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Tech Chat: Internet Routers

[memphis]

Web wheeler
Joined
Jun 6, 2020
Member Number
1867
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625
Current issue:

1000sq.ft home 1952 Build.

Original vapour barrier is like a sheet of tin foil, walls are cement board with plaster throughout the house and average 3/4" thick. The trash can style router I have is not cutting it anymore. We do not pay for fast internet (10mb/s) and that fluctuates because it's a cable connection and I understand it's limitations.

Router is in the NW corner of the house upstairs, if I am in the basement SE corner, I have a very poor connection. The desk top will be moved to the basement in this location and likely hardwired as it currently is because the connection upstairs is terrible on WIFI. Our outdoor patio is also in the SE corner outside, we would like to stream with spotify without it dropping in and out.

Will spending good money on a router help this issue?

Currently I have a D-Link DIR-820L
 
I have similar construction in my house. I ended up wiring in a WiFi extender upstairs for better signal up there.
 
On another note, I just disconnected the desktop hard wired line to see if I could establish a WIFI signal and it wouldn't connect so maybe the wireless card in the tower is junk?
 
One thing to consider with WiFi on desktops is where the antenna is. If the computer is down under the desk in the corner, the signal will have a harder time. You could try getting an antenna extension and putting the antenna higher or more unobstructed.
 
My last house was built in 1930 and had massive plaster walls which also killed the signal. I used Google WiFi Mesh with 3 pucks and that worked very well, just spread them out across the house. Only complaint is that a device, like a phone, *occasionally* got hung up transferring itself from puck to puck.

Now that we've moved onto 3.5 acres, I switched to Orbi Mesh, with the same amount of satellites, and have the whole property covered. Including inside a pole barn with a metal roof that sits about 150' away from the closest satellite. I feel like it's a better performing system. My biggest complaint about this system is that it's admin is very ... simple. You can't do advanced things like QoS.....
 
I run a couple of cheap repeaters, I have good signal all over my 3 acres including out back in my metal shop.

Extenders are your solution.
 
Extenders/repeaters/mesh all suck.

Run some cable and throw up extra access points...I use Ubiquiti Unifi gear, it's awesome.
 
What kind of distance are you looking at?

My previous 700 ft house was made in the 40s and had tongue and grove paneling(~3/4") on every wall.

I used a Cisco-Linksys E3000 Wireless-N Router that was sitting in a closet. It had Tomato aftermarket firmware installed on it. It could cut through ~3 walls with no issues about 30 feet away with my laptop.

With that said, I cut into the walls and hardwired all the rooms :p I had about 1' to 18" in the crawl space to pull wire.
 
If you want to do it right get a unifi cloudkey and a poe switch with as many unifi access points as needed harwired to the switch. The cloudkey runs controller software that makes all of the access points act as one large wifi network. The poe switch will provide both power and data to the cloudkey and access points.
 
Lil'John said:
What kind of distance are you looking at?

My previous 700 ft house was made in the 40s and had tongue and grove paneling(~3/4") on every wall.

I used a Cisco-Linksys E3000 Wireless-N Router that was sitting in a closet. It had Tomato aftermarket firmware installed on it. It could cut through ~3 walls with no issues about 30 feet away with my laptop.

With that said, I cut into the walls and hardwired all the rooms :p I had about 1' to 18" in the crawl space to pull wire.
Click to expand...

Approximate distance from router to backyard is 30ft, I'd love to be able to have solid wife to the edge of my lot, which is another 30 ft, so 60ft range would be GREAT
 
One or two of these inside:
https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-network-access-points/products/unifi-ac-lite

One of these outside:
https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-network-access-points/products/unifi-ac-mesh-ap

Plug them in to this:
https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-network-routing-switching/products/unifi-switch-8-60w

Plug this into the switch to configure and control the network (unless you have an always on machine to run the otherwise free controller software on):
https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-accessories/products/unifi-cloud-key-gen2
 
For the distances you are talking about you might be able to just step up to a good router ad be good to go. About a year ago I upgraded my old POS router to a nice ASUS https://www.asus.com/us/Networking/RT-AC86U/ and went from needing 2 extenders to cover the house to being able to get a usable (but not perfect) signal in the detached garage which is ~100 feet and 5 walls away from the router. It is also setup for mesh so if needed extra points can always be added.
 
My next upgrade will be some unifi stuff. You can run a cloudkey box on a a raspberry pi, so that's one less box to worry about. :smokin:
 
I have a ~$200 Netgear Nighthawk mounted in a closet in the center of my 2400 sq ft ranch and can maintain good signal over 100 ft from the house as long as I can maintain LOS. I’ve been very happy with the router.
 
Repeaters/Extenders and Powerline Adapters (uses your electrical lines to transmit data) are all junk. The repeaters/extenders slow your network down a lot because wifi is only simplex and not duplex.

Your best bet is to run ethernet or use moca adapters (send data over coax cable) and wire in an access point.

I'm running all Ubiquiti gear and have been very happy with it.
 
Also this:

I run Ubiquiti Unifi POE 16 port Gb switch with POE UniFi access points - specifically the AP-PRO in my house - as it can support 8 total WLANs (4 - 5gHz and 4 - 2.4 gHz WLANS) and it's POE. My router is a PFSense Firewall running as a virtual machine inside an ESXi hypervisor.

All wireless clients are on a separate network / VLAN from wired machines.

For my garage and patio area I'm using an AP-PRO and UAP-Outdoor respectively.

https://www.ui.com/unifi/unifi-ap/


I've had 20 people over here hogging up the guest wireless, streaming Netflix and streaming from my in-house DLNA (Plex server) at about 250 Mbps on the WiFi and not one latency complaint (nor any increase on latency in the house).

UniFi is awesome is the bottom line. Well worth the price.
 
Used a couple Ubiquiti Nano units to bridge out to my shop about 1000 feet from the house. Works great. Haven't had any issues with that since we set it up years ago.
 
FordFascist said:
Also this:

I run Ubiquiti Unifi POE 16 port Gb switch with POE UniFi access points - specifically the AP-PRO in my house - as it can support 8 total WLANs (4 - 5gHz and 4 - 2.4 gHz WLANS) and it's POE. My router is a PFSense Firewall running as a virtual machine inside an ESXi hypervisor.

All wireless clients are on a separate network / VLAN from wired machines.

For my garage and patio area I'm using an AP-PRO and UAP-Outdoor respectively.

https://www.ui.com/unifi/unifi-ap/


I've had 20 people over here hogging up the guest wireless, streaming Netflix and streaming from my in-house DLNA (Plex server) at about 250 Mbps on the WiFi and not one latency complaint (nor any increase on latency in the house).

UniFi is awesome is the bottom line. Well worth the price.
Click to expand...

I like all of this.

edgerouter er-x's are like $70 now and will handle 99% of most peoples needs.
I have an er-x and ruckus unleashed APs here.
vlans are tits.
 
Takotruckin said:
I have a ~$200 Netgear Nighthawk mounted in a closet in the center of my 2400 sq ft ranch and can maintain good signal over 100 ft from the house as long as I can maintain LOS. I’ve been very happy with the router.
Click to expand...

I have a Nighthawk right off my cable modem. I have another in the barn being used for a repeater. The barn is 175' from the house and is a metal pole barn with metal inner walls.
 
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Pt_Ranger_v8 said:
My next upgrade will be some unifi stuff. You can run a cloudkey box on a a raspberry pi, so that's one less box to worry about. :smokin:
Click to expand...

Just to be clear, a cloud key is the little box they sell that you just plug into the network that has the unifi controller software on it. Your raspberry pi is not a cloud key, it's just running the unifi controller software on different hardware. No different than running it on any other computer in the house and you don't NEED to run the controller 24/7 unless you want to collect stats, otherwise you can just fire it up when you want to change settings.
 
run cable to porch...
install inside/outside wifi router on porch
profit.
 
SomeGuy said:
... you don't NEED to run the controller 24/7 unless you want to collect stats...
Click to expand...

Some features do require the controller to be running 24/7, like the guest portal and I think managed WiFi handoffs.
 
Black Sabbath said:
For the distances you are talking about you might be able to just step up to a good router ad be good to go. About a year ago I upgraded my old POS router to a nice ASUS https://www.asus.com/us/Networking/RT-AC86U/ and went from needing 2 extenders to cover the house to being able to get a usable (but not perfect) signal in the detached garage which is ~100 feet and 5 walls away from the router. It is also setup for mesh so if needed extra points can always be added.
Click to expand...

This x2. I got a Asus with 3 antennas. Gets me decent signal across the house, through the brick of the house and shop and able to browse while out there. Been a couple years and recently moved it into a less ideal position since I'm working from home and using all the desk real estate, so need to either move it up or get a fresh one.
 
egdinger said:
Some features do require the controller to be running 24/7, like the guest portal and I think managed WiFi handoffs.
Click to expand...

True, there's other stuff that the controller does...but point was you don't generally need to have the controller running to just have some wifi.
 
SomeGuy said:
Just to be clear, a cloud key is the little box they sell that you just plug into the network that has the unifi controller software on it. Your raspberry pi is not a cloud key, it's just running the unifi controller software on different hardware. No different than running it on any other computer in the house and you don't NEED to run the controller 24/7 unless you want to collect stats, otherwise you can just fire it up when you want to change settings.
Click to expand...

Copy all. I knew that, just didn't want to type it all out :laughing:

I want the per client stats, and since I'm already running pi-hole, another small app won't be a problem.

I'm just cheap - it's hard to drop $500 bones on an edgerouter, a switch (for the living room) and two AP-Pro's. I'll get there soon enough.:mr-t:
 
I am running an old Netgear WNDR3800. I know I am behind the times and needing an upgrade. The house is fully wired and connected to most of the toys; stuff like smart switches and google stuff is on the Netgear router WiFI. A pair of Netgear GT108 managed switches handles the local traffic.

What say Irate4X4 for recommending a new router?????
 
Pt_Ranger_v8 said:
Copy all. I knew that, just didn't want to type it all out :laughing:

I want the per client stats, and since I'm already running pi-hole, another small app won't be a problem.

I'm just cheap - it's hard to drop $500 bones on an edgerouter, a switch (for the living room) and two AP-Pro's. I'll get there soon enough.:mr-t:
Click to expand...

it's not like you're going to use less internet in the future.

do it once, do it proper, don't worry about it for a few years.
 
Pt_Ranger_v8 said:
Copy all. I knew that, just didn't want to type it all out :laughing:

I want the per client stats, and since I'm already running pi-hole, another small app won't be a problem.

I'm just cheap - it's hard to drop $500 bones on an edgerouter, a switch (for the living room) and two AP-Pro's. I'll get there soon enough.:mr-t:
Click to expand...

Just do it...I have the security gateway pro, cloud key (version 1, not the new v2), 16 port 150w poe switch, two AP-AC-LR's, along with a rack, UPS, and a few other toys...well over $1000 investment but have the most reliable, stable, and fast internet of anyone I know. Since working from home, I've heard so many people complain about their internet dropping or being slow....whereas the wife and I are home, with 30+ devices on wifi (we have a half dozen cameras, a few tvs, roku's, chrome casts, personal and work laptops, desktops, a half dozen tp link kasa switches, cell phones, printer, voip phone, google home, and so on), and we never miss a beat with the internet.
 
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