Downloading on Sky Hub prevents other traffic

ic1male · 15 May 2015 at 18:34

I was with Be which automatically changed over to Sky Broadband last year. Tonight is the very first time I've plugged in the black Sky Hub (in preparation for ADSL upgrade to fibre when I place the order later on). All went OK, connected at a slightly higher rate (approx 16Mbps) than my old Technicolor router.

As a test I tried downloading a file to see what the speed was like. A nice constant 1.6MB/sec. However, none of the other computers could access the internet whilst this download was taking place. All webpages would time out on both laptops.

What's going on? Surely that can't be right that if I start downloading something all other web traffic is going to time out?

eldergeek · 15 May 2015 at 22:14

ic1male said:
I was with Be which automatically changed over to Sky Broadband last year. Tonight is the very first time I've plugged in the black Sky Hub (in preparation for ADSL upgrade to fibre when I place the order later on). All went OK, connected at a slightly higher rate (approx 16Mbps) than my old Technicolor router.

As a test I tried downloading a file to see what the speed was like. A nice constant 1.6MB/sec. However, none of the other computers could access the internet whilst this download was taking place. All webpages would time out on both laptops.

What's going on? Surely that can't be right that if I start downloading something all other web traffic is going to time out?

That sounds odd. As ****e as the SR102 is (and believe me, it's ****e by design) I've never encountered it locking out other users to achieve a quicker download.

Orcvader · 15 May 2015 at 23:34

I had a similar thing happen to me with the BT HH3 when I was still on ADSL, I just guessed it was the router not being able to cope. Oddly enough the very same HH3 coped better with FTTC, so it could be the ADSL modem within the router at the fault. Might be the same Sky hub.

Randall8686 · 15 May 2015 at 23:46

I find that my 1TB skybox gets a bit greedy on the network and tries to download as fast as possible cutting other traffic out, The normal sky box in the other room does not do this. However i have limited them both to only be able to use 10mbps with QOS on my router and it works a treat.

MissChief · 16 May 2015 at 03:11

It's possible the firmware may not be up to date. Download the Router recovery tool:

http://help.sky.com/articles/download-the-sky-router-recovery-tool

And see if it helps.

ic1male · 16 May 2015 at 07:49

I checked the firmware version. It matches the version number on the Sky website which strikes me as bizarre. They've not done any new firmware updates in over a year!

KIA · 16 May 2015 at 11:56

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bufferbloat

Does the problem go away if you throttle your client's download speed?

ic1male · 16 May 2015 at 12:43

KIA said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bufferbloat

Does the problem go away if you throttle your client's download speed?

I wouldn't have a clue how to throttle internet explorer downloads.

TheVoice · 16 May 2015 at 13:35

Presumably not using any download managers then? Often they make multiple connections to 'accelerate' the download which saturates the connection and renders it unusable for other clients.

ic1male · 16 May 2015 at 13:37

TheVoice said:
Presumably not using any download managers then? Often they make multiple connections to 'accelerate' the download which saturates the connection and renders it unusable for other clients.

No.

ic1male · 17 May 2015 at 23:45

So it appears it was a firmware issue. The Sky hub has updated itself overnight and everything is working as it should. The Sky page listing the firmware version number hadn't been updated so I presumed it was up to date when it was indeed a year old.