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Home Network Woes

R

readams

No longer wine tasting
Help. I'm suffering dropouts with my music

Current set up

TV room - Sky Q hub connected to Naim Unitiqute via ethernet directly and then a homeplug (Devolo 500 in all cases)

Lounge - homeplug to unmanned gigabit switch to Hegel HD30 fed by Tidal via Airplay from iPhone

Kitchen - Naim Unitiqute via wifi

Bedroom - Naim Untiqute via homeplug

I'm getting dropouts in the lounge, kitchen and the bedroom.

I'm assuming this is the router at fault. Have rebooted, updated firmware and tried different channels on wifi. Not sure why the bedroom is dropping out as wifi not involved here (listening to iRadio on UQ)

Running ethernet throughout the house will be an option when I get an extension built in a few years and get the house rewired but it's not viable now.

Do I need to get a new router and disable wifi on the sky box? House is 1950s four bed detached. If I ditch the homeplugs how do I connect the HD30 to the network as it has no wifi?

Help is appreciated
 
We had no end of problems in two houses like you describe. ADSL dropouts, internal network would go down, etc.

The thing that fixed it for good was.... getting rid of Powerline/homeplug.

The powerline systems can work beautifully (my parents house they work very well), but they can also not. I think it's often a case of fridges and freezers causing dropouts of the powerline.

We also had a lot of ADSL/VDSL drops, and I believe that this was thanks to mains-borne noise injection into the router.

Test it out with some long ethernet leads to prove/disprove that homeplug is the issue. Our setup has been rock solid since getting rid of it.
 
try getting a wi fi adapter for your HD30 and remove all your homeplugs.
Homeplugs often cause more problems than they solve IMHO.
In saying that I live in an old Victorian house with 6 fuse boxes!
 
I'm happy to get rid of the home plugs but I only got them as I was previously living in a flat in a converted Victorian asylum and wifi coverage was sparse. Wifi signal in the bedroom and upstairs office is iffy at best at the moment

Can anyone recommend a wifi adaptor that can take at least one ethernet connection?
 
At a guess I'd say its your Sky box that hasn't got enough umph as they are built down to a price.

For example I live in a 5 bed detached house surrounded by 30+ WiFi networks (there are a lot of apartments locally being at the seaside). The HomeHub that BT provided was utterly useless and I have moved to a semi-pro router from Draytek. I get WiFi coverage in every room (and the garden) with the router on the top floor in my office (best place for it). Three floors down is our main TV that employs a cheapo £35 Firestick to get HD TV over WiFi without any sweat.

In the living room on the ground floor I can control my Mac Mini music server from my iPad. The signal goes iPad > 3floors up to router > 3 floors down to the Mac and vice versa.

In a cheap (often free) ISP router there is usually one low power CPU that must handle all duties and that just doesn't have the bottle to handle much.

In our holiday apartment we have a Plusnet Hub One a rebadged HH5 Mk1 (until I get around replacing it). If you move out of the room that hosts the Hub One you lose the 5GHz WiFi signal utter crap. With my Draytek I get 5GHz Wifi all over our three story house.

Cheers,

DV
 
i-s said:
Sky terms and conditions don't allow you to use anything but the supplied router.
Click to expand...

I guess it depends on how the service is delivered. If its over a BT local loop on ADSL then I don't see why you can't use another router. Fibre is bit different.

For ADSL and from Sky support the config for ADSL is:-

Encapsulation: PPPoA
Username: [email protected]
(username contains o2, and not zero-two)
Password: install
VPI: 0
VCI: 38
Multiplexing: VC-BASED
MTU: 1500

I understand that in the past Sky have let those that upgraded to Sky keep their original router if they are on a ADSL line.

Cheers,

DV
 
I'm on sky fibre broadband. Wifi speed in the room where the router is about 40 Mb/s. I just want the best way to avoid drop outs. If I get a new router I'll still need to use homeplugs, what's the best way to connect my HD30 and my two NAS boxes in the upstairs office to the network without dropouts (apart from ethernet)?
 
readams said:
I'm on sky fibre broadband. Wifi speed in the room where the router is about 40 Mb/s. I just want the best way to avoid drop outs. If I get a new router I'll still need to use homeplugs, what's the best way to connect my HD30 and my two NAS boxes in the upstairs office to the network without dropouts (apart from ethernet)?
Click to expand...

You need to work out what the problem is first. Can you try removing the homeplugs to see if that resolves the drop-outs in the non-homeplug rooms? That will tell you whether the problem is your router or the homeplugs, so you will know what you need to actually do to resolve it.
 
Michael P said:
You need to work out what the problem is first. Can you try removing the homeplugs to see if that resolves the drop-outs in the non-homeplug rooms? That will tell you whether the problem is your router or the homeplugs, so you will know what you need to actually do to resolve it.
Click to expand...

I can try this tomorrow. Unplugging the PS4 will make me persona non grata at the moment
 
Possibly - but I didn't have drop outs in my old flat with a different router (BT) - but I didn't use Tidal then
 
For information. From what I have read it looks like Sky BB is delivered by BT Openreach so you can use a VDSL router. It also looks like Sky have their WiFi roaming over the BT WiFi network and that also steals some of your bandwidth to make yourself a BT WiFi hotspot. If you use your own router as I do with BT you get to keep all your bandwidth plus control over performance

However Sky tries to lock you down and doesn't provide the log on details. If interested this is how one guy replaced his Sky fibre router for a third party alternative with a much increased performance.

http://taupila.co.uk/blog/2016/04/17/replace-sky-router/

Cheers,

DV
 
I replaced my dreadful Sky Fibre router with an Asus RT-AC68U and Huawei BT modem and some custom firmware. It's a bit of hassle but well worth it for decent wifi and gigabit Ethernet etc...
 
i-s said:
Sky terms and conditions don't allow you to use anything but the supplied router.
Click to expand...

That doesn't mean you have to use it to provide your wifi network.

I still have my Virgin Media router providing the final internet connection (I'm on cable so changing it is not an easy option) but wifi is switched off and is provided by an Apple AirPort Extreme which is connected to the router by an ethernet cable. I have no experience of Sky routers but would be surprised if you weren't able to do something similar.
 
mattski said:
I replaced my dreadful Sky Fibre router with an Asus RT-AC68U and Huawei BT modem and some custom firmware. It's a bit of hassle but well worth it for decent wifi and gigabit Ethernet etc...
Click to expand...

Same here,i use my BTHub6 connected to an Asus router with Tomato firmware. the Bt Hub is the modem and the Asus does the important part.
most of my network is Ethernet.i use VPN as i also run an Android tv box which i installed KODI on....keeps prying eyes away ;).
 
Have connected a NAS drive with music on to network via home plugs and no dropouts so far. Does this mean home plugs ok and it's likely to be the broadband is a problem?
 
readams said:
Have connected a NAS drive with music on to network via home plugs and no dropouts so far. Does this mean home plugs ok and it's likely to be the broadband is a problem?
Click to expand...

Not enough info. If its just NAS >HP > HP > music player Then your HP network is OK. I never did have much problem with HPs except going across the 3rd floor to two adjacent rooms. It turned out that I have several ring mains and to go across a few feet meant that the signal went 3 floors down one ring then up 3 floors on a different ring via the fuse box!

You need to eliminate your router as I still believe that it is most likely the source of your problems. It just doesn't have the balls to do what you are asking of it. Maybe the CPU has insufficient power to handle Firewall processes and also the bridging of packets to two Ethernet ports with several MAC addresses to service plus WiFi also with several MAC addresses.

But go one step at a time and add the devices one by one and see what happens.

Cheers,

DV
 
readams said:
Help. I'm suffering dropouts with my music

...Sky Q hub connected to Naim Unitiqute via ethernet directly and then a homeplug (Devolo 500 in all cases)

Lounge - homeplug to...

...I'm getting dropouts in the lounge, kitchen and the bedroom.

I'm assuming this is the router at fault.
Click to expand...

I've been told from a Sky Q customer who has spent quite a bit of time talking to their technical support than the Sky Q box has a built-in "ethernet over mains" feature which is yet to be announced but will be causing conflicts with Homeplug type products.

Once he'd found the right person in Sky Technical Support, they told him how to disable this functionality and his Homeplug products started working properly again.

It sounds like this could be what is happening.

HTH.

Chris
 
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