Configuring Sky Fibre Broadband & Sky TV to work with an Orbi Mesh

My Sky Q Hub was gradually starting to creak under the strain of a Smart Home (30+ devices). Devices were starting to spontaneously drop off the network, and smart TVs and consoles were starting to really struggle with connectivity. With two kids doing remote learning on top of me working from home during the lockdown, there was an urgent need for a stable internet connection.

A phone call to Sky left me deflated; I was basically told they couldn’t detect any fault with my equipment through the self-diagnostics tools, and therefore they wouldn’t do anything about it. I was told that I simply had too many devices connected to the hub, and I should start unplugging things. That did not seem right, especially as more and more home equipment is ‘smart’ these days. I figured it was time to ditch the OEM Sky router and Sky’s own mesh and replace it with something more up to the task.

Cue days of Googling and investigating the minefield of replacing Sky equipment with third-party kit. Hopefully, if anyone Googles the same and comes across this post, it may give them some tips.

Background

The first thing to point out is that you cannot just stick another mesh system on top of the Sky router. There are a few problems with this, the main one of which is called the ‘Double-NAT problem’ which can cause all sorts of connectivity issues for devices due to there being two routers on the same network issuing IP addresses. To overcome this, you need to remove the Sky Q Hub from the setup completely, meaning aside from the mesh router itself, you need to also buy a new modem.

After some research, I settled on the Draytek Vigor 130 modem (~ £90) and the Netgear Orbi RBK23 Mesh System (~ £300 with two satellites). I investigated the Amazon Eero and the Google Nest WiFi mesh systems. In terms of pure functionality, I doubt there’s a huge amount of difference between the different systems and the prices were comparable, but there is a sneaky banana skin called ‘DHCP Option 61’ which led me down the Orbi route. See further below.

Here are the steps I went through to get it all set up:

Pre-Work

• Jot down your network SSID and password
• Turn off the Sky Q and any Sky Q Mini Boxes at the wall. The mesh network they create with each other causes all manner of problems. More on this later
• Place your Orbi satellites around your house. Do this first. My original plan was to get the router established and then add the satellites, but I learned later that it’s actually far easier to do them all together
• Sky uses a different type of connection protocol to other ISPs. Rather than use PPoE like most ISPs, they use MER, also called DHCP Option 61. There are hundreds of posts across the internet of people struggling to get third-party network equipment to work with Sky because of this. Because it is unusual, most routers are not configured to support it; most of them assume you are using PPoE. It is difficult to figure out for sure, but from what I could tell, neither the Google nor Amazon mesh systems support it. The Orbi DOES support DHCP Option 61… but not out-of-the-box. You need to do a firmware update. But to do this, you need an internet connection! It is a bit of a catch-22, but in the end, I figured out a way to do it:
• Plug the Orbi router into the Sky Q Hub router via Ethernet cable, and go through the process of configuring it as an access point via the Orbi mobile app
• When it has an internet connection, connect to the Orbi WiFi network via a computer
• Browse to the admin console on 192.168.1.1
• Go to Advanced → Administration → Firmware Update
• Update the firmware on the router and the satellites
• Once you have done the firmware update, hard-reset the Orbi by sticking a pin in the reset hole on the back of the device for 5 seconds (this does not overwrite the firmware, but wipes out all the Access Point configuration you have just done and takes it back to a clean install)
• Turn the Orbi off for now

Setting up the Modem

• Disconnect the Sky Q Hub and plug in the Draytek modem.
• Connect to the modem with a laptop via an ethernet cable and on a browser go to 192.168.2.1 to access the control panel
• Under the Internet Access menu on the left, choose MPoA / Static or Dynamic IP.
• Tick the Enable option next to MPoA (RFC1483 / 2684)
• Change the value in the VCI box to 101
• Click OK, this opens the option at the bottom of the screen called Enable Bridge Mode. Make sure this is ticked.
• Restart the modem by cycling the power button on the back.

This puts the Modem into Bridge Mode which disables the NAT feature and delegates the allocation of IP address to the upstream router, thereby overcoming the ominous double NAT problem.

Setting up the Orbi

• Look on the bottom of the Orbi router for the default access point name and WiFi password and jot these down
• Turn the Orbi router on then connect it to the Draytek via Ethernet cable
• ** Note ** — The Orbi app is undoubtedly an easier way to set up the system, but you cannot set up DHCP Option 61 via the mobile app, so you will need to do this via computer
• From a computer, scan for WiFi networks and wait until default Orbi access point appears (can take a while after first boot), then connect to it using the password
• Browse to 192.168.1.1 to open the control panel
• Follow the step-by-step guide to configure the network. When prompted, replace the SSID with your existing Sky network name and password. This allows all your existing devices to automatically connect to the new network without you having to reconfigure everything.

When the setup is complete, you will have a working network with a bunch of devices connecting to it, but no internet. The in-built wizards in the Orbi system are not designed to cope with DHCP Option 61 so none of these will work. Instead:

• Go to Advanced → Setup → Internet Setup
• Scroll to the bottom of the screen. If you have done the firmware update, you should see a DHCP Option table, with an empty box next to Client Identifier String (Option 61).
• You need to enter a client string. This should be in the format:
• <mac-address>@skydsl|<password>
• Note: handily, the mac address is shown a few boxes above. Just remove the colon “:” characters
• The password can be anything
• Example: 9dc9ee25edac@skydsl|abcde12345
• Press Apply at the top of the screen

Once this is done, the Orbi should be able to connect to the ISP. However, I waited several minutes and even rebooted the router and nothing happened. It was not until, in desperation, I went to Advanced → Setup Wizard and started the few steps of the wizard that it suddenly connected. I didn’t even finish the wizard. I thought it was a coincidence, but I have done it twice now. I think there’s something in the wizard that ‘jumps’ the Orbi into reauthenticating with the ISP, at which point the DHCP Option 61 setting activates.

You now have internet! (again)

Sky Boxes

Alas, there was always going to be a problem somewhere, and that problem is the Sky TV boxes. The main Sky Q box does not automatically reconnect to the new network, even with the same SSID. You need to go into the Settings and reconfigure the network and tell it you are using something other than a Sky router. Once you enter the WiFi password it does connect.

The problem occurs when you turn a Sky Mini box on. As soon as it tries to connect to the network, it boots the main Sky box off the network. When you turn the Sky Mini off at the wall again, the main Sky box suddenly sorts itself out and reconnects. The issue (as far as I can tell) is that the Sky mini box talks to the Sky Q over a private 5Ghz mesh network. This clashes with Orbi’s 5Ghz mesh. It is a shame you cannot just tell the Sky systems to use the third-party mesh rather than create its own. I understand when you’re using a Sky router, the Sky Q boxes act as mesh satellites for the overall network. But when you’re not using a Sky router… this private network just gets in the way.

I tried a handful of things. The most promising option was to go into the engineering menu of the main Sky box (Scroll to Settings, press 0 0 1 on the remote and then Select) and change the 5Ghz channel to something else. I then reset the Sky Mini and got it to re-establish a connection to the Sky Q. It inherited the new 5Ghz channel, and in theory should have been out of the way of the Orbi network. Sadly, this had no effect for me and the Sky Q main box stubbornly refused to stay on the network for more than a few minutes while the Sky Mini was powered (even in standby).

The only solution… and it was not one I took lightly… was to hardwire the Sky TV boxes into the network via a Powerline ethernet (Note: I know proper Ethernet is preferable to Powerline, but chasing holes in walls and running CAT cable everywhere around the house just wasn’t feasible for me). I did not want to do this because my Sky Mini was wall-mounted behind a TV and it was a pain to reorganise everything. I also felt like hardwiring was a bit defeatist after spending so long configuring a new WiFi network.

Seemingly with no other options, I bit the bullet and opted for the Tp-Link Nano AV600 (~ £25 x 2). I plugged one in near the Orbi router and then one next to each Sky box and cabled them all in. I switched the network settings on the Sky boxes to use Ethernet rather than WiFi, and then just to be sure, I disabled both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz from the engineer’s menu on both boxes. It took a little while to settle down but eventually stabilised.

Conclusion

It was more complicated than I would have liked, and the introduction of Powerline ethernet wasn’t in my original plan. It feels like a lot of the pain could be avoided had Sky designed their equipment to play nicely with third-party network equipment, not just the use of MER rather than PPoE, but it feels like there should be some way of telling the Sky TV boxes to piggy-back their signal over an existing 5Ghz network and not create their own private one. I might be missing something, but it seems a slightly arrogant assumption among Sky’s engineers that customers will go “all-in” with Sky equipment.

But I now have a fully working, third-party mesh that should be capable of handling hundreds of devices. Speeds look great (the speed-to-device has jumped from ~ 40 Mbps to ~ 70 Mbps which is only very slightly less than the speed into the modem), connectivity on all devices looks good, and (touch wood) there’s been no drop-outs.