Poor speeds with Sky

[inquisitive_pup]

Hi all, I have a basic question about Sky broadband Ireland. Sorry in advance if it's silly.

I have just signed up to Sky broadband with a 1GB connection. I have a SIRO ONT box installed in my home (I'm in Dublin).

After a good experience with Nest Wi-Fi (the older generation one with a router and multiple points) in my old place, I decided to try Nest Wi-Fi Pro (3-pack) as my Sky Hub’s coverage is extremely poor. I’m having several issues and was hoping for some guidance. Apologies in advance for any stupid or basic questions as I’m not very good with any of this.

[Without Nest Wi-Fi Pro] First of all, I’m only getting wireless speeds up to 500 when I stand next to the Sky Hub, which is half of what I’ve paid for. The Sky reps say there’s not much that can be done and that I should be judging a wired connection. With a wired test, the speed increases marginally to 550-580.

[With Nest] I’ve switched to Sky for the first time, since moving to the new place which has a SIRO box. At my old place, I was with Virgin where I’d used their router as modem-only and relied on the older generation Nest to give me speeds of 498-502MB (I was on a 500MB connection then). In the new place with SIRO, even when I add Nest Pro to the Sky router through the Ethernet cable, my wireless speeds only increase to 600 on the ground floor. The results are nothing to speak about on the middle and top floors, despite adding two additional Nest Pro routers as points within the mesh. For instance, I get less than 100MBps on the second floor (I don’t know if that’s normal / acceptable) and 150 MBps on the 1st.

I have read that Sky doesn’t allow a modem-only mode so was hoping that connecting to the nest Wi-Fi as is helps. It hasn’t, unfortunately.

This brings me to my question. what action can I take? I also tried connecting the Nest Wi-Fi Pro router directly into the SIRO box and amending the settings but no connection. Sky reps said SIRO says there's no fault with the ONT box (no one's come out to my home though, IDK if that makes any difference).

My goal is to get as much speed as I can with as much coverage (esp the top floor where I sometimes have to work from).

Sorry if this is all too basic and/or if I’ve missed something obvious but I’ve never used FTTH before and only ever used Virgin’s standard infrastructure (the white Virgin box with a grey wire).

Thank you so much for your help!

[Chrisee]

@inquisitive_pup your questions are asked quite frequently and are sensible. The standard Sky hub is a wifi 5 device which tops out around 600Mb/s due to the technology used. You can buy newer wifi tech including wifi6, 6e and soon Wifi 7 which offer higher "speeds" if both the router and the device support them. Standards change speeds improve BUT in practice most devices and apps dont use anything like the bandwidth Wifi 5 provides for example streaming UHD sport in HDR to a top quality TV never uses more than 35Mb/s. Practically once you have 100Mb/s connection increasing speeds further has minimal practical impact apart from downloads so if unless you have a need to download massive files spending money is not going to improve usability beyond speed tests. 

Sky in Ireland use different carriers and systems than they use in UK and in practice you can probably connect your Ring system to the ONT if you can figure out the log on which sorry I can't help with. However you can connect the unit as you have done via the Sky hub but if you are doing so turn off the hub's wifi or the two signals will interfere. In ideal circumstances you will then approach 850Mb/s on devices thst support Wifi6 and with luck you might get 900Mb/s. If you want to know the true speed of your connection useca device connected by a gigabit ethernet cable and you should get around 920Mb/s the difference being network overheads which is the data used to route the packets.

There are two possible ways to configure the Ring system first as a router so you have double network address translation which isnt ideal but works for most things. The second is as in Access Point mode where the Sky hub does the routing which is simpler.

If apps can't use the bandwidth and wifi struggles to deliver it why do ISPs offer Gigabit services well the proper reason is to support multiple simultaenous users but unfortunately many people buy these products based on media hype which is like buying a car just on its top speed which in practice 99.9% of owners will never actually get near. 

[inquisitive_pup]

@Chrisee @Thanks so much for your response! I've read through several posts on this community and more often than not your name pops up - thanks very much for offering your experience and expertise for us folks with limited knowledge in this domain!

How do I turn off the Sky Hub's Wi-Fi so the only active Wi-Fi is Nest's?

"There are two possible ways to configure the Ring system first as a router so you have double network address translation which isnt ideal but works for most things. The second is as in Access Point mode where the Sky hub does the routing which is simpler."

is there a guide or an existing post off the top of your head where I could learn how to do this? I get that it could be Sky Hub itself that isn't capable of transmitting those high speeds so if there's a workaround to this that would be great.

again thanks for all your help! I've been on the phone constantly with Sky and not gotten anywhere so any help is greatly appreciated. 

[Chrisee]

@inquisitive_pup use these instructions Split Sky WiFi bands

to access the wifi tabs then simply untick each of the two bands. 

[PaulN1980]

@inquisitive_pup Did you manage to get this sorted out?  I am in the UK but have managed to get my Nest WiFi Pro 3 pack working connected durectly to the ONT.  I believe you should be able to do this in Ireland.  You will need to

Open the Google Home App

Select Wi-Fi,

Select Network Settings

Select Advanced networking

Select WAN

Select PPPoE

Then put "anything@skydsl" as teh account name and "anything" as the password.

Hopefully that will allow you to get connectivity.  In terms of improving speeds throughout the house you can either have ethernet cables connected between the different Nest WiFI Pro devices to give a wired backhaul, or try to position them so that they aren;t too far away from each other and are as don't have too many objects/walls between them.