Hi, 

New Member. First,  apologies to Igrenter-- had difficulties in formatting my name and used yours with variant, as a trial , not expecting it to be accepted, irretrievably. !

To give background I considered myself fairly adept at technology till I began investigating issues below, and got totally and utterly confused and bamboozled by the level of complexities and technicalities  as regards Mac addresses/ Ip addresses/ Switches/ Backhauling/ beamforming, Access points etc etc.  

I am Looking for "cheat sheet" type of help for a fairly simple home set up. I had/ have Virgin BB (500mb) V M Hub 3 Modem/  Router and it all worked very well, with no complex setups etc, but had poor wifi signals in parts of my dwelling due to necessary location of the Hub. I got tired of trying extenders etc and installed, very straightforwardly, the Deco M5, three "node" setup. Primary node is adjacent to the VM Hub, with the two satellites in other parts of the house. All work exactly as claimed on the tin with speed most satisfactory. They are all in router mode. I had set the VM hub into Modem mode and turned its wifi off. I obviously connected ethernet cable to top slot on the hub, and then  to primary Deco M5. All mobiles/ Ipads/ Smart speakers etc worked very well as expected, using the "old" SSID / Passwords which I carried forward from previous set up. BUT then some hours after initial set up and after  having  worked  satisfactorily my Samsung 7 Series Smart TV, WIRELESSLY connected TV began to go a bit haywire/ froze. Switching on and off appeared to work, and various community fora for TP/ Sky/ Virgin etc highlighted a connectivity conflict possibility. In all the cases I encountered the problem seemed mainly to revolve around cases which had Sky mini boxes connected. I do not have any mini boxes, and will never require one. After two malfunctions/ restarting satisfactorily I connected one of the Deco M5 satellites to the Sky Q Box (model ES130) with a short ethernet cable. As no issues have since (yet ?) recurred  I have NOT (yet) attempted to change the internet connectivity menus of the Sky Box and / or TV lest I create further problems which I might find difficult to reverse later . I read somewhere that the connecting of an ethernet cable automatically reconfigured the Sky Box, without outside intervention. 

I would say that I installed the Deco 5,s only one week ago, and while I may be overthinking it, I fear that unexpected / intermittent problems will most likely arise with the SkyQ box in the near future, which, with the passage of time cause me to scratch my head as to what I did last week and what I have been uttterly confused with in the interim. The advices I have encountered in these fora have been very revealing and helpful  but most of the set ups referred to appear to be a lot more complex than my "simple" configuration.

Tips would be much appreciated-- the less technical the better.

PS does the quality/ version of cable (Cat 5/ 6 /e etc) have any appreciable influence. As above I use two short ones ,(A)  TP supplied one ,Hub to Primary Deco and (B) Unbranded ,  Secondary  Deco to Sky Q Box.)