My experience with the new Sky Broadband Hub

[Sinth]

@Garry777 

Stats look great. What wifi bandwidth are you ckecking speeds on, 2.4ghz or 5ghz?

For 1 reason or another I will be finally setting up my new hub tomorrow and will see how it performs on both bandwidths compared to the Q (which I better send back).

[Garry777]

Both! I use a combination 

[sanevictor]

have you split the wifi bands to test them?

[lettice]

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@Garry777 wrote:

Does anyone know what the latest firmware is? I'm on 3.03.1382.R

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That is what I have too.

[Sinth]

Ok finally set up the new hub...

System Up Time: 00:04:53

Port	Status	TxPkts	RxPkts	Collision Pkts	Tx b/s	Rx b/s	Up Time
WAN	MER	63711	173049	1	20116	230447	00:03:53
LAN	Up	5911	2406	1	130123	82431	00:04:53
WLAN (2.4 GHz)	Up	40147	14389	0	111424	8751	00:03:35
WLAN (5 GHz)	Up	158023	61565	0	758506	67150	00:03:33

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Broadband Link	Downstream	Upstream
Connection Speed	71102 kbps	14777 kbps
Line Attenuation	D1(12.5 dB) , D2(32.3 dB) , D3(49.2 dB)	U0(0.3 dB) , U1(24.9 dB) , U2(38.6 dB)
Noise Margin	6.2 dB	6.1 dB

Hub done firmware from 3.03.1343.R to 3.03.1382.R

[Sinth]

Some results:

Q hub

5ghz Wifi - 66.01 down 13.27 up

2.4ghz Wifi - 38.69 down 13.02 up

Broadband Hub

5ghz Wifi - 65.46 down 13.69 up

2.4ghz Wifi - 50.60 down 13.88 up

All via speedtest.net.

My status - 5ghz same (as expected)  -  decent jump in 2.4ghz performance but still not max throughput/output

[Sinth]

Quick further update, switched the 2.4ghz in router to 20/40 bandwidth and....

 PING ms

7

 DOWNLOAD Mbps

66.16

 UPLOAD Mbps

13.78

Very nice indeed, the 2.4ghz is spot on, HUGE improvement from Q hub.

[Garry777]

I havn't tested both. Because my parents keep complaining about the Q boxes going off haha. Mostly i'm just lazy. I also have the 20/40 setting

[Donfor]

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@Chrisee wrote:

Hi @Anonymous  16cm high x 25.4 cm wide and 5cm deep including the stand. 

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I think my t.v. Unit is going to be 1cm short approx.

Can the latest hub be sat flat similar to original hub

[Chrisee]

@Donfor it is designed to work vertically to get the best wifi signal but may work horizontally I suppose.

[Donfor]

[Sinth]

@Donfor @Chrisee 

Regarding having the hub flat, not entirely sure how you would do that. All cables plug in the back of the "plate" so you will either have it flat with cables standing vertical or you would have to design a recess for the cables the other way.

Personally, I don`t like the design, I would have taken the SR102 design so the cables plugged in the end so you don`t have to look at a large, well, plate.

My wife is just about OK with it but I even I don`t like it tbh. It all depends on where you house it but mine is in full view and it is a bit in your face.

Anyway, the router itself works well.

[Chrisee]

@Sinth I thought lieing the hub on its face would work. However the design is part of why it works better the wifi require an aerial design one of the compromises on the Q hub was  the low flat design forced the aerials not to be optimum small discrete routers dont work as well. Look at the Nighthawk range which would never win a beauty contest but sure do have good wifi signal distribution.

[Sinth]

@Chrisee 

I agree, sometimes there is function over cosmetics but the hub would still stand up if you had the ports on an end so you could at least situate it North/South instead of East/West...

[Donfor]

@Sinth 

my photos on another reply today were far from ideal.

Due to limited shelf space I went ahead and managed to connect and place hub horizontally on q box.

The connections were fine -I can view the three green led's by slightly tipping my head.

The hub lower than led's are almost a PlayStation effect -quite smart.

Immediate comparisons with sr202 is that latest 203 is much cooler though q box does have it's heat on top.

No cables are seen due to design of todays hub.

Only reason is if placed vertically as designed,  It would be om a seperate small table which is in use for cordless tel.