Sky Broadband

sco0ter

I was looking for a little bit of info...

I have tried to contact Sky over this matter but they are unwilling to give me a straight answer.

I have heard that when you go with sky you MUST use thier router (Netgear DG834GT). It has been said that sky recognise the routers MAC address as your username and the password is encoded into the firmware in HEX so to prevent mac spoofing and using your own router. I was just wondering if anyone knows anything about it. I have spoken to 4 different people from sky and all I get told is that the service works with thier router and they dont support any other ones.. When I told them I couldnt use the DG834GT because I cant get a signal where my computer sits and I have a Rangemax DG834PN to compensate all they say is I could get BT to move the phone line.

When I told them that both routers where practically identicle and I am using it on the Easynet LLU (which sky are using and own) I was told again that they dont support any other routers so if I order and cant get it working then tough... I will be held to the 12 months contract because it will definately work with the equipment they supply. I then asked them outright about the hard coding and mac address issue and was told it was not thier department but Sky Broadband support would know. I asked for the number and was told I would need to be a sky broadband customer to contact them as they dont talk to non-members.

This is why I am wondering if anyone has Sky Broadband using thier own router..

Thanks

espresso

You might find some answers over here.

HTH

Spikeybabe

sco0ter wrote:

I was looking for a little bit of info...

I have tried to contact Sky over this matter but they are unwilling to give me a straight answer.

I have heard that when you go with sky you MUST use thier router (Netgear DG834GT). It has been said that sky recognise the routers MAC address as your username and the password is encoded into the firmware in HEX so to prevent mac spoofing and using your own router. I was just wondering if anyone knows anything about it. I have spoken to 4 different people from sky and all I get told is that the service works with thier router and they dont support any other ones.. When I told them I couldnt use the DG834GT because I cant get a signal where my computer sits and I have a Rangemax DG834PN to compensate all they say is I could get BT to move the phone line.

When I told them that both routers where practically identicle and I am using it on the Easynet LLU (which sky are using and own) I was told again that they dont support any other routers so if I order and cant get it working then tough... I will be held to the 12 months contract because it will definately work with the equipment they supply. I then asked them outright about the hard coding and mac address issue and was told it was not thier department but Sky Broadband support would know. I asked for the number and was told I would need to be a sky broadband customer to contact them as they dont talk to non-members.

This is why I am wondering if anyone has Sky Broadband using thier own router..

Thanks

Sorry don't have sky broadband but it sounds like they are pulling your leg, AOL used to do something like this and you could get them to work correct if you change the default MTU size from the broadband standard 1458 to 1400. I hope this helps.

espresso

Spikeybabe wrote:

Sorry don't have sky broadband but it sounds like they are pulling your leg, AOL used to do something like this and you could get them to work correct if you change the default MTU size from the broadband standard 1458 to 1400. I hope this helps.

Not quite pulling his leg, as the username/password is encoded and would need to be recovered before any other equipment can be used.

:rolleyes:

nickmack

The official answer from Sky Broadband is No, you cannot use your own router. The one they supply has custom firmware on it. See http://forum.digitalspy.co.uk/board/showpost.php?p=10613131&postcount=1 for details of the restrictions.

Nikolai

Could you not connect the rangemax to the sky router using an ethernet cable, turn off the wireless on the sky router, disable DHCP on the rangemax and then you are effectively using the rangemax as a switch.

yeslek

sll they mean by saying they dont support it is if it goes tits up they cant help you with any modem issues which is fine as long as your a bit of a tech head and know what your doing.

they are saying they wont offer customer support unless you use their modem.

we do the same here (at work) so it a cust calls up all we can do is check the pc is set up correctly. if they still cant connect, because its their own modem we cant do anything. we wont send out engineers as for all we know it could be a modem fault so its up to the cust to resolve that.

hope that makes a little sense

nickmack

yeslek wrote:

sll they mean by saying they dont support it is if it goes tits up they cant help you with any modem issues which is fine as long as your a bit of a tech head and know what your doing.

they are saying they wont offer customer support unless you use their modem.

we do the same here (at work) so it a cust calls up all we can do is check the pc is set up correctly. if they still cant connect, because its their own modem we cant do anything. we wont send out engineers as for all we know it could be a modem fault so its up to the cust to resolve that.

Afraid not. Sky don't give you an ADSL username/password. So you can't use any other router to connect directly to their broadband service. It's not just they don't support other routers, you can't actually use them!

espresso

nickmack wrote:

Afraid not. Sky don't give you an ADSL username/password. So you can't use any other router to connect directly to their broadband service. It's not just they don't support other routers, you can't actually use them!

Partly right. Sky don't give you your username/password but it can be extracted and then used in other routers, which they obviously don't support!

:eek:

MickKnipfler

How available is sky broadband? They can only offer me the skyconnect rip off service

sco0ter

Thanks for all the replies and links... At least I know whats happening now. All I have to do now is find out how to extract the relevent information.