Sky Router connected device limitations.

[CNBPublic]

Hello.

I've trawled through quite a few posts on here looking for ideas and guidance but havent found an exact match yet.

We have Sky Ultrafast 500gb with FTTP, and the with the phone connection plugged into the Sky Router. We also have Sky Q and 3 mini boxes so its not the Sky Max router. We also have a mesh network using 3 white BT discs that we bought a few years ago. One is hardwired to the router, and the others are wireless connections. This is mainly used to provide wifi coverage at the back of our home, and for the small garden office. 

We are a busy family of 4 with laptops, phones, tablets, wifi TVs, Alexa devices, Ring, Hive etc. We had noticed that the internet connectivity for our home alarm system frequently drops overnight.

Apart from the connections dropping, everything in the setup seems to work fine with no issues - I get the sense that we might be quite lucky having looked at all some of the community posts!

I called Sky and after a lengthy call was left underwhelmed! 

I was told by the agent that we have too many deviced connected to the router - and that our router supports up to 18 devices.  This means that periodically as devices try to connect, the router will simply disconnect others to make way. The 18 limit seems like a major limitation for a modern household. 

Their advice was for me to purchase a 3rd party router that will support more connections. We cannot have the latest Sky router as it is not compatible with Sky Q. 

I've seen lots of posts about replacement routers, and the Asus ones appear to be most commonly recommended, although the Sky agent had mentioned TP-Link. I got the impression that if I was to replace the router it might have implications elsewhere with Sky Q etc that they would not support with a 3rd party router.

I just wanted to check if anyone has had success with replacing the router or if there are any considerations for a similar set up to ours with FTTP including the phone, lots of devices, and Sky Q. 

We are happy to purchase a new router if that is the right solution, but I was not left confident after speaking with with Sky that this was the right answer - especially with the device limitations being so low!

Any help or pointers to relevant articles elsewhere would be gratefully received!

Thanks

[jamesn123]

@CNBPublic 

To me it sounds like your Sky Q boxes are going into Eco mode overnight which is dropping the connection on your security system

Try switching all your Sky Q boxes to active mode and see if that solves it

https://www.sky.com/help/articles/using-the-standby-settings#:~:text=Eco%20or%20Active.-,Eco,any%20s....

[CNBPublic]

Thanks @jamesn123  for the quick reply. I'll try that change and see if it will help.

The alarm connects to the router via the mesh network - I should have mentioned that it has a separate SSID, but the Sky person suggested that it didn't matter as it was the total number of connected devices on the router irrespective of whether it is direct to the router, or via a booster or mesh connection.

Thanks for your quick reply - I'll post again in a few days to say if it works or not.

Thanks

[jamesn123]

@CNBPublic 

What Sky told you on the phone is a load of rubbish 18 devices is not a hard limit at all. Realistically you can probably get up to around 30 before ISP grade hardware starts to struggle but its not a hard limit of 'removing other devices so another can connect'

If the alarm system connects to the router via your mesh network & goes offline I would struggle to see how that is Sky's fault, to me that sounds like your BT mesh might be doing some 'housekeeping' overnight. E.g. Switching WiFi channels to a more clear one, this can certainly be possible if you are essentially running Sky Q & BT WiFi mesh alongside each other as they both try to command a good chunk of both WiFi frequency spaces so will inevitably clash if they are not manually setup to avoid each other.