Packet loss / latency spikes / excessive jitter

[socketts]

Hi,

I’m experiencing intermittent connectivity issues on my Sky Full Fibre Gigafast (900 Mbps) service.

The issue isn’t raw speed—speed tests are generally good—but the connection is intermittently unresponsive.

Symptoms include:

• YouTube Kids buffers for 5–10 seconds, then resumes at a lower resolution before recovering.
• Social media apps (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) often take several seconds before content starts loading.
• Both iPhones occasionally drop off Wi-Fi and switch to 4G even though the Wi-Fi network is still visible.
• This happens across multiple devices, not just one.
• The router remains online throughout (no loss of Internet or Wi-Fi lights).
• Calls dropping via teams

I’ve also noticed that Speedtest responsiveness results show high latency and jitter under load, despite good throughput. Typical examples include:

• Idle latency: around 6–11 ms
• Download latency: around 97–128 ms (with peaks up to 420–705 ms)
• Upload latency: around 90–384 ms (with peaks up to 1,526 ms)
• Jitter: up to 84 ms

I’ve already completed the following troubleshooting:

• Rebooted the Sky Max Hub.
• Changed the firewall from Low to Medium.
• Tested both WPA3 and WPA2 Wi-Fi security.
• Confirmed the issue occurs on multiple devices (iPhones, tablets, etc.).
• Confirmed it happens even when there is little or no network traffic.
• Confirmed the Wi-Fi signal strength is good (devices connected on 5 GHz with strong signal).
• Run multiple speed tests showing good download/upload speeds but inconsistent responsiveness.
• Confirmed there are no WiFi Max Pods, extenders or mesh systems in use—only the Sky Max Hub.

Has anyone else had similar issues and was able to resolve?

[Pau4]

@socketts 

Having the exact same issue and it's been so difficult to get someone to understand at sky that it's a network issue and not wifi despite what their tests show.

[Reddz]

I'm in the same boat as you two. Every time I speak to Sky they just run their normal tests and say its fine. Its not the speed that's the problem it's the consistency/stability. What can we do?

[Chrisee · Accepted solution]

@Reddz there sre multiple possible causes for the faults you list other than issues with your broadband supply. These include issues with your WiFi as interference will cause packet loss you can check for thst bybrunning a WiFinanalyzercapp on a phone or laptop but trst in different places in your home but any WiFi network within range using the same or adjacent channel can causexan issue. However its not just WiFi networks that can cause interference as that can be your own electrical equipment eespecially if it uses other wireless technologies.  Keep things like cordless  phones etc well way from you Sky hub. Ethernet cables are immune from interferencecso are always better for video streaming and gaming. 

Another thing thar will cause delays in opening resources is your own security software or systens that protect your identity. Sky hubs are not that powerful so if there are multiple systems running simultaenously that can cause an increase in latency so for example someone watching video can affect someone trying to game on the same connection. Server load is also a factor etc etc. Of course issues can be introduced by Sky's network but in independent tests it generally found to be reasonably good but you may have a local issue powering down the hub for an hour can often clear these. That leaves the broadband link over partial or full fibre which in rare cases can also introduce delays. Because of these complications ISPs including Sky do not guuarantee latency or jitter. 

In summary this is a complex area where no single factor can oftern be blamed. In my experience the WiFi jump is the biggest issue in most cases which is why a decent mesh WiFi system is a sensible investment as these are designed for stability as well as speed. 

[Daniel26]

I have the exact same issue! 

I've phoned up sky several times and they always tell me there's no problem showing there end, I currently have a sky engineer appointment which I think is a waste of time! 

The sky agent I spoke to on the phone says that the sky max hub are prone to this problem too and they are getting more and more phonecalls from users about this same issue!

The sky max hub shows a solid white light throughout when my connection dips. 

I have online gaming on an Xbox series x that drop out and lose connection, bbc iPlayer buffering, twitch, losing connection then getting pixelated, music is jittery when connected to a wifi speaker. Phones and tablets take forever to load when going onto different websites. 

You do all the checks on the sky app and that tells you there's no problem either.

Is it worth buying a different router that would work? Anyone bought a different router and the problem disappeared?? Please let me know before I spend decent money on one

[Chrisee]

@Daniel26 issues with packet loss etc can be introduced at many points in the transfer between the server and your device. In practice the most likely is in the WiFi connection as any wireless connection can sufer from interference unless you are using a direct Ethernet connection from the hub to your device this cannot be excluded.

I would treat the comment by a Sky agent about the Sky Max hub with care as these agents are not technically trained and given there are many million of these hubs in use yes the number of calls increase odd that. The most common issue by far these days is the assumption that WiFi will wirk every where for any use which is untrue. A properly designed WiFi system can work well but placing a Sky hub near where the broadbsnd supplybentersxa home and expecting a games console in a room on another floor to get a decent network connection is down to luck. Third party whole homecWiFi systems tgat use multiple units creating a mesh network do improve stability which is as important as speed.

Where the hub can play a part isxwhere you have multiple users in one home simultaenously streaming video playing games etc as tge hub's have limited processing power. Third party routers with facilities like QOS which can priotise urgent traffic can help. 

There are other factors that can introduce lag but they are far less likely. 

[Me134]

@Daniel26 A decent router would (presumably) help unless there's an issue with the Sky server you connect to. An ISP supplied router is never going to complete with a decent Asus say, the 3rd party router would also allow you to change settings such as the preferred DNS servers, the Sky routers are nailed down to Skys own DNS services (as well as splitting channels etc) unless you change it on a per device level.

I'm currently using the Sky Max hub with wifi disabled. All wifi (and some wired devices) are handled by a couple of decent TP-Link pods with one wired to the Max hub. The 2nd pod is connected to the 1st via a multi channel wireless backhaul with MLO enabled as well, this allows the sons PC to return the same figures wired to the 2nd pod as mine does wired to the 1st (and wired through to the Max hub). I would consider this sort of setup as a minimum nowadays when there are people WFH or gamers in the house. If not for the need to keep the house phone for the wife I'd plug one of the pods in as main router all day.

As a rider, I don't and have never suffered packet loss, latency spikes or excessive jitter and have an almost boringly consistent signal to the house.

[Pau4]

I've ran those tests and everything is coming back fine on the app, there is no electrical interferance, hub is out in the open and i'm only in a small flat anyway. My neighbours are having issues too and this happened with EE as well. When an EE enginer came out his test found network faults but I have had 2 openreach engineers out through sky and all they have done is ran one test on their phone, surely if the issue is intemittent it won't always show on a line test and no one has bothered to physically check the outside network either. My broadband just keeps buffering/going slow for a few minutes at a time, 5-6 times a day and while that happens the ping on the network not just wifi can increase massively which i have tested using terminal on my Mac. The lights on hub and ont don't change either, i have also tried boosters and replacing cables etc. Sky want us to go to streaming when the broadband is like this?

I am at an absolute loss and this has been going on for ages and no one, not even the executive response group can sort this out.

I would greatly appreaciate some advice. Thanks

[Erik+Stultz]

Hi Daniel,

If you bring up a command prompt on a PC/Laptop, try typing Pathping 8.8.8.8 .  This will run a route trace between you and google with all the sky stops in between.  Probably you will see your device, then your sky router, then SKY (I get 94.0.128.84), then some stars showing destination.  If you are getting large packet loss between your router and your devices, then a third party router might help.  If the packet loss is all showing between SKY and and the SKY router, then the issue probably won't be resolved with a different router.  

regards,

Erik

[Me134]

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@Erik+Stultz wrote:

Hi Daniel,

If you bring up a command prompt on a PC/Laptop, try typing Pathping 8.8.8.8 .  This will run a route trace between you and google with all the sky stops in between.  Probably you will see your device, then your sky router, then SKY (I get 94.0.128.84), then some stars showing destination.  If you are getting large packet loss between your router and your devices, then a third party router might help.  If the packet loss is all showing between SKY and and the SKY router, then the issue probably won't be resolved with a different router.  

regards,

Erik

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I get around 45% packet loss between the Max hub and the Sky server which according AI is "ICMP rate limiting by the Sky Max Hub and Sky’s gateway router " and not an issue at all, all other tests including a straight ping test are perfect. Perhaps a bufferbloat test would be useful as well https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat

[Shaun-87]

Hi,

It seems like a regular occurrence for everyone. This is Sky using my own Asus router. So to me, it seems like a routing issue with Sky’s servers.

[Me134]

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@Shaun-87 wrote:

Hi,

It seems like a regular occurrence for everyone. This is Sky using my own Asus router. So to me, it seems like a routing issue with Sky’s servers.

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I'm not sure where you come up with that?

[Shaun-87]

@Me134 if you scroll through the forum it seems like quite a few people suffer from this. Including me self 

[Shaun-87]

Hi all

So it's still a known issue. I have been testing for 5 days now. The IPv4 monitor is perfect, but IPv6 latency spikes are shocking. Is Sky going to actually look at what's causing this? I have been with Aquiss & Oligo. Both had ZERO issues with this.

[DanTup]

Did anyone manage to get this resolved? I've just moved back to Sky (900Mbs Gigafast with the Max hub) and I'm seeing exactly what's described here. Speed tests are generally good, but many websites/apps randomly stall for several seconds. A test to London on https://packetstats.com/ shows poor ping erratic ping times.

Happens wired, so it's not related to WiFi. Didn't happen on the previous ISP last week.

I've tried disabling IPv6 on the wan, and also tried changing DNS servers but neither of those helped. I tried switching back to the Vodafone router to see if I could eliminate (or blame) the Sky router, however it fails to get an IP address so I can't test with it (I guess there is some difference between Vodafone/Sky with how they get IP addresses?).