Sky Wi-Fi Max Router (SR213) vs Sky Q Hub (SR203)

[Kris_A]

Hello All, I'm new to this forum, so I apologise if this question(s) has already been posted. A few weeks ago, I decided to upgrade my Sky Broadband to Sky Wi-Fi Max (which offered a new router as part of the deal - I believe this is the SR213 model), which replaced my Sky Q Hub (SR203) - which I have to say was solid as a rock when it came to connected wireless devices. The moment I installed the new Sky router, I had nothing but issues with devices dropping (or not connecting, even though the SSIDs were visible). I contacted Sky, who after completing the compulsory line test (which was kind of pointless as this is an internal network issue), sent me a Sky Pod (which according to the instructions should just work out of the box), it doesn't, all I get is a flashing white LED (I had even left it powered up next to my router for over 60 minutes, no change). I am starting to feel that moving over to the new hardware, was a bad idea. Sky have arranged for an engineer to visit, but unless I have a faulty router, I don't see what else he can do. The only thought I have, is that I have a fair few IOT devices, that although worked perfectly fine on the old hardware, may struggle on the new kit (??)

If they cannot get it working as before, I may have to pull the contract (easier said than done). Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

Kris

(IT Network Engineer for 15 Years)

[GrimUpNorth]

Hi Kris, we had no end of trouble when we swapped to the SR213, in the end a new Openreach socket cured it - go figure Once we got it sorted it worked pretty well, did need rebooting now and again but so did the old SR203.

The Only frustration in the end was Sky won't supply their new WiFi 6 router if you've got a specific type of Sky Q box (which we've got), so after upgrading to their gigafast product last month, we jumped ship to Vodafone and have their Wife 6E hub and the difference is out of this world.

Hope this helps

[Stephen]

Hi and welcome. This is primarily cable focused but some of us now have Sky. Personally I don't have much experience or knowledge of the new SR213 hub. I'm still on the SR203 which works perfectly.

I did see on another forum that you apparently cannot split the network SSIDs like on the older routers, however for smart devices that won't connect they suggested disabling the other bands so only 2.5ghz is left enabled and connecting those devices. Then once done go back and re-enable to other frequencies and they should stay connected.

I dont know anything about those routers specifically, but I had a similar issue with my latest router(s) as I always ran a split 5/2.4 previously.
I got around it by disabling 5Ghz on the main SSID, and disabling 2.4Ghz on the guest network, then set the guest network to the slightly different SSID.
I then set the same security/password on it & thus I got back my split system. Everything was happy again.