Sky router - poor wifi connectivity

Jas H

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I switched ISPs to Sky and their bundled Sagem router. Unline my old Netgear router with external antennae, this Sky router has such a poor wifi signal that it reaches only 50% of my house :(

I regularly lose connection from devices such as ipod & iPhone. The PSP rarely connects, and DS consoles refuse to connect to it. I had no problems with the old Netgear router.

I've tried a replacement router and it was identical :thumbsdow

Is there a cheap or easy solution to this problem please? I'm a newbie when it comes to networking and routers :confused:
 
If you have a laptop PC - check one of the many threads here desribing how to use InSSIDer (free) to survey your locale and determine if you are using the best wifi channel available. It may be that your new router is "tuned" to a different channel to your old one and that is making all the difference.
 
Had the same problems when I switched to Virgin, changed Wifi channel and is now perfect,
I think part of the problems stem from the fact that these routers are sent out to customers preset to a specific channel (6 in my case) and the average customer just plugs it in as supplied, so if you have neighbours with the same kit they are all trying to use the same channel thus decreasing the available Wifi bandwidth.
 
Spot on - the world is replete with tales about how someone "fixed" a poor wifi performance problem by throwing money at buying a new router only to discover it was simply shipped preset to a different channel to their existing one. :smashin:
 
If you have a laptop PC - check one of the many threads here desribing how to use InSSIDer (free) to survey your locale and determine if you are using the best wifi channel available. It may be that your new router is "tuned" to a different channel to your old one and that is making all the difference.



Thanks everyone :) I don't have a laptop, and my only wifi devices are iPad, iPhone, PSP and DS. But I'll see what I can do by trial and error.

I did switch channels and try around 4-5 different ones when I first got the router :smashin:

I have also used my iPhone to scan for neighbouring wifi and ensured that I am on a different channel when I set it up, and checked again yesterday.

The wifi signal strength from my neighbour's wifi is almost equal to my own router which is infinitely closer. I do think the Sky Sagem router is a cheap & nasty bit of kit based on my signal though :thumbsdow
 
I do think the Sky Sagem router is a cheap & nasty bit of kit based on my signal though :thumbsdow
It has been pionted out on these forums umpteen times that is is not in an ISP's interest to send out shoddy kit, due the large number of expensive service calls such a policy would generate.

WiFi problems such as you describe are almost always the result of WiFi channel conflict. The fix, in your case, would be to borrow a Windows based laptop and do the survey suggested earlier. (Randomly changing channel is unlikely to help.)

If you can get hold of a Mac then you could use KisMAC instead of inSSIDer.
 
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I've got an old non-wifi laptop, which I'll try using with a wifi USB dongle and see what happens. Failing that, I'll see if I can use my office laptop, although that's a last resort as I don't want to install any software on it.

I can accept that the Sagem router may well be of an "acceptable" standard, but I still it is relatively poor compared to my old Netgear router. There really is no doubt about that. It is probably because the old one has external antennae, versus the Sagem's internal one(s).

Thanks for the advice though :)
 
Can you not just switch off the sky routers wi-fi and plug your old netgear router into a port on the sky router? Then use the wi-fi you had before? Effectively just using the sky router as a switch/modem.

It should all auto configure when connected together and will also mean you'll have extra Ethernet ports. That's what I did to upgrade my network to wireless n speeds.
 
Can you not just switch off the sky routers wi-fi and plug your old netgear router into a port on the sky router? Then use the wi-fi you had before? Effectively just using the sky router as a switch/modem.

It should all auto configure when connected together and will also mean you'll have extra Ethernet ports. That's what I did to upgrade my network to wireless n speeds.

Thanks, that sounds interesting and I did not even know it was possible to do such a thing :thumbsup: Like I said, I'm a newbie when it comes to routers and networking :(
 
Thanks, that sounds interesting and I did not even know it was possible to do such a thing :thumbsup: Like I said, I'm a newbie when it comes to routers and networking :(
It will work no problem. As previously mentioned, be sure to disable the DHCP server in your Netgear router, as this will probably be enabled on your Sky router. You don't want two DHCP servers on the same network.

Also, you may need to change the ip address on one of the routers so they don't match as they may be set to the same address. This can usually be done in the config pages.

Also, be sure on all your connected devices, if you are manually setting the ip addresses and not using dynamic ip addressing on a particular device, to ensure that the default gateway is the ip addresss of the Sky router.

All should then be good. :thumbsup:
 
Thanks :) I'll see if I can find an idiots guide / walkthrough on this, before I start to fiddle around with it. Some of those terms (DHCP) are new to me :(
 

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