How should I "network" Sky Q

Jon Weaver

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Before I get to the question.. Let me give a bit of background.

I have moved into a house with a large footprint.. One of the nice things about it is that it had UTP/Ethernet from a cupboard to 6 rooms, so I figured networking would be easy... Wrong..

On day one I found that there was no connection between the plugs and sockets and have spent the last month looking for some kind of patch panel...

I had pretty much given up and was waiting for my Nephew to come over with his tester where we could check the lengths of the cables and try to locate them, but I was convinced there was a unfixable issue (i.e the cables were cut) and I would have to resign myself to another solution (specifically a Wifi Mesh network).

This week I had SkyQ+3 Mini boxes fitted and had resigned myself to use "Wifi".. The installer did everything but found that 2 of the Minis were at the edge of rang and fitted 2 "boosters" which I now have randomly scattered around the house.

Everything was working other than the fact that they gave me a non-UHD box, which ment that only 1 Mini would work at a time.. When the installer arrived she even commented that they should not have provided this to someone who had THREE Mini boxes as there was no point... So I spoke to Sky and they upgraded the Main box to a 1TB UHD.

The engineer came back yesterday and whilst she was here, it gave me some inspiration to have another look at my UTP.. And low and behold my problems were all with the RJ45s which had been crimped by a butcher.. 4 of them just needed a harder crimp with the tool.. The other 2 had missing wires and the wires had not been pushed in all the way so were crimped into fresh air.

So whilst she was here, I managed to get Ethernet working to 2 of the 4 rooms.. But when I asked how I would be best to utilize the cable, you could tell she wasn't 100% sure.. So I felt it was best to let her go.. Tidy up and test my Ethernet.. And then work it out for myself.

So thats where i am now... And would like some advice on the best way forwards.

My current Setup is that I have SkyQ, 3 Mini boxes and 2 Boosters..

I also have Gigabit Ethernet from 3 of the rooms back to a switch hanging off the router... And finally I have the 4th Mini box in the kitchen which does not have UTP.

So I would like to connect the Main and 2 minis together via cable.. And then the 3rd via Wifi (using a Booster if necessary).

Is this just a case of plugging the main and 2 minis into the switches and reconfiguring the Network to "wired"? And if so, what about the 4th Wifi box?


Or.. To quote the old addage.. if its not broken, why fix it? So I could just leave it as it is...


Look forwards to any advice you can give.

Jon
 
Just connect them all back to the switch and it will configure itself. As for the 4th box I would recommend a pair of powerline adapters rather than the Booster.
 
Just connect them all back to the switch and it will configure itself. As for the 4th box I would recommend a pair of powerline adapters rather than the Booster.
Actually, thats not a bad idea.. I jsut bought a 2nd hand set as a workaround to my UTP problem and they were cr*p as either end was on a different floor/MCB.. But the SkyQ main and Mini are on the same 'ring', so they should work fine.

I will have a play when I get a minute free.. Cheers.

Jon
 
Actually, thats not a bad idea.. I jsut bought a 2nd hand set as a workaround to my UTP problem and they were cr*p as either end was on a different floor/MCB.. But the SkyQ main and Mini are on the same 'ring', so they should work fine.

I will have a play when I get a minute free.. Cheers.

Jon
I used powerline for a considerable period of time. Only occasionally did I get network issues. I found the Sky Q WiFi very weak but we have thick walls and a long house. They don’t need to be that fast, just stable. If all boxes are on LAN you can disable WiFi on all boxes. Just in case they try to use it and get confused.
 
My current problem with Powerlines are speed and stability.

The ones I had were Arcanet. They were slow at about 10mbs but they worked and got me moved in.. But they started to get unstable, loosing connection regularly

So I bought some 2nd hand BT 1GBs ones.. They were immediately faster at around 50mbs, but they are just as unreliable.

But this was across 2 different Rings.. I am hopeful that when on the same ring they will work fine... They always did in my old house for my CCTV, so there is no reason they won't work here.

Will try both pairs and see which ones work best.



.
 
How's your the Wifi in the Kitchen?
When I do big house Ubiquity unifi WiFi installs SkyQ is a nightmare because it's completely incompatible. I run Ethernet whenever possible to sky Q boxes but I have found I can use a device like a TP-Link TL-WR902AC to connect to the wifi and provide a Ethernet connection which has been fine for mini boxes, the mini box think's it's on Ethernet as long as the wifi is good enough no issues.

I still think it's ridiculous that SkyQ mini boxes will only Connect to a Sky wifi network, but that's easily worked around as you can see.

I recall being able to get speeds better than 100mbps on N wireless on the 5ghz band so these TP-link so if the signal is ok it should be fine hosting the main sky Q box too with a good signal.
 
The whole thing ended as a disaster.. The house is big (Approx 12m x 10m) so its no surprise that Wifi would be a problem.. Sky ended up fitting 2 Boosters, but the performance and was horrible and I didn't like having the boosters scattered around the house.

I expected the move to Ethernet to be easy, but it took days, partially because what I saw forced me to case doubt on my Ethernet or even the stability of my DSL.

But it turned out that the Boosters where screwing up my router...

So finally I ripped them out and started again, and now I have everything running on Ethernet.. For the kitchen, I used some old Arcnet powerline adaptors, but saw the video stutter, so swapped them out for some BT ones which I had spare.

Currently it seems OK. Live TV is perfect, but last night I saw some freezing on a recording, but I am not ready to blame the Homeplugs yet as I need to do more testing.

For now, it all seems to be working on Ethernet and I am leaving it well alone.
 

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