Sky Full Fibre Gigafast (Sky Max Hub) and TP-Link Deco M4 setup

[Zac_Taylor]

Dear Sky Community,

I have a technical question about my broadband setup at home.

I have Sky Full Fibre Gigafast with a Sky WiFi Max router/(hub) which is connected through a direct Openreach fibre line.  The range in our house is poor, and with people from working from home, we decided to install a WiFi mesh system.  So, connected to the router is the TP-Link Deco M4.  There are three units around the house - one is connected to the router, the other is upstairs in the study and the third is in the loft conversion. 

I am looking for some guidance on how best to set this system up.  I am aware that there are two main ways you can use the Deco system: either as access points, or as a mesh system which essentially creates a 'new' network.  

Running purely with the Sky router (i.e. without the Deco system) the internet speed around the house varies considerably.  Apple devices seem to get a significantly better speed than all other devices.  My iPhone, for instance, gets 493mbps download and 111 Mbps upload, whereas my Windows machine (in the same room, on the same desk as the iPhone) gets 127mbps download and 106mbps upload.  The signal is also apparently not too great on the Sky Q Mini boxes, one of which is located in the loft, and regularly suffers from stuttering or entirely loses connection.

However, when I run the Deco system in mesh mode, this brings the speed up for the Windows machines up to around 380mbps and stops the problems with the Sky Q mini boxes.  The Apple devices get brought down a bit – they move from 493mbps to a similar speed as the Windows devices. 

Ideally, I want to run the Deco system in access point mode.  However, I face a significant problem when I do this.  Because all the devices can find the Sky router, even if the speed isn’t as good, they default to it.  As the Decos are in access point mode, they do not have a separate network name, and so there is no way to direct devices to the nearest access point rather than the antennas in the Sky router.  I worked out pretty quickly that the solution would be to disable the Sky router’s WAN, however I actually cannot find a setting in its user control panel to do this.  It has a different interface to the Sky routers I have had before, but I am confident that I have looked everywhere for it.

With all of this in mind, I have a number of questions to ask:

1. Is it better to run the Deco system, in my case, in access point mode or mesh mode?
2. If I do want to run the Deco system in access point mode, how can I disable the antennas (and WAN) on the Sky hub?  Is this even possible?
   1. If this isn’t possible, what is the way round it?
   2. Is there anyway to actually run the Decos as access points and keep the antennas on the Sky router on so that devices will connect to whichever they are closer to?
3. If I run the system in mesh mode, what modifications should I make to the Sky hub settings to make sure the connection is as good as possible?  I want to minimise conflicts between the Sky hub and the Decos as much as possible.

Any advice on any of that would be much appreciated!

Regards,

Zac

[Chrisee]

@Zac_Taylor simple answer disable the hub's WiFi competly the settings for each band is in the hub's  Advanced settings area of the My Sky app. 

I run a similar set up and find AP mode works well. The two modes are AP or router and the units work as a WiFi mesh in both. You can run the Deco in router mode behind the Sky hub but you will have a system with double Network Address Translation which some apps dont like. If you do want to use that set up you can put the Deco in the Hub's DMZ which bypasses the hub's firewall but otherwise just leave it as it is.

Dont get too hung up on speeds anything over 100Mb/s is likely to be ample if you have devices thst will handle very large files regularly it is better to avoid wifi totally and use Ethernet. My Deco system works well giving a very stable network ideal fir streaming video.