Sky Fibre - Dropping Connection

We switched to Sky Fibre recently after having enough of BT's poor support. Initially speeds were pretty slow after the bedding-in period, so I switched their router out (against T&Cs, I know) and this saw a big improvement.

Recently though, we've started to get intermittent dropouts. They'll last anywhere from minutes to hours and have been without internet connectivity for most of the weekend.

What's kind of interesting is their approach to troubleshooting this sort of stuff. When I was with BT, their initial approach was that any problem must be related to wi-fi. Because wi-fi is this new fangled technology which they don't support, or even seem to know what it is. So you'd have to fight through a lot of inane questions before getting something logged and passed to someone who knew what they were doing.

Sky's approach seems to be obsessed with your telephone socket and filters. When on hold, they suggest taking a picture of your socket and sending it to them. Their automatic help tools built-in to the router start with different types of sockets. In getting through to them, it was all about the socket and filters.

Anyway, so we're in to day 3 of no internet and I'm waiting for a call back. At the moment they can't book an engineer because their system says I've never received a Sky router from them. Its here and its connected.

What's strange is that even after passing the usual line test, they seem to assume it must be something in my property which has suddenly stopped working. They, like BT, seem to be resistant to passing anything over to someone to look at problems within the network layer or anywhere outside of my house.

Pretty frustrating all round.

So is the problem with your wifi?

No, thankfully Sky acknowledge the existence of wi-fi.

So does the router log the problems?

Router just shows that the connection is dropped, unable to get an IP address. Nothing out of the ordinary in the logs to indicate errors leading up to something.

Any sync speed? Attenuation figures showing up?

A connection is two parts, the underlying VDSL2 and then the authenticated layer on top of that.

If you are synced at your usual speeds but not authenticating then points to something beyond the copper element being the issue

Presumably Sky have run a line test indicating the fault is at or near your property. If it's in your property and the engineer says it's your equipment you'll be charged £130.

I also had your issue with BT and WiFi, they basically told me everything has to be wired in and they only support 4 things connected via ethernet... Anyway,

Assuming a Sky Q Hub.

Head over here:
http://192.168.0.1/sky_router_status.html
Username: admin
Password: sky

Under Modem:
Is your modem status not showing as connected? Any line stats below?

Here is mine:
Modem StatusConnected
Traffic Type:PTM
Line Rate - Upstream (Kbps):9995
Line Rate - Downstream (Kbps):39998

Scroll to the bottom and click show statistics. Do yours all show as 0 ie not connected?
Here's mine for reference:

Broadband Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 39998 kbps 9995 kbps
Line Attenuation 13.2 dB 0.0 dB
Noise Margin 10.3 dB 12.12 dB

Sounds silly have you changed filters and if using a prefiltered socket, tried the test socket with a filter?

Edited by ukhardy07 (Mon 11-Dec-17 15:56:52)

Thanks all, will have a look tomorrow.

The connection has been stable since early afternoon so if it remains stable in to tomorrow I�m presuming it�s just something in the network.

I think Sky like the photos as it may suggest you are actually following their troubleshoot rather than "pretending" you have connected directly to the master socket, etc.

One of my mates went though this before a fault was detected in the local cab.