Is my new HD box slowing my broadband down ?

[dpluxor]

I took out the Comet off end of December and so far I am really chuffed with my £69 Sky HD box, picture quality is excellent when programs are in true HD, plus my SD is now 100% better than it was on my 10 year old normal Sky box that I have just removed. I have a problem with my broadband connection now though, I never used to have the phone plugged in but the engineer plugged the new one in and now I am seriously down on speed. My Dlink router will connect at approx 5.6 to 6.0 mbps with the sky box unplugged but only about 1.6 mpbs with it plugged in. I have repeatedly rebooted the router several times to rule out coincidence. I am a bit stuck now, I dont want letters off Sky about the phone line, but I also dont want to lose 75% of my bandwidth.

[MAW]

I have had this issue too. I now have seemed to solve it without any action, 3-4 months later. Did the installer do a firmware upgrade? You unplug the box, and replug whilst holding down 'backup' till all the LEDs light up. However, you don't actually need the box plugged in all the time, you could leave it unplugged for a month or so with no harm done, maybe plug it in at night for a bit? See if the problem rights itself. I still can't get my fax to connect since skyHD.

[Some Bloke]

Originally Posted by dpluxor

I took out the Comet off end of December and so far I am really chuffed with my £69 Sky HD box, picture quality is excellent when programs are in true HD, plus my SD is now 100% better than it was on my 10 year old normal Sky box that I have just removed. I have a problem with my broadband connection now though, I never used to have the phone plugged in but the engineer plugged the new one in and now I am seriously down on speed. My Dlink router will connect at approx 5.6 to 6.0 mbps with the sky box unplugged but only about 1.6 mpbs with it plugged in. I have repeatedly rebooted the router several times to rule out coincidence. I am a bit stuck now, I dont want letters off Sky about the phone line, but I also dont want to lose 75% of my bandwidth.

How many other phones do you have connected ?

I don't know if this is BS or not, but the engineer that fitted mine, told me each phone or connection uses 1 REN and can only have so many REN's per phone line.
You might be over loading your phone line and the quality may be suffering ?
Maybe BS, I don't know.

[pwood]

Apparently SKY only bother about folks who have multiroom who disconnect their phone line.

[dpluxor]

We have a cordless digital phone (twin handsets but I think that still counts as 1 ren), the router, and now the sky HD so thats only 3 things if they are all plugged in together

[chrise]

Originally Posted by dpluxor

I took out the Comet off end of December and so far I am really chuffed with my £69 Sky HD box, picture quality is excellent when programs are in true HD, plus my SD is now 100% better than it was on my 10 year old normal Sky box that I have just removed. I have a problem with my broadband connection now though, I never used to have the phone plugged in but the engineer plugged the new one in and now I am seriously down on speed. My Dlink router will connect at approx 5.6 to 6.0 mbps with the sky box unplugged but only about 1.6 mpbs with it plugged in. I have repeatedly rebooted the router several times to rule out coincidence. I am a bit stuck now, I dont want letters off Sky about the phone line, but I also dont want to lose 75% of my bandwidth.

Have you checked that there is an operational filter on the Sky HD line?

[dpluxor]

Originally Posted by chrise

Have you checked that there is an operational filter on the Sky HD line?

Yip, the router & the sky are plugged into the same splitter. I might actually move my router upstairs and see if its better on its own phone extension socket.

[irvin38a]

Hi, I'm on Sky Broadband. When I had my Sky+ box connected to phone line, it would slow my BB right down so I got round this by leaving the Sky+ disconnected to phone line.

However, when i 1st got my HD box installed, I also went with multiroom. By having multiroom, you MUST have both boxes connected to the phone line all the time so they know you're not selling it on to friends etc. This meant I had a problem again.

After some looking around on the internet, I came across Skyuser forums which were extremely helpful. By reading these I discovered I had to remove my 'ring wire' from the main socket (the one by the front door usually). I did this and ever since it has worked a treat.

I'll have a dig to see if i can find the links i used.


EDIT: see here for ring wire advice.... http://www.skyuser.co.uk/forum/cabli...rminology.html

Ring Wire. Many years ago, in the UK, the component that makes a phone ring was placed in the socket rather than the phone (which is more common in other countries) - this helped stop other phones in the house making noises when a phone is dialled using the old pulse dialling method. However for this to work there has to be a third wire in addition to the "twisted pair" used for the voice connection. In most circuits the twisted pair are "blue/white" (blue with white rings and white with blue rings) and the third wire orange with white rings. This isn't always followed though. One problem not foreseen in the early days was that this third wire acts as an enormous source of noise and noise is bad news for ADSL. A solution is simply to disconnect this wire (terminal 3) on the NTE5. Some modern phones will still ring as they now contain the "missing" component. If in doubt, all phones will ring with a dongle attached. Note that disconnecting the ring wire should not have any beneficial effect if a filtered faceplate is fitted. Some people say it does though so if you still have noise problems after fitting one it may be worth trying.

[KevinPedrick]

I had this problem. The 8Mbps of my Be connection dropped to about 1.5Mbps with the Sky HD box connected to the phone line.

I've now connected the Sky HD box to the phone line with a DSL filter and it solved the problem... but I dunno if the phone line functionality still works behind a DSL filter

[fredsie]

Originally Posted by Some Bloke

How many other phones do you have connected ?

I don't know if this is BS or not, but the engineer that fitted mine, told me each phone or connection uses 1 REN and can only have so many REN's per phone line.
You might be over loading your phone line and the quality may be suffering ?
Maybe BS, I don't know.

I doubt that this has anything to do with it. REN is only to do with the power supplied down the phone line to cause your phone to ring. The more phones you have, the more the power demand since they all ring at once. Each (legal!) device has its REN number printed on it, and a normal connection will support a total REN of 4. Beware that some power-hungry devices may have a REN of 1.5 or even 2. You can buy a REN 'extender' if you need to add more phones, but as I say I don't think this will help here at all.

[fizl]

Double filter the sky box. They are notorious for upsetting seemingly fragile broadband connection. If you don't have multi room I'd just unplug it, as they only are worried about the phone connection for people that have multi room

Shaz