WiFi not reaching the all floors of my house

[jonny+chanook]

I've had Sky and Sky Boost for about 1 month now. Our house is over 4 floors and the broadband comes into the house on the top floor. It's an old Victorian house with thick walls and high ceilings. I alway knew we would need some broadband extenders and expected we would get these from Sky. 

sky have sent us one extender (we paid postage) but this only extends the WiFi from the top floor to 2 floors down. The signal on this floor is poor and sometimes one of my Sonos speakers drops out and the wifi lights don't work.

I know we need another WiFi extender so that we can get a signal on the bottom floor. I have asked Sky 3 times and each time the person I spoke to said they were not able to get another one yet, so call back again. On the 4th occasion I was told I cannot get a second extender unless it is installed by a Sky engineer. The Sky engineer is not allowed into our house because of social distancing constraints. This means no TV on the bottom floor until Covid restrictions are lifted. 

Has anyone found a way to get sky to send me another extender? If an engineer needs to come and position it on the optimal location when Covid restrictions are lifted, then so be it. I need a WiFi signal on the ground floor now, so even I want one sent to me. 

Any suggestions what I can do?

.

[GD1]

@jonny+chanook  Your probably going to be better off with powerline adapters to be honest.  These could be more effective, a quick google will return a few different types.

[jonny+chanook]

Thanks @GD1.

We have 3 different consumer units (fuse boxes) across the house. One for the top 2 floors. One for the next floor down and one for the bottom floor.  Not sure why things were wired this way, but it is what it is.

Powerline adaptors don't work well across different electrical circuits

[brianholt]

@jonny+chanook hardwired with ethernet is the optimum method. If you have mini boxes these extend the signal as your with sky, if you have them. Having the router in the top floor is not ideal and would be better placed on a lower floor in your property if this is possible. As @GD1 indicates powerline may offer a solution to some or all parts of your network. Thick walls and a number of floors is not a good mix for wifi unfortunately.

[Chrisee]

@jonny+chanook daisy chaining wifi extenders is never a good idea as a rule of thumb each jump halves speeds.

Unless you have multiple supply  meters your electrical system may still support powerline as the modern units carry the signal over all 3 conductors. If you buy them online you can return them if they dont work. Plan to get around 20% of their rated speeds.  Sounds like at some point your home may have been split into flats so agree its a bit dodgy.

If they dont work hard wiring a wifi acces point on your lowest floor is likely to give you better speeds than wifi extenders. Your existing Sky booster can be used as an ethernet to wifi bridge. 

As you have the Boost bundle you should becable to get Sky to send an engineer out if you do not get 3Mb/s in every room in your home. In the end all the guarantee promises is a refund of the £5 per month the boost costs but It is worth seeing what they suggest.

[jonny+chanook]

@Chrisee thanks for tips. I have already tried powerline and they don't work. Moving the incoming line to the house away from the top floor, is not so easy. The line in from the central telephone pole would result in cables running low level across a couple of gardens, so not ideal.

I could look at internal cabling, but it's a long way to have a cable running through the house. I might be able to go outside and down the wall, but that is a real effort (4 storey house). 

I'm not so fussed about the loss of bandwidth. We only stream TV, multiple Sonos and a bunch of lights, plugs and Alexas, so nothing that needs significant bandwidth.

[jonny+chanook]

Hi @brianholt. thanks for responding. Practical considerations make re-routing the incoming line quite tricky. I may have to result to running an cat5 cable down the outside of the house, which is a bit of pain in the butt.

[Chrisee]

@jonny+chanook video streaming requires good bandwidth unless you like SD quality and buffering it is one of the most demanding applications. Its up to you but Victorian properties and wifi never mix that well.

[TimmyBGood]

@jonny+chanook 

Sky aren't obliged to send additional boosters even under the 'Wifi Guarantee' as the only thing actually guaranteed by that product is the return of the extra subscription fee paid up to that point if the distinctly unambitious '3Mbs in every room' isn't achieved: in some properties it's just more practical to refund rather than persevere, particularly under current circumstances.  Past a fairly low level of challenges, it's not realistic for ISPs to be dealing with WiFi anyway, as the time, expertise and equipment required rapidly exceeds their profit margin.

[jonny+chanook]

Thanks @TimmyBGood a useful perspective that I would be interested in Sky's opinion on. My sense is that one of the reasons people pay a premium for Sky is for good reliable service (including guaranteed WiFi supply). Otherwise you'd be as well going to Plusnet. If the Sky boost premium is not enough to cover costs, then charge more.

I didn't buy 70MB download speed, I bought guaranteed Netflix in my living room (not 4k) and Spotify in every room (not even at the same time!!). That's what I paid for and that's not what I'm getting. I know if they send me another booster, I'll get the service I expected.

My thoughts are that if my legacy setup from when I moved into the house is preventing this from happening because whoever put the phone line into the house originally 50 years ago or whenever it was, didn't have a magic ball to predict the internet, then surely the Sky engineer who installed the router could have said something.

I'm not one to be kicking up a stink and this is meant to be far from that. I'm just using all the Sky services I can find to resolve the problem and am grateful for the support of this community group (I've never engaged with one before). I do think that Sky set an expectation by offering the Sky boost service and as soon as they start hiding behind technical details, they're on to a losing streak and should ditch the service.

Surely the technical and marketing bods at Sky must realise that by offering the service they must expect that they are setting themselves up to have to deal with all the technically challenging households our there, because no one else will see the need to pay the premium.

[TimmyBGood]

@jonny+chanook 

My observation is based both on the wording used in the 'WiFi Guarantee' (which does not guarantee WiFi) and in the simple practicalities involved.  I'd suggest it's instructive to note that BT, the other big ISP doing something similar, also actually guarantee the refund rather than the WiFi coverage of their premium offering, although their product was perhaps more sensibly named: I suspect the Sky choice involved rather more marketing than technology bods.

[JPR007]

@jonny+chanook None of the main ISP's actually guarantee any type of coverage, and any such packages that claim too often state in the small print they actually have no guarantee of it either as @TimmyBGood alluded too.

The contract when you took out the broadband with Sky, states that what you pay Sky for is the physical line to your property and router from the street cabinet, nothing to devices after it, or services such as Netflix and Spotify. Any speed quotes or guarantees relate to this too and not WiFi devices. 

You can have the same hardware (router/boosters) in 100 different properties, and in every single property you would see different levels of performance, from pretty damn good and reliable, to I give up where is the hammer.
It is purely down to the nature and science of how WiFi operates and the physical factors in the property. It is simply impossible for any ISP to guarantee a certain level of performance. 

It's also worth remembering that unless the boosters are all connected via Ethernet, the more and more you add, the slower and slower the network will become, as every additional hop increases overheads. 

Sky broadband is also one of the cheapest ISP's out there, and is far from a "premium" service. A premium ISP would either be a business service, or one of the well known ones for domestic use is Zen, who consistently seem to come out very well, and are more expensive🤓

[jonny+chanook]

Just to finish this story off, a love sky engineer came round this evening and installed another 2 boosters around the house. We now get minimum 15MBs in each room. Problem solved.

Thank you Sky