Poor connection

[ColinGillespie]

Good morning,

After testing and everything coming back strong, I'm still getting poor signal in various areas in my home.

The signal strength has never been great and seems even worse lately. 

[caesarome · Accepted solution]

@ColinGillespie 

Try going through this to see if it helps:

https://www.sky.com/help/broadband/my-broadband-speed/improving-wi-fi-signal-to-my-devices/articles/...

If not and if you have Wi-Fi Max on your account then Sky will supply up to 3 pods as you can read about here:

https://www.sky.com/help/articles/sky-wifi-max

Select "No, I still need help" at the bottom on the above link.

[icesteelman]

Hello @ColinGillespie 

A single router often fails to reach every room in a property, even reatively small ones. 

You don't mention if anything in your setup has changed recently, nor what router, service, etc. you pay for so @caesarome 's response is probably the first place to go to diagnose any issues. If no obvious faults are found then there are a few possible solutions each coming at additional cost.

1. Obtain wifi boosters from Sky as mentioned by @caesarome  (but that may or may not cost you depending on what level of broadband service you are paying for). There are many posts on this forum about obtaining these if you search for "Booster".

2. Invest in further hardware and create your own wifi Mesh with sufficient devices to cover the whole house. There are multiple suppliers you can pick from that all work well, but this can be relatively costly (however once invested, a Mesh system would work with any broadband supplier if you eventually move away from Sky).

3. Homeplugs/Powerline devices can provide a hardwired solution from your Sky Broadband router to other rooms using your mains wiring, you simply need a power socket near the router and another in the "target" room that then allows devices to be hardwired (or connection of a wifi hotspot in the target room).

Personally I went with option 2 as some rooms in our bungalow were just too far away from the router to pick up a wifi signal reliably. This also made wifi available on our patio which is a bonus in the summer months.

There are plenty of very knowledgeable people on here that can offer advice / help in much more detail.

[ColinGillespie]

I have 3X boosters which is the maximum.

ive turned them all on and off and tried moving.  The engineer came out and placed them to an optimal position and it still isn't great. 

[icesteelman]

@ColinGillespie 

If the boosters can't cover your whole house (even when configured by a Sky engineer) then in my opinion a Mesh would be the solution if you need good wifi in all rooms.

This can be costly. I have 4 Amazon Eero devices to cover our bungalow. One next to the Sky router, one in the lounge(front of property), one in the kitchen (rear of property) and one in a bedroom (rear of property). I got a deal on a three pack a some years ago but still something like £150 and then purchased a refurbished individual unit for £40 . This gives a good wifi signal in all rooms and even out on the rear patio (great for the summer). It has worked fine for the last two or three years, first with TalkTalk and now with Sky (since August) and should still be good if I decide to leave Sky at the end of our contract.

Hope you find a solution that works for you.

[ColinGillespie]

Is this solution much better than the boosters? 
are you getting the top end of the modem speed in most places?

[TimmyBGood]

---

@ColinGillespie wrote:

are you getting the top end of the modem speed in most places?

---

Perhaps be aware for most purposes that's entirely unnecessary (although users still understandably expect it)

The higher speed bands deliverable over optical fibre can now significantly outpace even WiFi 7, and the majority of uses don't need more than 30Mbs received at any individual device anyway.

[icesteelman]

@ColinGillespie 

For reference I have Fibre 150 which delivers this to the Sky router. I then have my Eero 6 Mesh wired into this router and Sky WiFi disabled. I have never tested wifi speed as I have always been happy that this confirguration allows 2 TV's to stream simultaneously (in different rooms) and several phones/tablets to browse the internet, use YouTube, TikTok, etc. Since you asked I took my phone around each room and ran a few random speed test websites. The wifi download range was anything from 55 through to 80 if that helps.

[icesteelman]

@ColinGillespie 

Forgot to mention that the speeds I reported were whilst one TV was streaming live ice hockey 😊

[Chrisee]

@icesteelman a HD stream only uses less than 15Mb/s. The maximum bandwidth streaming in UHD is around 35Mb/s stability is far more important than speed. I agree a properly set up mesh system is the way to go but for most people they do not need a WiFi7 system which in practice few devices can use. My own WiFi5 system delivers around 150Mb/s in distant rooms ample for most users at a cost if £100 for 3 unit system.