Sky Q box crashing & box fan spinning loudly - EE Broadband

[jrwn]

As a follow up to my earlier post I have now had site visits from both Sky and EE home networks engineers and spent hours on the phone to EE technical support. Sadly my Sky Q box has still crashed unresponsive 4 times in the last 2 days after the changes, which is an improvement over the previous 4 times a day before their involvement.  The mini boxes dont always need restarting after a main box crash so recovery can be quicker in these cases.  Overall the performance is still not good enough. The changes made were:

1. The Sky Q main box was replaced which has reduced the fan noise, but still crashes when on standby.

2 A continuous 15m Cat8 Ethernet cable with no intermediate devices now connects the Sky main box directly into a port on the EE Plus hub to remove any debate that ethernet switches were the cause. The Ethernet connections to 2 miniboxes have been disconnected.

3 All 4 mini boxes now use WiFi on the 5Gz channel and the 2.4Gz channel is disabled in all Sky boxes including the Sky Booster.

4 The EE Plus Hub has been reset to WiFi 5 mode using WPA2 personal security instead of WPA3. This required a complete Hub restart, reuse of original WiFi passwords, resets of the EE Hybrid Connect and 4 EE Smart WiFi Plus range extenders and relinking to the EE app.  On some devices you had to manually forget the WiFi network and then select and reenter the password.

5 The EE WiFi settings were changed to use a fixed unused channel instead of Auto Smart to eliminate breaks from channel optimisation.

The EE Hub Manager Technical Event Log shows the Ethernet Interface port to the Sky main box going up and down multiple times during the night so is there an interaction with the standby mechanism in the Sky box?

If anyone else has any other suggestions on how you can stop the Sky main box crashing when it has an Ethernet connection please let me know.

[stereohaven]

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@jrwn wrote:

If anyone else has any other suggestions on how you can stop the Sky main box crashing when it has an Ethernet connection please let me know.

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I do not, but, as I mentioned earlier somewhere in the thread, my longest period of stability (before my latest box which does not have the issue), was to stop using Ethernet and connecting via WiFi using the 2.4ghz "Compatible WiFi" the Smart Hub Plus can generate.

Did you try that? Apologies if you did, it seems you have tried most things.

Out of interest, what Sky Q software build are you on? My box is on Q320.

[RuralPirate]

I have still had no issues since I removed the Ethernet cable and went full wi-fi

[MrSKYQCrash]

Hello all,  finally full stability on ethernet and its an interesting story.  Starting point was infrequent crashing.  Since upgrading network (hubs and powerlines) everything went pear shaped with multi-crashes per day.  And so the mission started.  New SKQ box if anything made things worse.  Moving to a different eth port on my lounge router and setting static ips with DNS 8.8.8.8 appeared to help for a while.  Then instability reappeared with main box crashing and fan on full speed until switched off and on.  Checking my main BT hub I noticed the internet was going offline during some of the crashes so reported to BT to get that fixed.  Once fixed, while better there have still been problems so, wihout any logs on the SkyQ box I decided to unplug devices and areas of my network to see if stability was better or worse.  Interestingly when I disconnected our home office stability improved.   I had notice the line speed to the office was previously poor 100mb so I put in a new cable and following reconnecting the office every for the time being appear fine running at 1000mb.  So things I would suggest in no particular order.  1) check the internet router logs for losing internet connection and report to your broadband provider. 2) test your ethernet lines, cheap line testers are available on amazon etc. 3) run off a different ethernet port on your router, possibly ask for new router especially if new model is available. 4) Test your cable for the SkyBox, replace anyway if you have a spare.  5) run static IPS and change your DNS to either 1.1.1.1 (Im on this now) or 8.8.8.8.  My guess is that SkyQ box do not tolerate network issues well .  Despite many posts it is hugely disappointing that no one from SKY has posted a reply.  I am now 4 crash free days.  Hope this helps

[Chodley]

Interesting

What exactly did you have connecting the home office (what is that, a garden room or something with a long ethernet cable?) before and after? And was the Q connected directly to the router or is there some other topology there in between?

[MrSKYQCrash]

Hi, my network has lots of elements.  Main BT router. which has the internet coming in, has 3 wifi discs extending to cover areas of house and garden.  CAT5 cable from BT Router goes to lounge where I have another wifi hub, ASUS one with many ports.  The Ethernet cable from the BT router goes into the lan port and not WAN.  Into this hub also goes SkyQ main box, TV, Sonos  and a couple of more lan devices.  2 buildings, one being the office,  also are connected to the LAN through ETH cables into this hub.  Office has a wifi hub and the eth cable gos into the LAN.  In the 2nd building I have a powerline system to extend lan access to other rooms.  I had noticed the office was only running at 100MB and detected some mice damage causing loss of some of the cat5 wires.  So I had already laid and protected a CAT6 replacement which I connected up when I realised it may be causing a problem.  Now the LAN is running on 1000MB.  As of now everything has been running smoothly, for the time being anyway :-).  I forgot,  I have Sky minis one of which is wifi connected to the main SkyQ and other is running off one of the BT discs eth port.   Any questions let me know.

[Chodley]

Ok so you still have wifi running on the Q - 5GHz only or both bands?

Wonder if the damage to the canle was causing a lot of packet loss & re-transmission

[MrSKYQCrash]

Wifi, yes on both bands for one mini.   Can remember what lines in the CAT cable were damaged but whatever it was meant it ran at only 100mb.. 

[Chodley]

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@MrSKYQCrash wrote:

Wifi, yes on both bands for one mini.   Can remember what lines in the CAT cable were damaged but whatever it was meant it ran at only 100mb.. 

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and on the Q? When I had wifi switched on mine loved to randomly stop using ethernet.

[MrSKYQCrash]

Have you tried setting the DNS on the main box to 1.1.1.1?

.

[Chodley]

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@MrSKYQCrash wrote:

Have you tried setting the DNS on the main box to 1.1.1.1?

.

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Mine? Er, can't remember. Might have tried that or Google's at 8.8.8.8

I've had wifi switched off for about 4-5 years now.

[wadinga]

Hi All,

For interest my system is stable for over two months with no crashes or fan hum, on standard wi-fi with no Ethernet. Equally my PC and laptop are very happy with lengthy Ethernet cables, provided there is a tp-link box between them and the EE Superhub.

Mini loses contact occasionally but I still suspect overheat. 

Good luck with getting Q to play nicely with the EE Superhub over copper. 

ATB

wadinga 

[Chodley]

What's a tp-link box? They make a lot of things.

[stereohaven]

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@Chodley wrote:

What's a tp-link box? They make a lot of things.

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I'm assuming an unmanaged switch, I also have one between the EE hub and the Q box these days.

[Chodley]

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@stereohaven wrote:

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@Chodley wrote:

What's a tp-link box? They make a lot of things.

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I'm assuming an unmanaged switch, I also have one between the EE hub and the Q box these days.

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That would be my guess too (and what I've recommended to others to try) but wanted to be sure