[SOLVED] Second Router Issues Part 2 - Revenge of the Sky Router

Noki0100

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Feb 28, 2019
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Hi all,

I was helped in a recent post to setup my second router correctly. However I still have some strangeness I don't understand.

I do however believe the fault lies with the Sky Router somehow. When removed from the equation everything works fine. But I need it plugged in for WiFi access downstairs. I'd rather not have to buy another router/access point, as this should just work and be honest, who doesn't want an emergency backup :)

My Setup:
Virgin Hub 3.0 (modem mode) connected to an Asus RT-AC66U_B1 as the main router and then a Sky Hub as a second line (it's cheaper to have the whole package, which I why I even have 2 connections at home) through Virgin I get 4 times the highest speed Sky can provide in my area. But Sky do cheaper (and better) TV in my opinion. I need to have a WiFi Access Point downstairs as my house seems to be a collection of Faraday cages. The new Asus router wasn't as powerful as I had hoped (but is still a great router, I don't blame it).

Virgin is Top Tier and usually gets 380Mbs
Sky is Bottom Tier and usually gets 1Mbs

The difference is obviously noticeable.

Now I have the Sky router setup as a fail over WAN as per this section of my router:
Z2Hmw8s.png

It's definitely connected to the right port on the back.

I can't see any other settings that I might need to change to get this to work right.

What was fixed (and why I closed the last post):
Previously some devices like my phone were defaulting to the slower Sky router for everything. Once I ran the cable and set the above config on the Asus router I got full speed. I made a few more checks on other devices and connecting from a few different points and closed the previous post a happy bunny.

The New Problem:
  • Now I went to YouTube and to watch a video and had some hiccups, but thought nothing of it.
  • After trying a few times I get the following consistent behavior:
    • Open speedtest.net and perform a run > 380Mbs result and the page loaded quickly.
    • Now open YouTube and pick a random trending video. Pages load is snappy.
    • Video itself is black with a loading icon, after 15 seconds it decides to set the video to minimum quality and it buffers around 3 seconds. Playback stops while it buffers some more, 10 seoncds of nothing, then a few more seconds of playback.
    • If I force higher quality like 1080p it buffers again retrieving nothing.
    • Give it around 30 more seconds and suddenly it decides oh you want FAST internet, and boom the video loads and plays without a stutter as it buffers several minutes of video at the higher quality selected in a a split second!
I realize this particular issue is vague, but there have been other minor issues this was just the easiest one to describe. Overall the original issue is fixed but I can't understand why the above example would happen. When I browse pages generally it's clearly faster than the 1Mbs so must be using the Virgin modem correctly, speedtest.net seems to agree with that. So why would every YouTube video do this consistently. MS Teams on my work laptop is also unhappy, but that could just be Team be flakey. As I said there are several minor annoyances since setting the backup router up correctly (assuming it is correct).

Now I power off the Sky Hub entirely and try again and there is no issue at all, everything is super fast. Including YouTube as I would expect. MS Teams doesn't seem to randomly disconnect neither.

I can't see any settings on the SkyHub or the Asus Router that might cause behavior like this. Can anyone explain this?

As I say I blame the SkyHub, it may simply be that it doesn't expose everything I need to change in order to fix this.

Willing to perform any checks and tests request to help, I run Linux and Windows if that matters.

Additional Info:
I like diagrams (I have an average of 10 devices connected at any one time, it's not as clogged as it looks)
MhMuPgc.png
 
Solution
The solution I put in the other post about different IP addresses you said did not work. Not sure why it just means the skyhub is not as simple as we think.

Using the asus router as a dual wan is a different solution and needs to be cabled differently.

Best bet is to find a $20-$50 router and use it as a AP.

I suspect after you get this all done you will find a new problem that the router does not always detect the primary wan go down. The ethernet port will never drop so that simple method of detection is out. It has to in effect send pings to something but that only find completely outages it does not work well for say you lose 50% of your traffic.

You might want to load merlin onto your router it has more features in the...

Noki0100

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Feb 28, 2019
53
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Sorry I seem to be missing something. In response to my other post you stated:

You are best off using a dual wan router but you could set the main router to say 192.168.1.1 and the second router to 192.168.1.2. You want to be sure you have the DHCP disabled on the second router.

This will require you to manually fail the devices over to the other ip address as the gateway.


And since my Asus router has an option for Dual WAN I inferred from what (you and others) said that this would work.

But then the SkyHub is still acting as a router, and not a modem like the Virgin Hub. So would this mean there is no way to still use the SkyHub for WiFi downstairs without it being an entirely separate LAN, which doesn't fit my needs.

The only option I have on the Sky Hub is to disconnect the modem, but even this causes the timeout problems I mentioned above.

So I need to dedicated WiFi access point downstairs, something the SkyHub can't seem to do?
 
The solution I put in the other post about different IP addresses you said did not work. Not sure why it just means the skyhub is not as simple as we think.

Using the asus router as a dual wan is a different solution and needs to be cabled differently.

Best bet is to find a $20-$50 router and use it as a AP.

I suspect after you get this all done you will find a new problem that the router does not always detect the primary wan go down. The ethernet port will never drop so that simple method of detection is out. It has to in effect send pings to something but that only find completely outages it does not work well for say you lose 50% of your traffic.

You might want to load merlin onto your router it has more features in the dual wan. I am pretty sure merlin supports that router.
 
Solution

Noki0100

Reputable
Feb 28, 2019
53
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4,545
I did rewire. I ran a cable directly from LAN Port 1 of the Asus router right into the Sky Router. The 2 orange lines in the diagram show how I set it up.

I will experiment a bit further and see what happens. I'd rather not have to buy another piece of kit if this will work. But if I must I will.