Ultrafast Plus - Sudden drop in speed

[ArnoldStallone]

Hi,

On Friday afternoon I had Ultrafast Plus installed (a very friendly engineer who agreed to run the cable through the garage and then into the house rather than having cable on the skirting boards and over door frames etc).

Yesterday the speed on the desktop that I am using to compose this message was 288Mbps. Now, given that the router is downstairs at the back of the house and the desktop is upstairs at the front of the house, I was pretty pleased with that for a WiFi connection. (And I was getting circa 350Mbps on an iPad when sat right next to the router)

Today I have connected a Sky Q Minibox that I'd missed previously when connecting devices to the new network.  Now I can't get better than 49Mbps!

Further info:

Router: SR203

Firmware: 5.14.2405.R

Does anybody have any suggestions as to what may have caused this sudden drop (I know that variations within the first 10-14 days are common but this seems quite a dramatic drop - slower than the connection I had before I upgraded 🙂  ) ?  And, hopefully, suggestions for how to fix it 😉

Thanks.

[JPR007]

@ArnoldStallone I would suspect the you are suffering from a performance drop as a result of using the Q mini box and its associated mesh, rather than an actual speed drop in the broadband connection itself.

The Q mesh has various foibles with it, and it is known to give rather poor WiFi speeds (certainly in my experience). Your destkop (assuming you are using WiFi on it) is probably now connecting to the mini box, which is in turn connecting back to the router, whereas before the PC was probably just connecting straight back to the router. 

[ArnoldStallone]

Thanks for the feedback @JPR007 

That makes perfect sense - it was too much of a coincidence for it not to have been linked to the Q mini box connection this morning.

Do you have any suggestions for a fix?  Should I remove the Q mini box connection?

[LGUser · Accepted solution]

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@ArnoldStallone wrote:

Thanks for the feedback @JPR007 

That makes perfect sense - it was too much of a coincidence for it not to have been linked to the Q mini box connection this morning.

Do you have any suggestions for a fix?  Should I remove the Q mini box connection?

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One thing I did in order to keep the WiFi working well was to seperate the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz WiFi on the router. I connected the Q box to the 2.4Ghz WiFi and left the 5GH WiFi for everything else.

Another suggestion is powerline adapers and going wired to the Sky boxes. You can turn off the WiFi for the Sky boxes.

[ArnoldStallone]

Thanks @LGUser .

I've split 2.4 and 5 and it has improved the situation.  However, it is still only 130Mbps compared to the previous 280Mbps.

I know that wired is the preferred solution for the best speed but I'm struggling to understand how the Sky Q boxes can make such a complete hash of the wifi situation. 

And, I know this is a user forum rather than one populated by Sky employees but is this a common problem that Sky is aware of?  It seems crazy that it's their own kit that is decimating download speeds (presumably, as long as it's the advertised speed at the point of entry to the house they aren't particularly bothered after that). 😞

[LGUser]

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@ArnoldStallone wrote:

Thanks @LGUser .

I've split 2.4 and 5 and it has improved the situation.  However, it is still only 130Mbps compared to the previous 280Mbps.

I know that wired is the preferred solution for the best speed but I'm struggling to understand how the Sky Q boxes can make such a complete hash of the wifi situation. 

And, I know this is a user forum rather than one populated by Sky employees but is this a common problem that Sky is aware of?  It seems crazy that it's their own kit that is decimating download speeds (presumably, as long as it's the advertised speed at the point of entry to the house they aren't particularly bothered after that). 😞

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Did you turn off 5GHz in the Sky Q box?

[ArnoldStallone]

Well, @LGUser , if you could see the blank look on my face you'd have your answer 🙂

Suffice to say, no I haven't turned off 5GHz on the Sky Q box.  I'll go and investigate.  Thanks again. 

[LGUser]

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@ArnoldStallone wrote:

Well, @LGUser , if you could see the blank look on my face you'd have your answer 🙂

Suffice to say, no I haven't turned off 5GHz on the Sky Q box.  I'll go and investigate.  Thanks again. 

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To turn off 5GHz in the Sky box...

Home >Settings (do not press OK) > 001 (press OK) > Network

[ArnoldStallone]

Thanks again @LGUser .

After doing that and rebooting the router I'm now back up to 253Mbps. 🙂

[LGUser]

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@ArnoldStallone wrote:

Thanks again @LGUser .

After doing that and rebooting the router I'm now back up to 253Mbps. 🙂

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Well done!