Sky Q - Causing big Issues with my Internet - Advice Required

[Parmageddon]

Hi there,

I've had this problem for a bit now without being able to pinpoint when it starts... until today....really scratching my head about this one!

A little bit about the setup first - I've got 2 internet providers and 2routers, Sky and Virgin (Mainly use virgin and sky is there as a backup for when virgin goes down).  I also have Sky Q (main box and a mini box, in living room and a back garden pub shed). 

Virgin router runs into a 16 port switch, which feeds hard wired ethernet to every room in the property, including the 2 Sky Q boxes.

The issue -   I thought until today that simply having both routers ON was (somehow) causing all my hard wired devices on the virgin network to suffer incredibly intermittent connection strength at random times, causing drop outs all the time etc... That said. It had gone away for months till today.... And I've realised the only thing I did today (with it being sunny) was go and re-establish the internet connection of my main Q box in living room and mini Q box in the pub shed.... again they're both hardwired to the virgin router.

And as if that wasn't weird enough....the problem goes away entirely IF i unplug the sky router (which again isnt hardwired to anything)....and as far as I can see i've disabled the 2.4ghz and 5ghz on the Q boxes to force a reliance on ethernet on the virgin network... So  I'm really stumped on how this could be happening.

Appreciate it's a bit long-winded and complicated.... but has anyone got any ideas on this and could possibly shed any light? 

thanks so much

[TimmyBGood]

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@Parmageddon wrote:

 but has anyone got any ideas on this and could possibly shed any light? 

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My guess would be that this is a side-effect of having a very unusual network setup, and that somewhere there's an intermittent crossover (quite possibly at the Q boxes) between the Virgin and Sky distributions.

[Parmageddon]

@TimmyBGood  thanks, yes I suspect you're definitely right RE:Crossover. Im just not sure how this can be the case.

Virgin Router --> Network switch --> All wired devices (including Sky Q boxes)

Sky Router --> WiFi only

Actually the Sky Router does have a line into the network Switch, but it's the phone line wire...not a cat5.

I guess I could try setting the Sky router into modem mode or w/e so it doesnt give off WiFI and see if that prevents the issue? for troubleshooting purposes atleast.

[TimmyBGood]

@Parmageddon 

Personally I wouldn't entirely trust Q television boxes not to talk to a Sky Hub if they can find one.    They are designed to use one which is there, or not to use one because there isn't one: your setup is an unexpected hybrid.

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@Parmageddon wrote:

Actually the Sky Router does have a line into the network Switch, but it's the phone line wire...not a cat5.

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Phone line into a switch?

[Parmageddon]

@TimmyBGood  

Yes, I know they're temperamental and would assume them to look/prefer a Sky Router etc. But im 99% sure i've gone into the secret menu on the boxes and turned the 2.4/5ghz signal off... so no idea how they could even be trying to find the Sky router now....especially whilst hardwired to the virgin router /  net switch.

RE: Phone line into switch. Yes, From router --> it goes into a microfilter --> some other adaptor --> net switch.... maybe thats causing the network confusion? 

Image link of  of that :- https://ibb.co/khTj3TK

[TimmyBGood]

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@Parmageddon wrote:

RE: Phone line into switch. Yes, From router --> it goes into a microfilter --> some other adaptor --> net switch.... maybe thats causing the network confusion? 

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I can't imagine what benefit that brings.  There's one RJ11 port on a Sky Broadband Hub for its internet connection (if ADSL/FTTC/G.fast but not FTTP) and one BT jack port for VOIP telephony using Sky Talk over SOGEA. 

[TimmyBGood]

@Parmageddon 

That would appear to indicate your Sky broadband isn't a failover at all: where is its actual external connection?

Edit: ah, is it actually patched via that panel to a phone port elsewhere?

You definitely wouldn't want to use such wiring into a switch.

[Parmageddon]

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@TimmyBGood wrote:

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@Parmageddon wrote:

RE: Phone line into switch. Yes, From router --> it goes into a microfilter --> some other adaptor --> net switch.... maybe thats causing the network confusion? 

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I can't imagine what benefit that brings.  There's one RJ11 port on a Sky Broadband Hub for its internet connection (if ADSL/FTTC/G.fast but not FTTP) and one BT jack port for VOIP telephony using Sky Talk over SOGEA. 

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Im not sure, not overly technical when it comes to network stuff. Though there's two rack mounted things in that cabinet, the lower of the 2 is the 16port switch which you cant see so well in that image, in the rack slot above it is loads and loads of port slots. Which I suspect for some reason sits between the network switch and the hard wired devices? 

Im not sure where port 24 goes (the one that the Rj11 from the rear of the sky router runs into.)..... though as the sky internet does work when plugged in, I've always assumed that runs to the main phone line from the telegraph pole....that's a certainty isn't it? Im just not sure about what its doing in between.

[Parmageddon]

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@TimmyBGood wrote:

@Parmageddon 

That would appear to indicate your Sky broadband isn't a failover at all: where is its actual external connection?

Edit: ah, is it actually patched via that panel to a phone port elsewhere?

You definitely wouldn't want to use such wiring into a switch.

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Interesting, potentially, though I didnt install any of that stuff. Previous (uncontactable) owner.

Yeah I'm wondering if thats it, maybe I just need to find the phone line and have that run directly into the sky router rather than what it's currently doing using any of the switches....?

RE:Failsafe, sorry i should've said. Nothing that complicated/automated.... I simply manually move over to Sky wifi if the virgin in my area ever goes down.

[TimmyBGood]

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@Parmageddon wrote:

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maybe I just need to find the phone line and have that run directly into the sky router rather than what it's currently doing using any of the switches....?

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Yes: you don't want that link touching a switch on the Virgin distribution.

It's fine to use a discrete strand of ethernet cable to link a distant phone port to the Sky Broadband Hub though: the grey adapter is one which permits structured cabling to be used to connect a digital telephone handset back to a PBX.

[Forever+Customer]

Did you solve this OP?

Did you disable 2.4 and 5GHz wireless transmission in your main Sky Q box?  Mine was defaulted to on even though totally uneccessary for my setup.

These days the air waves are jam packed throughout most frequencies and bandwidths and those signals are all potential sources of interference to hard wired solutions so the more noise you can take out of the equation the better chance you have of succeeding.

[Fergus+MacRoth]

You don't have any IP address conflicts, do you?

Last year (maybe the year before), I suddenly had a problem with connectivity, and I pinned it down to the fact that something on my network (an IP camera) had decided to change its IP address to the one Sky was using.

I didn't think that was possible - but it had definitely happened.