Wifi not strong enough to work from home

[mikefrompicture]

Since April (when we renewed our contract with Sky) our wifi performance has been all over the place. It has got to the point that it can't sustain a Zoom or Teams call for longer than 5 minutes making  it impossible to work from home. I have run all the connection tests that Sky suggest which continually crash when testing 'Your devices and Set-up'. I am desperate to talk to a human being about this and get someone over to sort it. Can anyone help?

Some more detail:

- Prior to April, we could get a good signal all over the house and I could run zoom meets on our first and second floors (our hub is on the ground floor). Now, I can only run a zoom meet if I'm sat right next to the hub.

- I have restarted the hub on multiple occasions and this does not fix the problem.

- When a zoom meeting crashes, I run speedtests and find that I'm getting download speeds of as little as 1.33Mbps.

- Also since April, building work has been going on next door. I mention this just in case this could be interfering with the signal.

- We pay for Sky Boost but I have no idea as to how to talk to someone in real life or get an engineer out to help us. I'm assuming that postin gthis might start that process?

- If I can't work from home, I will need to find a new supplier.

Can someone please help?

[Chrisee]

@mikefrompicture So forum members can help can you post your Sky hub's connection stats see Find your Sky Broadband router statistics

Also check the following 

• the hub is out in the open on a surface above things like rsdiators
• if you have a booster it placed halfway between where tge hub is and where you need the signal 
• any equipment like cordless phones or wireless speakers are well away from the hub

[mikefrompicture]

@Chrisee 

Thanks for the tips.

Here are our stats....

[Chrisee]

@mikefrompicture your broadband is using G.Fast and while not that unstable I can see the connection to the cabinst has dropped 25 hours before you took those stats while the hub has been running for 52 hours. To get the higher speeds over a copper line the system uses higher frequency carriers than VDSL and it has been found that things like Powerline adapters can cause the connection to drop as they use similar carriers. 

However thst does not explain the loss of wifi range which my other questions were designed to probe. The modt obvious explanation is something had changed like the position of the hub or a piece of equipment causing interference. The other possibility is interference from another WiFi network. You can download WiFi analyzer apps onto a mobile or laptop which will show you all WiFi networks in range with their signal strength and channel pretty obviously two signals on the same or adajacent channel will interefere if the signals are strong enough. Given everyone is using more and more WiFi just juggling channels can become pointless.

If you are working from home and want to use a room some way from your hub it is worth getting a better solution than the free basic hub Sky gave you. If your work room is on a different floor or at some distance Powerline adapters which use the mains cabling to carry the data are a possible solution but if you try those make sure they use a mains socket several feet from the hub and are linked by longer ethernet cable than the one thst comes with the kit duectomthe G.Fast issue. 

Another solution is to invest in a  whole home WiFi system which use multiple satellite units to form a mesh network which is far more resistent to interference. The third and often cheapestsolution  is to run an ethernet cable to your office.

[mikefrompicture]

Thanks @Chrisee,

A couple of questions:

1. We don't use Powerline adaptors so they won't be interferring with the router. On the basis you recommend trying them later in your post, I've  just ordered a pair to give that a go. I'll take your tip about plugging the routed one in a fair distance away.

2. The router is in a room with a wireless Sonos cinema surround sound set up and a cordless phone but was working perfectly well up to April. I can't really move anything that far away from the router or move the router much either.

3. If I found other WiFi networks running off the same channels as me, what action could I take? I had thought (probably wrongly) that restarting the hub made it automatically search for suitable channels? Can I specify a particular channel to run off? How?

Anyway, many thanks for the tips. Fingers crossed that the Powerline adaptors work.

[Chrisee]

@mikefrompicture the SR203 is not the smartest router and ehile it will try to find a clear channel it will not always detect third party wireless devices like Sonos or DECT phones but keeping them a few feet apart should help. You can choose channels manually as explained here Change your Sky WiFi channel