Sky Wifi - No signal outside living room

[Ahleckz]

Hi,
I'm a bit clueless with Networking hence the thread!
I've recently moved, and got Sky Fibre 100. The Router is in the living room, but I get almost no wifi signal in my bedroom (16 steps away) or home office. Signal is OK in the hallway and kitchen. It's an old tenement building with big walls which I guess is the issue. It's only a 2 bedroom flat, so not massive.
Sky are refusing to send out a Booster without me paying for their extra Guarantee package.

Would a new router help with this, and are there any suggestions on what to get (cheap as possible would be good). I've done some reading and heard that 3rd party boosters are pretty bad and will drop my connection but if any are good and won't drop my connection then I'd be happy to hear about them.

Sorry for the newb question, just not sure if I should go down a new router or booster purchase and trying to avoid spending much!

 

[Rawr]

I found Sky's router to be pretty abysmal to be honest. Back when we used to be on them we had to get them to send out a booster or else the second sky box wouldn't work. When we upgraded to their full speed fibre package (900mbps) I ended up just buying a new router at that point since their router was immensly handicapping it. Even wired it would cap up to about 850Mbps, wireless it wouldn't go above about 450Mbps even when right next to it.

Ideally you'd want to hardwire some access points for the areas you can't get the signal. But if you can't do that then maybe a new router could help. Unfortunately I don't have any recommendations, the router I bought was quite expensive and is probably overkill for your connection.

It's worth noting you might have to leave the original Sky router in the chain depending on your set up. If you're either using their internet phone service, or you're still on FTTC then you'd have to leave the router in the chain but disable the wifi, connect up the router you bought and use that in AP mode. If you're on FTTP (if openreach put a little ONT box on the wall like this then it's FTTP) you should be able to just plug the new router directly into the ONT - you might need to find the necessary settings though, the sky forum is pretty good for finding those out.

 

[leezer3]

If it's the walls, which it sounds like it is (the Sky router should go through a couple of 'normal' brick walls and provide an OK connection), no booster or router will help much if at all.

Cabling is the only real solution with thick walls unfortunately.
Ideally run ethernet physically, but powerline plugs could also be used.

 

[ChrisD.]

Sky are refusing to send out a Booster without me paying for their extra Guarantee package.

Probably for the best:

We'll give you money back for one month's broadband subscription if you can't get 3Mb/s WiFi in every room.

A single AP centrally mounty would likely help, but it won't get around the laws of physics and wireless laws.

Use a wifi scanning app and see if there are any overlapping channels with neighbours and try new ones, or 2.4 GHz only as an example for the rooms further away.