Perhaps just a cautionary tale but would be interested to hear of anyone else's experiences. We have had SkyQ installed (2TB Box and Minis in other rooms) and prior to the engineer visit I had decided I did not want to run the system over WiFi. Various reason for that really, I did not want my 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz spectrum being congested with SkyQ Mesh networking and Ethernet is just that much more reliable.
The install went fine and I thought all was well. It was, until I fired up my desktop computer and found absolutely dire Ethernet network performance. Pining my router resulted in very patchy performance with dropped packets and trying to access any network resource timed out or crawled along. WTF?
I had installed a small 8 port unmanaged gigabit switch in order to provide enough ports downstairs for SkyQ, SmartTV, Raspberry Pi etc and my first thought was this. Perhaps it did not support auto uplinking, perhaps it was causing a broadcast storm, perhaps it was just pap? When I looked at my main 24 port managed switch the port activity lights screamed of a broadcast storm.
I removed the uplink from the small 8 port on my main 24 Port managed switch and the problem instantly went away. Cue myself firing up the web to order a better managed switch to replace the 8 port. Prior though, perhaps it wasn't the 8 port at all? I restablished the uplink with no client devices connected, all was well. I reconnected client devices one by one and then BAM. Network died. It was the main SkyQ 2TB box and I can only assume it is to do with it's own mesh networking to connect to the mini boxes.
I did some googling and found an interesting post on the matter which references STP. https://community.ubnt.com/t5/UniFi-Routing-Switching/Sky-Q-network-paths-and-STP/td-p/2117608
Their use case was similar to mine, a desire to run wired Ethernet only and no Wireless.
It turns out our second mini box had just arrived and I wanted to install it. With the network still crawling along I managed to provision it over the WiFi using the WPS method SkyQ guides you though. I got the main 2TB box and both minis working then went about disabling all of the WiFi radios on all of them. This way the traffic will be forced through Ethernet.
Since then the network issue has not re-appeared, I am quietly confident but as with all multicast or other broadcast issues it may slowly build up over time until the network falls over again.
I've not found out any solid answers with my research. Does the Sky Q wireless mesh networking cause issues when simultaneously connected via Ethernet? Is it an issue with a combination of switches, some supporting STP and others not?
The install went fine and I thought all was well. It was, until I fired up my desktop computer and found absolutely dire Ethernet network performance. Pining my router resulted in very patchy performance with dropped packets and trying to access any network resource timed out or crawled along. WTF?
I had installed a small 8 port unmanaged gigabit switch in order to provide enough ports downstairs for SkyQ, SmartTV, Raspberry Pi etc and my first thought was this. Perhaps it did not support auto uplinking, perhaps it was causing a broadcast storm, perhaps it was just pap? When I looked at my main 24 port managed switch the port activity lights screamed of a broadcast storm.
I removed the uplink from the small 8 port on my main 24 Port managed switch and the problem instantly went away. Cue myself firing up the web to order a better managed switch to replace the 8 port. Prior though, perhaps it wasn't the 8 port at all? I restablished the uplink with no client devices connected, all was well. I reconnected client devices one by one and then BAM. Network died. It was the main SkyQ 2TB box and I can only assume it is to do with it's own mesh networking to connect to the mini boxes.
I did some googling and found an interesting post on the matter which references STP. https://community.ubnt.com/t5/UniFi-Routing-Switching/Sky-Q-network-paths-and-STP/td-p/2117608
Their use case was similar to mine, a desire to run wired Ethernet only and no Wireless.
It turns out our second mini box had just arrived and I wanted to install it. With the network still crawling along I managed to provision it over the WiFi using the WPS method SkyQ guides you though. I got the main 2TB box and both minis working then went about disabling all of the WiFi radios on all of them. This way the traffic will be forced through Ethernet.
Since then the network issue has not re-appeared, I am quietly confident but as with all multicast or other broadcast issues it may slowly build up over time until the network falls over again.
I've not found out any solid answers with my research. Does the Sky Q wireless mesh networking cause issues when simultaneously connected via Ethernet? Is it an issue with a combination of switches, some supporting STP and others not?
