Poor Wifi signal and quality with Sky router (SR203 model)

[JimM1]

@BTx555 For me instant as soon as it was switched over!

[se151]

So it's been a few months since my last update. What I can report is that the Sky Wifi Max Hub with a Sky extender "puck" has made this a whole lot worse.

Let me separate puck and hub issues.

The Puck - Firstly you will drop connection for some time if you switch from the puck to hub or vice versa. I'm currently closer to the hub but both laptop and android phone connect to the puck. The connection is intermittant and the speed is slow.. Basically the hub is downstairs in the open plan living room and the puck is at the top of the stairs. We have a 3 bed house so it's not exactly big! The puck will normally connect at a slow speed so streaming is hit or miss and we average about 50-60Mbps to the web. All in all, pretty rubbish.

The Hub - Still have really poor performance from it, UNLESS you set a device to have priority but you can only do that to one single device. It's constantly changing channels as it fights with the puck and neighbours wifi. If only I could MANULLY configure it to work optimally.

So overall, the Wifi Max Hub with a puck has made a bad service slightly worse. 

But... If I plug in my old faithful TP Link Archer AX1500, I get over 450Mbps consistantly throughout the house. No drop outs, no disconnects.

And that is my suggestion - if you can't make the Sky WiFi Max hub work in your house, buy a £40 router from Amazon and your problems will go away.

[se151]

Six months later, still hasn't

[JimM1]

@se151 When did you change to sky Max?

[se151]

That was the new router they sent me end of June. Been on that ever since. Running a channel scan, you can see it switching frequently during the day. It cannot stay stable. And the puck just causes more instablilty. But since using the TP Link router in AP mode, I see no issues. The throughput on that hovers hovers around 490Mbps even at a distance, but as I write this on my laptop, I'm connected to the puck EVEN THOUGH I'm 10ft from the main hub on the ground floor and getting around 10Mbps to the web.

[JimM1]

@se151 Do you mean a POD instead off a puck, puck's are streaming devices? If you switch the wireless off on the device give it a minute then back on does it connect to the closer wifi signal then or still jump to the POD Mesh?

Edit:- Are you also running the AP at the same time as the SR213 and it's pod with all the wireless switched on?

Channel jumping? both off them or just the 5Ghz...

As you have the sky Max connected is that because you need to maintain the talk landline also?

[se151]

Yes, POD. Tried many times... At some point it will switch between hub/pod again, but it's anything from 10-15 seconds up to a minute for it to reconnect.

But I failed to mention this before - even with the POD off (and have tried days without this), the hub will disconnect you if it's channel hopping which it does frequently. With this, that is one of the same issues I had with the standard router. The TP Link is set for channel optimisation but it doesn't drop you. 

And wrapped up with ALL of this, you still don't get anything like the throughput to the web that you should unless it's wired.

[se151]

Edit:- Are you also running the AP at the same time as the SR213 and it's pod with all the wireless switched on? - Currently yes. But having the AP on at the same time makes no difference in terms of the issues from the Sky hub. We ran the sky hub for many weeks on it's own before I started using the AP.

Channel jumping? both off them or just the 5Ghz... - both 2.4 and 5 on the sky hub. It

As you have the sky Max connected is that because you need to maintain the talk landline also? - Indeed.

[JimM1]

@se151 You are really caught between the rock an the hardplace with the configuration that you have, the SR213 needs to have the wireless on for the sky Max Pod to operate, and the AP Wired backhaul on the Tp-Link, but you have said the Max by itself was always hoping about, is the other wireless wifi signals around you causing an issue, could see the 2.4Ghz as it is stronger but cannot see why your 5Ghz is doing it, so just sounds like the Max does not like something external....

Have never used the sky Max few reason's to not entertain it, Asus my self 4 node mesh and powerline in the mix, and it just does not hop anywhere, never had a problem either when the SR203/SE210 were also in the mix but they are both retired back to the boxes!

[se151]

The thing with the Pod is, I don't need it. The signal when it's working is ok and covers the house. But if I switch the pod off, the main hub isn't consistent enough to maintain a connection. It's bad with it, worse without. I'm waiting for the post Xmas sales now to find the best router I can find and move solely over to it. I'll have to keep the main hub for the phone as you said but it will just become a router with no WiFi. If my 4 year old TP link can and does provide a fairly good signal throughout the house a gardens, I'll just upgrade it to make sure its a solid signal. But as you pay a premium for the Sky max hub, I will downgrade it as soon as possible.

I'm going to open another case with sky over the Xmas break to see where they will go next with this.

[JimM1]

@se151 By the sounds off the way you have it all does look like a two unit mesh will cover all your needs with the wireless turned off on the sky hub to maintain your phone, Max is just not the stable system you need by the whole sound off it, but because you have the AP in play not going to say the Max is not getting upset with the Tp-Link wireless!

[se151]

"but because you have the AP in play not going to say the Max is not getting upset with the Tp-Link wireless!" - well, consider the Sky Max hub was getting upset long before I broke out the TP-Link lifeline and is just the same with it in play, I could :-). 

[Chrisee]

@se151 the Sky Max hub and its extender pods use a  closed 5GHz signal to communicate if your property has solid internal walks or similar this can be an issue as its range is less than the 2.4GHz band

Use of third party APs is unlikely to help much and indeed can makecthings worse as the APncan interefere with the hub and pod. Instead I find disabling the Sky hub's wifi and instead using a 2 or 3 unit third party WiFi mesh system can be a far better solution.

An alternstive is to ask Sky fir additional pods which can come as part of the WiFi Max package but thry usually want an Engineer to visit to see what nedds doing.