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OldSenileGuy
Mar 13, 2001
Do routers like....go bad over time? I had some Linksys router that was supposedly "the best" in the late 2000s, but by 2011 I was having to reboot it all the time and getting tired of it's unreliability, so I splurged on an Apple Airport Extreme MC340LL/A. It's been fantastic ever since then. I don't think I've touched it once since 2011, which is exactly what I want out of a router.

However, lately I've started to notice my WiFi dropping out when I'm at the extreme edges of my apartment. Is it normal for a router to just start crapping out and losing range with age? Wirecutter says to buy the TP-Link Archer A20 or, if I want to save some money, the TP-Link Archer A7. If the loss of range is a signal that my router is on it's last legs I'll buy one of these, but if there's something I can do to extend it's life I'd rather just do that since I have no complaints with this router otherwise.

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H110Hawk
Dec 28, 2006
Yes. Electronics wear out. Consumer ones doubly so.

Unlikely case is you got new neighbors anywhere in range that is overlapping with your wifi channels and crowding you out. Newer ac 5ghz systems handle this better, a lot has happened in 9 years.

H110Hawk fucked around with this message at 02:39 on May 15, 2020

Internet Explorer
Jun 1, 2005





You have to replace your router more often than once every decade, yes.

Hadlock
Nov 9, 2004

Capacitors (essential electronic components) wear out, the liquid inside evaporates or boils off. A top quality capacitor will last for 25 years but the garbage they put in consumer electronics are likely good for 5, maybe 15 years if you buy high end name brand like Apple

Also antennas oxidize, connectors oxidize etc etc. Wifi components are typically the first to wear out. I've replaced my fair share of wifi antennas on laptops over the years.

OldSenileGuy
Mar 13, 2001
Ugh, it never ends with this technology. I'm just gonna go live in the woods.

Thanks for the info. I'm gonna start keeping an eye on Amazon to see if one of those TP-Link models goes on sale.

Internet Explorer
Jun 1, 2005





Also devices stop getting updated. I can almost guarantee that both of your routers had serious unpatched exploits and I'd bet decent money they were exploited. Very few things in tech last a decade. Sorry.

LRADIKAL
Jun 10, 2001

Fun Shoe

Minidust posted:

I'm in the market for a router - main motivation is to just stop renting Verizon's like a sucker, but I might as well get some functional improvement while I'm at it.

Currently have the standard FiOS-G1100; service is Verzon's internet-only "gigabit." There's no discrete modem, just an ethernet cable run into the house from outside and plugged directly into the router (I think there'd be a coax cable involved if I had TV service).

Router is located in the basement of a 2-story house. In the basement I have this gigabit ethernet switch (accountinng for a Roku, media server and some console gaming stuff), and there's also an ethernet cable run up to the second floor of the house (serving another switch with a PC gaming setup). First floor is the "wifi-only" floor with most of the traffic coming from 2 Apple TVs.

I'm not opposed to a "gaming router" if it's gonna meet my needs, I just don't wanna go overboard with elite xtreme gamer features since the devices that matter already have a wired connection. Biggest area for improvement is definitely the Apple TVs on the first floor, especially since one of them is in a location with no basement under it (garage conversion).

Any recommendations for this setup? I'll just need to make sure that the router works with FiOS (from what I understand this would be more complicated if I had the Verizon TV service, so I'm off the hook there), and that it can accommodate two ethernet cables connected to their own switches. Thanks!



e: added some details for clarification

Unifi USG, Dumb switch, Unifi access point closest to where you need it.

dpkg chopra
Jun 9, 2007

Fast Food Fight

Grimey Drawer
My apartment has 2-pair cable running through some in-wall conduits, it was originally used for the phone system which I no longer need. While the exits aren't in the best spots, I figured I'd replace the 2-cable with some Cat6 and use that to hardwire some devices.

The conduits are fairly large (much wider than the actual cable) and when I pulled the 2-pair cable I could see movement on the other end, so hopefully it won't be too much of a pain in the rear end.

What's the easiest way to use the existing 2-pair cable to pull through the Cat6 cable? I imagine that tying them together somehow and pulling on the 2-pair will be a lot easier than just trying to push through the Cat6.

Any tips?

Thanks!

dpkg chopra fucked around with this message at 21:12 on May 15, 2020

H110Hawk
Dec 28, 2006

Ur Getting Fatter posted:

The conduits are fairly large (much wider than the actual cable) and when I pulled the 2-pair cable I could see movement on the other end, so hopefully it won't be too much of a pain in the rear end.

What's the easiest way to use the existing 2-pair cable to pull through the Cat6 cable? I imagine that tying them together somehow and pulling on the 2-pair will be a lot easier than just trying to push through the Cat6.


If I were doing this, this is how I would try it:

Strip back an inch or two of both wire bundle outer sheething, leaving the insulation on the individual colors intact, and twist together several of the individual colors end-to-end, like the cat6 looks coming out of the sheething with two colors twisted together, not like you're doing an electrical splice with a wirenut. Lay it all flat/bunched together, and wrap electrical tape from sheething-to-sheething across the splices you just made, like you're putting back the sheething you removed. Tear it off, then go back the opposite direction. Make sure it is nominally flexible. Push some up into the conduit, pull some out the other side. If it has a good smooth flow, just pull from the other side, otherwise feed in, pull out. With 2 people it will go a lot faster.

This might be totally wrong, but it's how I would try to screw it up the first time. Stop if you get too much resistance at a corner. You can back it out and try again if you want to re-wrap it.

fletcher
Jun 27, 2003

ken park is my favorite movie

Cybernetic Crumb
Does the Unifi Dream Machine run the same controller software as the Cloud Key Gen2? I got a UDM for my parents house, just wanted to confirm before I head over there this weekend to set it up.

My dad got a Google Nest Wifi but it doesn't support ethernet backhaul, so I was going to replace that with the UDM and a couple FlexHD's to get the whole house covered.

MrMoo
Sep 14, 2000

fletcher posted:

My dad got a Google Nest Wifi but it doesn't support ethernet backhaul,

I have 3 running as just an access point (AP) which is that configuration, what were you specifically looking for?

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


The Nest Wi-Fi doesn't have ethernet on the remote pods, Google Wi-Fi does.

Nohearum
Nov 2, 2013
Has anyone had any luck connecting to the TP-Link router print server from a Linux device? I just picked up an Archer C7 and it allows you to connect a printer via USB. They provide an application to install for Windows/Mac OS (TP-Link USB Printer Controller) that lets you connect to the router to print. Works fine from Mac OS but I tend to run Linux most of the time...so I've been trying to get that setup. I can't find any detailed documentation on what protocol they are using.

mobby_6kl
Aug 9, 2009

I just set up Pi-hole on my raspberry print server and wanted to configure the router, which is ISP-branded but seems to be from Ubee interactive according to the mac address. I went to change the DNS server in the router and



What. It's clearly a valid address (even shows up in connected clients) but just won't accept it as either the primary or alternative DNS. Any ideas why it might not like it? I can't find anything online because it's a weird oem model.

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


Is it upset that the DNS server is in the DHCP pool range?

Burden
Jul 25, 2006

See if putting the pihole IP in the primary and secondary DNS servers makes it work.

Warbird
May 23, 2012

America's Favorite Dumbass

Is there a sane way to get a TP-Link to fail over to a DNS server if the default one goes belly up? I'm pretty sure the sporadic failure of my local reverse proxy is due to my C7 swapping back and forth from using the pihole and the secondary googleDNS (iirc). I'd just pull the latter, but I've had Piholes up and die while out of town and the wife is rarely in the mood to play "fix the router settings" when that happens. I'm playing around with the docker networking stuff that was brought up before so I may be able to do a couple of containerized instances of PH for redundancy purposes though that would mean that I'd be looking at a single point of failure should the server go boom for some reason.

H110Hawk
Dec 28, 2006

Warbird posted:

Is there a sane way to get a TP-Link to fail over to a DNS server if the default one goes belly up? I'm pretty sure the sporadic failure of my local reverse proxy is due to my C7 swapping back and forth from using the pihole and the secondary googleDNS (iirc). I'd just pull the latter, but I've had Piholes up and die while out of town and the wife is rarely in the mood to play "fix the router settings" when that happens. I'm playing around with the docker networking stuff that was brought up before so I may be able to do a couple of containerized instances of PH for redundancy purposes though that would mean that I'd be looking at a single point of failure should the server go boom for some reason.

Secondary dns servers are nominally pointless for clients, unless something has changed recently their timeouts are so high as to imply the internet is broken. (Minutes) but you can test this out. Unplug your pi from the network, specifically do not just turn off pihole - you need timeout not server refused connection.

Internet Explorer
Jun 1, 2005





I'll offer a dissenting voice, but its early and I'm tired so I'm not going to find links to support. At least on Windows, and I'm fairly sure for most OSes, client DNS servers are not "hit the primary unless it doesn't respond, then hit the secondary." There is a process to it, so it's not entirely random, but you cannot control it so that it will never use the secondary unless the primary fails.

This is a common problem at small businesses. Someone will set up a DNS server that has a bunch of internal records and they won't have a secondary, so they'll put the ISP DNS servers as secondary and then internal resources will randomly break because their ISP does not have those internal records.

Set up another Pi hole, accept that it is a single point of failure, or accept inconsistent results. Those are basically your choices.

Raymond T. Racing
Jun 11, 2019

Internet Explorer posted:

I'll offer a dissenting voice, but its early and I'm tired so I'm not going to find links to support. At least on Windows, and I'm fairly sure for most OSes, client DNS servers are not "hit the primary unless it doesn't respond, then hit the secondary." There is a process to it, so it's not entirely random, but you cannot control it so that it will never use the secondary unless the primary fails.

This is a common problem at small businesses. Someone will set up a DNS server that has a bunch of internal records and they won't have a secondary, so they'll put the ISP DNS servers as secondary and then internal resources will randomly break because their ISP does not have those internal records.

Set up another Pi hole, accept that it is a single point of failure, or accept inconsistent results. Those are basically your choices.

Yup, all that will do is randomly break things. Additionally, I never agree with containerizing anything that's critical for networking unless you know what you're doing.

DNS is generally round robined if you've got multiple, so failover is more difficult than "primary/secondary".

Warbird
May 23, 2012

America's Favorite Dumbass

H110Hawk posted:

Secondary dns servers are nominally pointless for clients, unless something has changed recently their timeouts are so high as to imply the internet is broken. (Minutes) but you can test this out. Unplug your pi from the network, specifically do not just turn off pihole - you need timeout not server refused connection.

I'll go putter with that this evening and see how it goes. With the stuff below I may just point it at a container running on the server and leave it at that. The host it would be running on shouldn't be going down unless everything else is already so no loss there I suppose. I was mostly skiddish about relying on an SD card to not blow out and this does address that pretty well.

namlosh posted:

Hey, I was just able to get this working after about a day of messing with it. Great timing. I had to cobble correct and complete instructions from a couple of different articles. It was a pain to figure out how to get it working but in the end the number of steps is really small.
I used that article to gain some understanding but mainly this one:
https://geekvisit.com/pi-hole-and-macvlan/

Just got around to looking into this and son of a bitch if that that wasn't a whole lot easier. I'm really starting to come around on the whole docker-compose thing. I need to get these things up on a repo somewhere for safe keeping. Now that I've got a working point to start from on this I can start getting really stupid. Thankfully 'rona means I can be around to fix my breaking things until I get the bugs worked out.

Warbird fucked around with this message at 17:00 on May 16, 2020

H110Hawk
Dec 28, 2006
I would be thrilled to be wrong here. Servers now have a concept of health, allowing for the faster upstream resolvers to be prioritized over slower ones. This helps in ddos protection. (Authoritative ones for domains.) My experience with OS+ISP+ whatever awful resolver library some clever software programmer decided to use has been flat awful in degraded scenarios. It's getting more consistent - software more reliably use the OS resolver library and servers but then you have Firefox thinking their poo poo doesn't stink and you're right back where you started.

Please post your trip report and testing methodology!

Murgos
Oct 21, 2010
Thinking of upgrading my home network and getting out from some perpetual monthly fees.

I have RCN with 500 Mbps internet service (no cable or telephone) and the RCN website say I need to use a model with DOCSIS 3.1 support,

RCN posted:

Motorola MB8600 and the Netgear C7800 DOCSIS 3.1 is not compatible with the RCN network.

Is there a good recommendation for an alternative since those two would have been my first choices?

Additionally, I would like to install a mesh network that covers the house (basement + 2 floors around 2500 sq-ft) and out to about the middle of the back yard, around 40 ft. There is a kitchen window I could perch an access point on if it were moderately narrow to 'see into' the back yard or a bedroom window on the upper floor.

So, along with the modem I would be looking at a router, switch, wifi base station and at least one AP? Probably WiFi 6 if it's not retarded expensive for a good one?

Edit: What about :
Arris SB8200
And
Netgear Orbi 752
Or just wait a few more months and better stuff is coming?

Murgos fucked around with this message at 22:22 on May 16, 2020

astral
Apr 26, 2004

cage-free egghead posted:

So ever since I upgraded to an Edgerouter my Chromecast has had a really hard time staying connected and I'm not figuring out why. Tried with Smart Queue on and off, have correct DNS settings, no clue what else could be affecting it. All other wifi devices work like normal but the Chromecast just cannot do it.

I did a quick search and this thread on their forums suggests disabling IGMP snooping might fix it.

Minidust
Nov 4, 2009

Keep bustin'

LRADIKAL posted:

Unifi USG, Dumb switch, Unifi access point closest to where you need it.
Okay I have to admit, the reviews for the USG on Amazon are completely incomprehensible to me.:crossarms: So I suspect I'm not knowledgeable enough to reap the benefits of this product. But thanks for the recommendation!!

SlowBloke
Aug 14, 2017
FYI Ubiquiti has stared offering a unifi wifi6 access point in their EA section, their first ax device is the u6 lite. It's a 2x2 ax unit so if you have advanced apple devices(iphone pro, ipad pro or macbook) keep in mind a classic 3x3/4x4 ac access point might be faster. Caveat emptor

LRADIKAL
Jun 10, 2001

Fun Shoe

Minidust posted:

Okay I have to admit, the reviews for the USG on Amazon are completely incomprehensible to me.:crossarms: So I suspect I'm not knowledgeable enough to reap the benefits of this product. But thanks for the recommendation!!

It's not that bad. People here can help. It's pretty good stuff. There's also the Unifi dream machine, but the previous suggestion is cheaper and gives you a choice of where to put your access point.

SlowBloke
Aug 14, 2017

LRADIKAL posted:

It's not that bad. People here can help. It's pretty good stuff. There's also the Unifi dream machine, but the previous suggestion is cheaper and gives you a choice of where to put your access point.

There is nothing stopping you from adding extra ap or switches to a udm, as long as the cumulative unifi device number is under 15. I would personally suggest to go udm rather than going usg today.

mobby_6kl
Aug 9, 2009

Thanks Ants posted:

Is it upset that the DNS server is in the DHCP pool range?
Huh that could be it. The address is already fixed but it is in the pool range so it is possible it doesn't like it. I'll check if I can change it easily without messing anything up on my network, but I already saw my ISP will upgrade my modem to a much newer one for :10bux::10bux: so I might as well just do that instead.

Burden posted:

See if putting the pihole IP in the primary and secondary DNS servers makes it work.
Nope, and if I put it into the secondary only, it just resets it to 0.0.0.0 silently lol.


Also wtf Microsoft.



Good job switching from using subnet mask after 30 years and not providing any hint, basic validation or even templated text boxes like you got in the control panel.

SlowBloke
Aug 14, 2017

mobby_6kl posted:


Also wtf Microsoft.



Good job switching from using subnet mask after 30 years and not providing any hint, basic validation or even templated text boxes like you got in the control panel.

That panel is known for being unreliable, use the old network center in control panel as long as it's still there.

mobby_6kl
Aug 9, 2009

Yeah it's garbage. The old control panel also lets you specify the DNS servers while keeping DHCP, here it's all or nothing. How difficult is it to make a decent control panel?

Internet Explorer
Jun 1, 2005





mobby_6kl posted:

Yeah it's garbage. The old control panel also lets you specify the DNS servers while keeping DHCP, here it's all or nothing. How difficult is it to make a decent control panel?

Microsoft has been working on it for like a loving decade at this point. It's crazy. How they couldn't have completely replicate the control panel in settings already at this point is insane.

derk
Sep 24, 2004
what do you guys use for outdoor AP's? i looked at unifi, but 500 smackers hurts. I might just be better off sticking a regular one in my bedroom window. i get it is made for the weather and such, but hot drat. only problem i have is this is a brick house, wifi does make it outside a little bit but the signal is dropped pretty good because of the brick. i use a ER-X and 2 AC Lite Ap's currently.

H110Hawk
Dec 28, 2006

derk posted:

what do you guys use for outdoor AP's? i looked at unifi, but 500 smackers hurts. I might just be better off sticking a regular one in my bedroom window. i get it is made for the weather and such, but hot drat. only problem i have is this is a brick house, wifi does make it outside a little bit but the signal is dropped pretty good because of the brick. i use a ER-X and 2 AC Lite Ap's currently.

True outdoor rated AP's are a specific thing which include a lot of weather protection integrated into it. STP connectors, grounding hookups, uv+rain protection, etc. Have you tried sticking one of your AP's in the window yet?

astral
Apr 26, 2004

derk posted:

what do you guys use for outdoor AP's? i looked at unifi, but 500 smackers hurts. I might just be better off sticking a regular one in my bedroom window. i get it is made for the weather and such, but hot drat. only problem i have is this is a brick house, wifi does make it outside a little bit but the signal is dropped pretty good because of the brick. i use a ER-X and 2 AC Lite Ap's currently.

Would it be mounted on something like a porch ceiling (sheltered from things like direct rain) or fully exposed to the elements? If the former, the UAP-AC-Pro should be fine since it's advertised for 'indirect weather'.

Head Bee Guy
Jun 12, 2011

Retarded for Busting
Grimey Drawer
I'm trying to hook up a Western Digital external drive to my TP-Link Archer to share files between computers on my home network. But when I plug it in, the router only seems tor recognize ~200mb on the drive, even though it has a 2tb capacity. Anyone know what's up with this?

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


derk posted:

what do you guys use for outdoor AP's? i looked at unifi, but 500 smackers hurts. I might just be better off sticking a regular one in my bedroom window. i get it is made for the weather and such, but hot drat. only problem i have is this is a brick house, wifi does make it outside a little bit but the signal is dropped pretty good because of the brick. i use a ER-X and 2 AC Lite Ap's currently.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1488887-REG/aruba_r2x10a_instant_on_ap17_outdoor.html

But if you already have UniFi then you'll want to stick with that system. What about the UniFi Mesh (non-Pro)?

derk
Sep 24, 2004

astral posted:

Would it be mounted on something like a porch ceiling (sheltered from things like direct rain) or fully exposed to the elements? If the former, the UAP-AC-Pro should be fine since it's advertised for 'indirect weather'.

the best i could do is to mount it in the soffit. no covered porches exist on this house.

mobby_6kl
Aug 9, 2009

Head Bee Guy posted:

I'm trying to hook up a Western Digital external drive to my TP-Link Archer to share files between computers on my home network. But when I plug it in, the router only seems tor recognize ~200mb on the drive, even though it has a 2tb capacity. Anyone know what's up with this?
Does it work fine on the PC? Maybe it's got weird partitions on it and/or needs to be formatted.

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Murgos
Oct 21, 2010
UniFi AmpliFi mesh kit and Arris SB8200 Docsis 3.1 modem?

Is the Surfboard the way to go for modems even though it's not motorola anymore?

Edit: or Unifi Dream Machine and nano APs?

Murgos fucked around with this message at 22:27 on May 17, 2020

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