Help with WiFi

Burkiebaby · 19 Feb 2024 at 16:03

Very confused so any help would be fantastic. I live in a fairly new 3 story home and the ONT is in the cupboard in the corner of the home on ground floor. No way I can get it out of there without messing up nice new walls. I could possibly get it attached to the outside of the cupboard but worries me if the hassle will make and difference.

I have sky internet and get a very decent 150mb to the home. Issue is getting that around the home especially 2nd floor.

It have a sky booster and have tried this in 1st and 2nd floor without making much difference to speed I get on 2nd floor. Varies massively one minute to next between 30mb down to 0.5mb.

Also have sky mini boxes on 2nd floor but that doesn’t help. It’s so bad even sky mini boxes are really slow/cut our randomly.

Been looking at mesh/booster/powerlines but very confused whet will/wont make a difference.

Also to make it worse the ground floor is on a different electrical circuit to the 1st and 2nd floor so not even sure power lines will work when connected to router on different circuits..

As I say not very knowledgeable so any advise very welcome.

Sky engineer due tomorrow but am expecting him to simply say move router out of cupboard. Just remembered I have moved it out of cupboard temporarily but cables only long enough to put it on floor outside cupboard and now can’t close door lol. Again made little/no difference

ChrisD. · 19 Feb 2024 at 16:10

Is your house wired up with cat5/6 at all?

Burkiebaby · 19 Feb 2024 at 16:14

Not sure, house is only 5 years old and has direct cable connected to a Modern looking bt open reach ONT box (meaning you can only connect main router there)

ChrisD. · 19 Feb 2024 at 16:34

Have a look around and see if you have any RJ45 faceplates, in new builds they are usually terminated back to where the ONT is installed.

If not, you might find there is a telephone cabling running around the house, one will likely go from the loft to downstairs and they usually use cat5 cable. Swap the faceplates around and you can run ethernet backhaul for a WiFi system.

There's another option of using the coax as your backhaul with Moca adaptors.

Otherwise you're forced to use a mesh system, or install your own cabling.

Burkiebaby · 19 Feb 2024 at 16:51

No rj45 face plates, so my two thoughts are

1 buy mesh system with 3 terminals ground 1st and 2nd floors (any suggestions and how good are these)

2 buy Powerline system with main and 2 additional sockets connect main one to sky booster on 1st floor and put other 2 on 2nd floor (again any suggestion on idea/recomemdations)

Hard wires not really an option

Anything I’m missing?

WJA96 · 20 Feb 2024 at 05:41

Burkiebaby said:
No rj45 face plates, so my two thoughts are

1 buy mesh system with 3 terminals ground 1st and 2nd floors (any suggestions and how good are these)

2 buy Powerline system with main and 2 additional sockets connect main one to sky booster on 1st floor and put other 2 on 2nd floor (again any suggestion on idea/recomemdations)

Hard wires not really an option

Anything I’m missing?

The problem is the cupboard. The Sky extender is basically mesh so if that doesn’t work then it’s unlikely other mesh systems will work. The Sky engineer (might actually be Openreach) should be able to move the ONT to a more sensible location. But fundamentals of radio say putting your main WiFi source in a cupboard is a bad idea. You want it as high and as central as possible. You say you can’t run cables but you can. You just don’t want it badly enough. Yet.

ristac · 20 Feb 2024 at 06:46

Sky is and always will be a nightmare unless it is hard wired or virtually in the same room. Work our the easiest way to run cable around the home and save yourself wasted efforts

ChrisD. · 20 Feb 2024 at 07:55

Running cables in a new build is easy, especially non-exterior walls. Plasterboard knife, drill, conduit, be prepared to take up some carpet/floor boards. Get a plasterer in afterwards and paint, can be done in a day or so. Look up Cameron Gray on YouTube, he's got a few decent (albeit long!) videos with how to do it. Either that or drill externally and hide behind a drain pipe or similar.

Burkiebaby · 20 Feb 2024 at 14:01

Thank for all the advice, sky engineer just been and replaced router and took away booster as this was making things worse he said.

Does seem better but he has said he’ll recommend they send someone to look at them har wiring Ethernet from cupboard into 1st floor lounge (centre of house). Will see what they have to say when the come around potential gain vs headache from wife about potential mess they make .

Also daughter will be home later and she is the main person impacted, she will soon tell me if rainbow 6 is working better or not.

tangey · 20 Feb 2024 at 16:45

My only thought is that it can't be too difficult to drill a hole large enough in the cupboard so that you can get the ONT cable thru it, then at least you can have your router permanently outside the cupboard. Depending on the layout of your house, just giving the router some height might help with signal strength vertically at least.