Thinking about treating myself to a decent router

Soldato
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I have been with sky for a yr now, but over the last 6 months or so the broadband has been rubbish, and over the last few days I have been using my good 10yr old dlink 504t router that I paid about £70 back in the day. This router has been the only ever decent router I bought myself, others has been cheapo things. I have been using the sky hub for the past yr and yeah its ok, but since using my dlink again, I wouldn't mind buying another decent router.....

Im on ADSL atm, but bt are apparently going to upgrade the lines so hopefully I'll get fibre........ But this is the problem with the sky T&C you have to use their sky hub with fibre, so what would happen if I get caught using a different router? It seems a odd set up because sky will let you use a 3rd party router with ADSL but not with fibre?
 
Soldato
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You'd still be able to put the superhub into bridge mode and use it purely as a modem and use whatever Router you wanted.
Sky not Virgin so that's not going to work.

I can't imagine Sky ever doing anything beyond asking you not to and refusing to offer any support.

The biggest issue isn't the T&Cs. Their use of MER for authentication is far more of a hurdle and severely limits the routers you can use.
 
Soldato
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I think the worst you can expect is to receive no support if something goes wrong. Replacing the Sky router isn't trivial and involves you having to use something like wireshark to extract your username and password from traffic. You also need kit with specific compatibilities. https://www.avforums.com/threads/how-to-replace-sky-sr102-with-another-router-sky-fibre.1939217/ covers it pretty well.

What is it that you find not decent about the Sky Router? A particular feature or wi-fi coverage or something else? Reason I ask is that you might be able to augment your home network with a bit of kit while keep using the Sky router and remain within the T&Cs. So if it's wifi then placing an additional AP somewhere sensible will work wonders whereas if you want on-router VPN capabilities you could add a virtual router for those purposes into the mix.
 
Man of Honour
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I had Sky for over a year and used my own router, I had a few support calls and it was never mentioned by them.

You also no longer need MER, they have dropped it.
 
Soldato
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Thanks guys for your quick responses. So I should be ok using a different router when bt upgrades the lines, can sky tell if your not using their hub, as I was thinking I can temporarily connect up the sky hub if I need to ever ring them up?. I was reading about the MER thing last night, glad they have dropped it. So yeah if I can get the funds I wouldn't mind a 6port Dratek router with no wifi, as I had a large house and have a wifi access point in the centre of the house so I get complete coverage... But I might have to make do with a slightly less expensive one, but I want one with activity lights for the LAN ports?

Do I need a VDSL/ADLS router for both ADSL and Fibre?
 
Soldato
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What features of the DrayTek are you going use?

Unless you have a specific requirement I'd use Sky's router and add one or more wireless access points. If you need more network ports buy a switch.
 
Soldato
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What features of the DrayTek are you going use?

Unless you have a specific requirement I'd use Sky's router and add one or more wireless access points. If you need more network ports buy a switch.

Well I would like a gigabyte lan port for my access point, as can have 9+ things connected to it during the day, and just a few other lan ports for pc and printer, with some spare. Also need port forwarding and static IP assignment.

Also would a better router make the connection any more stable and faster?
 
Soldato
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I'm also really interested to know what routing features you're looking for in your new router, given you have wifi well covered/

If it's just flashing light's you're after then do as Bremen says and add a switch - it's a lot cheaper

If it's some of the advanced features of the Draytek then they can might be able to be found more cost effectively using a switch with a homebrew pfSense box or Ubiquiti ER-L or USG. I don't know much about them but I think Mikrotik routers are quite cost effective and feature rich too.

If you're doing this with advanced routing in mind then you might want to separate out the modem from the router. The products I mention above can work equally well with whatever internet connection but would need an ADSL or VDSL modem which can be got cheaply enough off eBay. Draytek products can come with the modem built in and often a modem suitable for both ADSL and VDSL. Tell us what you want from your router and I'm sure the advice will flow.
 
Soldato
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Well I would like a gigabyte lan port for my access point, as can have 9+ things connected to it during the day, and just a few other lan ports for pc and printer, with some spare. Also need port forwarding and static IP assignment.

I don't know the Sky router but I'd have thought any router provided by an ISP nowadays for fibre will have a gigabit port. So plug a £20 gigabit switch into that gigabit port and you'll have plenty.

Port forwarding and static IP assignment I guess might not be on an ISP provided router, but you wouldn't need to spend the money on a Draytek for that. Most 3rd party consumer devices will be able to do that from the likes of TP-Link, Netgear, Asus etc.

Also would a better router make the connection any more stable and faster?

I'm ashamed to say I don't really know the answer to this. I'd have thought that Sky would engineer their products to work well with their service. I guess perhaps they might dial down the settings to ensure more stability and less speeds and lock you out of the settings. Some 3rd party routers you can tweak things like that on the built in modem - certainly the Asus VDSL routers I've seen can do this.
 
Soldato
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The problem is the sky hub has only 100mbps lan ports

OK, but plug that into a gigabit switch and transfers around your internal network will be at gigabit speeds. It's only when traffic goes out to the internet it'll go via your router and be limited by the 100Mb connetion, but your internet isn't going to be that fast anyway. That port won't be a bottleneck.
 
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Get a Billion 8800NL R2. It has an ADSL and VDSL modem and is a brilliant bit of kit for the price. I rate it better than my Asus 68u which is twice the price.

It doesn't have gigabit, but I really can't see the need unless you transfer large files often internally, and even then 100mb is still pretty quick.
 
Soldato
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There's nothing I can see in what you posted or what you linked to that says they've stopped using MER.

There's information there that suggests that you no longer have to extract the Sky username and password and can use generic credentials instead. That's not the same as them removing the requirement for MER and accepting vanilla PPPoE connections instead.

I hope I'm wrong as it would make life easier for many people.

If such a change had happened I would have expected more Internet chatter on the subject and I can't see anything significant.
 
Soldato
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For sky adsl broadband you can use a generic username/password ect if you want to use a 3rd party router, but these details wont work for fibre, so you are forced to use their sky hub, unless you extract the info from the sky hub and the MER isn't a problem. I haven't found any info about the MER being scraped online?

Get a Billion 8800NL R2. It has an ADSL and VDSL modem and is a brilliant bit of kit for the price. I rate it better than my Asus 68u which is twice the price.

It doesn't have gigabit, but I really can't see the need unless you transfer large files often internally, and even then 100mb is still pretty quick.

I have looked at this router, it looks pretty good and will probably do everything I want it todo aswel. I see it has a WAN Gigabit port but guessing my wifi access point wouldn't work in that socket?
 
Soldato
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OP you want a combined VDSL modem/router. Personally I have a TP-Link Archer VR900 about £120 though.

Sky don't have any issues you using your own router, likely just not provide 'support' as such if you need router help.

Although when I rang with a line fault about a year ago, they didn't reference any issues with my own router, just sent out an OR engineer who sorted it promptly.
 
Soldato
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A superficial check of the specs suggests that the Gigabit EWAN port can be used as a LAN port if you're using the internal modem.

If the predominant use for the wireless is accessing the Internet then it isn't going to matter what the speed of the port is so long as it's as fast as the broadband connection.
 
Soldato
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A superficial check of the specs suggests that the Gigabit EWAN port can be used as a LAN port if you're using the internal modem.

If the predominant use for the wireless is accessing the Internet then it isn't going to matter what the speed of the port is so long as it's as fast as the broadband connection.

Absolutely. I don't understand this fascination with having the Access Point on a gigabit port. Unless you put a gigabit switch in that EWAN port, the rest of your network is going to be restricted to sub 100Mb using the Billion and your VDSL is sure going to be sub 100Mb so what's the point.
 
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