Help Sky ISP weirdness?

[rynnor]

Now heres an odd pattern I have seen for a while now - at peak times fri/sat early evening etc. the signal strength of my sky broadband router drops by half?

So usually I have 8 bars from my main pc upstairs - on sat afternoon it drops to around 4 and the usually rock steady green signal drops to yellow.

I thought ISP's throttled the connection but it looks like the firmware on the wifi router itself is also throttling - weird huh?

Its fine the rest of the time so I dont think its a bug with the router but it happens every week at the peak times?

I think Sky will now be ditched as this is impacting my playtime

 

[nath]

I can't imagine they'd ever throttle your wireless signal. Perhaps it's neighbours activating their wireless. Have you tried changing the wireless channel? Maybe try a different router?

 

[rynnor]

I can't imagine they'd ever throttle your wireless signal. Perhaps it's neighbours activating their wireless. Have you tried changing the wireless channel? Maybe try a different router?

Yeah - I thought about someone fighting over the same channel but the only other one i can see is on channel 1 while I'm on 11?

 

[MYstIC G]

Never had this problem matey. Speak to Sky, tell them that there's something wrong with the equipment and see what they say. After all they force you to use their routers so they should replace them when they're fubar.

 

[nath]

You can't use alternate routers with Sky? Sheesh :\

 

[rynnor]

I've tried manually switching channels but to no effect - its still only about 1/2 what it should be.

What other non pc devices could be causing interference on this wavelength?

I'm working on the theory now that someone is using something at peak times thats screwing my signal up.

Edit - the signal strength is 70%+ but the speeds down to 18-24 Mbps - is that due to error checking or something?

 

[MYstIC G]

You can't use alternate routers with Sky? Sheesh :\

Well obviously you can but in theory it's against the T&C. That said the netgear one they supplied me with is rock solid and they remotely patch them to keep things updated. I think with Sky it's more a method for knowing what's on their network means they know what to expect problem wise and they can take the "your kit dont work, your problem" standpoint.

BT do similar with our office 2wire router except every time they do it, it cocks up. I have about 4 of these routers in sealed boxes in the office because they just send out new ones and I prefer to keep the settings (fuck entering the wireless codes again on 20+ pc's) so I always end up re-flashing the box.