SKY Q + Netgear Nighthawk XR500

[katolley96]

Hi All,

I brought a Nighthawk XR500, to use as a replacement router as my Sky q FIBRE one is shocking, well several attempts to obtain the sky dsl login failed and some research shows sky makes it impossible to use other routers.

Anyway, I have settled to use the XR500 as an access point now so my set up is

BT OPENREACH MODEM > SKY Q ROUTER > XR500

My problem is it keeps dropping connection? Am I missing something very simple, or if anyone actually knows how to set it up as a standalone router would be much appreciated.

Many Thanks

 

[Lutfij]

You may want to see if you have firmware updates pending for the router.

 

[katolley96]

I don't I have updated to the latest firmware, I do auto connection and it detects a PPPOE connection asking me for my DSL login (Which i was told you dont have with fibre) only other set up is a manual set up but i cannot find anywhere with a guide on how to set it up, preety annoyed a £250 router can't do the basics on one of the top selling isp packages

 

[bill001g]

It is kinda strange they do not allow you to replace it. The only ones that seem to have a hard restriction contain voip telephone ports or have the actual optical connection in the router.

I guess it depends on what you mean it drops connections. If you plug into the sky router with a ethernet cable and are getting network drops then I would call the ISP and tell them to fix it. This is actually one of the good things that the router is theirs they can not try to blame your equipment.

If it is wifi then I would just disable the wifi and use the xr500 only.

I don't know the abilities of the sky router but you should be able to run it as a very dumb box. Disable the wifi radios. Set the DMZ to point to your new xr500. This should allow even some game consoles to work properly.

 

[katolley96]

Hi Bill,
Thanks for the response. I think my problem could be the DMZ? I haven't changed a thing just plugged it into the sky q box and changed to AP mode and hoped for the best. Is there any thing else I need to do? I have stopped the sky q from broadcasting its wifi to.

 

[bill001g]

That is the other way to accomplish the problem. You are only using the radio part of nighthawk. All the router function is done by the sky box.

It all depend why you feel you need the nighthawk. When you use the nighthawk as a AP and disable the radios in the sky box what you have in effect done is replace the radio chips.

You will not be able to use thing like the VPN feature in the nighthawk.

 

[kieran5018s]

To be honest bill it's the wifi signal I'm after, my house is seriously bulky so wifi is terrible with the sky q, I just want to feed the wifi into the xr500 to broadcast and we all connect to that (not to mention I have 2 extender plugs to round the house it's that bad)

 

[bill001g]

If your connection is solid on the ethernet ports then the sky router is working fine and you can use the other router for wifi. I would look for a cheaper router if you need more "AP' . In general most end devices do not have fancy radios like the routers so they drop back to the lower standards. If you also do not use the advanced features in the router it is kinda a waste of money.

In general there is not a huge difference between manufacture wifi coverage any more. Even many of the ISP routers have gotten to be acceptable rather than the pieces of junk they used to be.

 

[katolley96]

You may want to see if you have firmware updates pending for the router.

Well, turns out it needed to be connected to my sky router to download the firmware, came home and updated and now opens up the Option 61 which I have extracted using wireshark of the Q router - Am now running XR500 Nighthawk in router mode. Many thanks for the replies./