Hi all,

I'm hoping someone can help here please. I currently have a Sky Q Hub (SR203) and the Wifi is poor and sometimes just cuts out altogether resulting in all devices still connected but with no internet at all. My working from home is being impacted by this fault with Sky Routers and having to reboot regularly.

I have seen on the forums here and elsewhere that replacing the SR203 with a 3rd party modem/router is possible providing it supports DHCP Option 61” / “MER”.

I therefore am trying to set up a TP Link Archer VR2800 to do the job but keep getting no internet connection (i.e. orange internet light all the time). Below are the steps I have taken so far to no avail:

VR2800 powered on with dsl cable connected to my filtered master phone socket and used laptop to connect to the router via Ethernet (not Wifi)

Navigated in browser to tplinkmodem.net

Created new password in the TP LInk UI to access router settings

Selected Country UK and Time Zone GMT

Selected Sky(MER)_VDSL from list of ISPs

Entered generic credentials as below, as many have said should work:

Username: abcdefgh@skydsl

Password: 1234567890abcdef

Proceeded to test connection and it keeps trying and never resolves (orange internet light never goes white)

This is the point as which I'm stuck. I can set all the wireless config for 2.4 and 5 ghz SSIDs and can connect with devices fine but the VR2800 will just not resolve an internet connection

I've also followed steps by George Buckingham and attempted to extract my Sky VDSL true credentials using Wireshark but what I see for Option: (61) Client identifier is nothing in the form like =abcdefgh@skydsl|1234567890, it's just random characters like below which maybe encrypted?? Have Sky stopped included credentials in the packets? 

=YM!
=(ºNy

Anyway apologies for the long post, I'm just hoping someone has some advice to get my current £150 brick working. Thanks in advance