Slow Ethernet speed on Sky Q Box

[Chodley]

Decent 5GHz distance on these things means about 3m and no walls though 😉

I have a 100Mb switch attached to my Q so can't test it without digging out a 20m cable. How do you know the chipset on the newer boxes is limited to that? I've read otherwise but not from a concrete source. 90Mb is an odd limit, is that data minus packet overheads? It's still plenty for any content on a Sky box of course. The fact he's seeing 40Mb on his mini suggests some kind of hardware or contention issue.

"I'm a little confused as to what you mean when you say hopping between ports 3 and 4"

This was also a complete mystery to me.

[Chodley]

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@ADDragonFire91 wrote:

I've turned off the wireless signal band and it reads 89mbps speed on the main box but not on minis. But on my mini box and other mini boxes in our house it's reading 40mbps with wireless turned off on my mini box that's on Ethernet to. The 2.4ghz band doesn't work cause I've turned off 5ghz and the picture freezes. on the 2.4ghz band, can anyone else do this on their box to see to if it's not just me like going into 0.0.1 select in network you'll see 2.4ghz and turn off 5ghz band if your 2.4ghz band works then it's my box but if it doesn't work for you to then it the update.

Don't forget to put your 5ghz band back on again though.

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You can't use 2.4GHz between sky boxes.

[Anonymous]

@Chodley It's my job to know 😉

With the growth of  FTTP the Sky Q limitations has been one of the biggest drivers of service calls to Sky broadband customers complaining of slow Wifi speed after upgrading. Especially Gigafast where the issue is exasperated by a WiFi 5 only router.

[lettice]

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@Chodley wrote:

I have a 100Mb switch attached to my Q so can't test it without digging out a 20m cable. How do you know the chipset on the newer boxes is limited to that? 

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The latest 1tb UHD and V2 UHD boxes are both capable of 10/100/1000Mb/s Ethernet

The full specs if the four Sky Q boxes are here;

https://www.sky.com/help/articles/sky-q-box-specs

[Chodley]

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@Anonymous wrote:

@Chodley It's my job to know 😉

With the growth of  FTTP the Sky Q limitations has been one of the biggest drivers of service calls to Sky broadband customers complaining of slow Wifi speed after upgrading. Especially Gigafast where the issue is exasperated by a WiFi 5 only router.

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I thought the biggest issue was the Max router doesn't work with the Q mesh the same way as the old router, so it behaves more like every other poor soul on a 3rd party ISP has been suffering the last 10 years 😁

I'd have thought the Q spamming out broadcast advertising packets constantly is probably a big cause of disappointing wifi speed relative to the internet uplink.

[Anonymous]

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@lettice wrote:

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@Chodley wrote:

I have a 100Mb switch attached to my Q so can't test it without digging out a 20m cable. How do you know the chipset on the newer boxes is limited to that? 

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The latest 1tb UHD and V2 UHD boxes are both capable of 10/100/1000Mb/s Ethernet

The full specs if the four Sky Q boxes are here;

https://www.sky.com/help/articles/sky-q-box-specs

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I've never seen any where near Gigabit speeds from a hardwired Sky Q box.

These are the official capabilities of Q nodes.

This is referring to when Q nodes are acting as WiFi hotspots. If Q is able to receive gigabit speeds for streaming only, then this isn't something I'm aware of. It would make more sense though given the WiFi throughput limitations that Ethernet capability is more like 10/100.

[Anonymous]

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@Chodley wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

@Chodley It's my job to know 😉

With the growth of  FTTP the Sky Q limitations has been one of the biggest drivers of service calls to Sky broadband customers complaining of slow Wifi speed after upgrading. Especially Gigafast where the issue is exasperated by a WiFi 5 only router.

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I thought the biggest issue was the Max router doesn't work with the Q mesh the same way as the old router, so it behaves more like every other poor soul on a 3rd party ISP has been suffering the last 10 years 😁

I'd have thought the Q spamming out broadcast advertising packets constantly is probably a big cause of disappointing wifi speed relative to the internet uplink.

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Unfortunately the Max hub fixes the issue of speed limitations caused by the Q mesh. However, it's now created more issues for connectivity and loss of WiFi coverage. There are ways to resolve in most cases, but unfortunately in rare cases we see that Max and Q can't be made to work as effective as their old setup, just as previous issues seen with HD to Q upgrades. However, unlike those upgrades, there is no way to revert back to previous hubs once a hub 6 is on the account.

[xenon81]

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@Anonymous wrote:

The Ethernet capability of all Sky Q boxes regardless of version is 90 Mbps. If you see a speed of more than this being reported by an app, it's either not giving an accurate reading or the box is using WiFi.

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The V2 box can definitely achieve over 100Mbps (not by much however). I have an ASUS router which shows live traffic from each connected device and 140Mbps is the highest i've seen reported by the router when running the Netflix speed test on the Sky box (connected via ethernet).

 Sky downloads can reach 120Mbps if the box is otherwise idle, in standby and not recording anything at the same time., otherwise it tends to be 80-90Mbps. 

[Anonymous]

@xenon81 That's interesting. How fast is your connection to your home / router?

I'm curious as to whether the Q lan is delivering over 100 Mbps or if the Netflix app is incorrect.

As a possible comparison I often see fast.com reporting 1.1 Gbps over Ethernet which isn't actually possible as the device only has a gigabit lan.

I have Stream with gigafast at home so can't check right now, but may look to get 100% confirmed next week. Unless someone is able to clearly show Q going significantly above 100 Mbps.

[xenon81]

I'm on a 500Mb Virgin Media connection.

I agree Fast.com/the Netflix in-app speed test can be unreliable, and often show a higher figure than that reported by the router. But the router's own speed stats seem to be accurate and match the speeds reported on PC/phone etc when I run speedtest.net or a file download etc, so it seems the Q box can slightly exceed 100Mbps but obviously doesn't come close to gigabit speeds. 

[Anonymous]

OK, so I can confirm that Sky Q boxes do in fact have gigabit lan cards as Sky test equipment can identify whether it's connected back to the router or switch using gigabit or 10/100.

Which suggests that that the WiFi throughput has been severely throttled to 90 Mbps when a Q node acting as a WiFi hotspot is connected over lan, which is odd for it to be throttled lower than when connected over WiFi. 
Or the Q software is simply optimised in a way which does not take full advantage of a gigabit lan chipset.

[TimmyBGood]

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@Anonymous wrote:

OK, so I can confirm that Sky Q boxes do in fact have gigabit lan cards 

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Depends on the box model, I believe.

[ADDragonFire91]

So why won't sky 2.4 ghz work and 5 ghz does 2.4 ghz used to work fine for WiFi hotspot. Sky needs to sky release another update to fix the issue.

[TimmyBGood]

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@ADDragonFire91 wrote:

Sky needs to sky release another update to fix the issue.

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Very unlikely at this point in the lifespan of the product, I suspect.

[Anonymous]

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@TimmyBGood wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

OK, so I can confirm that Sky Q boxes do in fact have gigabit lan cards 

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Depends on the box model, I believe.

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Yes, but my confusion is that none of the models will deliver over 90 Mbps when connected over Ethernet and acting as a WiFi hotspot.

I am a Sky employee working in the field as a broadband / WiFi tech and this issue with the Q Lan spec has thrown me a curve ball.