New customer: Sky TV pauses and Xbox large pings - BT=worked, Sky=woes :-(

[thewitchisdead]

1. Moved from BT Fibre 500 to Sky Fibre 500 a week ago.
2. BT was great. Had no problems (except for some weird minibox glitches that got resolved).
3. Moved for the lower cost of Sky --they emailed me an offer that I couldn't refuse esp with the BT price hikes and so far have been really efficient.

I want to stay with Sky.

What happens...

1. Sky Broadband seems ok except our TV pauses a few times a day (never seen this with BT).
2. I've seen a couple of drops from a Team's meetings (with BT I never ever had a drop).
3. And my kids' Xbox games sometimes suffer from large pings (Fifa 23: 9ms with BT and with Sky: 12ms-100ms sometimes 400+ms) - my kids instinctively knew broadband had changed! 🙂

My set up...

• Sky box is hard wired
• 4 x mini boxes
• Xbox is hard wired
• We use dLan wired mains LAN devices
• We do have a lot of devices (laptops (wired), TVs, smart plugs, Alexas, PS5, that kind of thing) but as I said, everything was tickity boo with BT.

Sky Support...

• When I called Sky the automated message explaind it detected an internal network set up problem (ie: something wrong with my set up).
• I spoke to Sky Broadband first-line support they said my "network is conjested" - the chap seemed to suggest "one device is interrupting another" - I tried to explain that this can't technically be possible especially when considered hard wired devices. The Sky agent had a nice calming repsectful reply but it didn't get us any closer to an answer.
• I asked why would it be ok with BT and not with Sky, they didn't really have an answer.
• They asked me to do silly things like unplug wired devices and plug them back in slowly one at a time.
• Asked me to move wireless devices away from the Sky router.
• I have done all the basics, unplugged unuseddevices, moved wireless devices away from the router, etc without any joy.

My main question is, what has BT got that Sky hasn't? My instinct tells me the Sky router can't cope with the amount of traffic.

I don't want to move away from Sky, can anyone offer any inight as to what the problem might be?

Cheers

[thewitchisdead]

--couldn't edit my question... Sky box is the upgraded box - is it 2Gb storage? (had it for a couple of years or so). 

[thewitchisdead]

+we get good speeds when I test with speed testers, anything between 100Mb to 300Mb on an iPhone in any location in the house.

+miniboxes are located pretty close to the main router.

[thewitchisdead]

+just remembered something I did on my BT router - I disabled 2.5Ghz (at least I think that's what I did, could have disabled 5Ghz? ... whichever, anyway I disabled one of them - is that worth a try?)

+what was strange, when I was setting up my Wemo plugs onto the new network, when they went into set up mode it pretty much knocked every other device off the Sky wifi. After they were set up it calmed down.

[thewitchisdead]

Thanks to @Mark-Br for the post on how to get the stats.

[geoffae]

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@thewitchisdead wrote:

+just remembered something I did on my BT router - I disabled 2.5Ghz (at least I think that's what I did, could have disabled 5Ghz? ... whichever, anyway I disabled one of them - is that worth a try?)

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Like BT the Sky router synchronises the 2.4Ghz & 5.0Ghz networks this supposidly allows devices to 'roam' using each band. This seems to be the norm on home routers and if it wasn't for my son's Xbox when he was at home (which did not play well with this synchronisation) I would have been none the wiser.

So having just moved from BT myself one of the first things I did was to separate the two bands on the router just as I did with BT. I have devices that are dual band and some 2.4Ghz only, this allows me to set each device to specific Wifi networks. The issue with your plugs could suggest that they are not dual band hence the 'fight' with the network.

I also found that the Sky router has IPv6 enabled by default, I have disabled this on the LAN side along with IPv6 DHCP server.

In Advanced -> LAN IP Setup I have also set the IP address range from start 02 to ending 40, this allows me assign fixed IP's after 40 to specific devices on my network. 

TBH all in all Sky so far has been good, at least it's stayed connected since it went live, unlike BT which would reboot itself randomly.

[thewitchisdead]

Amazing @geoffae i will try these immediately now!! 🙂

Ye it's funny isn't it how our kids pick up on the slightest change. I intentionally didn't tell them we were switching as a test haha.

Same here re BT, had some problems but over time it all settled. And as I said, I wanted to move and stay with Sky because it's a great deal £32 for Fibre 500 fixed for 18 months is a steal compared to what would have been £50+ with BT after the increase and with another increase in a year. I ended up getting a call from BT where the lady told me BT have been caught napping and Sky marketing dept capitised. Just for that reason alone I wanted to give Sky the reward so to speak 🙂

Thank you again, will give those settings change a try.

[jamesn123]

@thewitchisdead 

Simple answer is that BT have marginally better hardware than Sky. Its well documented that most people see performance uplifts on BT over Sky hence why Sky broadband is usually cheaper.

You many benefit from not using the Sky mesh system by messing around with the WiFi bands as @geoffae has recommended. 

[thewitchisdead]

Thanks, I ended up being on a lengthy call with a Sky engineer.

I believe my problems stem from the fact that the mini boxes act as wifi devices, so my devices joining them cause all sorts of issues.

The engineer tried to tell me there was a conflict between my dLan wired mains devices and the Sky internal network in my home.

I think you are right in that I need to turn off/not use all of Sky's attempted fanciness and bring it back down to basics.

I therefore might resort to forcing the mini boxes to use a wired connection, turning off both their 2.4 and 5 wireless.

Its such a shame Sky couldn't just keep it simple.

since changing to Sky's fibre out Sky mini boxes, as well as pausing, loose connection to the main box.

On one hand my son's Xbox Series X now gets blisteringly fast speeds on wifi and slower than BT on wired. Whereas the Xbox Series S is slow on both. Both in the same location!!

Its very frustrating to say the least.

[geoffae]

@thewitchisdead 

I would test the wired connection on the mini's I tried this when I was with BT, really weird behaviour anything that played on the mini stuttered. Put it back to TiFi and it was fine.

As the SkyQ box appears to connect at 2.4Ghz it may be possible to turn off the 5Ghz on the mini's.

TBH my venture into using power plugs was not great, whilst they worked most of the time they did have a tendancy to drop connections. In the end I installed Ethernet with two switches (the two switches not ideal) but it beat having to install a patch panel. I used the boxed in soil stacks to route around the house, that was fun 🙂