I can assure you that you can split 2.4 & 5GHz bands on Smarthub-2 as that’s how I have mine set, and BT make it very easy to do so.
1 Like
True… the locals seem to use an EE phone as their house phone. Even though there is no EE signal for miles around.
All mobile phone reception is crap round here but it was only ever an issue for the time it took to request the relevant box from the phone provider to allow mobile calls over broadband. It’s not limited to one provider; we had an O2 box and EE for a while, now just EE.
It’s a small box the size of a packet of cornflour that just needs a mains supply and an Ethernet connection into your router.
1 Like
Negligible mobile signal here so for years we’ve had a femtocell to route mobile calls over the internet. When the internet goes down, roughly every 18 months, have to plug in an olde worlde phone to report it. With FTTP that may no longer be possible.
Willy.
That is not splitting the channels. With split channels you will have a different SSID for each frequency band. You can’t do that with SH2 despite everyone asking for it on the BT community forum. Earlier versions of the BT router offered separate ssid for each band but this functionality was removed for the SH2.
OK misunderstanding.
Yes I agree & yes its annoying that BT does not allow different SSID network naming for 2.4 & 5GHz bands.
My/our misunderstanding is the SH2 still allows users to split (separate) the bands under the Separate Bands switch.
BT default naming adds ‘-5’ to the 5GHz band name, good enough for me.
I have 6 (yes Six!) of the BT Whole Home Wifi discs & have had them for about 3 years +/-. They work faultlessly in my Granite walled Cottage with foil backed Plasterboard - each room is almost a Faraday cage :-0! If you get the White ones make sure you get the big not small ones - I got the extra discs from Fleabay quite cheaply. My 272 is on a wired connection though - much easier.
1 Like
On Friday BT promised me two of the extender discs but today a single plug type unit arrived.
The bizarre thing is I set it up as explained and upstairs where the signal is worst this plug in extender displayed it was too close to the hub and wouldn’t work. I switched it from 2.4 to 5 and did the set up again. This time I got the desired reading that it was in the optimal position.
However while my laptop ran quicker at 38 Mbps on WiFi and 94 Mbps using an Ethernet cable to the plug in, my phone was markedly slower.
The acid test will be tomorrow when engineer arrives to fit Sky Q as we’re having multiroom boxes in two of the bedrooms upstairs.
I don’t understand your definition of split. I think you mean having separate frequency bands. All modern routers have both 2.4 and 5 GHz bands but having two bands is not having split bands. That is achieved with separate SSIDs as I said.
1 Like
I hate to worry you further Steve but Sky Q, at least in my experience, is an absolute nightmare. I have a smart hub 2 and 2 disc extenders and to be fair it works pretty well. However Sky Q is another matter entirely. Apart from the connection to the main Q box, the speed and reliability of your broadband connection doesn’t seem to matter with Sky Q as it works on a seperate ‘mesh’ network on both wi-fi and powerline and is, to say the least, problematic.
It has improved since they switched the powerline on but there are still problems. As an example, one of my Q miniboxes sits not 15 feet away from a disc which measures at 70mb+ download and still drops and buffers regularly. I really hope it is ok for you but don’t hold your breath.
We bought an Orbi 752 to replace our ageing Apple AirPort Extreme and express. Blisteringly fast and such powerful wifi all over the house. But after about 4 weeks it went wrong. First the Naim dropped off, unit by unit, and then internet access seized up for everything but my iPhone. Nothing we could do would make it work, and I must have spent a whole day trying everything under the sun.
Luckily it bought it from the online tax dodgers so I sent it back for a refund. We are now back with the Apple stuff. It may be slow but at least it works.
There are few issues with Sky Q other than understanding how it works and how to ensure it’s configured correctly. I’ve had two engineer visits to fix something else and on both occasions the engineers didn’t miss a heartbeat in setting the Q back to default as a hot spot in itself. Turn that off and it works painlessly. The real problems start when you add multi room which, frankly, is a mess and not really fit for purpose. Never yet seen a genuinely trouble free set up pf multiroom via Q mini boxes.
Fortunately not an issue in our household as my Mrs. and I have consciously only ever had TV in one room. Absolutely never in the kids bedrooms or indeed our own.
Spot on Mike. It’s not the main box which is generally ok these days now they seem to have fixed the connectivity issues with some TVs but the multi room which can be a nightmare.
Too early to report on how well the multiroom works but everything else seems tickety boo.
The Netflix and Prime accounts are linked and seems to be working well on the main box.
Luckily I used to play snooker with the engineer who called so I know it was installed properly. How good it actually is remains to be seen.
Totally depressed by this thread given I only get 3mb speed! Makes streaming Qobuz hires something of a lottery.
What’s the 4G signal like around there? We were in the same boat until we junked the landline and got a 4G home router from EE instead.
Now we get unlimited data for circa £30 pcm and speeds of 50-100 mbs.
Well, last night I thought I’d spoken to soon.
I tried to download a couple of films but it wasn’t happening.
I rang Sky and spoke to a guy who was very helpful to be fair. However he couldn’t get it working and ended with “sometimes it can take 24 - 48 hours before everything is up and running”.
After that I looked on the sky forum and saw stories about people who’d had sky Q for over a year and still couldn’t download on demand stuff. Don’t understand how they’re still sky customers tbh. Anyway, at this point I was filled with dread.
This dread was compounded when the wife went upstairs to watch a mini box whilst I watched the football downstairs. She was constantly losing the WiFi connection and getting loads of buffering which made it virtually unwatchable. I accessed the settings menu and you could see the network connection flicking on and off every few seconds.
After a couple of hours back on the forums and attempts at resetting/reconfiguring the boxes I stumbled across what was hopefully the problem. During the phone call to sky I was told to change the power option setting on the main box from ‘Eco’ to ‘Active’. Turns out unless this setting is the same on every box it causes connectivity issues.
Fingers crossed we’re sorted.
Hopefully a final update.
On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I had issues with the main box. The screen went black and the box became unresponsive on a number of occasions requiring a reboot.
I rang Sky and once again got a tour of all the settings for 15 minutes or so. Then the advisor said there was an engineer currently in the area and they could arrange a visit. So within 2 hours an engineer called, replaced the box and reconfigured the set up.
Since then there have been no issues and thankfully the mini boxes work flawlessly too.
Big thanks to Sky.
1 Like
Had to complain via their chief executive route. Minor issue in some ways but after five weeks I expect it to be taken seriously and perhaps not be referred to as “mate”.
I think it’s very much a lucky dip as to which “team” you get put through to.
On the first night (Tuesday), the guy was friendly but ultimately useless. On Friday morning I got a guy who was spot on and after a quick work through the menus said there’s got to be something wrong with the main box. While on the line I said I wished I hadn’t moved to Sky Q after the problems I’d had and the number of people with issues I’d read about online.
As well as the new box I got a months credit as an apology for the bumpy switch over to Sky Q. Can’t complain at all really.