Sky Max Hub

[Essexbleu]

Changed to the Msx hub yesterday and my connection is worse. I have reset everything, changed the password, lowered the security settings and still terrible. Speed test showing 28mps download and it is so poor. Streaming programs are constantly buffering and unwatchable and I had several Teams calls I had to abandon.

[mae-3]

@Essexbleu 

Contrary to popular belief Sky Max does not improve signal strength around the house it improves only signals that use 5Ghz with the 802.11ax standard for additional speed. Sky Max does allow the addition of Sky Max Pods to improve coverage and the Sky Max Pods are only 802.11ac standard.

[Essexbleu]

Thanks just a shame that's not how Sky advertise it and the issues relate to streaming through my Sky Q box so you would think they would ensure compatibility of there products. 

[Chrisee]

@Essexbleu the range of the Sky Max hub is roughly the same as Sky's earlier Broadband Hub as it uses the same output power, which is llimited by regulation, and design of aerials. However it is designed to work with extender pods which can come as part of the Wifi max bundle. If you pay for that Sky will send out one pod if you call them if you still hit issues then they will arrange for a broadband engineer to visit who can authorise another 2 pods. 

The resultant up to 4 unit mesh system should give decent coverage in quite large homes and is triband so the backhaul traffic between the pods and the hub does not use the same signal as your devices. However like most Wifi6 systems the spedd relies on the higher frequency 5GHz band which is less able to penetrate solid walls etc which can make networking older properties a pain.

Sky Q is getting very old in networking terms and is no longer being actively developed as it looks like satellite broadcasting has a limited life. However Sky Wifi Max is now offered to customers with a main Q box and up to one Q mini customers with more Q minis or boosters will have to wait a little longer. The issue is the proprietry networking Q uses being difficult to integrate with modern routers.  You hit similar issues if you use a third party wifi mesh system in place of your Sky hub.