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Hey all. Read through the OP but I'm afraid I've still got some questions. I've just switched my broadband over to Sky and gone from a 20mb cable connection to a 40mb fibre connection. I'm getting around 40mb out if I plug directly into the supplied wireless router from Sky, but wireless wise I'm getting around 20mb everywhere in the house, no matter how near or far I am from the router. I've tried switching channels and futzed with inSSIDer to see if I can find the best place but all the channel changing makes it worse as near as I can work out (it's going to channel 11 if left on auto and that seems to be best). The supplied router only works on the 2.4ghz range so I'm wondering if getting a dual band one is going to make anything better. I don't have any of the necessary tools or cable to wire the house up, so I'm mostly at this point looking at whether I should do that or buy a better router.
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Mar 12, 2013 16:39
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grumperfish posted:Get a better router (check the OP - although I like Netgear's lineup) then set your Sky router's DHCP server/wireless off, or whatever the DMZ+ configuration is for that model. Give the new router a static IP then use it for DHCP/wireless. If you want step-by-step info, I can walk you through it on mumble or jabber once you've purchased the router (Agincourt on WoL). All-in-one ISP-provided routers generally aren't the best to run everything off rather than compartmentalizing connections/routing on separate units. You may also need newer wireless adapters depending on what speed tiers they support. Cheers - after I posted this I asked in WoL jabber as well and got similar advice. Ordered a linksys E4200 and a dual band USB wireless adaptor as well so will see what happens with them. Appreciate the reply!
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Mar 13, 2013 07:45
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Ok, my E4200 is here. The stock firmware doesn't look like garbage, but should I be flashing it to DD-WRT anyway? Or Tomato (a quick google suggests Tomato isn't as good at the 5ghz band as DD-WRT, but I rarely trust recommendations from outside these forums).
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Mar 21, 2013 11:57
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I'm having some issues with this E4200. I've got it, flashed it to DD-WRT (using a trailed build specifically for it), and hooked it into my home network. I plugged it into my Sky hub, disabled wireless and DHCP on the Sky hub, set the E4200 to a static IP and plugged anything wired into it. Two things seem to happen - it works fine for a bit and everything can connect, but the wireless signal is weaker than I was expecting. After a few minutes the wireless disappears completely, and connecting to it via a direct ethernet cable results in me being able to ping and connect to the Sky hub, but not to the router itself. Something is going seriously cockeyed here but I'm damned if I can figure it out. Any pointers? Edit: Am I supposed to be setting the WAN type to "Disabled" on the E4200? Fil5000 fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Mar 22, 2013 |
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Mar 22, 2013 16:53
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Windowlicker posted:I have an E4200. I get the impression there wasn't much love put into the firmware, so I didn't use it. Do you suggest going back to the default firmware then? Or tomato?
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Mar 23, 2013 17:14
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Windowlicker posted:If you rely on that device and it has to be stable, I'd go back to the stock firmware. In my opinion, you only want to move away from stock firmware if that firmware isn't doing something you need it to. I'm getting the same issues with the stock firmware so I think it's hosed. Time to get an exchange.
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Mar 23, 2013 22:01
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Windowlicker posted:I have had nothing but bad experiences with powerline hardware personally. Then again, I haven't tried installing them in a house, only in businesses. Given the issues I was having with that router I picked up a couple of tplink power line adapters yesterday. They work fantastically for me - I've gone from getting 1.5mb/sec downloads from Steam via my ISP provided wireless router to getting more like 4mb/s. It's been consistent as well. I understand it depends on the wiring in your house, although for reference mine must date from the late 70s/early 80s and it's working pretty great.
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Mar 26, 2013 09:10
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KingKapalone posted:Since people are talking about wireless speeds this page, I think it's a good time to post my issue again. I posted about this back in December and then it got looked over during the holidays/since. Have you tried firing up inSSIDer to see what other networks you've got around you? 3 isn't a great channel anyway from what I understand, you're best off on 1, 6 or 11 (picking whichever of those has the least traffic near you). Upping the transmit power also generates more noise, so that might have been causing you to see the network but not be able to connect.
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Apr 12, 2013 13:28
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waloo posted:I'm visiting my grandmother and in her house, plugged into an outlet is one of these: http://www.amazon.com/PlugLink-9650-HomePlug-Powerline-Ethernet/dp/B003MEBTLK One of those on it's own does indeed do nothing. You need at least a pair of them - buying another one of the same type should do it.
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May 6, 2013 22:48
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Access point question - I've got a wireless router on the ground floor and a powerline kit connecting it to my PC up in the loft. I've got a Belkin N300 sitting around with DD-WRT on it that I want to hook up in the loft to give me some extra ethernet ports (I have an Xbox and a Raspberry Pi that I want to connect), and I'm wondering if I may as well have it function as a wireless access point as well. If I do, is there any problem with me setting it to the same SSID, password and channel as the existing router, or should I name it something else and stick it on a seperate channel entirely.
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Jun 4, 2013 15:18
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I'm using a router with DHCP turned off as a switch - is there any reason to get an actual switch to do this job instead?
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Jan 3, 2015 11:36
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Has anyone got experience with the SR101 router that Sky provides? I've noticed that every now and again I get devices that can't connect to other devices (like getting my iPad to talk to the WDMyCloud I use for holding all my tv shows, or getting my wife's netbook to connect to my own pc, etc etc). I'm wondering if the SR101 just can't cope with too many connections and is making GBS threads itself as when I reboot it everything is fine again.
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Jan 25, 2015 16:09
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lovely Treat posted:The sr101 is a piece of crap it can only support something like 15 devices connected at once and has poor wifi range. Righto, off to Amazon for a new one then. Ugh, I wish I didn't have to gently caress around with their stupid hidden password bollocks.
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Jan 25, 2015 17:17
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lovely Treat posted:You can add another router onto the network and use that for wifi connections and keep using the sr101 if you don't want to mess around with wireshark. Although getting the password sounds more complicated than it is I don't want to have two routers plugged in where I only really need one, so I'll just do the wireshark thing and put the 101 back in its box. I'd switch back to Virgin but gently caress their traffic management policies.
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Jan 25, 2015 18:01
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Obscurity posted:If you mean on the speed test site, 3 different locations give similar results. Are you plugged directly into the modem/router on the PC that you're running the speed test on? If you're connecting over wifi or a powerline adapter or anything other than straight ethernet you may be losing some.
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Mar 12, 2015 13:03
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As someone who's just left Sky, a couple of observations: 1. The Sky Hub ethernet ports are all 10/100 2. Wifi is single band 802.11n and when I was on 40mb fibre with Sky it struggled to deliver that even in the same room. 3. As noted if you want to swap out the hub for something else you have to piss about with Wireshark to extract the password. Basically it's adequate but not great and swapping it out is a pain. For the speeds Sky offers the lack of gigabit probably isn't an issue but if it's your only router and you want to be moving files around or streaming high quality video then it's going to be a bottleneck. Personally I just left it alone because every time I fired up Wireshark to get the password out I just couldn't be bothered. Since moving to Virgin who supply an AC hub with gigabit ethernet ports it's made a huge difference.
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Mar 16, 2015 12:57
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Ahdinko posted:drat the ports are all 10/100? I guess I too have been spoilt by my Virgin Superhub, I've not even got the new one, mines the old 2010-2011 model. Yup. They've thoroughly cheaped out. The SR102 has the fibre modem built into it as well so you're stuck using the thing in some capacity. It wasn't a huge problem for me at the time as I used a Raspberry Pi as my media centre which only has a 10/100 port anyway, but it's pretty poo poo.
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Mar 16, 2015 13:42
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PopeCrunch posted:So I get this, and just throw a wireless access point on the other end? That makes sense. FYI, I went from the 4010s linked there to the 6010s and went from a 20-30mb/s throughput from the ground floor up to the loft conversion to a 70-80mb/s throughput. Depending on the distance you're going and the age of your wiring it may be worth considering the 6010s. Also the 4010s only have 10/100 ethernet ports on them and the 6010s have gigabit ports.
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Mar 24, 2015 11:36
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Antillie posted:Awesome! As for router recommendations: Seconding the Archer C7. I picked one up the other week and it goes like stink while having a good range of settings on it. I'm genuinely baffled as to how it goes for £85 when most other comparable stuff seems to cost about 20-30% more. Also, not sure if this has popped up in the thread yet but D-link are about to (or have) put out a new powerline adapter that goes stupidly fast. Obviously it still depends on your house wiring, but this is looking like seriously impressive speeds: http://www.techradar.com/news/networking/d-link-delivers-lightning-quick-powerline-extender-1290766
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Apr 23, 2015 14:45
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I've got the C7 v2 so I can say with confidence that that one is fine. I don't know about the 1 or 1.1.
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Apr 24, 2015 22:31
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ThermoPhysical posted:I've heard that there are overheating issues with the C7 and it's due to the overclocking. I was wondering if the different versions were better. I was also recommended the C5 instead of the 7 but I'm not sure. I've never bought a non-Netgear router but I have no exact preference. If I can't get by on cost, then I'm cool with going by with features. Preferably something fast, using the best technology, and is relatively around $160 or so. I've got about a dozen devices connected at any given time and not seen any issues with overheating. Speedwise I can get my full 100mbit cable connection over the 5ghz wifi if I'm in the same room and the only slowdown I get to the network as a whole is from my powerline adapters. It's a good router, for sure.
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Apr 25, 2015 08:55
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redeyes posted:I'm interested in this Archer c7 but here is my main question: are both 2.4 and 5ghz both stable and fast? How about having to reboot the router every so often? To be honest the only router I have ever tried that didn't require reboots (other than VPN security appliances) was PFsense based intel boxes. :/ 2.4 and 5ghz both seem as stable as each other for me. I can max out my 100mbit cable connection on the 5ghz in the same room as the router and I get the sort of speeds you'd expect from 2.4ghz all over the house. Only time I've had to reset it is when I changed the DHCP settings, I've not had cause to otherwise.
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Apr 27, 2015 14:13
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I switched from fibre to cable a couple of months ago and I'm getting endless trouble with my connection now. What seems to happen is that it'll work fine for a while (could be hours, could be days) but then it'll start dropping out. All the upload bandwidth disappears, then the download bandwidth, pings to google start timing out, all that sort of fun stuff. Virgin have been out and replaced the hub but that doesn't seem to have worked. The only thing that seems to put things back in order for a bit is some advice a tech on the phone gave me, which was to unscrew the coax cable, tap the inner copper bit against the outer thread on the modem coax socket and then screw it back in. No idea why that works, but it does. I'm running an archer c7 as my router, I've got Devolo powerline adapters to enable me to use my computer up in the loft. I had an e4200 up there as well but I've removed that in the interests of troubleshooting. Anyone got any ideas? I've got a tech coming tomorrow but I'm wondering if it's anything in my home setup that's causing it.
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May 28, 2015 11:24
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stuxracer posted:Just resetting the device. A lot of the time people refuse to unplug power outlets so having them unscrew the coax is a good way to reset it so the customer says "I reset my modem, no really" when they didn't do poo poo. Huh. Interesting. And this wouldn't have been something that would have affected my previous fibre connection? Or could it just be the cable connection that isn't grounded?
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May 28, 2015 14:00
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stuxracer posted:Disclaimer again I am not an electrician for others reading if I need correcting, but this is what they would say. We used to have to contract them out for customers to prove/fix issues. The ground is to protect you from your house burning down (lightning hits power line running to your house) and to remove static build up among other things. Ok, cool, all makes sense. I will ask the tech about that tomorrow if they attempt to just swap the modem out and leave again. I'm now wondering if changing my powerline adapters has had any effect on this, as the Devolo ones tout the fact that they use the ground wires as well as the live/neutral ones to get better speed.
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May 28, 2015 15:47
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Follow up on my last few posts: as soon as I called Virgin to get a tech out the problem utterly vanished. The tech still came out, changed a splitter on the cable and swapped around which line I was connected to in the junction box just so he'd done something I think, but yeah, rock solid since I called Virgin up. As a separate issue I'm getting something weird with my powerline adaptors now. Previously Id be able to get my full 6mb/s upload speed through the powerline link. Now I can barely get 1.5mb, but I'm still getting 60mb download through it. Anyone got any ideas why I'd be losing upload bandwidth across powerline but not download? Edit: haha, I'm the worst. I'd installed netbalancer at some point to see what was using my upload and download bandwidth and then forgotten about it. Somehow it was the thing that decided to only let me use 1.5mb of my upload speed all of a sudden. Uninstalled it and I'm back in business. Fil5000 fucked around with this message at 14:12 on May 31, 2015 |
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May 31, 2015 12:42
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KKKLIP ART posted:So after my old router crapped out, I ordered an Archer C7 as a replacement due to it's high praise from several reviews, including this thread. Some of the reviews seem to say the web GUI leaves something to be desired. Is there a good replacement firmware like DDWRT or OpenWRT that people have zeroed in on? I have read that DDWRT has kind of fallen behind some of the others. Depending on what you actually want to do it may not be worth replacing the firmware. Is there anything specific you want to do with it that you think it won't handle natively? The UI isn't pretty or anything but it's functional.
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Jun 6, 2015 21:04
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KKKLIP ART posted:Probably basic QOS stuff, prioritizing web traffic over streaming or torrenting and port forwarding would be the most intense I would need. I suppose I will look through the firmware first and see if it is serviceable before eyeing openwrt. Port forwarding is available in the default firmware and is pretty standard. The closest thing to full on QoS seems to be these settings:  So if that's not enough for you then yeah, consider alternative firmware. Works fine for me because I just yell at my kids if they start eating all the bandwidth but I can see it's not super flexible.
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Jun 7, 2015 07:32
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The C7 has been fine for me since I've had it with no particular need to reboot and no need for custom firmware. I've got something like a dozen wireless devices, a TiVo box, a NAS, a raspberry Pi media centre plugged in direct and a desktop PC hooked up to it through powerline adaptors and it copes fine. I guess if you're wanting to do something above and beyond that level you might want to flash it or consider something beefier.
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Aug 11, 2015 17:25
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Goetta posted:Yeah I was thinking about that but the Wifi in my house gets sketchy towards the front room so having an extra router out there has been pretty nice for laptops and whatnot. Looking at reviews those are only slightly faster than ones rated as 1200. I've got a 1200 set and I can get about 40-60mb/s through mine. One review I found for that one you linked suggested it managed 10mb/s faster than a 1200 set, which is nice but it's not gigabit.
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Oct 10, 2015 09:05
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Kafka Esq. posted:Does anyone have any real world experience with powerline adapters? I can nab a top rated one (the PA8010P from TP Link) from a liquidating store for less than 60 bucks. I live in an Edwardian house that has been gutted to the studs at least twice in the past twenty years, so may have been rewired at least once. I'll be in the basement, and the offending wifi router that caused all this is on the top floor. I'm running one in a 1930s house that's had at least one refit since then and I'm using powerline adaptors from the ground floor up to a loft conversion. I'm using Devolo 1200mbps ones and I'm getting about 40mb/s sometimes getting as high as 50.
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Nov 5, 2015 17:38
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Kafka Esq. posted:Is the connection stable? Yeah, seems to be. Just need to watch out for noisy devices loving things up (I have a cheap Chinese knock off Ipad charger that drops my speeds by like half if I have it plugged in).
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Nov 7, 2015 13:13
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ufarn posted:Is the TP-Link Archer C7 - AC1750 the best price-no-object router out there now? I'm trying to circumvent my PoS ISP router with bridge mode, and I don't care too much about the price at this point. The c7 is actually relatively cheap and yet also good. If you're willing to spend more then stuff like the high end Asus offerings might be a bit better but the c7 is pretty much the best on price/performance before diminishing returns start to set in.
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Dec 24, 2015 12:34
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ufarn posted:What are the ASUS ones? Might as well see what there is; C7 doesn't do automatic updates either, from what I understand. The nighthawk I think. R7000 or 8000? I've got the C7 myself and it's fine but yeah doesn't seem to do automatic updates.
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Dec 24, 2015 13:12
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I have got fed up of my powerline adapters not being able to deliver my full broadband speed around my house, so I've decided I'm going to run ethernet between the cable modem (ground floor, front left corner of the house) to my PC (two floors up, back right corner of the house). Am I right in thinking that all I really need is: A reel of ethernet cable, either CAT5e or CAT6 Two face plates/back boxes A punchdown tool A drill Some cable tacks Maybe some trunking if I'm feeling fancy
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Feb 26, 2016 14:59
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Rexxed posted:Yeah, pretty much, as long as everything is easy to get to behind the walls. If you're buying new stuff it's not a bad idea to get cat6. It can be harder to put ends on cat6 as patch cable but punching it down is about the same as cat5e. If you have to pull the cable through some distance a small fish tape isn't a bad idea for fishing the cable from point to point, as well as some string and tape to adhere the string or cable to the fish tape. Cheers - it's an old house (built in the 1930s) with solid brick walls everywhere except the converted loft, so I'm not going to be able to conceal the cable in the walls very much. It's going to be going over doorways and along skirting boards with the occasional hole in a wall. That being the case I'm probably just going to run a single cable as it'll be less noticeable than running multiple ones. As I'm basically just running it from my cable modem to the switch in my office space is there any great advantage to running more than one cable? I'll shoot for going top to bottom, thanks for that advice. My instinct was to start at the cable modem and run from there to the PC but letting gravity do the work sounds smarter.
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Feb 26, 2016 17:50
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Rexxed posted:In that case I'd just run the one cable. Doing more than one run is mainly for in-wall installs where you can just leave the extra in the wall if you need it later. I tend to use different cable holders depending on visibility and how clean I want things to look. In a basement or ceiling those nail-in cable holder tacks are easy (like these but any brand really http://www.amazon.com/Your-Cable-Store-White-RG6/dp/B007TMYTK4 ). On a visible wall you can go with command hook style ones which cost more but can be cleanly removed: http://www.amazon.com/Command-Small-Clips-Clear-8-Clip/dp/B0084M696K or just put it behind wiremold stuff that's the same color as your wall so it won't stand out: http://www.amazon.com/Wiremold-CMK50-Cord-Mate-Kit/dp/B0015EDVVU/ The only kind I'll never use again are the kind with a cheap normal double sided adhesive pad. They just fall off eventually. Thanks for this - last question before I start ordering stuff, is there much difference between different types of cable? A 100m reel of "Valueline" shielded CAT6 is £24, shielded is another £10 for the same length and then for another £5 on top of that is "stranded" cable instead of "solid". I can comprehend why I might want shielded or unshielded but I've no idea what stranded vs solid means in practical terms.
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Feb 26, 2016 22:48
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Cactus Jack posted:To add to the CCA chat, I have a box of cat5e CCA from Tiger Direct that I got on clearance and it says on the box to not make a cable longer than 16 feet. CCA is pretty bad unless you just want some poo poo cable to learn/teach with. I made sure when I ordered my stuff today that it was actual copper wire and not CCA - I very nearly ordered CCA stuff before the advice in this thread, so another thank you from me.
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Feb 27, 2016 16:39
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Feenix posted:I have a Zyxel Powerline Ethernet wiring my downstairs poo poo. Upstairs I have some nestcams that suck dick for staying connected to my wifi. Am I able to buy a compatible Powerline Ethernet receiver that also pumps out wifi to pit in that room? As long as you get an adaptor that uses the same powerline standard (probably homeplug AV2?) as the zyxel you should be fine.
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Feb 29, 2016 23:46
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Feenix posted:Yeah it's Homeplug AV2. I'm having trouble finding a single I've definitely seen single units in the past, no idea how easy they are to find though. You're more likely to find single units as you go up the price scale though, I'm pretty sure of that.
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Mar 2, 2016 17:21
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