The Home Networking Megathread - Yes the OP is out of date

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Home Networking Megathread - Yes the OP is out of date

Nitr0: Aug 17, 2005; IT'S FREE REAL ESTATE

Devian666 posted:

Dad's tesla coil is jamming the wireless and Mom won't let me drill holes in the basement
Truely the networking option of last resort is powerline networking. Products on the market will not be listed here as they are universally terrible. This is not something that you use if you want more speed than your 100mbit/s wireless is currently giving you. A recent review demonstrated the speed is very dependent on range and interference. In fact the speeds in a three storey house ranged between 30 to 50 mbit/s. The top speed was achieved with powerline network adapters rated at 200 mbit/s.

This is pretty much wrong. Powerline networking can work fine but it is entirely dependant on the quality of the wiring in your house. Old house with poor wiring == poor speeds. Anything made in the last 10 years should be decent enough to run at high speed.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2011 05:15

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# ¿ Apr 23, 2024 11:47

Nitr0: Aug 17, 2005; IT'S FREE REAL ESTATE

Ashex posted:

I'm looking to get a tiny wireless AP that can be connected to a laptop via ethernet, essentially a tiny router.

The reason I want this is I have a bunch of trainers who go out and do demos of software products and part of the demo is to have users connect to it, when they're in an office with locked down wireless/network they need to be able to server it up somehow so we're looking at wireless.

I have a FON router with DDWRT on it that we're testing so I wanted to see if you guys knew of routers of the same size as this one.

http://www.apple.com/airportexpress/

# ¿ Oct 15, 2011 04:24

Nitr0: Aug 17, 2005; IT'S FREE REAL ESTATE

If you have an ipad then airvideo. 100%.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2011 03:05

Nitr0: Aug 17, 2005; IT'S FREE REAL ESTATE

Any router over 5 years old. Reboot, Reset, Replace.

Don't even bother troubleshooting it.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2011 19:32

Nitr0: Aug 17, 2005; IT'S FREE REAL ESTATE

GruntyThrst posted:

I've got a Linksys E3000 powering my home network, including 2 Xbox 360s. I've been having trouble with NAT issues lately, so I forwarded the proper Xbox LIVE ports to my main Xbox and it works just dandy, but apparently that keeps the other from connecting to LIVe and, rather mysteriously, sometimes the main Xbox as well.

Is there some way to just tell my router to not block anything for a specific port to any of my devices, since AFAIK you can't forward a port to two separate devices?

I'm still running the default firmware because it's a goddamned miracle I even have this network at all and I'm worried about bricking my fancy router.

make sure that upnp is enabled and just let the xbox handle things like that. You shouldn't have to manually forward ports to play xbox.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2012 00:21

Nitr0: Aug 17, 2005; IT'S FREE REAL ESTATE

GruntyThrst posted:

Sometimes it works but I get a lot of annoying warning about NAT issues and party chat being unstable/unable to connect to certain people.

then either upgrade the router to a third party firmware or get a new one because something isn't working properly.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2012 03:20

Nitr0: Aug 17, 2005; IT'S FREE REAL ESTATE

Oaks posted:

My understanding is that, while enabled, WZC periodically scans for wireless networks, and during this scan I experience a moment of increased latency. Regardless of the actual technical reason for the problem, it is obviously happening and is easily resolved by simply disabling the service after I've connected to whatever wireless network I want to be on. Except now I can't disable it.

Upgrade to win7. It's 2012 for fucks sake

# ¿ Jan 3, 2012 02:50

Nitr0: Aug 17, 2005; IT'S FREE REAL ESTATE

Devian666 posted:

Windows 7 has a number of strange rituals that you have to perform. They include rebooting and clicking on the network icon to bring up the connection panel. Then some random waiting.

When you change the network settings Win7 seems to go through a number of strange processes, then when you next reboot it shouldn't have the same problems as it will remember the settings. Maybe one day Microsoft will release a version of windows that is compatible with the internet.

i have a protip for ya.

it's not windows.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2012 23:32

Nitr0: Aug 17, 2005; IT'S FREE REAL ESTATE

Devian666 posted:

Do elaborate, I always like learning things.

Not much to elaborate on. You don't have to reboot to bring up the "connection panel"

Changing network settings just work for me. No waiting and no "strange processes"

# ¿ Jan 10, 2012 01:23

Nitr0: Aug 17, 2005; IT'S FREE REAL ESTATE

What the gently caress is the "connection panel"

# ¿ Jan 10, 2012 03:55

Nitr0: Aug 17, 2005; IT'S FREE REAL ESTATE

Plug 54gl into n300, disable wan port and disable dhcp server on 54gl, assign it a different ip address from your n300. Change n300's wireless settings to be 5.7ghz N only.

change wireless settings on 54gl to b/g only with a different ssid (i named mine "regularname24")

blammo,

# ¿ Jan 15, 2012 08:12

Nitr0: Aug 17, 2005; IT'S FREE REAL ESTATE

jeeves posted:

I have been doing some contract work for a really crappy cafe/restaurant that somehow racks in a ton of dough, and I ran into a bit of a problem with their wireless.

They have a pretty long rectangular shaped building, with the owner's office being at one end. The wiring was all done like a decade ago, and they (OF COURSE) don't want to pay for the money of running more LAN/ethernet cables out from the office, where the internet comes in from the ISP.

The problem is, that the office has like three loving layers of concrete or some poo poo around it. They used to have like FIVE cheap-o wireless repeaters scattered around, but they all slowly died due to the place having super lovely power or something. At first I had them buy new wireless repeaters, but the lovely things kept crashing so much (like every day) that I just told them to buy actual wireless routers and I would just set up wireless bridging.

I have little to no say on what they purchase(which is something I hope to fix), but they went and bought two Netgear WNR3500Ls, which was fine by me since I was able to put on Tomato-USB and figured that since it was an actual router made in the last year or so unlike their old one, then it would get a good enough signal strength out of that horrible office.

Well, with WDS turned on and poo poo, it really looks like the reception from the office is not cutting it, as wireless now has like the speeds of a 56k modem, even if they are getting perfect signal strength from the second router that the thing bridges to. It is so bad that they can't even stream anything, and it makes me wonder if WDS is just poo poo, or what?

Actual tiny wireless repeaters seem to loving suck at the place, and constantly crash, but now they are bitching about how slow the wireless is. Should I replace the two 3500L's with dual band routers, and set one band to do the WDS bridge and one to do the access point broadcasting? Or do those 3500Ls just have poo poo range? It seems like wireless was working quicker when they just had the repeaters up, but those drat things would crash every day and need to be manually reset. The WDS/router option seems to be much more stable, but everything is just seeming to be bottlenecked by the bridging.

I really wish I could just run a loving cord out of their office, but I really want to exhaust my wireless bridging options before trying to kill myself crawling under the place to put in a cord.

use this, cheers. http://www.ubnt.com/unifi

# ¿ Jan 19, 2012 09:34

Nitr0: Aug 17, 2005; IT'S FREE REAL ESTATE

jeeves posted:

This is all well and good, but their APs want to be plugged in via a network cord, which is the whole problem I am facing. I can't install any new network cabling out of the concrete coffin of an office where the drat base station is.

If WDS sucks so much, what other wireless bridging options do I have? What do those little 60$ wireless repeaters use? And why do they crash so drat much?

because you are using lovely wireless repeaters. WDS sucks man no way around that. So either run cables or deal with shittyness.

edit: you could try powerline adapters?

# ¿ Jan 19, 2012 22:13

Nitr0: Aug 17, 2005; IT'S FREE REAL ESTATE

You need to stop trying to use indoor yogi's and weird adapters. Get two of these http://www.ubnt.com/downloads/datasheets/nanostationm/nsm_ds_web.pdf and setup a bridge. Depending on the tree coverage you might be able to use 2.4GHz but if there's too many trees you will have to go 900MHz.

# ¿ Apr 29, 2012 04:34

Nitr0: Aug 17, 2005; IT'S FREE REAL ESTATE

Etrips posted:

Correct, the house has already been wired. Currently it has been setup by the previous landlord as follows (as the best of my memory can recall):
Modem > 8 port Ethernet switch > multiple wireless routers > voodoo magic

I believe with this setup we are currently using, is the reason why we have been having some internet issues. Mainly the fact that if we download at too fast of a rate it craps out and the internet resets.

So my thinking is to try and set something up like follows:
Modem > Main Wireless Router > Switch > Hard wires going to different parts of the house to connect to WAPs.

She wants to go ahead and pick up some new wireless routers, so I was thinking of suggesting the Linksys E3200, but what about for the WAPs? I'm guessing I don't need to get something quite as fancy.

You should be using something like http://www.ubnt.com/unifi

Don't use linksys crap covering this large of distance because it is not going to work well and you are going to be pissed.

# ¿ Jul 19, 2012 16:41

Nitr0: Aug 17, 2005; IT'S FREE REAL ESTATE

This will only replace the access points. It does no layer 3 routing on its own. You will need to have a router that can do that for you.

# ¿ Jul 19, 2012 17:03

Nitr0: Aug 17, 2005; IT'S FREE REAL ESTATE

That router is like 5 years old, buy a new router ffs.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2012 23:53

Nitr0: Aug 17, 2005; IT'S FREE REAL ESTATE

fookolt posted:

Sigh, still having issues with my Asus RT-n16 with Tomato (Shibby mod 1.28 or something).

With wired, I'm getting 30+ Mbps. On wireless across all my devices, I'm getting 2-4 MBps.

What the hell is going on? This only just started happening today.

InSSider still looks the same as before (my router is Super Awesome, heh):

I mean look at your screenshot it tells you right there for god sake. You're overlapping with 6 other access points with less than -18db. Not to mention any other interference in the area like microwaves, cordless phones, etc. Switch to 5GHz or use wired because your wireless is not going to work well. At the very least turn your bandwidth down to 20MHz instead of 40 and use channel 3 to try and mitigate interference.

Nitr0 fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Nov 15, 2012

# ¿ Nov 15, 2012 18:55

Nitr0: Aug 17, 2005; IT'S FREE REAL ESTATE

Devian666 posted:

They're just reading from a script if even that. Most support people will tell you to try direct connection to the modem as that will determine if there's a router problem or not. Comcast are like all large companies; the first step is to blame the consumer as that is cheaper than sending out a technician.

more like 90% of the time it is the consumer's fault that their poo poo router is causing the internet to go slow

# ¿ Dec 16, 2012 22:14

Nitr0: Aug 17, 2005; IT'S FREE REAL ESTATE

Just use your brain for a half a second. I really don't understand what causes people to not use critical thinking when trying to troubleshoot their networks. Like they're going brain dead.

"Coaxial cable from the wall -> cable modem -> ethernet cable -> wireless router"

If you're trying to troubleshoot your router, where would you plug your computer into?

# ¿ Dec 16, 2012 23:24

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# ¿ Apr 23, 2024 11:47

Nitr0: Aug 17, 2005; IT'S FREE REAL ESTATE

He said he plugged in three pc's into his router, which doesn't mean a god drat thing so...... Just get a new asus router the e1500 is crap.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2012 01:35

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Home Networking Megathread - Yes the OP is out of date