Sky Gigafast+ Broadband – What They Don’t Tell You (Read Before You Upgrade)

[Anonymous]

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Sky Gigafast+ Broadband – What They Don’t Tell You (Read Before You Upgrade)

As a reasonably tech-savvy guy, I thought I’d share some info that Sky don’t really explain — especially if you’re upgrading your broadband expecting “faster speeds.”

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⚙️Ethernet Cables Matter

The ethernet cable supplied (and stated in the manual as the one you must use) is a Cat 5E cable. That’s only capable of 1 Gbps, meaning your shiny new 2.5 Gbps / 5 Gbps line is already throttled before it even reaches your Sky Gigafast+ Hub.

👉To get the full benefit, you’ll need a Cat 7 or Cat 8 cable.

You can find these cheaply online (Prime delivery etc.). I personally went with Cat 8.

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💻Hub & Device Limitations

While the Sky Hub does have a 10 Gbps port, it only helps if your device’s network card supports speeds above 1 Gbps.
Most devices — Sky Q boxes, Xbox Series X, Smart TVs, etc. — only have 1 Gbps ethernet ports, so they’ll be limited regardless.

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📶Wi-Fi Performance

Unless your device supports the latest Wi-Fi standards (e.g. Wi-Fi 7 — like the iPhone 17), don’t expect full speeds wirelessly:

• 5 GHz: typically 500–800 Mbps

• 2.4 GHz: around 200–550 Mbps

• 6 GHz (Wi-Fi 6E/7): can easily exceed 1 Gbps

I upgraded my desktop with an MSI Herald BE Wi-Fi 7 card, disabled the OEM Wi-Fi, and now consistently get ~1700 Mbps download/upload from my study upstairs.

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🧩 Network Management Quirks

While you can reserve IP addresses in the hub settings, you can’t rename devices — only add a note. This means you have to click into each device’s MAC address to identify it.
This becomes annoying when you have, say, two “Samsung Smart TV” devices listed and you’re trying to set up port forwarding (no IP/MAC shown in the forwarding menu).

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🔞Broadband Shield

Don’t forget to turn off Broadband Shield if you access anything 18+ — this can include sites like Reddit or other non-pornographic adult content.

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🧠 Final Thoughts

For heavy PC users or households with multiple devices streaming at once, the 2.5 / 5 Gbps service makes a noticeable difference — especially when using:

• 6 GHz Wi-Fi connections

• High-speed ethernet cards & cables

If you’ve only got a few or older devices, though, you probably won’t see much benefit over a 1 Gbps fibre plan in which save your money

[TimmyBGood]

One correction to the above: Cat5e is entirely capable of multi-gigabit speed at any cable distance likely to be found in a domestic setting (and 5Gbs is absolutely no problem for the length of patch-lead which Sky provides)

The original certification of the standard in 1999 was for 1000Mbs at 100 metres, but this was superceded by IEEE 802.3bz in 2016

For a household with a really long cable (out to a garden office perhaps) and 5Gbs broadband, Cat6A would be preferable for the external run: the patch between ONT and Gigafast+ Hub won't be the bottleneck.

 

[JimM1]

Having closed your account, not sure what you are doing, and it does not take the magic wi-fi 7 pill to make it all work that's for sure.

No way near wi-fi 7 for sure!

[TimmyBGood]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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Most devices — Sky Q boxes, Xbox Series X, Smart TVs, etc. — only have 1 Gbps ethernet ports, so they’ll be limited regardless.

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Q boxes and smart television sets have absolutely no use for internet connections above about 30Mbs (the speed required to stream UHD with HDR)