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Jonny 290
May 5, 2005



[ASK] me about OS/2 Warp

CuddleChunks posted:



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.



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.

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Manky
Mar 20, 2007


Fun Shoe
Is there a cheap wireless router that'll let me manually set the MAC address? That's really the only feature I need other than being inexpensive and reliable.

ryanbruce
May 1, 2002

The "Dell Dude"

Manky posted:

Is there a cheap wireless router that'll let me manually set the MAC address? That's really the only feature I need other than being inexpensive and reliable.

MAC on the WAN side? I haven't come across one that doesn't.

Manky
Mar 20, 2007


Fun Shoe

ryanbruce posted:

MAC on the WAN side? I haven't come across one that doesn't.

The MAC address of the router itself. I need to change it for appearances as part of a larger network.

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.

Ninja Rope
Oct 22, 2005

Wee.

Wheelchair Stunts posted:

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.

The antenna amplifies both the signal and noise by the same amount, if it is pointed at both a signal and a source of noise. A directional antenna only amplifies what it's pointed at, so if you point it at the source of the signal other sources of noise would be excluded and the signal to noise ratio would improve drastically. In the unlikely event the source of the signal is inline with the source of the noise then both will be amplified. In that case, you should move the laptop or antenna (merely moving the antenna but keeping it pointed at the laptop should suffice), move the source of the noise, or put the antenna on the laptop.

Ninja Rope fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Oct 25, 2011

Tunga
May 7, 2004

Grimey Drawer
This isn't actually a Home Networking question but close enough. Could someone recommend an access point that we can throw on our small office network to provide wireless access. We only need basic security (WPA2/MAC filtering), it doesn't need to be a router and we need coverage in a room which is about 20m x 20m with a couple of thin partition walls that shouldn't casue much in the way of signal issues (and the most frequent users will be in direct line of sight).

I have a Linksys E2000 at home which has worked well for me, I could just pick up one of those (or similar) and disable DHCP. Is there a benefit to buying a straight up AP over doing this? They don't seem to be any cheaper. WAP610N is £70 and doesn't have great reviews, compares to an E2500 for £75.

Any recommendations would be great, thanks.

Ragingsheep
Nov 7, 2009
Between the Asus N16 and Netgear 3700, if both are around the same price, which one should I get?

The N16 appears to be more custom firmware compatible but the Netgear has more fancy features like DLNA and dual band wireless. The only thing I really need is wireless range and penetration.

Devian666
Aug 20, 2008

Take some advice Chris.

Fun Shoe

Tunga posted:

This isn't actually a Home Networking question but close enough. Could someone recommend an access point that we can throw on our small office network to provide wireless access. We only need basic security (WPA2/MAC filtering), it doesn't need to be a router and we need coverage in a room which is about 20m x 20m with a couple of thin partition walls that shouldn't casue much in the way of signal issues (and the most frequent users will be in direct line of sight).

I have a Linksys E2000 at home which has worked well for me, I could just pick up one of those (or similar) and disable DHCP. Is there a benefit to buying a straight up AP over doing this? They don't seem to be any cheaper. WAP610N is £70 and doesn't have great reviews, compares to an E2500 for £75.

Any recommendations would be great, thanks.

Just get a router if there's only 5 pounds in it. I don't think that would break any office budget. It will also give you future flexibility and a back up router if the existing one fails.

For the N16 and 3700 I do not know which would give better wireless range. The only things of note are that the 3700 doesn't need third party firmware to function correctly, and I don't have any problems with mine.

Thirteenth Step
Mar 3, 2004

Is there anything I should look for in a wireless adapter?

I've not had to buy one for years now, should just any random USB Wireless N+ one do the job or are there ones to avoid etc...?

Devian666
Aug 20, 2008

Take some advice Chris.

Fun Shoe
There are various opinions on wireless adapters. The consensus seems to be that anything will do. I'm not a fan of USB wireless but my bad experiences are from the early days of wireless.

Have a look at if it supports 2.4 or 5GHz. Rather important to match the frequency. You,at also find having dual band support is handy.

aeiou
Jul 12, 2006

It's cold in here...
Just kidding! It's to
fool enemies..

movax posted:

If the E3000 is the renamed WRT610N, I've had 0 issues with them.
*snip*
Performance as a NAS/FTP for drives attached via USB blows though, I was hoping it would be at least "decent", but IMO not worth using for anything save perhaps a printer.


I'm sad to hear that as I'm looking for router that could also work as a simple NAS. What I'm looking for is something that I could plug in a NTFS formatted external drive and make it shared with the network while still allowing me to unplug it use it elsewhere. It looks like I could sue a E3000 with ddwrt and ntfs-3g, but performance is somewhat important. Anyone have a setup like this that works?

Devian666
Aug 20, 2008

Take some advice Chris.

Fun Shoe
I run a netgear 3700 as a NAS and it has a throughput of 2.5 MB/s. Apparently the beta firmware has higher NAS throughput. Note that this is with the netgear firmware, no need to use dd-wrt to make it stable.

Jonny 290
May 5, 2005



[ASK] me about OS/2 Warp

Wheelchair Stunts posted:

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.

Not quite, but good thinking. Antennas are passive devices, meaning that they do not amplify signals; it's a zero sum game. Whatever signal is enhanced in a particular direction has to be counteracted by worse signal in another direction. Antennas have what is called a field pattern which is a 3-D plot of how strong a signal is in relation to the antenna. Strong spots are lobes, dead spots are nulls.

Simple omni antennas look like a donut with the antenna stuck through the hole. Best reception is perpendicular, worst reception is off the ends. It's a pretty fat donut though, and you still have good signal strength when you're at an angle to the antenna, so a boring low gain omni antenna is great when you want to give coverage across two floors of a house, for example.

High gain omni antennas squish that donut, for lack of a better term. So you have stronger signals in the plane perpendicular to the antenna, but less leeway for being above or below the AP. This is why high gain omnis are bad for trying to cover multiple floors.

Directional antennas take the donut and stretch it out very disproportionately in one direction, usually along the long axis of the antenna, but for patch antennas it's perpendicular to the plane of the patch. Directional antennas make up their very high forward gain by being deaf as a post in other directions.

To tie it all back in, background RF noise is by and large random and coming at you from random angles, so if you've got great ears in one direction where your signal is, and you're deaf to everything else, that background noise doesn't rise in level nearly as much as your signal.

For extreme interference solutions there are things like cardioid antennas which have roughly omnidirectional coverage except for one designed-in dead spot (and it's very, very dead). You use these not by aiming the lobe at the desired signal, but by aiming the null at the noise you want to ignore.

renzor
Jul 28, 2004

...I still get the ham, right? Good.
So I just signed up with Telus Optik and they gave me one of those lovely all-in-one modem/routers. I really want to use my own router, and apparently if I harass them enough there's a chance they'll come by with a wired one at some point although the internet tells me they're pretty scarce now. Would following a guide like this have the same outcome? Would going through I guess what would be 2 routers cause any(noticeable) slowdown?

Dr. Fraiser Chain
May 18, 2004

Redlining my shit posting machine


We have a nice lab setup in the basement of a University building with several computers and a printer all plugged into the University network. The problem is that anyone in the building can access the printer without being in the lab. The result is that we run through a TON of toner due to people jacking the printer and printing stuff from somewhere else in the building. Is there a solution to this particular problem?

Devian666
Aug 20, 2008

Take some advice Chris.

Fun Shoe

renzor posted:

So I just signed up with Telus Optik and they gave me one of those lovely all-in-one modem/routers. I really want to use my own router, and apparently if I harass them enough there's a chance they'll come by with a wired one at some point although the internet tells me they're pretty scarce now. Would following a guide like this have the same outcome? Would going through I guess what would be 2 routers cause any(noticeable) slowdown?

The guide is exactly what you need to do. There is no issue having the modem/router communicate with your router. In fact that's what routers are designed to do. I am one of the many people that prefers the modem + separate router combination.

I doubt you would experience a slow down as performance generally goes up with this configuration. The modem/wireless/routers perform poorly when all of the functions are used and many people experience problems with wireless connections or internet stopping. Often the they will require rebooting due to overheating or having insufficient ram.

The guide includes appropriate items such as disabling the Telus modem wireless and configuring DMZ.

CuddleChunks
Sep 18, 2004

Goodpancakes posted:

We have a nice lab setup in the basement of a University building with several computers and a printer all plugged into the University network. The problem is that anyone in the building can access the printer without being in the lab. The result is that we run through a TON of toner due to people jacking the printer and printing stuff from somewhere else in the building. Is there a solution to this particular problem?

See if your printer supports a whitelist feature - maybe you can authorize PC's by IP address and just add your local lab. This would be the least disruptive way to handle this.

Triikan
Feb 23, 2007
Most Loved

Goodpancakes posted:

We have a nice lab setup in the basement of a University building with several computers and a printer all plugged into the University network. The problem is that anyone in the building can access the printer without being in the lab. The result is that we run through a TON of toner due to people jacking the printer and printing stuff from somewhere else in the building. Is there a solution to this particular problem?

What model printer?

Triikan
Feb 23, 2007
Most Loved

devmd01 posted:

its me, im the lovely neighbor. Ubiquiti AP at the peak of my attic...haven't done a proper site survey, but let's just say that streaming pandora over wifi-only on my blackberry in every corner of my yard works just fine.
Wireless n router on channel 1, g router on channel 11, guest router on channel 6. To hell with the neighborhood.

Devian666
Aug 20, 2008

Take some advice Chris.

Fun Shoe

Triikan posted:

Wireless n router on channel 1, g router on channel 11, guest router on channel 6. To hell with the neighborhood.

I endorse this efficient use of the entire 2.4GHz spectrum.

briefcasefullof
Sep 25, 2004
[This Space for Rent]
Here's my problem:

I have DSL, and the modem does wifi. The thing is, it's in the back of my house, and I have some network devices (Xbox, etc) in the front of the house that I want to have internet access. The house isn't wired for cat5 or anything like that, and I'm renting it so I can't run the cables myself. What can I do?

The major use of this will be to get Netflix instant on my Xbox (or DVD/Blu-ray player when I get one).

The modem I have has built-in wireless, and I have a couple of spare wireless routers (if that counts for anything).

sleepy gary
Jan 11, 2006

Goodpancakes posted:

We have a nice lab setup in the basement of a University building with several computers and a printer all plugged into the University network. The problem is that anyone in the building can access the printer without being in the lab. The result is that we run through a TON of toner due to people jacking the printer and printing stuff from somewhere else in the building. Is there a solution to this particular problem?

Get a router and put all your equipment on your own LAN.

ThermoPhysical
Dec 26, 2007



I'm looking for a modem that I can buy offline, I need it before Sunday as the one I have now is dying pretty quickly.

I looked for the Motorola SB6120 but can only find the 121. The SB6121 has overheating issues thanks to wifi, is there something I can do to fix that or a better modem I can use?

My budget is about $120.

ryanbruce
May 1, 2002

The "Dell Dude"

ThermoPhysical posted:

I'm looking for a modem that I can buy offline, I need it before Sunday as the one I have now is dying pretty quickly.

I looked for the Motorola SB6120 but can only find the 121. The SB6121 has overheating issues thanks to wifi, is there something I can do to fix that or a better modem I can use?

My budget is about $120.

Get it from Amazon.com for $77.99 + $3.99 for overnight shipping to get it Saturday (if you order in the next 15hrs)

Don't have Amazon Prime?

1) Amazon.com/student = free year
2) Amazon.com/mom = free year
3) Go to the SA-Mart thread and split with some goons.

Also, the SB6121 doesn't have WiFi so I'm not sure what you're talking about.

uapyro
Jan 13, 2005

ryanbruce posted:

Get it from Amazon.com for $77.99 + $3.99 for overnight shipping to get it Saturday (if you order in the next 15hrs)


Do they offer Saturday delivery? I've only once seen it. Ordered something immediately, then get an email saying it would be Monday. Called their support line and I was told they don't do it. If it's that specific location, or I just got bad phone rep I don't know.

ryanbruce
May 1, 2002

The "Dell Dude"

uapyro posted:

Do they offer Saturday delivery? I've only once seen it. Ordered something immediately, then get an email saying it would be Monday. Called their support line and I was told they don't do it. If it's that specific location, or I just got bad phone rep I don't know.

*shrug* The 6120 had it as an option and said Saturday so I would assume so.

ThermoPhysical
Dec 26, 2007



Thanks for the tip, I'll give it a shot!

ryanbruce posted:

Also, the SB6121 doesn't have WiFi so I'm not sure what you're talking about.

I checked around and it seems it's some kind of modem/wireless router combo and the router part of it is bad and causes overheating.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Motorol...customerreviews

One guy thoroughly complains about it here.

The.Big.Dirty.Emu
May 2, 2009
What's the best home VPN solution? All I'm really looking to be able to do is mount iSCSI shares when I'm away from home for time machine backups.

MJP
Jun 17, 2007

Are you looking at me Senpai?

Grimey Drawer
I'm looking at setting up three rooms with Cat6 drops. Does anyone have a recommendation on good bulk cable? I'm looking at http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10234&cs_id=1023401&p_id=8107&seq=1&format=2 but I didn't know if there was any significant difference between riser and in-wall rated.

feld
Feb 11, 2008

Out of nowhere its.....

Feldman

The.Big.Dirty.Emu posted:

What's the best home VPN solution? All I'm really looking to be able to do is mount iSCSI shares when I'm away from home for time machine backups.

:suicide:

No. Do not. NO.

Dr. Fraiser Chain
May 18, 2004

Redlining my shit posting machine


Triikan posted:

What model printer?

It is an HP 2055

ryanbruce
May 1, 2002

The "Dell Dude"

ThermoPhysical posted:

Thanks for the tip, I'll give it a shot!


I checked around and it seems it's some kind of modem/wireless router combo and the router part of it is bad and causes overheating.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Motorol...customerreviews

One guy thoroughly complains about it here.

I think the guy's a moron. There *is* a wireless/modem combo offering, but it's not the SB6121.

http://www.amazon.com/Motorola-SURFboard-Gateway-SBG6580-Wireless/dp/B0040IUI46/ref=pd_cp_e_2

skystream92
Jul 1, 2007
I'm pretty much a moron when it comes to networking/internet connectivity issues, so please bear with me.

Recently (past couple weeks or so) we started seeing some connectivity issues with our comcast internet. Basically, there are times when the internet will have almost no connectivity, and at other times the internet seems to be fine. I called Comcast about it, and they said that from their end, they see the signal to our modem is strong. I was thinking that maybe we were having a saturation issue with the frequencies, so I plugged the computer directly into the modem and bypassed the router. This didn't help at all, and connectivity is still lovely. Any ideas?

EDIT: At this point, is there anything else I can try looking into that can be fixed from my end, or is it basically in the ISP's court now?

skystream92 fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Oct 28, 2011

ThermoPhysical
Dec 26, 2007



ryanbruce posted:

I think the guy's a moron. There *is* a wireless/modem combo offering, but it's not the SB6121.

http://www.amazon.com/Motorola-SURFboard-Gateway-SBG6580-Wireless/dp/B0040IUI46/ref=pd_cp_e_2

I checked and it seems the router would only come on Monday and not tomorrow. I'll probably go with the SB6121. I think that guy posted on the wrong modem, now that I check.

Apparently, the 121 does run warmer than the 120 but not too much (and only seems to have major problems with Charter but I'm on Cox).

Thanks for the help though!

The.Big.Dirty.Emu
May 2, 2009

feld posted:

:suicide:

No. Do not. NO.

I get the impression that might be a bad idea...

What are my alternatives for remote time machine backups?

MrMoo
Sep 14, 2000

You might want to look at something like Crashplan instead.

I drive a BBW
Jun 2, 2008
Fun Shoe

skystream92 posted:

I'm pretty much a moron when it comes to networking/internet connectivity issues, so please bear with me.

Recently (past couple weeks or so) we started seeing some connectivity issues with our comcast internet. Basically, there are times when the internet will have almost no connectivity, and at other times the internet seems to be fine. I called Comcast about it, and they said that from their end, they see the signal to our modem is strong. I was thinking that maybe we were having a saturation issue with the frequencies, so I plugged the computer directly into the modem and bypassed the router. This didn't help at all, and connectivity is still lovely. Any ideas?

EDIT: At this point, is there anything else I can try looking into that can be fixed from my end, or is it basically in the ISP's court now?

I've been having the same issue with Suddenlink. My connection issues would start around 6:30-7:00PM and continue until around 10:30-11:00PM. I'm paying for 20Mbit and at certain points I would get as low as .88Mbit/sec. During the day I was getting 20+.

The first thing I did was hook a few different computers directly to the moden like you did to verify it wasn't the router. Then I started doing bandwidth tests during the day when it was working fine and taking screenshots, and then doing the same when it slowed down and taking screenshots. I also started doing traceroutes to various sites to see where the bottleneck was. In my case, it was the first hop once it left my house. I then started doing pings on that node and noticed that the times were wildly inconsistent. They would range anywhere from 10ms to 500+ms. Turns out they were having some interference on the node in the neighborhood. They performed some maintenance on the node and haven't had any more issues since.

The best thing you can do is be persistent. I called every day for a week, sometimes two or three times within a few hours.

EDIT: Forgot to say that I was using https://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest and https://www.speedtest.net for speed testing.

I drive a BBW fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Oct 29, 2011

Jimlad
Jan 8, 2005
Can someone help me with choosing which ADSL2+ modem/router to buy? I'm with Orange who gave me a Netgear N150 (DGN1000) but I'm having real trouble getting it to work properly, especially on wireless. I figure I'd rather just plump for a new router and stick Tomato on it, but there's such a huge range and so much weird networking terminology out there it makes my head explode.

I'll just list random facts that I think would be relevant, I guess:
  • My connection speed is around 4mbps d/l
  • I have one desktop connected via cable, and a few random devices (tablets, laptops) that I want on wireless
  • I plan on adding at least one more wired desktop to the mix in the near future, but I don't think I'll ever need more than 4 wired ports
  • I'll want to put DD-WRT or Tomato on it, so compatibility with one or both is a must
  • I use the connection mostly for gaming and occasionally torrenting, and I'll probably want to stream video over the network at some point. I won't be doing all at the same time though
  • I need to be able to get the router easily in UK
  • My budget is around £80

Does anyone have any decent suggestions? I'm willing to pay more if it means I'll get less headaches from the router randomly deciding to stop transferring data, or having certain programs deciding not to connect.

Jimlad fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Oct 30, 2011

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Devian666
Aug 20, 2008

Take some advice Chris.

Fun Shoe
I recommend going through the op. All of the routers in there have enough ram that they shouldn't have problems with running some torrents. The majority listed can have dd-wrt installed.

The newer netgear routers are usually fine running the stock firmware, and not having issues like the stock Asus or Linksys firmware.. For example the 3500L runs fine and is in the $75USD category which is well within your budget.

As you go up the price range you'll get a few features and more router bandwidth though the low end routers will easily have enough internal bandwidth to cope with your connection.

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