Help Sky Broadband

[old.user4556]

Anyone else with Sky?

The past 7 days or so my broadband has felt as slow as dialup, it's unbearable in the evenings. I've checked the usual, connected just shy of 8 megabits but actual download speed tests from speedtest.net shows 3 megabits on a good day and tonight it's been as low as 0.5 megabits. Pings are also shocking, a whopping 220 ms.

There are over 30 pages (and more threads) about it over on Sky's forums.

http://helpforum.sky.com/t5/Sky-Broadband-Speed/Terrible-broadband-speed/td-p/93541/page/30

Anyone else?

 

[soze]

I am with Sky and had not noticed any issues but in saying that I have just got this speed, testlast night Sab shows I had the full 20Mb/s so I do not know if mine is up and down as well.

 

[MYstIC G]

Sounds like something somewhere has gone *POP* to be honest. Have you checked to see if other ISP's that service your exchange are reporting problems G? If they are it is likely a BT/Openreach issue, if not then it is likely Sky have fucked something up.

 

[Raven]

Mines been fine all weekend. a steady 3.5mb, which is the fastest it's ever been in my area.

 

[Access Denied]

On the subject of Sky. Considering switching from BT, who have always given me good service, if not good customer service. Purely because it'll be MUCH cheaper. I've done some reasearch that suggests they've pulled their finger out and got their act together since last time I looked at them.

Current deals on their website are unlimited broadband with evening calls for £5pm for the first 9 months and £10pm after that with £12.25 line rental. Sounds like a bloody good deal to me since I'm currently paying £35 for BT. However, since the customer service reps at Sky are just as bad as they are at BT, will I still get the connection speed I'm getting now at that price? Can't find anything on the website saying otherwise but figured I'd check before taking the plunge.

 

[soze]

For that price I get get the most my line can support so I would say yes its up to 24mb. I love Sky and especially the way they don't shaft you on speed ever. But the few times I have spoken to them they have been beyond useless and they just re-profile your line which takes 5 days to complete but i suppose they hope you will forget the issue.

 

[Access Denied]

Well how about that? Just called BT to get the ball rolling on moving to Sky and they matched the price! So I get the speed and package I get now for the same price I'd get at Sky. Saves on the downtime too.

 

[Jupitus]

Mahoosive bumpage!

What's Sky broadband like nowadays, anyone? Same as Access Denied, I'm being shafted on price. Fibre is available meaning 'up to 38Mbps' for me which is fine, and I don't need any calls... I'm just worried about reliability and service....

 

[old.user4556]

I would like to retract my poor opinion of Sky, I traced my shit broadband down to my missus' iPhone saturating the connection every time she docked it on a charger. It automatically started backing up / downloading.

Just as well she's good at sucking cock.

 

[Raven]

I found them good when I was with them before they put fibre into the village but for some idiotic reason their broadband is capped at 40mb round here whereas on BT I get 76.

I would switch but for that reason.

 

[Jupitus]

I found them good when I was with them before they put fibre into the village but for some idiotic reason their broadband is capped at 40mb round here whereas on BT I get 76.

I would switch but for that reason.

Yeah, I'd lose some connection speed, similar to you. It must be a back end contractual thing...

 

[old.user4556]

I'm just sitting here waiting for the recently installed fibre cabinet to go fucking live .

Seriously, it's been weeks now, there's been more roadworks to "plumb" something (looked like power) and they had people wiring stuff up inside the cabinet itself. Now it's gone quiet.

GIFV MEGABITES.

 

[soze]

I got Fibre last month and as expected I get near enough 80/20. http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4607619227 this was just now while streaming NetFlix. I ditched Sky over the 40mb thing as well. They told me it is because they do not sell over capacity unlike other suppliers. Sky seem to suggest if they sell you 40mb you will get 40mb 24/7 and will not suffer from contention at busy times.

 

[Embattle]

Hate Virgin due to spam and throttling and hate Sky due to Router requirements.

 

[JBP|]

I've been on sky fiber for a about a year and half now. I moved over after being pissed about by BT. I have not had a single issue since moving over and speeds seem fine although i haven't done a speed test in a while. All I had to do was swap routers over when the BT one stopped working, no down time at all.

 

[soze]

Hate Virgin due to spam and throttling and hate Sky due to Router requirements.

I was not using a SkyRouter for the last two years I was with them. I found a website that gives you your credentials and used my own. I told them that my Router was not working and they would not give me a new one. They said I could use my own but they would not support it.

 

[DaGaffer]

Is there any way to test your broadband speed in front of the router/modem? I'm in a row with my provider (UPC) at the moment because I never, ever, get the 200Mb I'm paying for (absolute best, using an ethernet connection is 70Mb, and I rarely get that), but they keep insisting I am getting it and they can't see anything wrong, and this is despite me sending them screenshots of the speedtest off their own fucking website. So it might be the router, which is this combined modem/settopbox/DVR thing UPC insist you use, but since my speedtest has to go through it, I'm don't know how to prove they're lying or if the box is the problem. NB. Before you ask, even 70Mb is better than the DSL alternative (for now, although fibre should be available in a few months) so I'm reluctant to bin UPC just yet, but I'm pissed off with paying for something I'm not getting.

 

[Bodhi]

Sky are currently annoying me slightly, as they are claiming Fibre isn't available in our new house, yet BT are quite happy to supply Infinity. Not a massive issue, as I'd rather drive an Audi than go with those useless shower of retards again, still a bit annoying though - especially as Sky's claims of 8-16 Mbit at the new place have materialised into 5 Everything works fine, and we can have 2 Netflix streams going at once without issue, still not great however.

Other than that no real complaints with them, have far less line drops than I ever had with BT, and if anything does break they fix it pretty quickly. The current Sky Hub we have is OK (nothing special, but not awful either, we can get WiFi on all 3 floors and in the garden, so can;t grumble), and the recent house move was about as painless as it gets. Moved Sky TV over ourselves, were given a date 2 days later when BB would switch off at the old place and on here, they said it could take up until midnight but was done about 8:30 am.

 

[soze]

I have seen that with Sky. A BT guy said they only have to allow other resellers a certain percentage of the Fibre Card so just because BT have capacity it does not mean that Sky or any other reseller do.

 

[Bodhi]

Fair do's, I'll stick with ADSL until BT stop being cunts. Looking at their current determination to make sure if you want to watch everything that was available on Sky Sports twice the price as you now need a BT Sport subscription as well, frankly they can swivel.

 

[soze]

Fair do's, I'll stick with ADSL until BT stop being cunts.

I think we will have super fast Internet direct to the brain before that happens mate.

 

[Poag]

Fibre in my area was available from most suppliers. Then suddenly only BT (i'm with BT but i check now and then) wondered why. Next BT engineer i saw in the cab i asked

"Run out of Fibre pairs from the cab back to the exchange, so we stopped letting people resell it till we up capacity" which was what he was doing at the time. This tied up with the problems the BT guy had installing my fibre, took him all day as literally all the remaining fibre in the street cab were duff.

 

[old.user4556]

Is there any way to test your broadband speed in front of the router/modem? I'm in a row with my provider (UPC) at the moment because I never, ever, get the 200Mb I'm paying for (absolute best, using an ethernet connection is 70Mb, and I rarely get that), but they keep insisting I am getting it and they can't see anything wrong, and this is despite me sending them screenshots of the speedtest off their own fucking website. So it might be the router, which is this combined modem/settopbox/DVR thing UPC insist you use, but since my speedtest has to go through it, I'm don't know how to prove they're lying or if the box is the problem. NB. Before you ask, even 70Mb is better than the DSL alternative (for now, although fibre should be available in a few months) so I'm reluctant to bin UPC just yet, but I'm pissed off with paying for something I'm not getting.

At the risk of a torrent of Gaff abuse , I presume you've removed everything from the network that might be leeching bandwidth? As per my above post, my missus was saturating the connection with her shitty iPhone in addition to sporadic TV show downloads on her Sky box. Just wondering if you've maybe got a similar situation where a device is using the connection and eating up bandwidth / causing latency.

 

[DaGaffer]

At the risk of a torrent of Gaff abuse , I presume you've removed everything from the network that might be leeching bandwidth? As per my above post, my missus was saturating the connection with her shitty iPhone in addition to sporadic TV show downloads on her Sky box. Just wondering if you've maybe got a similar situation where a device is using the connection and eating up bandwidth / causing latency.

First thing I checked. Everything in the house is on wifi except the NAS, which is right next to the stb/modem, so that's ethernet. I went around switching off all the iphones, tabs and other devices then plugged the lappy into ethernet as well and powered down the NAS. I even checked I hadn't been dumb and laptop had a crappy ethernet adaptor; nope, all good. The iPhone issue is well known although you can manage what its doing in the background in settings. My photo backup used to be a bastard for using up all the bandwidth but I can schedule that for night time now.

 

[smurkin]

First thing I checked. Everything in the house is on wifi except the NAS, which is right next to the stb/modem, so that's ethernet. I went around switching off all the iphones, tabs and other devices then plugged the lappy into ethernet as well and powered down the NAS. I even checked I hadn't been dumb and laptop had a crappy ethernet adaptor; nope, all good. The iPhone issue is well known although you can manage what its doing in the background in settings. My photo backup used to be a bastard for using up all the bandwidth but I can schedule that for night time now.

Long shot - could your router be 10/100 Mbps? Or using cat5 cables?

I have an R6000 nighthawk 1000 mbps which is supposed to be the dogs and I was pretty surprised to see that my NAS was giving me knowhere near the speeds I was expecting over ethernet.

 

[soze]

My work resell FTTC and one of our customers was on a 20gb capped package which costs about £8.99 a month. Because BT committed to the install when the engineer found out the cab was full it was fast tracked for a second card. It took about 10 days abut by all accounts costs about £2k all for a £8.99 service

Is there any way to test your broadband speed in front of the router/modem? I'm in a row with my provider (UPC) at the moment because I never, ever, get the 200Mb I'm paying for (absolute best, using an ethernet connection is 70Mb, and I rarely get that), but they keep insisting I am getting it and they can't see anything wrong, and this is despite me sending them screenshots of the speedtest off their own fucking website. So it might be the router, which is this combined modem/settopbox/DVR thing UPC insist you use, but since my speedtest has to go through it, I'm don't know how to prove they're lying or if the box is the problem. NB. Before you ask, even 70Mb is better than the DSL alternative (for now, although fibre should be available in a few months) so I'm reluctant to bin UPC just yet, but I'm pissed off with paying for something I'm not getting.

The only way would be to replace the router temporarily and try again. If it is an all in one you can't even go into the modem which is a shit. But if they insist you use that Router and only that Router then tell them you want a new one. Run a speed test from your NAS to your PC to test speed on the LAN side. As someone else mentioned you might have 10/100 ports. If you get GB speeds on that but not from the web then it has to be WAN side and if they force you onto a Router that should be their problem.

 

[DaGaffer]

Long shot - could your router be 10/100 Mbps? Or using cat5 cables?

I have an R6000 nighthawk 1000 mbps which is supposed to be the dogs and I was pretty surprised to see that my NAS was giving me knowhere near the speeds I was expecting over ethernet.

Nope. Cat 6, Integrated 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet LAN.

 

[DaGaffer]

My work resell FTTC and one of our customers was on a 20gb capped package which costs about £8.99 a month. Because BT committed to the install when the engineer found out the cab was full it was fast tracked for a second card. It took about 10 days abut by all accounts costs about £2k all for a £8.99 service

The only way would be to replace the router temporarily and try again. If it is an all in one you can't even go into the modem which is a shit. But if they insist you use that Router and only that Router then tell them you want a new one. Run a speed test from your NAS to your PC to test speed on the LAN side. As someone else mentioned you might have 10/100 ports. If you get GB speeds on that but not from the web then it has to be WAN side and if they force you onto a Router that should be their problem.

Pretty much what I've done. They don't like replacing them though because they're expensive, which is why they're giving me the runaround. Reality is I don't think I'm getting 200Mb to the house and changing the box will only help confirm that.

 

[Moriath]

I got virgin 152mb and its great. Never really affected by any of the throttling that is supposed to happen. Dont know what was meant by spam on virgin tho.

 

[Bodhi]

Just a heads up for anyone with Sky at the moment, they are giving away free Wireless Boosters (well, you have to pay £2.99 postage) - ours just arrived today. Not especially critical for us as the router seems to be doing a decent job, but hey, it's free