Hub 4 keeps disconnecting from Sky Q box

[guilbert]

I moved to Virgin 1 Gig Broadband in May 2021 and got a Hub 4. I had a few problems (see previous questions on this forum) and in the end a Virgin engineer came out a checked the router, the indoor connections and the box outside in the street. Seemed to work ok for a while.

But in the last few weeks the Hub keeps losing connection to the Sky Q box and it is very frustrating as we have to keep reconnecting the Sky boxes to the router, often multiple times till it works.  

We have a Sky Q main box, plus two "slave" boxes in the two upstairs bedrooms, all connected to the router via wi fi. We live in a standard semi detached house. Router at the front of the house, all the Sky boxes (and TVs) at the back of the house so cant use ethernet cable.

For about the last six weeks or so the Sky boxes keep reporting there is no internet connection. This can be either the main Sky box or the two "slave" boxes or all three. 

I reconnect the Sky box to the router, then often within a minute or so it loses connection again. It can often takes 4 or 5 goes to get a stable connection between the Sky box and the Hub 4.

If it happens mid evening (say 9pm) I can be playing around with the three Sky boxes for 30 minutes or so reconnecting the Sky boxes to the router, and then just seeing them lose the connection in minutes. I get so frustrated I often give up and go to bed hoping it has sorted itself out by morning.

Is there anything I can change in the router or the Sky boxes to get a more secure connection?

I do see comments about the Hub 4 wi fi not being that good so I would be willing to consider getting a good quality router and putting the Hub 4 in modem only mode.  

Or maybe getting some sort of Mesh system and putting 3 or 4 of them round the house to get a more consistent wi fi signal. Wiling to spend up to £200 to get a good Mesh system.

Note it is not the speed of the wi fi that is the problem, more the fact the connection keeps dropping to the Sky boxes.    

I have been a Virgin customer for over 20 years (was with Birmingham Cable Communications then NTL then Virgin) so would be unhappy to leave Virgin but CityFibre have just laid cables in our street and once I find out their prices I may be tempted to leave Virgin as I am getting so frustrated wit these wifi disconnections.   

[Tudor]

Sky Q boxes have a lot of trouble with any ISP except Sky, there are lots mentioned on the web. Best thing to try is to connect the master Q box to the VM hub with an Ethernet cable. I’ve not got Sky Q, but have read somewhere they make a private network between the master and slave boxes, so the slave do not go through the VM hub, of course this may not be true.

[Tom_F]

Hi guilbert, thanks for your post.

Sorry to hear about the problems you've had with connection to your Sky boxes. 

I've taken a look from here and there are no obvious issues that I can see. If the issues you're experiencing are with the Sky devices specifically and other devices are OK then that would indicate it's a more likely to be a compatibility issue with the devices in question. 

I'd also recommend trying an Ethernet connection as suggested above, I appreciate that may not be ideal but if it's more stable and stops the connection drops it may be worthwhile.

Tom

[Humblebum]

I installed Sky Q 2TB + a mini-box & booster 4 months ago. Daily, at least once sometimes more, it drops off. I've had 12 Sky engineers out and they are at their wits end trying to figure it out. Finding it even harder to get virgin to help.

Here's what's been done. Original set-up was w-fi and I insisted sticking to that for the first few visits but eventually gave into ethernet cable but it doesn't make any difference. 2.4ghz was disabled and 5ghz enabled. DNS has been set to both Cloudfare and Google public addresses along with both VM options. The mini-box/booster works off the Q Box, although we did revert that once to see if it would make a difference. All the combinations of DNS and frequency settings have been tried, both on Wi-Fi and ethernet. Nothing works I even tried port forwarding recently but the IP address changes automatically on the Sky set-up and the 2.4ghz enabled again, without any humans being involved. 

Seems to me that virgin has the router set somehow to override any changes manually made on the SkyQ. That's the only logical conclusion. I thought port forwarding would beat that but the IP address was changed and you can only make one rule for each address. I've used the Hub 3.0 Settings page and set and reset various options, all with no change. Last visit from Sky we changed channel width from 80mhz/36 to 40mhz/44 but again, mysteriously, that reset itself overnight.

The effect of all this is that the tv guide works so you can search for shows via that, as that comes in via the dish. The router services wifi which is all the other functions such as On Demand, Cinema, Sports etc where the landing page should have a selection of tiles (thumbnails)that allow the viewer to browse for their evening's entertainment. Similar to Netflix and Prime. Those tiles are missing and a blue page with script tells you you have a connection problem. But when you go to settings it tells you the connection to the router and internet are good. Every possible option has been and variation has been tried but it still falls over every day, at least once. To time pattern to it.

Look forward to opinions. If anyone has a contact number for an engineer I'd appreciate that too. Cheers.