Interference from neighbours multiple Sky Hub WIfi signals

Hello all,,

Apologies first of all if I have posted this on the wrong forum.

I'm currently with Vodafone connect fibre 38, and up until recently I was perfectly happen with the speeds and rarely had to change the channels. However recently the speeds I was getting through out the day and evening started to drop down to around 4Mbps or less. I kept switching channels and the speeds would go up but not by much!

My young son tried running one of those free Wifi analyser tools available for PCs. That's when we discovered that although we have just one SSID, one of our neighbours has SIX(!) SSIDs all with the same name (eg SKXXXXA). Looking at the Router Names as well it's showing he has two Sky Hubs, two Sky Q Mini Boxes, and two Sky Q Silver boxes. Am I correct to assume that because all these devices have the same SSID they belong to the same household?... Also as the Mac Addresses are all different are they all physically separate boxes?... why would someone want to have that many boxes???... it seems crazy!!... there is only one family living next door, with two grown up kids, so it seems excessive... but it's clear his signals are interfering with mine.

I have also noticed that three of my neighbours SSIDS are on channels 1,6 and 11. And the other three SSIDs are on channel 36. All six of his signals appear 80%-90% signal strength in my house!

Can someone please explain what my options are as I am having to change my channels several times a day! ... I have read somewhere that one option is to buy a good third party router to replace the vodafone one but it needs to be an approved one?

Your help with this would be much appreciated.

I've got four wireless access points in my house, all with the same SSID, on channels 1, 5, 9 and 13. There's no way I can cover the whole house with one and it just makes everything easier and faster. Maybe I'm just greedy!

Are you sure that�s the cause of the problem ? What are speeds like if you disable wifi and use ethernet to a device instead.

Have seen a few posts on here casting aspersions on your suppliers router.

Do you have any line stats from it ?

My son checked with Ethernet and the speeds are almost max. The Vodafone tech guys also confirmed that the speeds coming in is 40Mbps and uploading 10Mbps.

I have had enough, this vodafone router is really not up to the job and going by comments on the vodafone forums best solution is to swap the router for a better one... but it has to be an openreach approved one apparently.

You don't necessarily have to change the router.

You could add one or more Wireless Access Points (say Devolo dLAN 500 wifi). You could put one in the room you need it most. Or, join you neighbours at their game and have two or more throughout the house, perhaps not using wifi at all, but using the dLAN wired units for fixed computers or TVs (or a mix of both wired and wifi).

There are similar systems by other manufacturers.

I think you'll find they have 3 devices. They have a sky hub (ie the Sky router), a sky Q (main sky box) and a sky mini (to allow watching sky on another TV). Each of those devices is broadcasting on both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz (so you are seeing one of each but connected to 2 different frequencies).

That is definitely not over the top - in fact in a house of one person I essentially have the same setup (although don't have Sky as my ISP).

Their use is pretty normal and as someone else said probably not what is causing you issues.

In reply to a post by Karen032:

going by comments on the vodafone forums best solution is to swap the router for a better one... but it has to be an openreach approved one apparently.

It doesn't need to be Openreach approved. Vodafone will ask if it is before giving you your username/password. You can tell them anything though.

I have Sky, the way it works is as follows...

You have a main router, and a main TV box (connected to a satellite).
The main TV box connects into your main routers WiFi, and then acts as a WiFi booster.
Any extra TV Boxes eg. ones in the bedroom, kitchen etc, these connect only over WiFi, they get all of their TV channels from the main TV Box over WiFi (even the 4K channels are streamed from the main TV box over WiFi to the other TV Boxes). All of the extra TV Boxes also work as a WiFi Booster.

So if you have sky in 3 rooms, you now have Main Router, Main TV Box, Second TV Box, Third TV Box, so 4 SSIDs being broadcast at 2.4Ghz and 4 SSIDs being broadcast at 5Ghz so 8 total being brodcast on the same SSID.

6 SSIDs likely mean just Sky in 2 rooms - totally normal for a family house.

As the TV Boxes send 4K content and HD Content, they need basically full WiFi signal to work well, so sky TV Engineers can add in extra WiFi booster boxes to ensure the WiFi signal is strong enough to carry Full HD and 4K content, bearing in mind you could be watching a 4K stream on multiple boxes... Hence you can get more SSIDs being introduced.

To answer your question 6 SSIDs is not that many for a Sky Q setup and is entirely the norm.

A fix for you is to switch to 5Ghz, and to use a channel that is not 36 (the channel used by Sky Q by default).

My Sky setup has 8 or 10 SSIDs, not sure if my main box is set to broadcast SSID or uses ethernet only.

All this being said I do not believe this is the cause of your issues.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Thu 25-Jan-18 19:13:50)

FTTC modems (and likewise routers with built-in modems) DO have to be approved in that they must have passed the Modem Conformance Tests specified in BT SIN 498. See http://www.kitz.co.uk/routers/MCT.htm for full details.

No, they don't
OpenReach don't enforce this, period. They never have, and never will.
There's a particular brand that isn't on the list, that is KNOWN to cause issues, and it still works.

None of the TP-Links are on that list, or any Asus, Most of the Zyxels.
They all still work, perfectly.

Only the Asus models with a Mediatek chipset have issues, as OpenReach disabled G.INP on these devices.

In relation to my comment, Vodafone don't have the means to check which modem you are using (except their own modem). You can tell them any old nonsense.