router to replace rubbish sky's

bobo696

bobo696

bobo696

Associate
Joined
1 Dec 2009
Posts
330
Location
London
Hey there

I would like to replace my sky router which is utterly rubbish, very very slow. I just installed a nas and the speed is ridiculous (a few hours to transfer 10 GB of data)
Plus, my internet speed is not great, but then that has more to do with my distance to the exchange than the router I suppose...

So what router should I get to replace it ? Must be Wifi as there are several wifi machines in the house

Thanks !
 
Are you on Sky's fttc service or ADSL service? Is the nas capable of 1000mb? You've been quite vague on details.
 
When i was on sky they said im not allowed to use other routers and must use skys router provided.

They wouldnt give me any login details for a new routerf or anything.

You best check up and see if they still do this so you dont waste your money

I left sky and went to BT
 
Sky have said that if you use another Router they won't assist you in any way. That means no login details, no help and no support. However, if you can get it working I was told they won't ban you from the service, they just won't help out with any issues you may have until you plug the Sky Router in.
 
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esK` said:
Are you on Sky's fttc service or ADSL service? Is the nas capable of 1000mb? You've been quite vague on details.
Click to expand...

I'm on SKY ADSL, and my NAS is a dlink dns 320

Superficial said:
yeah but if you whinge and whine they'll give you the login info. I should know.

billion 7800 is good.
Click to expand...

I've heard that you can apparently obtain your login info via some tools...

Ok for the billion 7800. Check the price, it's expensive!

Any alternative?
 
If you use another router or flash theirs you are invalidating their terms and conditions though - which gives them cause to tell you to naff off if you ever have problems.
 
Ok so you want a router because your local network speeds are slow and also because you feel your Internet connection isn't that great.

Firstly post your line stats from the router. Chances are it's because of the distance from the exchange as you say and no new router is going to make a difference.

If you feel your local network speeds are slow then find out if your NAS is gigabit then just buy a gigabit switch and plug that into your existing router. No sense replacing the router when you don't have to and you won't gain much, if anything, from it.
 
You could always grab yourself a Gigabit switch and have that serve your network, just having the Sky router providing DHCP and the internet.

In my house I have the Sky router upstairs, ethernet cable runs downstairs into a Gigabit switch, which then serves my PC, my printer server and the Xbox360 in the other downstairs room. So my device network is Gigabit speed but my Internet serving ethernet cable is limited to 100Mbit, which is fine.

Replacing the Sky router is simple enough if you are on a PPPoA connection. There are username and pasword generators available on the internet that use the MAC address of your router. If you are connected by MER then it get's tricky. I'm not sure if it's yet possible, even with a Billion, to connect by MER.
 
Phemo said:
Ok so you want a router because your local network speeds are slow and also because you feel your Internet connection isn't that great.

Firstly post your line stats from the router. Chances are it's because of the distance from the exchange as you say and no new router is going to make a difference.

If you feel your local network speeds are slow then find out if your NAS is gigabit then just buy a gigabit switch and plug that into your existing router. No sense replacing the router when you don't have to and you won't gain much, if anything, from it.
Click to expand...

It's both : low speeds for the internet and low speeds for my local network.

My router is gigabit yes. I am 1.24 km from the exchange (straight line) and my speed is approx 6 meg (800 KB/s). I feel this is poor, and actually I had faster speeds when I enter this flat 2 years ago (I think it was double this figure)
 
Tealc said:
You could always grab yourself a Gigabit switch and have that serve your network, just having the Sky router providing DHCP and the internet.

In my house I have the Sky router upstairs, ethernet cable runs downstairs into a Gigabit switch, which then serves my PC, my printer server and the Xbox360 in the other downstairs room. So my device network is Gigabit speed but my Internet serving ethernet cable is limited to 100Mbit, which is fine.

Replacing the Sky router is simple enough if you are on a PPPoA connection. There are username and pasword generators available on the internet that use the MAC address of your router. If you are connected by MER then it get's tricky. I'm not sure if it's yet possible, even with a Billion, to connect by MER.
Click to expand...

OK for the switch, but that would not improve my internet speed I suppose ?
 
No it wouldn't. But you need to first off find if replacing the router can make any difference at all before simply replacing it. Post your line stats.
 
Just a thought, yes, you can use other routers on Sky's ADSL packages, as for their router interface login, try sky/sky :)

My brother-in-law is on Sky ADSL currently, and I put in a linksys adsl modem router for them(was lying around spare and theirs was having wifi issues) no problems at all :)
 
You should be able to find your router stats by connecting to the router's web interface. Depending on the model of router it will either be the first page or you'll have to select Show statistics or Connection info.

You'll know you are in the right place when you see something like this:-

Code: 
ADSL Link Downstream Upstream 
Connection Speed 20712 kbps 1153 kbps 
Line Attenuation 8.0 db 6.3 db 
Noise Margin 7.5 db 8.4 db
 
Nothing untoward there, although your line length is longer than 1.2km if you go by the attenuation. I reckon your line would be about 3km.

To verify that you are getting the best from your line plug your router, and only your router, directly into the BT test socket and post the stats again. To access the test socket you must remove the bottom half of the BT wall socket.
 
I tried removing the bottom half of the wall socket, no success. I unscrewed it but it would not go off... I'm reluctant to try harder as it's a rent property...

Is there another way ?
 
The main idea behind removing the front panel was to remove all telephone devices and extensions from the line to test on an as clean a line as possible to determine if anything you have attached is causing lower speed. I have seen, on here, some people see quite large differences and speed just by working out what was dragging the system down.

So if you can remove all hard wired extensions, all couplers, adaptors and stuff from the socket and just test the router direct. Do the best you can.

If your BT socket looks this this...

bt_master_socket_2.jpg


..then you can remove the bottom just by removing the two screws. It may need half a tug to separate the two parts from each other. It is designed to separate.

If it looks like this...

bt-socket.jpg


..then you can't and you just have to plug straight in. The problem is that extensions can be wired into the socket directly and could be causing attenuation to your line but there's not much you can do about that without fiddling with stuff you might not understand.
 
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