My experience with the new Sky Broadband Hub

[Chrisee]

@tarbat I aleady do use the Airport utility but that measures external network connectivity not internal. If the app measures relative speeds it has merit even if the figures themselves are innacurate and certainly having the mac code is useful as it highlights the mesh node in use which can be a pain to identify. I have Devolo powerline adapters and sweetspots measurements are believeable against the Devolo app's results. 

[jamesn123]

@Chrisee  @tarbat Seems about right to me, I am getting about 480mbps on my phone from one of our enterprise APs here in the office and they are rate limited to 500Mbps per client.

[tarbat]

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@tarbat wrote:

It's widely believed in reviews that the Mbps numbers in the SweetSpots app are fake.

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Happy to report that the reviews claiming that the numbers in the SweetSpots app are fake are themselves fake 😞

Testing it in NOX on PC, it's clear that it tests the speed by creating hundreds of loopback connections to establish the fastest link speed back to itself. In this case, over ethernet, a speed of 973 Mbps:

[Chrisee]

@tarbat  When you read the reviews your see they are not realising that speedtests measure external speeds which will be limited by the external bandwidth and other traffic and the person who said they were fake because speeds varied when he turned his phone horizontal does not understand how aerials work..

The app seems a useful tool as it identifies the node being used whereas wifi analyzers dont always show that and Mb/s are easier to explain than dBm measures which are negative so smaller numbers are better.  Thanks for checking it is actually measuring speeds though as I suspected it was just using signal strength to calculate throughput. 

What it does show though is the amount of network traffic that is presentyou have to take into account when running speedtest. The app shows 500Mb/s to the  router via a Sky box and powerline connection, which is the slower link, but a speedtest shows 55Mb/s with a sync of 80Mb/s and therefore a theoretical throughput of 75Mb/s so 20Mb/s is going somewhere now I know a couple of iPhones will be updating the Q boxes do limit bandwidth etc.

[tarbat]

It's also a useful tool to show the limitations of each device and wifi band being used. I tested my PC, an Android phone, and an iPad with interesting results.

	Ethernet	2.4GHz	5 Ghz
moto g6	-	69	145
iPad mini	-	n/a	289
PC	973	-	-

Presumably the wifi hardware in the Android phone is limiting the 5 Ghz speed compared to the speed that the iPad can achieve in identical conditions. So in my case, with a 160/30 fttp broadband service, the limiting factor on my phone is the wifi module in the phone.

[Jason+Wark+uk]

How is the new hub performing?

does it make any difference to speeds as  it's enclosed by a wooden shelf at the top?

[Chrisee]

@Jason+Wark+uk mine performs pretty well as documented near thecstart of the thread. Ideally any router should be out in the open but a wooden shelf should not reduce the signal level by much. 

[BUXTONLAD]

hi. I've just rec'd the sr203 router. I had a tplink vr2800 which works perfectly well. However when switching over to the sr203 I do not get any internet at all. All 3 lights are solid on the router but I'm not getting any internet connection. I remove the ADSL lead and plug it back into the tplink and my internet runs fine.

I rang support and they said I will have to wait 10 days before an engineer appointment can be made.!!

I explained it must be the router at fault but sky refuse to post a replacement. Any one here got any ideas/suggestions?

Cheers

[The+Latics]

Have you tried plugging into one of the ethernet ports, or is it just not working on WiFi? 

[BUXTONLAD]

Hi. I tried only with WiFi initially and no go. I tried earlier and it worked on ethernet but I could not get any wireless connectivity at alll.

I've tried this evening with just WiFi and still no go. 

I can simply plug the ADSL cable into my archer vr2800 and I get WiFi and ethernet no problem. To me it must be the router.

[The+Latics]

I can say that my sky router did NOT have the right password for WiFi on the sticker (not even close).

If it works via ethernet, login to the admin screen and see if the WiFi password is correct. Could be that simple. 

[BUXTONLAD]

I've changed the password anyway along with my network access ssid. It's weird......

[SBrisbane]

Hello folks

Have any of you had issues with your connection being killed when plugging something into the ethernet ports on the new hub? Only got my upgrade to ultrafast up and running today after months of issues with my order, all seemed well but when I started to hook things up to the Ethernet connections something was killing it after a minute, I'm trying to eliminate things but could take some time.

[andybarra]

Interesting to read such a positive review. I have had 2 of these since switching to Sky Q and both have been totally unreliable. Unreliable speeds, dropping connection regularly and often requiring a reboot to re-connect. the first one stopped working completely after two months and the replacement displayed all the same issues.

Eventually I just switched back to my old pre Sky Q hub and all problems dissapeared!

I suspect the manufacturing quality control is not what it should be.

[SBrisbane]

Looks like it's my TP link homeplugs that seems to be causing my internet drop out, everything connects to WiFi great and have a couple of things connected via ethernet at the hub and those are fine, when I try to hook up the homeplug/powerline adapter it kills the connection. The WiFi range on the new hub is pretty impressive thankfully so I will need to buy a wifi card for my son who's bedroom is an attic room, previously we needed the homeplugs but think wifi should be ok up there, his Xbox is connected to it up there no problem at all with decent speeds.