Ethernet cable throwing out Sky TV

[vickiB84]

Hi all, hoping someone can help please.

We have a new garden room that we have run an ethernet cable to. The ethernet cable goes from our main (non sky) Broadband router in the house and is plugged in to a wifi extender in the garden room.

The extender works fine for connecting phones etc to the wifi but for some reason the new cable is causing our sky boxes to lose wifi signal. We are having to reset our main router and reconnect the main Sky box each time (and turn the wifi extender off in the garden room).

We dont understand the issue. Surely an ethernet cable should make it all run smoother? NB we have put a Sky mini box in the garden room which we want to connect to the main Sky box too.

hoping someone knows what to do here! 

thanks so much

[MightyQuinn · Accepted solution]

Hi @vickiB84 

It is not really clear, but your Garden room Mini box needs to connect to the Sky Q Main box, not your network or WiFi extender. Ethernet Router to Main box and Ethernet Router to Mini box should work (via gigabit unmanaged switches is fine).

[stereohaven]

Hi @vickiB84 

I suspect it is because Sky Q mini boxes only connect to the main Sky Q box, not your actual WiFi (unless it is Sky broadband and hardware), which is what most people assume. The Q devices create their own mesh, so the mini probably cannot consistently connect directly to the main box.

To test this, plug the Sky Mini into the ethernet cable you are using for the extender, and then reset the network connection, turning off Wifi as you do.

This will force the box to use the ethernet port. Leave it all to restart and see if it finds the main Q box and works consistently.

[vickiB84]

Thanks very much. Sorry I think I've not explained properly in my original post.

we've not even tried to connect the Sky mini Box in the garden room to the WiFi in yet. All we've done is plugged in the WiFi extender in the garden room and connected it via the Ethernet cable to our router in the house. Whenever we turn the extender on this causes all our Sky boxes (main one in the lounge and a mini box in the kitchen) to disconnect from the WiFi.

[stereohaven]

Which make of WiFi extender is it?

[vickiB84]

It's an Amazon one. Couldn't tell you the brand as it was a cheap one! 

[stereohaven]

---

@vickiB84 wrote:

It's an Amazon one. Couldn't tell you the brand as it was a cheap one! 

---

OK.

Who is your broadband with?

[stereohaven]

---

@stereohaven wrote:

---

@vickiB84 wrote:

It's an Amazon one. Couldn't tell you the brand as it was a cheap one! 

---

OK.

Who is your broadband with?

---

Actually, let's try and make this easier.

Remove the WiFi extender and plug the Sky Q mini directly into the Ethernet cable.

A little while back Sky removed the need to have Sky broadband for the boxes to act as WiFi hotspots. They are not powerful and only work on 2.4ghz but using the mini instead of the extender might help solve the issues you are having. 

More here: https://www.sky.com/help/articles/wifi-hotspots 

[vickiB84]

Thanks very much for your help so far. Rather annoyingly our sky mini box is on the other side of the room to where we have put the Ethernet cable (and would rather leave it there to avoid having a big wire across the room!). We will however test it out tomorrow to see if this works, will report back! Thanks again 

[Chodley]

Bet the Sky boxes are trying to access the wifi via fhe extender and getting a terrible signal. Try putting it on a different SSID (if it lets you) and make sure it's not using the same frequencies as the wifi on the router.