Setting up mesh system to boost Wifi

[Sammia21]

Hi 

I have the sky broadband hub and have upgraded to Sky Broadband Ultrafast fibre, connection from outside to the hub is fine however, the wifi has declined since the upgrade.

I have purchased a TP-Link Deco X55 AX3000 mesh system which i plan on setting up tomorrow but have read somewhere that the sky router needs to be set to non-router mode? 

Has anyone got any experience of this and  might be able to tell me what i need to change in the router set up? (we have sky Q until tomorrow so not fussed if it will stop that working as we wont be using it going forward)

Thanks

[jamesn123]

@Sammia21 

No idea what you mean by 'non-router mode'. The mode I assume you might be thinking of is 'Modem' mode but the Sky hubs do not have this functionality. To use the 3rd party router properly you would remove the Sky hub completely and connect your TP-Link router directly to the ONT. 

[Chrisee]

@Sammia21 the simplest setup for a Deco system is to configure it in Access point mode  connect it to the Sky hub by wifi and disable the hub's own wifi.

Deco systems dont connect that easily to Sky lines as they dont support DHCPv4 Option61 Sky require although they can in some lines be connected using DHCPv6 PD but that is by no means certain

[Sammia21]

Would i be better off changing the router too?

[Silichip]

I'm also planning to buy the TP-Link Deco X55 AX3000 Wi-Fi 6 mesh (3 Pack) for my Sky 150Mb broadband hub soon, but I have set up a Huawei Wi-Fi 5 mesh from my old Vodafone broadband hub, and I needed to ask Vodafone ISP support for the my broadband username & password to set up the Wi-Fi mesh system, and you probably need to do the same with Sky.

[JimM1]

@Silichip You dont ask with sky no NEED to, but with Vadafone yes you NEEDED to!

[Silichip]

I ended up buying the TP-Link Deco XE75 Wi-Fi  6E from Amazon, and the setup was easy; no need to connect Sky. I'm very happy!

[JimM1]

@Silichip Good to know you got it all working and with no issues at all!

[Sayek]

@Silichip I was considering the Deco XE75 for my 500Mbs connection but settled for a pair of X50 as it was a lot cheaper due to being only dual band and does a decent job too.

The speed on main unit is 500Mbs and 2nd unit on wireless backhaul is about 300mbs to 350Mbs depending how busy the house is.

I plan to keep mine 3 years duration of the TP-Link warranty and by then Wi-Fi 7  hardware will be cheap and 900Mbs will same price as 150Mbs today 😁

My Deco did work direct from ONT but I plugged the Sky router back to monitor LED if any issues.