Sky Router

Just moving from BT service of infinity 2 fibre to Sky Pro fibre, and have a question on the small white router hub sky supplied (not connected yet as I get switched from BT to Sky next Tuesday), is the new Sky wifi router N enabled or just b/g?

I bought USB wifi connectors for my two sons PC's, which are upstairs on wireless connections, which at the moment connect to the BT home hub 3, (dreadfull wireless signal 80% of the time), so just checking which type of connection the new Sky router provides?

Thanks in advance.

don't think the sky router is N enabled but the question you should be asking is...
is my exchange going to suffering from the crippling congestion issues....


good luck with your Sky connection, I have a feeling you might need some!

Sky Hub SR101 is wireless N - some spec info (and other articles about that router) here:

http://www.skyuser.co.uk/forum/content/165-specifica...

I think the Sagemcom 2504n (Fibre) is also wireless N too - but I don't think they are issuing those any more.

In my opinion, they are adequate for the job but neither of them are what you might call leading edge devices.

I'm on a Chester exchange currently with BT, and as far as I'm told, will be keeping the current Fibre connection BT provide, and switched to Sky via the exchange, so no congestion issues to look forward to.
Reasons I'm leaving BT are many, I was on the BT vision pack, when they replaced my old BT vision box with a new youview box, worked for a week or so, then every time you turn it on, either wont activate, or come up with a bright pink screen, asking BT's help desk was a joke, the guys there are on a strict script, asking me to press the blue youview button to start re-tuning the box, I said I'd love to, but no menue just a bright pink screen ( I tried other HDMI cables both to/from the youview box,and plugged PS3 & xbox 360 into the HDMI socket used by the youview box, all of them worked perfectly, bar the BT vision box, still giving out a bright pink image.

My broadband was flaky, due to the quality of the supplied home hub 3 (am on my 7th) and my next door niebour has all things in sky's name, and no problems for him on anything, so I'm following him, besides, the wealth of programmes Sky offer in HD is wonderfull, so much better than the freeview based BT vision.

I've got the BT wholesale infinity white box, which the new sky router will connect to, and the 2TB sky HD box working now, a fantastic service from Sky.

any thing you could recommend as a replacement?

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/hardware/reviews/77-sk...

The wireless might limit speeds the SR101 has reasonable coverage

There's quite a lot of info on skyuser about using 3rd party routers on Sky fibre. I recommend you look on there and do some research. It needs to be a router that supports DHCP Option 61. I think Billion has a model for which firmware is available that will work on Sky fibre (there may also be one or two other specific makes/models).

In reply to a post by vf12vf:

don't think the sky router is N enabled but the question you should be asking is...

They've been N enabled for quite a long time now! The previous slimline silver box was N enabled as well.

In reply to a post by vf12vf:

don't think the sky router is N enabled but the question you should be asking is...
is my exchange going to suffering from the crippling congestion issues....


good luck with your Sky connection, I have a feeling you might need some!

No congestion problems here. As far as I know the problems are limited to a small number of exchanges. You could bet this forum would be a lot busier if there were widespread problems.

In reply to a post by _Resonance_:

No congestion problems here. As far as I know the problems are limited to a small number of exchanges. You could bet this forum would be a lot busier if there were widespread problems.

This forum is likely to be the busy one: http://helpforum.sky.com/t5/Broadband-Speed/bd-p/sky...

In fact, it is.

most people don't really understand what is going on and just accept it, there are more and more people discovering that something is wrong and sky just fob peeps off as usual.
FYI my connection was brilliant for the first 2 weeks after connection, now after 6pm I am lucky if I can get 1 mb up or down......

I hope you are unaffected but it seems sky have been signing up people on the exchanges with limited bandwidth and are being caught out more and more.

Thank you, just reading up more, and it seems I loose one of the 4 ethernet sockets on the back of the Sky SR101 to the fibre connection itself, this I can live with, but am worried about the wireless signal upstairs, and am wondering if anyone has ever used this to extend/improve wireless signal upstairs using the SR101 downstairs: http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/ShopDetail.asp?...

If not, any other thoughts on extending wireless signal upstairs?

I had thought of inline homeplugs, but no spare ethernet cable after connecting the sky box, PS3 & Xbox 360 in the living room.

Thanks in advance for all help & suggestions.

In reply to a post by zrerz:

I had thought of inline homeplugs, but no spare ethernet cable after connecting the sky box, PS3 & Xbox 360 in the living room.

Homeplug is probably the best way to get performance - you could get a homeplug unit with multiple RJ45 ethernet sockets, e.g.:
http://solwise.co.uk/net-powerline-500av-4pe.htm

Don't forget you need two units for a network.

to be honest, I didn't see any problems with the wireless side of things, my daughter uses her Laptop in the other side of the house to where the router is located, she has powerline adaptors but said the wireless signal was ok and hasn't used the plugs for a while..

In reply to a post by vf12vf:

to be honest, I didn't see any problems with the wireless side of things, my daughter uses her Laptop in the other side of the house to where the router is located, she has powerline adaptors but said the wireless signal was ok and hasn't used the plugs for a while..

Everybody's house is different - my friends can't get any signal on the other side of his house, without the homeplugs. Might be because of the sheer number of WiFi networks around his area there are no free channels.

In reply to a post by vf12vf:

I hope you are unaffected but it seems sky have been signing up people on the exchanges with limited bandwidth and are being caught out more and more.

To be fair Sky are probably unaware of the bandwidth from the exchanges because their network management is subcontracted to Alcatel-Lucent. Sky are seeing high take up in some areas, for example in my area Sky accounts for more that half the total residential broadband customers.

I hear what you are saying but in my case, sky are fully aware of the bandwidth problems, there is another thread on this forum..not started by me.. detailing the problems at my exchange..i also know for a fact that at least 10 people I know locally are having the same prob and informed Sky directly.

but Sky just want to ride it out on their time scale, they have no thoughts for the loyal customers paying for something they are not getting. would you accept going to the petrol station week after week to fill your tank but only get 10- 15% full but still pay the full amount with no questions? I think the answer will be a perfect No!
however this is what Sky are expecting of their customers.

it wont be my problem soon as im in the process of moving, I just wish everyone luck that the expected fix comes sooner rather than later.

I'm sure if Sky wasn't dependant on Alcatel things would get done much quicker. The upgrade at my local exchange was put back three times by Alcatel which delayed it by six weeks. All Sky can do is report problems to them and leave them to schedule the necessary work.

At the end of the day Sky did apologise through the help forum and compensated customers that had been affected the longest. Unfortunately I wasn't one because the issue was affecting ADSL connections about a month before fibre.

well, got online today via sky fibre pro, old BT infinity 2 went offline at 1am, and Sky went live live at 10am.

Got wireless Netgear extender WN2000RPTV2, got this set up OK, and no problems now wirelessly upstairs to my sons PC's.

The netgear gave me a choice of WPS, or linking via webpage, I choose the later, and was up and running quickly.

Going to see if I can borrow a laptop now, to connect one off by ethernet, to test the download/upload signal, and I'll report back here with the results.

Thanks to everyone who gave advice.

In reply to a post by vf12vf:

don't think the sky router is N enabled but the question you should be asking is...
is my exchange going to suffering from the crippling congestion issues....


good luck with your Sky connection, I have a feeling you might need some!

Absolute rubbish, when an Exchange does become congested with sky (only due to how popular sky is right now, for obvious reasons) they are very quick to point it out and give the users a fix date.

Other ISP's do not bother to give any kind of resolution date, or do not even acknowledge the problem in the first place.

In reply to a post by simon194:

To be fair Sky are probably unaware of the bandwidth from the exchanges because their network management is subcontracted to Alcatel-Lucent.

Just because network management may be subcontracted to a third party doesnt mean that SKY wouldnt be interested in the network performance. The would be not point in paying the third party to manage the network if the performance was just ignored.

There is, of course, a difference between knowing a problem exists and fixing it.

Presumably the roll out of FTTC is placing a strain on all ISPs backhaul - especially if the advertise an "unlimited" product at a keen price, The heavy users move to it and network suffers!

sad to say the Netgear was useless in the end (lost wireless signal from evening of day one, and reading the instruction book near the end, Netgear clearly say "using this product will slow down the internet data, use only in real dead spots, and try to use the original wireless router for full speed signals? )

So, back to the experts, you guys.

Can anyone recommend anything else?

I was wondering if these USB connectors with twin aerial would work with my sons PC's upstairs, if so, anyone got suggestions?

Thanks once more for all your help everyone.

If you call waiting between 4-10mths to find out the issues from The Register and not from Sky, quick, then you are far more patient than I am. My exchange has the throughput issues corrected (to a point), with my latency still sky high. Checking on the service status page, it still says its suffering problems, with a resolution scheduled for the end of Februrary. They cant even update their service status page within a decent timescale.

Edited by HiPing (Sun 31-Mar-13 15:58:28)