In reply to a post by Skilty:

Does that mean each Sky Q Mini is acting as a glorified WiFi extender?

The main box and minis act as wifi hotspots not extenders so there isn't any loss of bandwidth and if they are all connected via ethernet you still have the option of setting them up as hotspots.

I had mine installed on launch day and I wouldn't go back now. OK I have posted a few negative comments on Sky.com but they are just niggles really.

So sky connect the boxes together with Ethernet cable?

My view was that right now, sky use wifi to link the boxes together, so when the second box re broadcasts the wireless signal there will be at least a 50% reduction in total wireless throughput.

Even if using power line adapters - those are not the same as Ethernet. Lots of home users will have their sky boxes connected via extension leads etc which reduce throughput of home plugs, but also many houses will have home wiring which slows down the home plugs. As an example in my house I only get 15Mbps over home plugs which are 1gigabit rated.

Ethernet gives me the full fibre speeds, home plugs do not. Actually in my home wireless AC gives me full speeds and is far better than home plugs.

This was exactly my point, if they are not using powerline or ethernet then they are acting as a WiFi extender (or AP) you will lose bandwidth if you connect to the mini.

In reply to a post by Skilty:

This was exactly my point, if they are not using powerline or ethernet then they are acting as a WiFi extender (or AP) you will lose bandwidth if you connect to the mini.

& if they perform anything like the current Sky WiFi booster, good luck.

Connecting the booster used to drop the connection speed down to 2Mbps on everything connected to the booster. If I placed the booster in the same room as the main router, I still only saw 5Mbps via the booster...

Even if they use the homeplugs / powerline, in a lot of houses, they will not yield the full speeds either. Homeplugs also cause gaming lag, I find it's better to have a slower speed on WiFi than a quick speed on homeplugs for gaming.

I personally think if they wanted to do this properly, they should have got an engineer to install ethernet between the boxes, even if they ran it externally.

Yes, right now the boxes I am using are using WIFI to connect together. The engineer did say that the sky boxes use the 5Ghz range and the normal house wifi uses the 2.4Ghz range. that has been confirmed by the router stats (I do not have any 5GHZ wifi devices apart from the skyQ boxes).

If that is so, then there is not a 1/2 of the speed as they are using different bands.

Will see how this goes over the next few days before I convert to Ethernet and external power line devices

I did have a laugh when I checked the devices connected to the network and noticed 2 "SKY+HD" devices connected to the network

Edited by iand (Thu 10-Mar-16 18:14:43)

Don't think they are going to send a Engineer out to rig these Sky Q boxes and Mini with Ethernet capacity,that would cost and take a very long time as much as i agree with what your saying.

Like i said a few days ago,i had been with Sky Broadband for 6 days and i have to say its the worse wireless performance i have had the misfortune to witness,and thats on there latest Sky Fibre Hub.

Now returned back to Bt Infinity and have the choice of using my own equipment ,like i said to Sky,i know you can find a way of retrieving the user/password combination but why won't they give me the option.

Obviously they want to support just there own equipment ?

From the IPV6 router type stats they operate 2% of non sky routers on their network, which is not a lot. This is similar to the 2-3% of sky routers that are known not to run IPV6.

I think we will see other WIFI boxes being sold which will attach to the SKY modem/router. For some houses a non SKY router looks better, for a lot of others, it makes no difference.

Wonder when someone will do some stats on how good wifi or Power line is in the house, just like the adsl/vdsl line stats for a house.

Don't think they are going to send a Engineer out to rig these Sky Q boxes and Mini with Ethernet capacity,that would cost and take a very long time as much as i agree with what your saying.

Agreed, although is it really much more work than multiroom already?

E.g. with multi room in my house, they ran a cable from the satellite at the front of my house, all around the property, into the back room - approx 50m of cabling total. They could have just got an engineer out to run ethernet in a similar way.

In reply to a post by iand:

Yes, right now the boxes I am using are using WIFI to connect together. The engineer did say that the sky boxes use the 5Ghz range and the normal house wifi uses the 2.4Ghz range. that has been confirmed by the router stats (I do not have any 5GHZ wifi devices apart from the skyQ boxes).

If that is so, then there is not a 1/2 of the speed as they are using different bands.

Will see how this goes over the next few days before I convert to Ethernet and external power line devices

I did have a laugh when I checked the devices connected to the network and noticed 2 "SKY+HD" devices connected to the network

So, if we assume the boxes connect over 5Ghz, perfect. So wireless AC is 1300Mbps, and I get throughput of around 400Mbps on my wireless AC network... Even with a 50% reduction that's still 200Mbps which is plenty for this to work nicely. So there is no issue with it... Also yes the boxes do re-broadcast 2.4 and 5Ghz signals, but as I've just demonstrated 50% reduction on wireless AC is not a big issue like it is at 2.4Ghz.

HOWEVER, take my household. The back bedroom is only reached by 2.4Ghz wireless, 5Ghz does not penetrate the walls enough to get there, what does SkyQ do in this situation? Surely then it starts using the 2.4Ghz band and the speed reductions happen... I'm assuming this is where the Homeplugs would kick in.