Upgrading the home network

Priapus

Priapus

Priapus

Soldato
Joined
30 Jul 2004
Posts
10,564
Location
East Sussex, United Kingdom
We recently moved into our first home here in the UK; and had Sky broadband installed. The issue now is though, the WiFi signal in the house is terrible in pretty much every room, except the one were the router is. Back in my home country, I had a full UniFi setup - 16 Port PoE switch and a few APs placed around the house - so there was pretty much 100% coverage across the whole property.

I'm not looking to go to that extent again - as it would be overkill. Looking for good recommendation on extending the WiFi in a 5 bed detached house. Looked at a few mesh ideas, but don't want to have to buy something to find out it's wrong.

Can I change the Sky router too, for something else or is it specific to be connected to the ONT?
 
If you're familiar with Unifi, I'd do that again.

I ran my Unifi Express + U6+ in mesh mode for a few days before I ran the cat6 to wire it, and was surprised how well it performed.
 
I set up my 85 year old neighbours sky stream yesterday
On the phone they basically told her
She would have to pay for sky boost
As wouldn't work without it
Totally untrue and added 4 quid to her bill

But anyway
Think nowadays you're not limited to sky supplied router
Depends if your property is victorian/similar era
If its all internal brick walls not stud and plaster
Then yeah wifi signal will suffer
I have a cheap wifi 6 mesh setup using a few hauwei ax3
£30 each made a pretty cheap Mesh network

But as always
If you're able to run ethernet it's best option
 
Another +1 for going the unifi route again. Unless you're only staying in the UK temporarily, or in that home temporarily.

Any other solution is just going to be a half attempt that you'll throw money at and still be unhappy about. May as well do it right the first time.
 
I run my own router with sky.

They don’t officially support it, if you have an issue then you have to put back their equipment before they’ll talk to you but not really a big deal.

There’s a few guides online about what settings / user name and passwords you need to get set up.

The supplied sky router was pretty pants tbh but other than that they’ve been good. I had a couple of issues with fibre ports (not their fault) and they arranged really quick openreach call outs
 
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Semple said:
Another +1 for going the unifi route again. Unless you're only staying in the UK temporarily, or in that home temporarily.

Any other solution is just going to be a half attempt that you'll throw money at and still be unhappy about. May as well do it right the first time.
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I'm probably staying in the house for a year and the UK for the foreseeable future. I'll take another look at some UniFi stuff. I do really like their kit.

ben1987 said:
I run my own router with sky.

They don’t officially support it, if you have an issue then you have to put back their equipment before they’ll talk to you but not really a big deal.

There’s a few guides online about what settings / user name and passwords you need to get set up.

The supplied sky router was pretty pants tbh but other than that they’ve been good. I had a couple of issues with fibre ports (not their fault) and they arranged really quick openreach call outs
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Okay that's good to know; their router is pretty crap. Thanks for the info.
 
Best upgrade to a home network is to wire as much as you can.
I hate how congested residential spaces are with WiFi.
I wonder if anyone has patented a wallpaper that blocks WiFi.

Wonder if this would work.
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Priapus said:
I'm probably staying in the house for a year and the UK for the foreseeable future. I'll take another look at some UniFi stuff. I do really like their kit.



Okay that's good to know; their router is pretty crap. Thanks for the info.
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With FTTP it actually makes it more of a breeze to use your own networking kit. Previously, even with FTTC most ISP routers could not be placed into modem mode, so unless you went down the double NAT route, you were mostly stuck with it.

I got fed up after changing providers with having to modify every device again to join a new network. This way all my ubiquiti gear stays as is regardless of ISP and any change to a different ISP is mostly transparent to my devices that connect to the network.
 
Semple said:
With FTTP it actually makes it more of a breeze to use your own networking kit. Previously, even with FTTC most ISP routers could not be placed into modem mode, so unless you went down the double NAT route, you were mostly stuck with it.

I got fed up after changing providers with having to modify every device again to join a new network. This way all my ubiquiti gear stays as is regardless of ISP and any change to a different ISP is mostly transparent to my devices that connect to the network.
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We have FTTP I believe. There is an ONT box on the wall and the Sky router just plugs into that via a ethernet cable.
 
When we moved into current property, I took out Now tv, it used the Sky Q router and it was dreadful, it was not so much the wifi, but it just could not handle how many devices we have.
As we did not know long term who we were going with, I dug out an old edimax router, I had to get some settings online to get the Sky one playing nice (it was a few years ago, but there was no native modem only mode if i recall)

I'd probably only do that if you have one lying round, probably just as easy to buy a Mesh network. If you end up moving the network can go with you or be sold (I used Deco tp link mesh)
 
SpellowHouse said:
Don't Sky insist you use their equipment? They used to. One of the drawbacks of going with a company like that.
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It was a DNS option (53 IIRC). I have been using a custom router with Sky for almost 15 years - someone built a calculator to spoof it. The TP Link I recently fitted for my mum however, has a wizard built in that does it all for you. So it is completely transparent to the user. I doubt many other providers would work so seamlessly.
 
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