This could have gone in the disproportionately cross thread but then at risk of hijacking that, or not hijacking it and thus not getting any help
My new SKY Max hub has boiled my piss. OK, it's actually very good so far for what it does, 500 full fibre speed, a QR code for my phone to access it, and a very pleasant man fitting the Optical box for me yesterday. Plugged in, waited for a short update, and then 3 greens and all good.
But when i last changed broadband thanks to guidance on here i did two things - 1/ installed a Mesh to give better signal all through the house; 2/ renamed network and password to something secure but easily remembered.
So, I thought I just need to log into the SKY Hub and do the same (rename it, put to modem mode, plug in the Mesh boxes again) and all my devices would see new network as the old one.
But apparently not. Although in and working and connected using its own name and p/w almost instantly it was plugged in, MySky (the app that allows me to see and control my devices) 'might not see the device for 24-48 hours'. I've googled and it's recommended all sorts of rebooting, log out of the App, log back in, and still the Hub isn't visible, so i can't access it to change the name.
24 hours gone and I might have to wait another 24 hours apparently - so in the meantime half the devices in the house have had to have the laborious random password manually entered (including 3 TVs using the onscreen keypad bastard thing) anyway, and also potentially the Hub won't accept some Mesh devices (can't put to Modem mode*) and i'll have to pay extra to SKY to get their own version(s)
*google suggests if the Mesh system is modern enough it'll go to Access Point mode and i can turn the Wifi signal off on the Hub?
Any experience (and help) - ideally in words an IT duffer that just about managed a Mesh set up would follow.
It's a world of pain. Best option is to go with the default until you can see it in The MySky app and then change it via the app. I'd suggest deleting the app and reinstalling if you haven't done that.
30 hours and still not appearing in my devices. I've rebooted several times, logged out and in and then even deleted the MySky app, and still nothing. Starting to get annoying, what is happening (to an IT duffer's understanding) that means it needs such a long time for Sky to recognise their bloke installed my router/Hub yesterday!
Also - is this thread an example of how this place seems to be expiring. One (albeit helpful) response in half a day - when I posted 2 years ago about the mesh network in the first place I had multiple responses almost immediately.
Can you plug the WAN cable directly into the mesh and ignore the Sky 'hub' completely?
(Probably not given that it's Sky, but it's worth a try.)
What @cougar said. Idk why you’d bother using the Sky Hub wifi at all except for initial access or to administer the sky hub
Though being Sky I expect that there are things they’ve done to make it easy for regular people and harder for folks like you and geeks.
doing what @cougar said without having the sky hub in some sort of modem mode is only likely to give you a double NAT problem. Aside from annoying messages on the MESH system’s router that has limited effects for folks doing normal stuff ime.
Just rereading your post OP.
unclear what the exact setup is.
Do you have an ONT box (optical network terminal) box and then the sky hub is plugged into that with a network patch cable?
If so, have you tried just unplugging the sky hub and plugging your router in?
There may be some sky jiggery pokery to foil this. With BRSK the ONT will happily work with your own router.
The 24 hours is typically to allow an IP address given a device via DHCP to expire, usually powering a device off and on with remove the need to wait 24 hours.
How was your network set-up before you changed, do you know what was providing IP address to all the devices (the mesh or the previous BB router?). How is the Mesh connected to the router, is the base station hard wired?
With BRSK the ONT will happily work with your own router.
Yeah, and it's a supported configuration by Brsk. I asked and they cheerfully agreed. They stipulated that I should keep the router to return if/when I leave them, I pointed out the folly in them thinking I was going to keep their big daft router in a cupboard for years and they sent a nice man round to collect it instead.
Sky historically were the opposite. Back in ADSL days it was forbidden to use a third party router and (whilst possible to hack) the WAN username/password were hidden. Whether that's still the case today with modern FTTP provisioning I do not know. Logically it should be "just" an Ethernet connection coming out of the ONT, but as I said earlier it's Sky so who knows what perversity they've put on their connections.
The 24 hours is typically to allow an IP address given a device via DHCP to expire, usually powering a device off and on with remove the need to wait 24 hours.
This seems unlikely, unless you know something I don't.
If "MySky" connects to a device three feet away by going out across the public Internet and back in again (what could possibly go wrong), then I would assume it's reliant on Sky adding it as a new device to whatever command & control server runs it all. That's what takes 24 hours, you're waiting for someone to get their finger out.
This entire post is speculation on my part, however.
Thanks all so far
Old set up
Virgin Media line -> (coax type I think) VM router -> (ethernet cable) Tenda Mesh box -> (wireless) 2 other Tenda mesh boxes
The VM router was set to modem mode and with our own network name and password. I don't recall if I had to change the names or anything on the Tenda but don't think so. FWIW, but assume it doesn't matter, the first Mesh box was also ethernet connected into the SKY TV box and one of the other Mesh boxes had the Hive home hub ethernet connected.
New set up
SKY ONT -> (ethernet) SKY Max Hub.
The intent is to plug that into the first Tenda box, by ethernet and then everything else would be 'the same'. But having googled, seems i can't put the SKY router to modem mode, I can't even access settings yet because I can't see it in MySky app which is their version of the admin access. I haven't tried plugging in the Mesh network as is, with the SKY Hub in wireless mode, again google says then I'd have 2 networks and a double NAT problem which sounds perilous if not illegal 😉 Accessing the SKY Hub enablkes me to turn wireless off, and then apparently (google again) I turn the Mesh into an access point via the Tenda app.
So equally FWIW, the SKY TV and the Hive are now plugged into other ports of the SKY Max Hub and they're working OK (albeit, Hive is very far now from the boiler controller which has been an issue in the past) but the wireless signal to far points of the house is weak - which is why I bought a Mesh in the first place.
I dont have sky BB, but cant you just log into the router via the router IP address then using username and password on the back of the router. Then change whatever you need to without using the app.
SKY ONT -> (ethernet) first Tenda box, by ethernet
having googled, seems i can't put the SKY router to modem mode
If the above works, put it into Cupboard Mode.
I know this is daft, asking you to tell me how I set my Tenda mesh up 2 years ago.....
But ISTR that i didn't have to allocate any network name / password to the Tenda boxes, they just took them from the VM router. If that's the case and I plug the Tenda direct into the ONT, how does it know what network it is?
Or did I have to program the network info into the first Tenda box and the rest took from there?
If the VM box was in modem mode then all it's providing is an IP address to the WAN port of the first Tenda node. That node then becomes your router.
For most practical purposes, what's coming out of the ONT is exactly the same as what was coming out of the VM box unless Sky have been dicks.
Equal parts genius and bastard
So it would seem plugging the Tenda directly into the ONT works. SKY Hub into cupboard mode.
Bastard because if you'd been on a better SLA you might have told me this 2 days ago.
Mildly concerned if I have a service issue that I can't log into the SKY Hub but I'll cross that bridge when it comes - probably by running the back out of cupboard protocol
OK, one more question. I've now swapped getting coverage back for relatively low speeds - not dreadful because we aren't big gamers or anything like that, but we only have a basic 3 node system that seems to manage about 5-10Mbps, but we're on a 500Mbps full fibre connection
Recommendations for a decent, relatively fast mesh upgrade? How fast do I really need - bit of Netflix, endless Tiktoks, WFH Teams calls, etc.
Sounds like you’ve plugged the MESH router into the ONT box and it works. Great!
The MeSH router does not care what ‘network’ it is plugged into. All it cares about is getting a WAN IP address. It can then do its routing magic.
Great coverage, low speeds? First check the performance of your router to the world. Turn off the other MESH access points and using either a wired connection or a very close fast wifi connected computer test the network speed several times. Some routers, like ASUS, have built in speed test apps that offer a fairly direct test of performance. Even these provide variable speeds and pings depending on the destination server and other factors. Once you are happy that the primary MESH router is performing OK then poking the rest of your MESH system can follow.
is your backhaul wired? Are the connections between routers showing as gigabit? A common problem is alleged gigabit cables performing like weedy 100Mbps ones. Check the connections and replace if necessary.
if your backhaul is wireless then check if you have a dedicated 5G connection for this. If you have dual band MESH then the answer is ‘no’ and you can expect lower performance than if you did. The 5G network bandwidth is shared between devices and nodes. If you do have a dedicated network for backhaul then check the performance between your nodes.
if the internet-router performance is good and your MESH connections are good then it should all be good.
One big performance improvement I made on my 4-node ASUS MESH network with gigabit wired backhaul was to separate the AC/AX 5G network ID from the 2.4G b/g/n network by giving them separate SSIDs. This is something that MESH setups are meant to not need but it meant that our portable device performance and TV experiences were consistently better than when it was ‘machine, pick the best connection’. It took some user training to say ‘connect to xxx5G not xxxN’ and have folks follow that. I kept the original combined SSID for the 2.4G network to avoid having to update all the IOT devices.
good luck.
and in English?
What's a backhaul?
Bastard because if you'd been on a better SLA you might have told me this 2 days ago.
🤣 I told you 12 hours prior to this post!
Mildly concerned if I have a service issue that I can't log into the SKY Hub but I'll cross that bridge when it comes
Point of note here - again, I'm wholly speculating - if I'm right that it needs activating at their end for the smarts to start working, it's possible that they'll need sight of it when they tick whatever box is required.
Back when I worked for an MSP, if a device was remote managed then "can we talk to the box?" was part of Support Acceptance. No connectivity, it stays with the Installations teams.
Recommendations for a decent, relatively fast mesh upgrade?
I've posted about this before but my experience of Tenda is that - the one I bought at least - was ****ing garbage. It would be hard to think of a different solution which could be worse. TP Link are well regarded in price/performance stakes but I've not used them personally. I bought Asus, it's not great TBH but that's probably more to do with the challenging environment than the router itself.
If you can use a wired backhaul - ie, cable the mesh units together - then that will be your best bet. Every Wi-Fi 'hop' will have a not insignificant impact on performance. For me personally, running cables about the place was a non-starter as it would've required a core drill and a new girlfriend.
How fast do I really need
Probably less than you think. All bells and whistles 4k streaming (comfortably) is about 50Mbps, as a reference point. The only time I really Feel The Speed is when an Xbox download is 50GB, and for that it's hardwired into the router.
Oh, and,
if I have a service issue that I can't log into the SKY Hub
That being the case you can always bang the Hub back in for testing porpoises.
What's a backhaul?
The backhaul is how the mesh units talk to each other. Best = wired Ethernet; next best = dedicated Wi-Fi channel (which is a device feature you'll pay a premium for); almost certainly good enough anyway = regular Wi-Fi.
and in English?
When our esteemed parroty friend here talks about "5G" here he means the 5GHz Wi-Fi band, not 5G. Wireless connections to your devices will be 2.4GHz or 5GHz. As a rule of thumb the higher the frequency (GHz) the faster the connection, but at the cost of shorter range and weaker penetration through obstacles such as walls.
His last paragraph is a longer conversation. Wi-Fi standards is a hot mess of moving targets and this ☝ is a simplification.
Sounds like you’ve plugged the MESH router into the ONT box and it works. Great!
Except that unless your mesh system is performing firewall duties you have now removed the firewall.
Why wouldn't it be (it being Tenda aside)?