Terrible experience with Sky Fibre Broadband

Cromulent

Cromulent

Cromulent

Soldato
Joined
1 Nov 2007
Posts
7,065
Location
England
We have recently signed up for Sky Q television and we thought at the time that we could save some money by moving our broadband over to Sky as well at the same time. So they installed it and the first thing I noticed was that we were not getting our full broadband speed. So I rang them up and spent an hour on the phone and the answer was that it was one of our devices using up all our broadband speed. I told them that the day before with exactly the same network configuration we were getting the full speed with Virgin Media but they continued to blame us. So not wanting to get into a long argument with them I gave up on it.

When I use my computer I normally have Spotify, IRC and Discord open all the time while I am programming and I have noticed that my Sky Broadband connection disconnects at least 3 to 4 times per day which is infuriating. It disconnects from all my IRC servers for sometimes 1 or 2 minutes at a time and it does this multiple times a day. I've also noticed that Wifi internet connection drops out as well at random times (most annoyingly when I want to listen to Spotify on my mobile phone).

So fast forward to today I have a broadband connection rated at 70mbps down and 20mbps up and I'm only getting 30 or so mbps down (on a very good day it goes up to 35mbps) and I have an internet connection that drops numerous times during the day everyday.

This is the worst service I have ever had when it comes to an ISP. Even when we had dial up back in 1992 it never used to drop out all the time. I just want to go back to Virgin Media where we got the full broadband speed and I know if we try and cancel they will charge us for the full 12 month contract even though they are not providing a decent service to us. Is there anything we can do? I am a very heavy internet user and I rely on having a good internet connection for my programming work and for gaming as well.
 
In another thread I described a similar situation I was having after my move to Vodafone. Both BT and Talk Talk before had managed to give me a 75mb connection, where as Vodafone was dropping daily to 54mb.

Spoke with them last week and they agreed to pass the issue to Openreach who apparently attended the exchange and then reset my DLM.
I'm now on 76.6mb and have been for just over 48hrs.

What are Sky saying to you? What did they say the range of your connection would be?
 
stoofa said:
In another thread I described a similar situation I was having after my move to Vodafone. Both BT and Talk Talk before had managed to give me a 75mb connection, where as Vodafone was dropping daily to 54mb.

Spoke with them last week and they agreed to pass the issue to Openreach who apparently attended the exchange and then reset my DLM.
I'm now on 76.6mb and have been for just over 48hrs.

What are Sky saying to you? What did they say the range of your connection would be?
Click to expand...

They didn't mention anything about range but the telephone exchange is literally at the end of my road. Certainly less than a mile away.

Sky technical support told me that one of my devices was flooding the local network so that was causing the slow down of my broadband connection despite the fact I was getting 160mbps down on Virgin Media at full speed with exactly the same network devices on my local network. They basically blamed me for it. Even though I was sceptical I followed through with what the telephone operator recommended and disconnected every single ethernet device from the network and disabled Wifi on the router so that only one Apple Mac was left connected to the network and I still had the same speed. My confidence wasn't improved when the telephone operator claimed that there were two devices connected to the network when in fact there was only one and the reason it looked like two was because it had both an IPv4 address and an IPv6 address. I find it shocking that an ISP technical support person didn't know the difference between the two.

Since that phone call I haven't bothered to ring them again. Maybe I should. I only started noticing the disconnecting issue recently because I had a spell away from my computer where I couldn't use it as often as I normally do. Now I'm back to using my computer everyday it is highly annoying to be disconnected sometimes once an hour if not more.

Frankly at this point in time I just want to cancel Sky broadband and go back to Virgin Media.
 
2 things you can do to really help yourself and us see what might be the issue...

1. Post up your router stats please (showing sync rate, max rate available, SNR, attenuation etc)

2. Put in your address on BT's DSL checker here https://www.dslchecker.bt.com and let us know the results (obviously remove your address before posting back)

EDIT: Also noticed you have disconnects, if you pick up the LL phone can you hear any noise/interference? Dial 17070 option 2 for the quiet line test.

EDIT 2: Do you have the email from Sky with your guaranteed minimum line speed before you went live? This may help escalate your fault, or enable you to open a complaint easier...
 
Last edited:
Sparx said:
2 things you can do to really help yourself and us see what might be the issue...

1. Post up your router stats please (showing sync rate, max rate available, SNR, attenuation etc)

2. Put in your address on BT's DSL checker here https://www.dslchecker.bt.com and let us know the results (obviously remove your address before posting back)
Click to expand...

The only info I can find on the router is this:

Modem help
Modem StatusConnected
Traffic Type:PTM
Line Rate - Upstream (Kbps):20000
Line Rate - Downstream (Kbps):74889
Click to expand...

which says it is connected at the correct speed. But none of the machines get that speed. The only weird thing about our network is that the router now has to be downstairs to be plugged in to the correct so we have a 500mbps Ethernet over Power adaptor which takes the Ethernet back upstairs to our computer room which has all the other Ethernet points joining up. It also doesn't explain the internet dropping out all the time. I could try moving the router upstairs again if you think that will help? At the moment I'm willing to try anything as this is driving me up the wall.

The BT site said this:

There is no data available for this number. This could be either because it is not a BT line or it is a new BT number that has just been provided. Most new numbers will appear on the checker 24 hours after BT has installed the line.
Click to expand...
 
On the DSL checker, use the 'address checker' link rather than your number for the results. (with Sky your number is moved to their LLU network, so not classed as a BT number)

Although from what you posted, looks like you are actually syncing at 75/20 anyway. To be fair if you are running POE adapters you need to rule these out first.

Run speed tests now as you are on www.speedtest.net, then plug in via ethernet direct to router and complete speed tests again. See if the POE plugs are the issue, then you can move the router upstairs if able to.
 
Well I've done a little bit of digging around about this problem. It appears that at least part of the problem is that Sky's DNS servers go down or that they are not accessible. The most annoying thing about this problem is that Sky's router that they provide does not let you change the DNS servers to someone more reliable such as Google's DNS or OpenDNS.

Not entirely sure what to do about that. I'll move the router up stairs at some point in the next day or two to see if that makes a difference to the speeds we are seeing. I'll do the rest of the stuff you suggested tomorrow morning. I've been a bit busy the last couple of days.
 
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