Has anyone modded their sky router for external antenna

I'm after wifi to my shed and was wondering if anyone has fitted a sma socket to their sky router , so I can put in a directional antenna

Would it be easier to just use a third party router? With the added benefit of being able to use other DNS servers etc too.
Though depending on how far away your shed is you may want to consider using a separate AP to beam the signal towards the shed, leaving your usual AP antennas to focus on the house!
Or just run some cat5 to the shed!

Post deleted by LadFromWales85

Just get a booster from sky, the sky q ones are usually £20 if you negotiate down.

A booster connected by wifi will cut the wifi speed in half. Better to use a access point connected by either ethernet cable, or maybe powerline adapters...

In reply to a post by dwg1:

A booster connected by wifi will cut the wifi speed in half. Better to use a access point connected by either ethernet cable, or maybe powerline adapters...

The sky q boosters are wireless AC using a mesh system. The Sky Q mesh system is much more than your typical set of WiFi boosters. The AC data throughout is 400meg+, so halving it won’t come close to your max fibre speeds.

In regards to speed when I had 80meg the boosters pulled the speed just fine, now they do the same on my 40meg.

They use 5Ghz only for the backhaul which is wireless AC.

If you get sky Q TV. You have one master tv box connected to a sat dish and all others link over WiFi only. All TV content even the 4K stuff is sent from the main TV box over WiFi to the other rooms sky q boxes. The usage case of the boosters is typically to link second or third sky tv boxes to the main box, in areas where the WiFi doesn’t reach. You may have a WiFi router and main Q box in the front room and then 3 floors up at the back of the house have a second Q box. Here the engineer is likely to install 1 of 2 Q WiFi boosters.

You can have multiple boosters around the home and in my experience they do a fine job of 4K streaming over WiFi.

It should be noted all TV boxes also become WiFi boosters.

Sky has actually disabled the powerline features of Sky Q for the time being as the performance wasn’t as expected. In my view powerline is hyped up but often not reliable, at least with WiFi you know what you’re getting.

Powerline often interferes with VDSL2+ causing errors or drop outs and I cannot personally recommend it.

As far as getting internet in a hard to reach place, the sky q boosters won’t slow it down. They can pull 80meg perfectly if setup correctly.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Tue 02-Jan-18 04:00:14)

Thanks for the information. I wasn't aware that the Q boosters only run on 5Ghz. I have heard that streaming from the main Q box to Q minis, over wifi is very inconsistent, some might even say unreliable. I have to admit I don't know much about these Q boosters, but surely the more boosters you add, the more potential for interference etc? Is it also possible to daisy chain one booster to another, or does there have to be a Q box in between? In regards to the Q mini boxes acting as access points, do they operate on 2.4G and 5G, or solely 5G. I appreciate your input

I have the full Sky Q package, and I find it rock solid, with uptimes of 1000+ hours and no problems.

The boosters run on 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz, however the mesh network only uses 5Ghz as the backhaul between the devices, so the link between the main router, to the sky boxes, and the boosters, is all 5Ghz. Clients may connect in at 2.4Ghz (say a device not supporting 5Ghz), but the backhaul is only 2.4Ghz to the nearest TV Box/booster, this then feeds back over 5Ghz to the main router.

The airties MESH is quite intelligent, it can band steer things onto 5ghz / 2.4ghz depending on the usage. Things can be daisy chained yes, the MESH system will always figure out the best, most efficient route back to deliver the traffic as required. This may mean using daisy-chain or it may mean going direct from the booster to main AP, if devices are doing more latency, rather than speed requiring tasks.

The streaming can be inconsistent, this is mainly where the WiFi signal is poor in a larger house, some engineers don't put in enough boosters, or place a booster too far from the main AP, so it's picking up a weak signal and boosting that on. The engineers have equipment to ensure this doesn't occur, but some typically rush things.

In my home I have the main router, a main Sky Q box, 2 boosters and 1 Mini box. When I had BT I had 1 router, and 1 repeater, but Sky insisted I had a strong signal in every room, as my main TV box and Mini are linked as far apart as possible. I get full WiFi all over.

The only feature I do not love about the airties MESH is the network management built into it, in effect no device can take all the bandwidth if it detects other devices are connected. It's basically a QOS built in that can't be turned off.

I can't complain too much about the system. I like how it intelligently steers me onto APs as I roam around... Never had a problem with either of the TV boxes. Some detail here:
http://wi-fi360.com/2016/01/28/airties-can-finally-t...

Worth noting, Sky has kept powerline on the TV boxes, just not on the main router. So in my house the TV boxes could effectively talk direct on powerline. My signal could even go main router - main Sky TV box - powerline- sky Mini Box - wifi - sky booster - wifi out to devices, or it could all go via WiFi.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Tue 02-Jan-18 17:27:43)

In reply to a post by atherlon:

I'm after wifi to my shed and was wondering if anyone has fitted a sma socket to their sky router , so I can put in a directional antenna

I would personally do one of two things, buy a powerline kit which has a 'dual band' access point and locate that closest to shed and set it up as an access point with same wifi name and WPA.

or run Ethernet to shed.

Adding an external antenna to Sky router probably won't accomplish much to be honest, and assuming you have a Sky hub 1/2 would require soldering and could risk damage to hub or extra interference to DSL.

@ ukhardy07 that's very useful and interesting information So a quick question if I might, is it possible to configure manually the Q boosters, or at least turn off the 2.4 or 5G bands on them? TIA