New line flakey

[bethespoon]

Had sky full fibre activated yeaterday.Was fine at 600mbps now at 7am when i would say local demman low its at 50mbps. Do sky lines need to stabalise and is this the norm coming from a very stable virgin media line its a worry this early.Also very weak signal in most of the house for such a router

[jamesn123]

Hi @bethespoon 

The line speed and the speed you will get over WiFi are different. Is the 50mbps figure something you are seeing from a WiFi based speedtest on your phone, or via the Sky app/website?
If your coverage is low in areas of your home, you may need a booster. These can be claimed from Sky for free, if you have the Sky boost/Max addon.

[bethespoon]

Speed test from samknows and ookla show 35mbps on a mobile.Spoke with sky for 2 hours and can only get extender if i pay £6 a month and was told can just cancel in cooling off if not happy.

So far its poor worried the older looking bt ont is causing issues ?

[bethespoon]

I do have white older bt whole home wifi discs for mesh.Would these work with the sky max hub as i already own them vs paying sky for one 

[jamesn123]

Hi @bethespoon 

Yes so those tests you are doing are measuring the WiFi speed rather than the line speed. To get an accurate reading of your line you would need to use ethernet.

To improve your WiFi speed you would need to look at a router, mesh network or boosters. As you mentioned, Sky do charge for their boosters so you could look elsewhere. The White BT disks are supported on any network so you could try and get those up and running. 

[bethespoon]

Yeah i get that.But thats my point the max router is touted as being great yet its clearly not for broadcast of wifi wifi is what 80% of devices in any home will use.

Is the max extra 6 a month worth it when you only get one pod to start they told me then up to 3 if a engineer decides.

We have mobile phones buffering in bedrooms upstairs from the router surely thats not right for such an advanced router

[jamesn123]

@bethespoon 

Whether it is worth it or not depends on how you wish to solve the problem. Some people prefer just paying Sky a bit more a month and letting them handle the problem & provide hardware. Some people prefer buying the hardware like boosters or mesh so that they own it and there is no recurring monthly fee. 

[bethespoon]

I guess my annoyance is their top router seems to be weak at best compared to any other i have used.Its like they know this for the upsell of the boosters

[jamesn123]

@bethespoon 

Compared to what exactly? The way routers have developed means typically you now get less range but a stronger and faster signal within that range. Many routers are now configured to almost force clients off the 2.4ghz WiFi space because its so congested & slow these days. This means clients are using 5ghz more which is a plus because its less noisy and faster, however it offers perceived less range because people are used to the longer range of 2.4ghz. 

Also the Max hub isnt Sky's top hub anymore, its now the Gigafast hub. https://www.sky.com/help/articles/set-up-hub-which-sky-hub-do-you-have 

[bethespoon]

Compared to the last virgin router we had honestly never had any issues across wifi 

[robvalentine]

The Max moniker for the router is misleading. I came from virgin wifi 6 box, and it was so much better, and even my google home devices actually worked. Not so with Sky router. I went for an eero mesh system, switched off wifi on sky router and now I can see my doorbell and actually get the notification just after it's been rang, instead of 10 minutes later. and an inability to see who actually rang it. 

SO your best bet is to get a decent mesh network, but WiFi will always lose speed, some such as the sky max router loses nearly all of it, some not so much. Try and get WiFi 6e or 7 if in budget but you won't get 900 mbps over wifi sadly. 

[TimmyBGood]

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@robvalentine wrote:

The Max moniker for the router is misleading.

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It's an unfortunate marketing name: all such hardware typically operates at the maximum power output permitted by UK regulations but actual performance varies hugely.