My experience with the new Sky Broadband Hub

[tarbat]

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@sanevictor wrote:

is this voip service what bt is calling sogea?

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Sort of but not really.

SOGEA is the Broadband part, where Sky can now order a Broadband only service from Openreach. It's then up to Sky to provide, optionally, a voice service. Sky are doing this through their own VOIP solution via their new hub/router, which has an ATA built-in.

Sky's VOIP Service has nothing to do with BT or Openreach.

[sanevictor]

if i phone technical team will they do this for me?

[tarbat]

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@sanevictor wrote:

do you need a diferent phone socket for this?

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It doesn't use any of the phone sockets in your home, instead you plug the phone directly into the Sky hub/router. So no extension sockets in your home will work anymore 😞

[nishasingh9]

Hello @jamesn123 

Set up the new router to replace my old SR-102 and was wondering whether there is the possibility to separate the 2.5Ghz and 5GHz bands into separate SSIDs?

The reason is that normally almost all devices will fall back to 2.4Ghz by default as the signal is strongest (when further away from the router), and that using a dedicated 5Ghz SSID would help to lock devices to that band and therefore make use of the greater bandwidth.

Thanks

[Chrisee]

@nishasingh9 thst can be done but you are unlikely to improve speeds by doing so as later devices can use both bands at once. Log onto the hub, untick synchronise on the wifi tab and rename the one of the SSIDs so you can tell them apart. 

[jamesn123]

Hi @nishasingh9 

As @Chrisee  said it is possible but only really should be done if you find your speeds are a lot lower than they should be. What kinds of speeds are you seeing?

[nishasingh9]

@jamesn123 

Speeds are generally good around the home, although when upstairs in bedrooms rooms (esp. room furthest away) as its a small room and a bit more crowded so I think the signal gets affected as I don't get full bars as I would downstairs for example. 

Our house doesn't have any thick or concrete walls either so I'd say that upstairs range is pretty much the same as the SR-102 I had before and so I do still make use of my old 2G extender (which adds extra latency and probably reduces speed somewhat)

Downstairs where the Hub is placed on a high shelf in the corner of the living room, no issues and it's centrally placed enough in the middle of the home and closest to the master socket. I can see the Hub is connected with a downstream of around ~18Mpbs but:

- When next to it or downstairs, wifi speeds are approx 15Mbps

- When upstairs, wifi speeds are approx 9Mbps (and lower during evening peak)

All in all, much improvement over the older kit I'd say. My original question was more just out of curiosity! 

Thanks

[jamesn123]

@nishasingh9 

Sounds like it is performing well for you then. If you wanted to though yes you could split the bands 

[Chrisee]

Intersetingly @jamesn123 a forum member pointed to an app for ios called Sweetspot which measures wifi speeds directly so sitting in the lounge I get 450Mb/s through the Q box near me as the app shows the mac address as well as SSID which will be useful when debugging Q mesh set ups.  Near the hub itself I see around 640Mb/s.

No idea on the accuracy or whether there is an Android version though.

[Ian27]

Since I installed the new hub our speeds are lower than the old SR 102 hub and not as stable,

The kids are kicking off because their Xbox's are running very slow. Even with Ethernet they get a maximum or 30mb.

My sons iMac really struggles now with speeds of below 10mb, he had 40-50mb with the old hub.My iPhone keeps losing signal and you have to turn the wi fI off then on again to connect.

Due to revert to the old one if this keeps up.

[jamesn123]

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@Chrisee wrote:

Intersetingly @jamesn123 a forum member pointed to an app for ios called Sweetspot which measures wifi speeds directly so sitting in the lounge I get 450Mb/s through the Q box near me as the app shows the mac address as well as SSID which will be useful when debugging Q mesh set ups.  Near the hub itself I see around 640Mb/s.

No idea on the accuracy or whether there is an Android version though.

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That does sound useful, does it tell you which you are connected to at the time?

I see an app called Wi-Fi SweetSpots by ASSIA Inc on the Play store not sure if thats the same app?

[jamesn123]

@Ian27 

In your case it may be worth splitting the WiFi bands and connecting all the important devices to the 5Ghz band.

[Chrisee]

@jamesn123 that sounds like it the screenshot below

[Ian27]

I installed that app. How can it show 400+ mbps when the box shows 58mb ?

my speeds were going from 30mbps to 450mvps

[tarbat]

It's widely believed in reviews that the Mbps numbers in the SweetSpots app are fake. On iOS, better to use the Airport Utility WiFi scan function. On Android, I find WiFi Analyzer an excellent, accurate app.