pleasure so politely declined ..  will probs wait until the Ultrafast order process is up and running on the website to see if I can get a better deal.

[Steve-35]

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@DaveLloyd wrote:

Rang Sky earlier to try to get one of these new hubs but as I am out of contract and currently on Sky Fibre Max I was told that I would need to recontract for 18 months onto the Superfast Fibre Package but would have to pay £48 admin fee ..  was happy to recontract but not if I had to pay £48 for the pleasure so politely declined ..  will probs wait until the Ultrafast order process is up and running on the website to see if I can get a better deal.

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@DaveLloyd have a look at

http://sky.com/ultrafast, provided the availability checker shows up  you may be lucky enough to see availability in your area. It’s in my area but based on Sky’s website I can’t order as an existing customer at my address., I can only sign up & purchase as a new customer if I move in with one of my neighbours! 

[Tyl3r99]

They want to charge me extra 5 a month although I was previously told because I'm a diamond tier customer with over 20 years service every customer has to pay extra 5 pounds a month 

[lettice]

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@andytoll wrote:

I would say about 20-25 at any one time. 

I have just spoken to Sky about the new hub and i currently get the Boost for free, they said that the Boost will now cost £5 per month extra and £9.95 postage?

i dont really get issues so is it really worth an extra £60 per year?

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I got my £9.95 postage refunded when I ordered it last week. They just offered that to me.

If you are a Platinum or Diamond Vip you get Sky Buddy free for 18 months. Not sure about the other Vip tiers.

That deal should carry over if you already had that deal. If not ask them to.

[Steve-35]

@lettice I had free boost previously however despite my best & most determined attempts no one would continue that offer. My options were pay £9.95 delivery then have boost discounted by £2 a month OR free delivery on Hub & £5 a month for boost. 

[adeharding]

Same here, no budge on the £5 per month. I only signed up about 3 weeks ago too.

[DaveLloyd]

@Steve-35 same for me gfast is available in my area but the option disappears when I sign in ..  the agent I spoke to wasn’t able to order Ultrafast for me over the phone ..  I ended up recontracting my TV package to keep getting my existing discounts on the TV side of things but no offers for me on broadband even though I am out of contract ..  happy with the discounts I got on the TV side though so wasn’t all bad 😃

[jamesn123]

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@Giggsy1977 wrote:

@jamesn123 - thanks for the review of the new hub. I'm having one delivered myself this week. Just a couple of questions of you'd be kind enough to answer them?

1. Have you noticed an increase in connection speed at the hub from the previous version? I'm not sure what chipset the new hub uses? 

2. Have you been able to connect an old sky router to the new 203 hub to act as an access point and extend your network and WiFi as that is something I would need to do? 

Many thanks 👍

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Hi @Giggsy1977

I have noticed a speed increase from the current Q hub as well as stronger signal all round not sure about the chipset but its certainly an improvement and step u

I haven't connected an old hub because I have no need to do it. I would have thought that it won't work since the current Q hub really doesn't play nicely with using other routers as boosters. I'd highly recommend just using the new WiFi boosters from sky instead 

[Steve-35]

@DaveLloyd Sky are still classing it as a “soft launch” apparently according to what I was told over the phone.

Was told if it’s available online then purchase that way, but like yourself the option disappears when I sign in.

Even without signing in & trying to sign up as a “new customer” at my address the website recognises I may already be or recently was a Sky customer & suggests I phone!

As I mentioned in my previous post I have been able to all but purchase it using my details & a neighbours address. Awaiting a call back between 5-6 this evening to explain why this is. 

[Steve-35]

@DaveLloyd just had my callback from Sky, long story short the Ultrafast isn’t yet available to buy even online despite it showing up.

The technology is in my area as it is yours from what you’ve said but as far as sky are concerned it hasn’t officially been signed off as available yet.

The advice was basically to keep checking for availability regularly.  Also said that even attempting to sign up as a new customer the order would ultimately get cancelled & any monies paid for upfront costs refunded.