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ThermoPhysical
Dec 26, 2007



Ragingsheep posted:

Chargeback and return windows are different things and there isn't necessarily a time limit on when you can ask for a chargeback. Talk to your bank though, on the phone is their website is broken.

Oh no, I mean that TigerDirect's site was broken and I finally got a hold of them to do a Return Auth on the router and I'll be returning it next week (roommate needs to print something for work on Friday, I guess).

I'll can talk to the bank tomorrow, I guess, but I don't know if they'll do anything if the RA is already in effect.

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Ragingsheep
Nov 7, 2009
Fair enough, I thought that you weren't getting anywhere with Tiger or Asus. If they are processing a refund for you then no need for a chargeback.

ThermoPhysical
Dec 26, 2007



Ragingsheep posted:

Fair enough, I thought that you weren't getting anywhere with Tiger or Asus. If they are processing a refund for you then no need for a chargeback.

I'm not getting anywhere with ASUS, no, but TigerDirect finally got back to me after an hour and 7 minutes on the phone holding.

Not gonna use em again.

I've been looking at the Netgear Nighthawk I linked to last page and it seems to have weirdly bad reviews...are there any other routers coming out I should keep an eye on around $200?

Ham Sandwiches
Jul 7, 2000

ThermoPhysical posted:

I'm not getting anywhere with ASUS, no, but TigerDirect finally got back to me after an hour and 7 minutes on the phone holding.

Not gonna use em again.

I've been looking at the Netgear Nighthawk I linked to last page and it seems to have weirdly bad reviews...are there any other routers coming out I should keep an eye on around $200?

So that's the thing, the Nighthawk also had some firmware instability early in its life. Trying to return stuff to manufacturers is a huge waste, they always want you to pay for shipping or repairs. It's also why they try not to get you to do returns through the store. The only complicated part was that you bought from TigerDirect.

I would avoid Newegg, they also suck for returning things. Try ordering your routers from Amazon.

The Nighthawk and AC87U are probably your best bets. I know you just got burned with Asus but in reality Netgear and Asus have the best router hardware out there right now. It may come down to simply trying both of these units, both should work in your environment - but I bet one will be well behaved if you try both. The two routers have similar CPUs, different radios, completely different firmware. Both of them support third party firmware, though they sometimes lose acceleration features depending on the firmware.

I'd start with the Netgear nighthawk since Asus both pissed you off and was unstable in your environment.

And finally the SB6121 running hot is normal.

Golbez
Oct 9, 2002

1 2 3!
If you want to take a shot at me get in line, line
1 2 3!
Baby, I've had all my shots and I'm fine

lampey posted:

I would try plugging a computer directly into your modem to rule out any problems with your router. You could check your modem admin page to see if there are any logs or obvious errors about when this is happening. This sounds more like an issue with the nat table in the router failing to make new connections.

Is your dns pointing to your router or to the real dns server?

I finally had the opportunity to plug my computer directly into it when this is happening, and I still think it's the modem. I can't even access the admin page; I get the same "Connecting..." that I do for everything else other than my router. I did manage to access the admin page otherwise.

How can it be anything but the modem at this point?

All About Trout
Jul 17, 2007

This is sorta small business networking, but I dunno where else to post this. I work at a very tight-assed place. A while back, our Comcast Xfinity Hotspot, which required people to have a Comcast account and service to login with and was a constant source of irritation for that reason, died.

Comcast wanted money, owner didn't want to pay for anything. People would not stop complaining, owner was doing nothing. We have 1 star on yelp and poor reviews elsewhere, mostly due to the period where we had no wifi and other things weren't being fixed. So I brought in an old WRT54G (v6, 8MB ram POS, DD-WRT micro) from home and hooked it up to our old cable modem/router (SMC8014, DOCSIS 2.0) that we use for the front desk PCs, networked cameras, etc. Our internet connection is about 20 down / 4 up so I QOSed the WAN port (and only the WAN port) on the WRT54G to 16/2 or something like that to leave some bandwidth for what we need to do.

Obviously, the 10+ year old 802.11g router with 8mb of RAM would crumble as soon as we got to ~9 concurrent users. It would lock up repeatedly during the day and be mostly unusable in the afternoon/evening. We have dozens of people (trying to be) on the wifi at peak hours.

But now we have this! http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-WDR3600-Wireless-Gigabit-300Mbps/dp/B008RV51EE

My boss asked me specifically to find out "how many people can be on it" (at like midnight) and my best answer was "up to 75 concurrent users", which was stated on some support page on purplewifi.com because it's one of the routers supported for their commercial hotspot firmware (which i'd guess is openWRT based like DD-WRT).

But I have no idea how accurate that number is. It's an improvement, and seems stable, but is still often unusable. It's still on stock firmware for now, but I could DD-WRT it. I know for sure that the bigger bottleneck is the SMC8014 and our 20mb internet connection, but I'm wondering if anyone with experience putting tons of users on one AP has a ballpark on how many people could be streaming spotify or facebooking or whatever simultaneously for when we, hopefully, convince the owner to get a separate internet connection for it.

Smoke
Mar 12, 2005

I am NOT a red Bumblebee for god's sake!

Gun Saliva
Got a fairly specific question here for replacing my old router.

I've got a 2nd gen Airport Extreme(about 8 years old so far) handling my wireless needs, and using it to share an external USB drive. It's only doing duties as wireless AP and disk sharing(as well as acting as a switch for some wired devices such as my desktop PC and a SIP phone), since I've got an ISP-provided router handling DHCP and routing needs. I can't put it in any form of bridged mode by design, and I've got other wired devices hooked up to it as part of the LAN, such as a WDTV Live that need access to the USB drive.

Sadly the AE is slowly having more and more issues, being not reachable from time to time, having connectivity issues, feeling rather hot and not allowing access to the configuration. So it'll have to be replaced.

A new AE would be rather nice but also rather expensive, so I'm looking for an alternative. Airport Express is not an option due to not having Gbit LAN and having too few ports.

Anything else I should consider? The main issue is the USB harddisk, since it's HFS+ formatted and I can't easily reformat it as it contains all my backups and some data I simply don't have room for in other places. I've considered the Archer C7 but I have no idea if it'll suit my needs. Just trying to fix this with buying as little additional hardware as possible.

SiGmA_X
May 3, 2004
SiGmA_X

Golbez posted:

I finally had the opportunity to plug my computer directly into it when this is happening, and I still think it's the modem. I can't even access the admin page; I get the same "Connecting..." that I do for everything else other than my router. I did manage to access the admin page otherwise.

How can it be anything but the modem at this point?

Motorola has decent to good support. Give em a call.

How old is your modem?

Maybe prime yourself a newer SB (6141 or the ... Next newer one. 6141 does 14MB/s+ on w 105Mbps Comcast package, so it's plenty for me but it's not 'future proof') and see if that fixes the problem before you send back the 68U?

Antillie
Mar 14, 2015

Smoke posted:

Got a fairly specific question here for replacing my old router.

I've got a 2nd gen Airport Extreme(about 8 years old so far) handling my wireless needs, and using it to share an external USB drive. It's only doing duties as wireless AP and disk sharing(as well as acting as a switch for some wired devices such as my desktop PC and a SIP phone), since I've got an ISP-provided router handling DHCP and routing needs. I can't put it in any form of bridged mode by design, and I've got other wired devices hooked up to it as part of the LAN, such as a WDTV Live that need access to the USB drive.

Sadly the AE is slowly having more and more issues, being not reachable from time to time, having connectivity issues, feeling rather hot and not allowing access to the configuration. So it'll have to be replaced.

A new AE would be rather nice but also rather expensive, so I'm looking for an alternative. Airport Express is not an option due to not having Gbit LAN and having too few ports.

Anything else I should consider? The main issue is the USB harddisk, since it's HFS+ formatted and I can't easily reformat it as it contains all my backups and some data I simply don't have room for in other places. I've considered the Archer C7 but I have no idea if it'll suit my needs. Just trying to fix this with buying as little additional hardware as possible.

The Archer C7 is a great router but I have no idea if it will read that HFS+ formatted disk. I strongly suspect that it won't since HFS+ is an Apple proprietary file system. If being able to read that drive on your new router is a requirement then a new AE is probably your only option.

Antillie
Mar 14, 2015

All About Trout posted:

This is sorta small business networking, but I dunno where else to post this. I work at a very tight-assed place. A while back, our Comcast Xfinity Hotspot, which required people to have a Comcast account and service to login with and was a constant source of irritation for that reason, died.

Comcast wanted money, owner didn't want to pay for anything. People would not stop complaining, owner was doing nothing. We have 1 star on yelp and poor reviews elsewhere, mostly due to the period where we had no wifi and other things weren't being fixed. So I brought in an old WRT54G (v6, 8MB ram POS, DD-WRT micro) from home and hooked it up to our old cable modem/router (SMC8014, DOCSIS 2.0) that we use for the front desk PCs, networked cameras, etc. Our internet connection is about 20 down / 4 up so I QOSed the WAN port (and only the WAN port) on the WRT54G to 16/2 or something like that to leave some bandwidth for what we need to do.

Obviously, the 10+ year old 802.11g router with 8mb of RAM would crumble as soon as we got to ~9 concurrent users. It would lock up repeatedly during the day and be mostly unusable in the afternoon/evening. We have dozens of people (trying to be) on the wifi at peak hours.

But now we have this! http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-WDR3600-Wireless-Gigabit-300Mbps/dp/B008RV51EE

My boss asked me specifically to find out "how many people can be on it" (at like midnight) and my best answer was "up to 75 concurrent users", which was stated on some support page on purplewifi.com because it's one of the routers supported for their commercial hotspot firmware (which i'd guess is openWRT based like DD-WRT).

But I have no idea how accurate that number is. It's an improvement, and seems stable, but is still often unusable. It's still on stock firmware for now, but I could DD-WRT it. I know for sure that the bigger bottleneck is the SMC8014 and our 20mb internet connection, but I'm wondering if anyone with experience putting tons of users on one AP has a ballpark on how many people could be streaming spotify or facebooking or whatever simultaneously for when we, hopefully, convince the owner to get a separate internet connection for it.

The user limit for an AP is entirely dependent on how much traffic each user is generating. Only one device can talk on a wifi network at a time so whenever one client is sending a packet all the other clients have to wait. So this going to be very dependent on what the users are doing on the network. For normal web surfing I would say something around 10-15 active clients per AP at most. The 75 client estimate probably assumes that only a few clients are actually using the network at any given time.

Honestly wifi is a bad solution for getting more than a rather small number of people on a network in a small area. As soon as you need to provide reliable connectivity to more than about 20 or so active users in said small area its time to go wired. Having lots of clients connected to the wifi isn't the issue, its how many of them are trying to use the network at the same time that creates a problem.

Splitting your wifi clients between the 2.4ghz and 5ghz band with different SSIDs can help though. In fact the shorter range and lower solid object penetration of the 5ghz band can make it much easier to have one AP per room instead of several rooms per AP. This can make it much easier to spread a large number of clients out across multiple APs. You can do the same thing with the 2.4ghz band if your turn down the transmit power on the APs so you can place them closer together or properly plan your AP layout to use only channels 1, 6, and 11 in a repeating pattern that doesn't places two APs on the same channel next to each other.

I think in your case there are simply too many wifi clients trying to actually use the network at the same time (not the same as the number of clients just connected to the SSID). All you can really do it split them between two or more APs with the same SSID, which may be hard for you to do depending on the layout of the facility, or split them between the 2.4ghz and 5ghz bands with different SSIDs, which may be confusing for your users.

Technically you could stick three APs right next to each other and run them on channels 1, 6, and 11 in the 2.4ghz band with different SSIDs and let users hop on the different wifi networks. This would let you have three times as many active wifi users but it relies on the users evenly distributing themselves between the three SSIDs, which probably won't happen without some sort of organization system in place to keep everyone from just picking the first SSID in the list and ignoring the other two.

You can pull the same trick with the 5ghz band but with more than three APs, not sure exactly how many off the top of my head.

Antillie fucked around with this message at 18:08 on Jun 18, 2015

psydude
Apr 1, 2008

Antillie posted:

You can pull the same trick with the 5ghz band but with more than three APs, not sure exactly how many off the top of my head.

5 GHz has up to 11 non-overlapping channels when you run channel-bonding at a 40MHz width, assuming you're using all of the available bands (part of band A is reserved for indoor use only). Obviously, this means you can have 22 non-overlapping channels if you're only running 20 MHz.

In other words, you can have either 11 access-points or 22 access-points (depending upon channel width) running in the same area on the same SSID without interference from one another. That's more than enough for a SOHO deployment, especially since 5 GHz doesn't propagate as far as 2.4 GHz so you're less likely to experience interference from neighboring offices.

Clanpot Shake
Aug 10, 2006
shake shake!

I've got a Roku set up wirelessly, but the connection isn't consistently good enough to maintain 1080p streaming, so I'm considering running a cable to it. Because I live in a stupidly laid and wired old building it's going to be about 100 feet to run it neatly along the molding. Couple questions:

What is a good, cheap staple gun to stable cable neatly to the wall?

I haven't paid attention to cable specs in about a decade. My dad has a giant spool of cat 5 at their house - will this work okay for a 100Mb/s connection over that distance?

All About Trout
Jul 17, 2007

Antillie posted:

The user limit for an AP is entirely dependent on how much traffic each user is generating. Only one device can talk on a wifi network at a time so whenever one client is sending a packet all the other clients have to wait. So this going to be very dependent on what the users are doing on the network. For normal web surfing I would say something around 10-15 active clients per AP at most. The 75 client estimate probably assumes that only a few clients are actually using the network at any given time.

Honestly wifi is a bad solution for getting more than a rather small number of people on a network in a small area. As soon as you need to provide reliable connectivity to more than about 20 or so active users in said small area its time to go wired. Having lots of clients connected to the wifi isn't the issue, its how many of them are trying to use the network at the same time that creates a problem.

Splitting your wifi clients between the 2.4ghz and 5ghz band with different SSIDs can help though. In fact the shorter range and lower solid object penetration of the 5ghz band can make it much easier to have one AP per room instead of several rooms per AP. This can make it much easier to spread a large number of clients out across multiple APs. You can do the same thing with the 2.4ghz band if your turn down the transmit power on the APs so you can place them closer together or properly plan your AP layout to use only channels 1, 6, and 11 in a repeating pattern that doesn't places two APs on the same channel next to each other.

I think in your case there are simply too many wifi clients trying to actually use the network at the same time (not the same as the number of clients just connected to the SSID). All you can really do it split them between two or more APs with the same SSID, which may be hard for you to do depending on the layout of the facility, or split them between the 2.4ghz and 5ghz bands with different SSIDs, which may be confusing for your users.

Technically you could stick three APs right next to each other and run them on channels 1, 6, and 11 in the 2.4ghz band with different SSIDs and let users hop on the different wifi networks. This would let you have three times as many active wifi users but it relies on the users evenly distributing themselves between the three SSIDs, which probably won't happen without some sort of organization system in place to keep everyone from just picking the first SSID in the list and ignoring the other two.

You can pull the same trick with the 5ghz band but with more than three APs, not sure exactly how many off the top of my head.

This is pretty much what I assumed. I work at a small to medium sized gym -- it's a single, big, open room where wifi is the only option for clients. It's good because it's almost all line of sight and in an area with about zero 2.4ghz interference, bad because of the huge number of clients. I did tell the owner that it's going to depend on what people are doing -- as soon as a few people start streaming videos instead of just checking facebook, there goes a huge chunk of both wifi and internet bandwidth etc. But he's not very good with tech, is very cheap, and wanted a number from somewhere. I personally figured around 30 active users would be the real upper limit for the single AP, spread across both bands and with none/few of them streaming video.

I do have the AP configged for 2 SSIDs and I've been advising people who can see the 5ghz band on their phone to use it, because old phones/tabs with only 2.4 to new phones/tabs with 5 is probably a decently even split, for now. I hadn't thought of other APs with the same SSIDs on a different channel. My only experience with sharing a SSID was with a few repeaters/repeater bridges, and that apparently does not work well under DD-WRT. I guess the devices will just switch to whichever device on the SSID has the strongest signal automatically?

In that case, we might be able to at least stick another wired AP in one of the offices that has cat5 run to it. The trouble (treadmill) area is going to be closer to the main AP, but it would still help out. Would a few APs configged for WDS and stuck into the drop ceiling at different points be the ideal (non commercial) solution here?

All About Trout fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Jun 18, 2015

Ham Sandwiches
Jul 7, 2000

Clanpot Shake posted:

I've got a Roku set up wirelessly, but the connection isn't consistently good enough to maintain 1080p streaming, so I'm considering running a cable to it. Because I live in a stupidly laid and wired old building it's going to be about 100 feet to run it neatly along the molding. Couple questions:

What is a good, cheap staple gun to stable cable neatly to the wall?

I haven't paid attention to cable specs in about a decade. My dad has a giant spool of cat 5 at their house - will this work okay for a 100Mb/s connection over that distance?

If you're looking for ~100 mbps (>30 should be enough to stream for quite a while), have you considered a pair of powerline adapters? I mean if you want to run the cable then that's obviously a good solution, but it may save you some time.

Powerline adapters are little plugs that you put into a pair of power outlets and they can do ~100-300 megabits through your electric lines.

SiGmA_X
May 3, 2004
SiGmA_X
I'm moving to a rental that has poor coax jack locations and no cat5e/6, and no basement access. I'm going to push for getting some time in the basement and run some cable, but failing that, Powerline it will be. Im going to need 3 I believe. One by the router, one by the server, and one by my desk for my laptop dock. I will try out wifi, but I assume it's going to be too slow for my liking. I enjoy file copy from my server at 40-60MB/s currently. Will Powerline realistically support that?

ThermoPhysical
Dec 26, 2007



Rakthar posted:

So that's the thing, the Nighthawk also had some firmware instability early in its life. Trying to return stuff to manufacturers is a huge waste, they always want you to pay for shipping or repairs. It's also why they try not to get you to do returns through the store. The only complicated part was that you bought from TigerDirect.

I would avoid Newegg, they also suck for returning things. Try ordering your routers from Amazon.

The Nighthawk and AC87U are probably your best bets. I know you just got burned with Asus but in reality Netgear and Asus have the best router hardware out there right now. It may come down to simply trying both of these units, both should work in your environment - but I bet one will be well behaved if you try both. The two routers have similar CPUs, different radios, completely different firmware. Both of them support third party firmware, though they sometimes lose acceleration features depending on the firmware.

I'd start with the Netgear nighthawk since Asus both pissed you off and was unstable in your environment.

And finally the SB6121 running hot is normal.

I've had good luck with Amazon returns so I'll give them a try. How's the C8?

Clanpot Shake
Aug 10, 2006
shake shake!

Rakthar posted:

If you're looking for ~100 mbps (>30 should be enough to stream for quite a while), have you considered a pair of powerline adapters? I mean if you want to run the cable then that's obviously a good solution, but it may save you some time.

Powerline adapters are little plugs that you put into a pair of power outlets and they can do ~100-300 megabits through your electric lines.

I never really considered powerline adapters because the building I live in was built like 150 years ago and the wiring is old and lovely and there's really no telling what's wired where in regards to the other apartments. I have 3 grounded outlets in the whole place. This is what my fuses look like for gently caress's sake.

Ham Sandwiches
Jul 7, 2000

SiGmA_X posted:

I'm moving to a rental that has poor coax jack locations and no cat5e/6, and no basement access. I'm going to push for getting some time in the basement and run some cable, but failing that, Powerline it will be. Im going to need 3 I believe. One by the router, one by the server, and one by my desk for my laptop dock. I will try out wifi, but I assume it's going to be too slow for my liking. I enjoy file copy from my server at 40-60MB/s currently. Will Powerline realistically support that?

Here's the smallnetbuilder site with all their Powerline stories / reviews:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tags/powerline

This is a review of two adapters from the same company, comparing the AV500 spec to the newer AV600 spec devices:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/lanwan-reviews/32454-tp-link-homeplug-head-to-head

On page 3 they show you the actual throughput they got at various points, at close / medium / long range, they got 65-90mbps measured throughput (faster as it got closer) on the av500, and 100-250 on the av600. If I had to guess I'd wager on ~70-80 throughput on the av500 and ~120-150 on the av600.

There are newer specs now I think it's called av2 and supports MIMO, you can look at those devices. In general the devices are more tolerant of noise and more reliable as the spec gets newer, speed aside.

Ham Sandwiches
Jul 7, 2000

Clanpot Shake posted:

I never really considered powerline adapters because the building I live in was built like 150 years ago and the wiring is old and lovely and there's really no telling what's wired where in regards to the other apartments. I have 3 grounded outlets in the whole place. This is what my fuses look like for gently caress's sake.

Ok you're right. If you plug in a powerline adapter you would probably hear it scream.

SiGmA_X
May 3, 2004
SiGmA_X

Rakthar posted:

Here's the smallnetbuilder site with all their Powerline stories / reviews:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tags/powerline

This is a review of two adapters from the same company, comparing the AV500 spec to the newer AV600 spec devices:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/lanwan-reviews/32454-tp-link-homeplug-head-to-head

On page 3 they show you the actual throughput they got at various points, at close / medium / long range, they got 65-90mbps measured throughput (faster as it got closer) on the av500, and 100-250 on the av600. If I had to guess I'd wager on ~70-80 throughput on the av500 and ~120-150 on the av600.

There are newer specs now I think it's called av2 and supports MIMO, you can look at those devices. In general the devices are more tolerant of noise and more reliable as the spec gets newer, speed aside.
I didn't even think to check SNB, it's my go-to for routers! AV2 MIMO was what I was looking at via Amazon.

I'm worried I'll be sorely disappointed vs my current gig connection, but failing running wire, I'm sure it'll be my best bet. I don't want to attempt AC on my server<->router connection, I'm sure the traffic will kill it. AC may suffice to my laptop, we shall see.

Ham Sandwiches
Jul 7, 2000

SiGmA_X posted:

I didn't even think to check SNB, it's my go-to for routers! AV2 MIMO was what I was looking at via Amazon.

I'm worried I'll be sorely disappointed vs my current gig connection, but failing running wire, I'm sure it'll be my best bet. I don't want to attempt AC on my server<->router connection, I'm sure the traffic will kill it. AC may suffice to my laptop, we shall see.

Yeah looking at this review where they compare the av2 mimo devices at various distances:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/lanwan-reviews/32717-netgear-pl1200-powerline-1200-reviewed?start=1

Looks like you can expect 15-20MB/s throughput from those devices. I agree it's going to be a big step down compared to gig e in terms of throughput. With Wifi vs powerline you are at this point looking at lack of cables + short range performance vs overall reliability. Powerline can have noise issues but it generally works, it will give you much lower latency and much lower ping time variations as well.

Depending on how large the transfers and how noisy the band in your area, and how reliable you may need them to be, you could try some part of the transfers via AC, but it doesn't look great:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/32674-dlink-dir-890lr-ac3200-ultra-wi-fi-router-reviewed?showall=&start=2

It looks to me like ~20 MBps effective avg for downlink even with AC3200. On the other hand it can hit 40MBps in good conditions, which powerline can barely manage on the same plug.

Ham Sandwiches fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Jun 18, 2015

SiGmA_X
May 3, 2004
SiGmA_X

Rakthar posted:

Yeah looking at this review where they compare the av2 mimo devices at various distances:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/lanwan-reviews/32717-netgear-pl1200-powerline-1200-reviewed?start=1

Looks like you can expect 15-20MB/s throughput from those devices. I agree it's going to be a big step down compared to gig e in terms of throughput. With Wifi vs powerline you are at this point looking at lack of cables + short range performance vs overall reliability. Powerline can have noise issues but it generally works, it will give you much lower latency and much lower ping time variations as well.

Depending on how large the transfers and how noisy the band in your area, and how reliable you may need them to be, you could try some part of the transfers via AC, but it doesn't look great:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/32674-dlink-dir-890lr-ac3200-ultra-wi-fi-router-reviewed?showall=&start=2

It looks to me like ~20 MBps effective avg for downlink even with AC3200. On the other hand it can hit 40MBps in good conditions, which powerline can barely manage on the same plug.
Yep, this is going to be painful! I really don't want my server in my home office due to the added heat... But I do want the best performance possible between the interweb, my server and my laptop/dock. We shall see, maybe heat won't be so bad, or maybe the landlord will let me run wire. I hope he will. I'm also considering running wire inside, stapling it or something, but that looks so horrid.

Smoke
Mar 12, 2005

I am NOT a red Bumblebee for god's sake!

Gun Saliva

Antillie posted:

The Archer C7 is a great router but I have no idea if it will read that HFS+ formatted disk. I strongly suspect that it won't since HFS+ is an Apple proprietary file system. If being able to read that drive on your new router is a requirement then a new AE is probably your only option.

I've done some more looking into this and it turns out I can convert the filesystem to NTFS with a free utility. Will still be making a backup of the most essential data before doing that though, so HFS+ compatibility is no longer a real major requirement. I know the WDTV Live can also read the disk, but it's a bit too unreliable to use for a backup drive.

Still wondering if there's alternatives or better options though, as I don't really need the full featureset(and blinkenlights, I dig the AE's aesthetic because it's just got the single light) of a router, but would be limited by a pure access point.

Krailor
Nov 2, 2001
I'm only pretending to care
Taco Defender

Since you don't need super high speed connections you might want to take a look at using some Unifi APs from Ubiquiti. They should provide better coverage and multi-user support than consumer stuff and they're only $68 ea or 3 for $180.

Golbez
Oct 9, 2002

1 2 3!
If you want to take a shot at me get in line, line
1 2 3!
Baby, I've had all my shots and I'm fine

SiGmA_X posted:

Motorola has decent to good support. Give em a call.

How old is your modem?

Maybe prime yourself a newer SB (6141 or the ... Next newer one. 6141 does 14MB/s+ on w 105Mbps Comcast package, so it's plenty for me but it's not 'future proof') and see if that fixes the problem before you send back the 68U?

It's a Hitron modem, and pretty new - I've only been running it for two months, and while I don't know how old it was before then, it seems new. I'm going to go trade it in tomorrow; if that fails, then I'm at a complete loss. (The modem is a rental from the cable company... I think you might have me mixed up with someone, I never said what kind of modem it was)

SiGmA_X
May 3, 2004
SiGmA_X

Golbez posted:

It's a Hitron modem, and pretty new - I've only been running it for two months, and while I don't know how old it was before then, it seems new. I'm going to go trade it in tomorrow; if that fails, then I'm at a complete loss. (The modem is a rental from the cable company... I think you might have me mixed up with someone, I never said what kind of modem it was)
Definitely mixed posts up, I just re read your history, but I stand by what I said. I think you have a junk modem.

Why are you renting a modem? Get a new Moto, it'll pay off in about 12mo or less, and give you good speeds.

redeyes
Sep 14, 2002

by Fluffdaddy
I have need to connect 2 buildings at about 550ft, wirelessly. I need the highest speed connection possible for the least price (surprise right). This is basically a wifi bridge and needs to do nothing else. One of the devices must be on a roof and probably waterproof/uv proof. The other could be in a window but also, on the roof is fine.
What should I be looking at?

SamDabbers
May 26, 2003



redeyes posted:

I have need to connect 2 buildings at about 550ft, wirelessly. I need the highest speed connection possible for the least price (surprise right). This is basically a wifi bridge and needs to do nothing else. One of the devices must be on a roof and probably waterproof/uv proof. The other could be in a window but also, on the roof is fine.
What should I be looking at?

Something like the Ubiquiti Loco M5 would probably work fine, and is inexpensive at $67 each. They should be able to push several tens of mbps in reasonable conditions with good line of sight.

redeyes
Sep 14, 2002

by Fluffdaddy

SamDabbers posted:

Something like the Ubiquiti Loco M5 would probably work fine, and is inexpensive at $67 each. They should be able to push several tens of mbps in reasonable conditions with good line of sight.

Looks good but can we do higher speed?

SamDabbers
May 26, 2003



redeyes posted:

Looks good but can we do higher speed?

The next step up would be the newer NanoBeam AC which claims up to 450Mbps actual throughput. They're slightly more expensive at $99 each. If you need faster than that, I'd look at the AirFiber line, which is considerably more expensive.

22 Eargesplitten
Oct 10, 2010



Something weird is going on with my phone's WiFi connection, but only to this router specifically. A week or so ago, my fiancee did something when the internet was out and I was at work. It changed the SSID, and I noticed yesterday that we had two slightly differently capitalized SSIDs. One of them disappeared yesterday, not sure why. But for an uncertain amount of time, my cell and my roommate's cell weren't connected to the WiFi. I think he got back on because he was just spelling the SSID wrong, but I put everything in right and it says the connection is out of range.

I would just use WPS, but my router only supports pin and button-on-device, and my phone only supports button-on-router.

Rexxed
May 1, 2010

Dis is amazing!
I gotta try dis!

22 Eargesplitten posted:

Something weird is going on with my phone's WiFi connection, but only to this router specifically. A week or so ago, my fiancee did something when the internet was out and I was at work. It changed the SSID, and I noticed yesterday that we had two slightly differently capitalized SSIDs. One of them disappeared yesterday, not sure why. But for an uncertain amount of time, my cell and my roommate's cell weren't connected to the WiFi. I think he got back on because he was just spelling the SSID wrong, but I put everything in right and it says the connection is out of range.

I would just use WPS, but my router only supports pin and button-on-device, and my phone only supports button-on-router.

Maybe it's a dual band router and she set 5ghz (or 2.4ghz) to a different SSID? Then perhaps your phone only supports the band that had its SSID changed and now it can't find the network it remembers? WPS is garbage, just get in the settings and see what the radios are set to on the router.

22 Eargesplitten
Oct 10, 2010



That's actually very possible. I'll check the 2.4g and 5g settings.

fake edit: Well, the SSID is different for the 2.4g network. I'll have to figure out how to unify that. At least I thought it was originally the same SSID. It's also weird, because this phone does have n-band, and I thought that meant it had to work on 5ghz.

Rexxed
May 1, 2010

Dis is amazing!
I gotta try dis!

22 Eargesplitten posted:

That's actually very possible. I'll check the 2.4g and 5g settings.

fake edit: Well, the SSID is different for the 2.4g network. I'll have to figure out how to unify that. At least I thought it was originally the same SSID. It's also weird, because this phone does have n-band, and I thought that meant it had to work on 5ghz.

A lot of cell phones don't handle 5ghz, it's often reserved for flagship phones. You can look your phone's specs up and/or grab WiFi analyzer on the play store and see if it'll show the 5ghz bands.

Tapedump
Aug 31, 2007
College Slice
N can be 2.4 GHz as well as 5 GHz.

22 Eargesplitten
Oct 10, 2010



Mine was a flagship, but that was four years ago.

With the TP-Link WDR3600, should it be able to have the 2.4ghz and 5ghz bands on the same SSID, and switch between them automatically if you lose reception in one but not the other?

Rexxed
May 1, 2010

Dis is amazing!
I gotta try dis!

22 Eargesplitten posted:

Mine was a flagship, but that was four years ago.

With the TP-Link WDR3600, should it be able to have the 2.4ghz and 5ghz bands on the same SSID, and switch between them automatically if you lose reception in one but not the other?

Dual band routers can set both radios to the same SSID, but the deal is that your devices decide which to connect to (this is the same for same band, different channel like multiple APs covering a large area as well). This can be problematic if you have 5ghz devices that you move away from the router that suddenly have a poo poo connection but they refuse to switch over to the longer range 2.4ghz radio, so some folks keep them separate so they can explicitly choose which radio to connect to for their devices. Your average end user probably leaves them the same, though, since that's most likely the default config. The most common setup I see when they're separate is "ssid" for 2.4 and "ssid5" for 5ghz.

22 Eargesplitten
Oct 10, 2010



Okay. I think I'll probably keep them the same, since it's a 950 sq. ft. townhouse. The most interference I'm getting is whatever toxic poo poo they put in the floor when they built this back in the 60s.

ThermoPhysical
Dec 26, 2007



So I forgot the power cable for the router when mailing it off yesterday. Anyone know what's gonna happen next? :v: This is TigerDirect we're talking about so I'm sure they're going to take $50 or someshit for it instead of just cancelling the RMA and letting me do it again with the cable.

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Uncle Spriggly
Jan 29, 2009
I'm in the market for a new wireless router and I have some generic questions. My girlfriend and I are the only ones using it and we'll be living in a fairly small apartment. I spend a good portion of my manchild life on online games and I'm curious if I'd need a 100+ dollar router or if the 50-100 range would suffice. Worst case I imagine three devices going at once, one of which would be streaming netflix. Any suggestions?

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