Alternative Routers For Sky FTTP?

[Scott1111]

Hi everyone 👋. Recently switched from BT 150 FTTP package to Sky's version. During our time with BT I got myself a little office in the house which is located diagonally across the house upstairs with the router located downstairs in the living room. To combat a weak signal I bought myself a black BT Wifi extender disc from CeX which not only massively improved the signal in the office, but it also covered the garden ourside too.

Now that our Sky service has gone live the Wifi disc obviously no longer works which means I'm back to a poor signal in the office. Now from what I see I have 3 options...

1. Add-on Wifi Max to our package which will give me a free Sky booster pod thingy. But working it out over the 24 months that would cost us £144 for 1 pod providing the monthly price doesn't change (which it probably will).

2. There seems to be a few Sky pods floating around on eBay at between £100 to about £120. As much as it's a similar price to above, once it's paid it's paid. The downside is if we change again after our 24 months it's another useless booster.

3. Buy a 3rd party router and possibly booster. While this option might cost the most now, the theory is that we shouldn't need to change anything if we change providers.

This is where I have no idea what I need to look into. The things I do know is that in the house there are 2 or 3 items that run on ethernet wired connections and then 3 phones and a laptop running through the wiffy. I've also seen that it needs to have "authentication systems of DHCPv4 Option 61".

Is there any simple plug and play options out there? We got rid of our landline over 2 years ago so we don't need to worry about anything like that 😊.

Thanks for anyones help on this 👍.

[Chrisee · Accepted solution]

@Scott1111 don't be tempted to buy Sky pods as they need to be registered to your hub to work properly and are Sky's property as none have been sold.

There are multiple ways to achieve a good WiFi servicecin yiur home. You can buy a whole home WiFi set ups which need not break the bank the one. i use myself costs under £100 for a 3 unit system thst delivers at least 150Mb/s in every room of my 3 level home. As I still use the landline I have kept the Sky hub but do not use its WiFi. Instead one of the Deci units is conected to the hub by Ethernet and set to operate in Access Point Mode tha t links to the other 2 Deco units one on each of the other 2 levels. This has paid for itself by saving on paying for Sky;s WiFi Max and being my own I can potentially use it with any ISPs service. Loads of systems around mine is a lowly WiFi5 system which tops out at around 650Mb/s which is more than fast enough for 99% of apps.

A mesh WiFi system such systems produce allows devices to roam and come with useful extras like a guest and IOT network allowing you to segment your devices. 

[Scott1111]

I think the same princeple was meant to follow with the BT Wifi extender discs, although like Sky, a few manage to creep out into the wild. Although I didn't know about them needing to be registered to the Sky hub so that's a very important and intresting piece of information that I've noted down 👍😊.

If I'm understanding this right, I could buy something like this: https://www.tp-link.com/uk/home-networking/deco/deco-be68/v1%20(2-pack)/ Then run an ethernet cable from the Sky router into one of those Deco's to act as the main Deco and then have another Deco in the office to provide the strong signal that I need?

I'm doing some man-maths and if that setup lasts for 4 years then it would cost £62.50 a year which would be a cheaper solution than Sky Max and also be future-proofed with it being to the Wifi 7 standard.

[Chrisee]

@Scott1111 nothing wrong with your logic and that set up sounds like it should work. In pactice whether you need WiFi7 speeds is down to you but in a couple if years we will,have WiFi8 and so on. I gave up trying to keep up some years back but WiFi6 gear is probably what I would go for if I was buying today.

[Me134]

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@Scott1111 wrote:

I think the same princeple was meant to follow with the BT Wifi extender discs, although like Sky, a few manage to creep out into the wild. Although I didn't know about them needing to be registered to the Sky hub so that's a very important and intresting piece of information that I've noted down 👍😊.

If I'm understanding this right, I could buy something like this: https://www.tp-link.com/uk/home-networking/deco/deco-be68/v1%20(2-pack)/ Then run an ethernet cable from the Sky router into one of those Deco's to act as the main Deco and then have another Deco in the office to provide the strong signal that I need?

I'm doing some man-maths and if that setup lasts for 4 years then it would cost £62.50 a year which would be a cheaper solution than Sky Max and also be future-proofed with it being to the Wifi 7 standard.

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Exactly what I've done myself. We need the landline for the wife so the Sky Max hub forms the main gateway but with wifi disabled. The downstairs BE65 is hardwired to the Max hub and set to AP mode, this gives me more ethernet ports downstairs with the upstairs BE65 connecting via their own wifi backhaul system, the sons PC is hardwired to the 2nd pod and gives almost exactly the same DL, UL and latency figures as mine downstairs.

[Scott1111]

I really appriciate both of your responses 👍😊. It's a great point that you make about the goalposts for the wiffy standards constantly moving @Chrisee so I'll probably save a few quid and look towards a 6 or 6e option. Thanks @Me134 for confirming that the setup I have in my head should work fine 👌. I'm off to pick some freshly grown notes from the money tree in the garden 😁.