Sky Max hub randomly changing channel and diabolical WiFi speed.

[Paul_99]

Hi all,

we've  recently had Sky fibre installed and I've encountered the familiar issues others have highlighted of smart devices no longer working.

For the most part I've managed to work around these disabling the 5Ghz channel briefly etc. but the worst problem I've encountered is with my PC in the spare room. It's no more that 6m from the router with no walls in between.

The problem is that at times the Linksys WiFi dongle will only connect the the 2.4ghz channel. Even changing the settings of the adapter to only connect to 802.11a hasn't been successful and the 5Ghz band isn't visible, I can see the neighbours sky network so I don't believe it's an issue with the adapter.

When I returned the setting to auto and it has managed to connect to the 5Ghz band I've managed speeds of 190Mbps on channel 52. I've left the room and upon my return it's dropped the 2.4Ghz on channel 1 and this was the result -

 

Any ideas of why this is happening and how to fix this issue?

Why have sky hamstrung the end user by not being able to manually set the channel etc on these routers? This seems like a pattern with ISPs, the last one I had to daisy chain a BT hub to their router to achieve reliable WiFi service.

If there's no decent fix can anyone recommend a good third-party modem and router combination?

Thanks in advance.

[Chrisee]

@Paul_99 the Sky Wifi Max hub supports Wifi6 (802.11ax) and is designed to optimise wifi automatically which is great with reasonsbly modern wifi kit but it sounds like your wifi adapter doesn't like the system. You have set the adapter to use 802.11a which is almost ancient history which will limit speeds as explained here https://www.cbtnuggets.com/blog/technology/networking/when-to-use-802-11-a-b-g-b-nc-wifi-standards#

At least get an adapter or usb dongle that supports Wifi5/802.11ac which virtually all current models do.

[JPR007]

@Paul_99 Modern routers and kit is designed to dynamically change channels all the time as this ensures optimum performance in an ever more crowded world/space in the airwaves. In the "old days" you used to manaully choose wifi channels, but these days thats too simplistic.
It shouldn't mean kit disconnects regularly. The router will constantly scan the airwaves to detect other ones and avoid using the same channels, however it is not by any means a perfect science, and there is a limit to what it can do. 

Every single day my setup is using different channels, but nothing drops off the network. 

As @Chrisee has alluded too, i think the issue might be the adaptor more than the router, and most so called "smart" kit is usually pretty dumb and uses the cheapest of cheap radio chips that don't even support wifi 5 let alone wifi6/6E.