Need help with Sky Gigafast failing to reach upstairs

[Harrys941]

We upgraded to Sky Gigafast last week, going for the 900Mb/s subscription. It was all installed fine, and the engineer told us that the connection would gradually speed up over the next 7/10 days.

Downstairs, by the router, we're getting speeds of up to 500Mb/s which is great  compared to our previous speed of around 100Mb/s.

Upstairs, we used to have around 50Mb/s. Now we're looking at 1Mb/s, with a maximum of 3 to 4. I know Sky have the guarantee of just 3Mb/s but even still, my game console upstairs is now incapable of connecting to the router, and videos on my laptop will not play at all. It's an incredible downgrade so far. 

I've been looking at purchasing a WiFi extender - through a third party - but is there anything else I can do? Moving the router isn't really an option, and the upstairs room I'm referring to is at the back of the house, while the router is at the front. Wired connections are therfore difficult.

Any help hugely appreciated! 

[Chrisee]

@Harrys941 as you wish to play games using a wifi extender is not the best solution as it will increase jitter and latency . There are two potential solutions assuming running an ethernet cable from the hub to the console is not practical.

First is to buy a Powerline Networking kit which uses your home's mains wiring to get the signal to the distant room. These can be bought with varying "speeds" but assume you will only get 20% of the speed on the box. You plug one unit into the wall near the hub and link the two using the ethernet cable in the kit. The other plugs in near the console and again should be linked by a second cable. While you can buy these kits with built-in wifi you are better using ethernet for gaming.

The. Second suggestion is to buy a proper Whole Home Wifi system,. Sky market their Wifi Max bundle for currently £7.50 a. Month which gets you a new hub and upmto 3 pod extenders with the guarentee of 25Mb/s in every room. Alternstively for much the same orice as the first 18 month contract commitment you can buy a third party system that is set up as Wifi Access Points with the Skt hub's wifi turned off. I use one of these myself and the lowest speed is just under 200Mb/s which is more than fast enough in my experience.

[jamesn123]

@Harrys941 

Did you change the router/location of the router as part of your upgrade to Gigafast? This would be the only explanation for going from 50mbps to 1mbps in the same location

[Harrys941]

Thank you for your responses guys. I realised something this morning: We have a booster and plugged it into our old router. It was still in there. I unplugged it, put it into the new router, and I'm now getting reasonably solid 40-60Mb/s upstairs. 

It was a dumb mistake of mine - boosting the connection of a router that had been powered off! I am still going to look into potentially boosting further upstairs as around 100Mb/s would be ideal, so if I can get to that speed, I'll be very happy. As it is, though, it was my mistake, not Sky's!