The Home Networking Megathread - Yes the OP is out of date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 The Home Networking Megathread - Yes the OP is out of date

Wheelchair Stunts: Dec 17, 2005

CuddleChunks posted:

Repeaters are poo poo. Move your router upstairs to see if it will clear the obstruction that's gumming up your link to the computers downstairs. Otherwise, get some ethernet and start running it inside the house so that you can give yourself a decent wired connection. This will blow any halfass wireless solutions out of the water.

Wireless is a walkie-talkie system - both sides have to be able to hear each other reliably for it to work. If you buy a directional antenna to add to your router, that's helpful because it focuses the wireless energy in the direction you want it to go. Oh sure, you now lose out on feeding service to half your house but vroom vroom there goes the wireless right at your laptop.

Too bad the laptop is still using a lovely antenna built into the molding of the screen and even though you get tons of bars of signal now your own link back to the AP is just as weak as ever. Solution? Put another AP closer that your laptop can actually talk back to properly.

Wireless is rough stuff and home wireless is worse because every neighbor fires up their own little router and clogs the airwaves with their poo poo. Worse, you can't predict how an AP is going to handle the construction materials in your home or how well your laptop/phone/game console will work talking back to the AP. If you absolutely can't avoid using wireless, then do your best to play to its strengths - use directional antennas when possible, keep the distance between AP and clients short, avoid going through tons of walls as that will generally cock up the signal and when things are sluggish try searching for better channels. In the end, think of wireless as a convenience and that will hopefully keep your blood pressure low when you're dorking around with it, trying to get it to talk to your Gaming Rig.

Why are repeaters bad? I've known of repeaters used in WISP equipment and numerous other uses with wireless signals. Is it just that wireless bridge consumer products tend to be poo poo or something to do with wireless repeating in general?

# ¿ Oct 24, 2011 02:31

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 23:55

Wheelchair Stunts: Dec 17, 2005

Jonny 290 posted:

This is not how antennas work. Radio antennas are reciprocal devices - every decibel of gain you have on transmit you also have on receive. So, even though you still have the crappy laptop antenna on the other end of the house, your AP has a very focused ear pointing right at it, giving you better reception AND transmission.

I was under the impression that while the AP does have a more focused ear, it also has a lot more noise to try to get a decent SnR from that bitty transmitter that is now competing with who knows how much more noise than before.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2011 23:44

Wheelchair Stunts: Dec 17, 2005

How expensive are the hardware encryption solutions? It'd be nice to be able to buy a unit with that built-in to offload some of the VPN lifting.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2011 11:31

Wheelchair Stunts: Dec 17, 2005

SamDabbers posted:

Given your throughput requirement a SOHO router will not do the job. Encryption is a processing-heavy task and the CPUs in consumer-grade routers will typically only handle a few mbps. Take a look at a the Mikrotik routerboard series or set up a PC-based router on pfSense.

Why don't they do encryption in hardware? Such cards have existed for at least 20 years to the best of my knowledge?

# ¿ Dec 27, 2011 08:05

Wheelchair Stunts: Dec 17, 2005

The_Franz posted:

High speed VPN performance isn't really something that a lot of SOHO users need so the extra cost of adding encryption hardware would go to waste most of the time.

That said, even those encryption acceleration cards that work with m0n0wall or pfsense are only good for about 40-50Mbps of traffic. For 75Mbps of encrypted traffic you need something like a higher end Routerboard (RB1100AH or better), a Sonicwall device or a full-blown PC. The Mikrotik and Sonicwall solutions will run around $400+. You could cobble together a PC for less, but chances are that the savings will be gradually eaten up by an increased electric bill

Yeah, I guess I just wasn't sure how much those devices (the accelerators) actually cost so have no good perspective for price/unit.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2011 10:57

Wheelchair Stunts: Dec 17, 2005

Binary Badger posted:

Great deal, but every other review says they heat up a lot. Nothing a Dremel can't fix, though. Maybe Linksys dropped a hint to the distributors that they're either EOLing this or getting ready to rev the hardware like they did with the 4300.

If this heat issue is enough of a defect to impact performance, why would they not be made to issue a recall. I don't believe you're supposed to be permitted to sell defective products.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2012 00:35

Wheelchair Stunts: Dec 17, 2005

Devian666 posted:

The entire purpose of this thread is to modify defective products so that they are able to do what the advertising says on the box. The only routers on the market which are not defective out of the box are the Netgear ones.

I meant defect in terms of a manufacturing defect. This is also how most defects are referred to in the context of a recall. Thermal issues that can cause damage to the product or potentially even worse are a different beast from "Wah, I don't have QoS."

Protip: I am all for third-party modification or I wouldn't be here.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2012 01:18

Wheelchair Stunts: Dec 17, 2005

Devian666 posted:

When I say defect I mean design defect, which is far more serious than a manufacturing defect. The linksys routers are manfactured to their design.

My Linksys ADSL 2+ modem got so hot they all the writing evapourated from the top surface of it.

e: If I wasn't so busy I could file a complaint under consumer protection laws that would see Cisco receiving a serious fine.

I think I mixed my defects up. You seem to get the picture and life is good. I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2012 01:36

Wheelchair Stunts: Dec 17, 2005

If someone owns their own cable modem, is there a way to modify/replace the firmware my ISP uploads to it with one that with both give me a connection and give me access to native features of the modem like SNMP?

# ¿ Mar 11, 2012 13:00

Wheelchair Stunts: Dec 17, 2005

Nighthand posted:

Setting ti G-only didn't prevent a crash a few minutes ago, so seems that didn't work. At the time my comp was idle with AIM and firefox open, my GF's was placing an order at gamestop, and I was signed into xbox live but playing offline. Doesn't seem like too huge a load.

Have you tried to see how much stuff is being forwarded through UPnP? I've had that use buttloads of ports/connections before.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2012 04:30

Wheelchair Stunts: Dec 17, 2005

Why is using ICMP echo / ping a good connectivity test? I was under the impression (and have personally observed) numerous occurrences where ICMP traffic is (de/)prioritized which makes me think it'd be very tenuous for measuring packet loss among other things.

edit: Edited for politness.

Wheelchair Stunts fucked around with this message at 06:27 on Apr 26, 2012

# ¿ Apr 26, 2012 04:39

Wheelchair Stunts: Dec 17, 2005

Oh, I'm not sure if any of you rt-n16 bros and broettes use optware, but it's pretty awesome. I use it with a 16GB USB memory stick and now have package management on my router. Granted, there's only so much mileage I get out of that processor but you'd be surprised!

# ¿ Apr 28, 2012 03:57

Wheelchair Stunts: Dec 17, 2005

I am wireless retarded. If I were to have 2 rt-n16s and use them in a wireless bridge, would that or would that not impact performance on my "regular" wireless. If so, would it be halved per connecting client? It's mainly just to get some stuff hooked in a switch on the other end of the apartment to be kosher with the poo poo out front without running a long rear end cable.

# ¿ May 31, 2012 03:20

Wheelchair Stunts: Dec 17, 2005

Golbez posted:

Guess what's not working.

Can anyone decipher modem logs? Is there any possibility whatsoever this is being caused by my computer or router? Or is that for another topic? This is what appears every time it cuts out and comes back.

I just fire those little fucks into Google. Also, if you do enough begging/pleading/threatening/cajoling, you may be able to get their magic network elves, who (allegedly) use this output to improve performance. I think they just "mark as read" that poo poo and gently caress off.

Also, do you have any kind of testing equipment for the cable that delivers your service? Also, sometimes I notice that they upload their own firmware to my modem which disables SNMP and other useful stuff on my modem. You may want to see if they are doing such shenanigans. Unless, of course, they own the modem and you're leasing it in which case ymmv.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2012 09:49

Wheelchair Stunts: Dec 17, 2005

Golbez posted:

I have, and while I haven't found exactly the same logs, I have found people with similar issues and similar log entries. It's the cable company's modem.

I'm just concerned it's being caused by my computer, because the problems only seem to happen when this computer is downloading, not when any other computer on the network is. Yet it's the modem that's crapping out, and not anything on my computer. Also, this problem is so random that it could just not be happening when I try on other computers.

You might want to see if you can get some private time with just a laptop or whatever and the modem. Fire up Wireshark and I guess try either high throughput / high connection count or both and see what blows it up. I'm no Networkologist, so hopefully someone can embellish/correct upon this and we can get your poo poo figured out.

As for me, another wireless bridge question. (Still waiting for my other unit to ship.) Is there any way to maintain vlan ports on the switch attached to either side of the bridge?

# ¿ Jun 2, 2012 10:51

Wheelchair Stunts: Dec 17, 2005

Jonny 290 posted:

Your VLAN tags get stripped or ignored if you just plug trunks into bridges without any real configuration, but you can do it if you have bridges that support multiple SSIDs and trunking/VLANs. You set up one subinterface and SSID per VLAN, plug them in, all your traffic is trunked.

Okay, that makes sense and is aligned with what I thought a bridge was. Would I be wanting to dedicate a directional antenna for each side of the bridge or is that just pedantry? It's near-los down a hallway for about 30 feet.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2012 08:58

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 23:55

Wheelchair Stunts: Dec 17, 2005

I thought all the smart heads from Netscreen went to Fortinet rather than Juniper.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2012 22:34

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