Large house setup

[BrunoMindhorn]

Hello community, would massively appreciate any advice on broadband/wifi setup in a large (2500 sqft) house.

I'm not yet committed to anything. The house is being renovated, electrical fix has yet to start, and we have provisionally scoped in 3 ethernet ports. I'm wanting to stay with Sky and specifically Sky Q because several family members record a lot of sport from all channels to be watched later/on fast wind, etc and I think Sky Q is still the only solution that will reliably do this. I know you don't have to pair it with Sky Broadband, but seems like the simplest option.

My current house is about half the size and we are just about getting by with a Sky Hub, Sky Q, Mini Box and 2 Boosters. Doubling the size of the house and adding some tough constraints around needing really reliable broadband for the family TV, our home business, and demanding teenagers, all in opposite corners of the house, makes me worry that a Sky setup is just not going to work.

What would anyone advise please?

I'm assuming multiple ethernet ports can't be used for additional hubs.

Will Sky Wifi Max do the job with boosters?

I am better off abandoning Sky broadband and asking a local firm to install a decent wifi mesh, then make this talk to Sky Q?

Thankyou - confused with options!

[Chrisee]

@BrunoMindhorn first point is Sky Q has a limited likely life of 4 to 5 years so dont plan majot infrastructure to support that. However as you stand your current set up could work with a littele help. Running ethernet cables from the hub to more distant rooms and connecting the Q boxes tomthese will mean their wifi hot spots will be faster for your other devices assuming you stick with your current black hub. Switching to the white Sky Max hub will mean you will use the use of the wifi hotspots from the Q boxes.

The Sky WiFi Max extender pods require a good 5GHz connection to the hub which can work in modern properties with partition walls but hits issues in properies with solid walls or floors. The new hubs can be made to work with Sky Q but the forum gets feports of issues.

Personally if I was specifying a property as you are I would install a proper whole home network with hard wired access points on each level which if installed as part of a build would not be prohibitively expensive but employ a netork professional and not rely on the knowledge of the average electrician.

[jamesn123]

@BrunoMindhorn 

I would note that recording a lot of sport to be watched later on can all be perfectly done on Sky Stream & Sky Glass, you dont have to keep Q just because of that.

As for your setup, if you scope in a good amount of ethernet all around the house, and certainly where the Sky Q boxes will go, then you can use ethernet as your mesh backhaul which should provide a good connection all through the house. You can then use any extra ethernet ports you scope to back the Q mesh up with any boosters that are required to complete full coverage around the home.

As an alternative, you could look to just spec your own mesh system & then get Q to connect to that, but you would still want to use ethernet if there is a good distance between Q boxes. 

Is your new home going to be FTTC or FTTP?

[BrunoMindhorn]

Thankyou both for your super quick and helpful responses.

New house will hopefully be FTTP shortly after we move in - we won't be moving for 6 months and Openreach have recently updated the rollout status from the "end of 2026" to "within a year".

The message I'm taking from you both is to get the home network properly sorted - and I can speak to local specialist companies before the electrical fit and ethernet installation. It's an older house, and the neighbours have warned me Wifi coverage is a nightmare. 

If I can get the network nailed, the TV should be relatively straightforward. A really good point not to hang my TV or broadband strategy around something that may be retired.

On the Q vs Stream thing, I think there are some edge cases where Stream will not allow me to consume sport from every channel exactly as I want to (although i think it will with Sky and TNT) but it's probably good enough.

If the network is not bombproof, it's a bit of disaster. If I miss a bit of sport, i'll cope! This is really helping me clarify the priorities, thankyou.

[TimmyBGood]

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@BrunoMindhorn wrote:

 The house is being renovated, electrical fix has yet to start, and we have provisionally scoped in 3 ethernet ports. 

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Three per room (rather too many) or three in the property (almost certainly not enough) ?

As @Chrisee advises, beware of electricians unless they have a proven track record of data network installation: the topology is almost entirely different to mains cabling.

[BrunoMindhorn]

3 in the whole house - but that can be easily changed at this point to as many as we need.

[Chrisee]

@BrunoMindhorn if the property has solid walls ensure there are ethernet feeds at the minimum to each floor. Installing your own wifi network gear seems a no brainer each unit connected back to the router by Ethernet. Ideally link your Q boxes by ethernet as well and turn off its WiFi. The ethernet sockets should be wired back to a panel near the likely location of the router/ONT. A network specialist will design something simple and label it for you.