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Warbird
May 23, 2012

America's Favorite Dumbass

Ok I think I remember why I thought I didn't have data wiring for 3 years. There's no drat place to get "in" the wiring from what I can find. The wall where the data coax comes in it just input coax (one cable/satellite, one internet), the surround sound panel dohickey and a couple of front speaker access points, some electrical outlets, and a few "blank" panels that just open into the empty inaccessible area under the stairs. I'll post some photos later.

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TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
Can anyone point me to a wikihow or YouTube or something on the best way to PROPERLY run wiring to rooms? Specifically to create an outlet in an already dry walled room. Currently I have wires poking through where the carpet meets the mounding and know that's not proper.

I'll likely be doing a full rewire of my house and want to do it well.

To that end, if I'm bothering to run wire, I should definitely do cat 6, right? Is best practice to run one drop to a room and then if I need more connections in it to put a hub or switch or should I be running as many as I think I will need devices for.

Warbird
May 23, 2012

America's Favorite Dumbass

Thanks Ants posted:

Unscrew your phone jacks and see what's there, they're probably punched into RJ11 keystones in which case you just need to order yourself some new keystones and a punchdown tool. Or I guess you can get tool-free keystone jacks and save yourself the hassle.

Here ya go:

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


Those are actually RJ45 jacks so it looks like you'd need to do nothing to use them for data, just move the cables at the other end into a switch.

Warbird
May 23, 2012

America's Favorite Dumbass

And now I'm posting from that sweet sweet wired connection. Ain't that a gas? Thankfully I had a small powered switch handy that I was able to stuff into that panel area so everything's great. My (and by "my" I mean "my wife's") only gripe is that I have to run cable around the corner of the room and into our pantry where the switch now lives. It's doubly annoying as it's only about 3 feet as the crow flies from where things go into the house. I suppose I could make a couple of holes, but I'd rather let someone insured deal with making large holes in our drywall.

Any ideas where that cord for Cat5 Data In might be terminating? We have a satellite dish on the roof from a previous owner so I wonder if that's somehow related to all this. I think there's a panel out back I can pop open.

H110Hawk
Dec 28, 2006

Warbird posted:

Here ya go:

Yeah, 568A/B label means it's RJ-45. It's the pin-out spec (color code -> pin mapping) for the RJ-45 jack. It might be one of the fancy RJ-11+45 jacks if it looks odd on the front. They take both cables.


I don't know what this is, but it doesn't look like something conducive to ethernet working as intended. You might need some of these if your cables just need to be connected together depending on the full cable map: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FZ4B1YK/

Warbird
May 23, 2012

America's Favorite Dumbass

I didn't attempt with the hardware pictured, but I suspect you're correct. The little switch I tossed in there has me humming along at full speed. I'm sure taking this desktop off the wifi will help things too as the WiFi cameras we recently installed have been bandwith hungry. New router soon, but I've got to talk the wife into a NAS and then I can go down that road. If I was to have some guy come out and make a couple of holes with the proper mounting dohickies who would that be and how much would that run for? I'm down to go do the wire portion myself.

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


Do you have an AT&T demarc or something on the side of your house? That would be where I'd look for the other end of that data line, along with the incoming phone stuff.

Delthalaz
Mar 5, 2003






Slippery Tilde
Hi folks, I’m looking to upgrade my router and I was hoping you could point me in the right direction. Right now I have a Tp-link ac-1750, which used to work great for my needs. My basic problem is despite living in a reasonably small apartment, I think I’m in some sort of wireless arms race with my neighbors in this crappy building and I can no longer consistently maintain connectivity on my laptop on the 5ghz network only 30 loving feet away in another room. heavy internet use, do a lot of streaming, have a bunch of devices, a NAS connected to the router by ethernet + roku, playstation, etc.

astral
Apr 26, 2004

Delthalaz posted:

Hi folks, I’m looking to upgrade my router and I was hoping you could point me in the right direction. Right now I have a Tp-link ac-1750, which used to work great for my needs. My basic problem is despite living in a reasonably small apartment, I think I’m in some sort of wireless arms race with my neighbors in this crappy building and I can no longer consistently maintain connectivity on my laptop on the 5ghz network only 30 loving feet away in another room. heavy internet use, do a lot of streaming, have a bunch of devices, a NAS connected to the router by ethernet + roku, playstation, etc.

Have you checked which wifi channels your neighbors are using? You could try changing to a less-crowded channel. You'll have a better wireless experience if as many of those devices as possible are wired, as well.

30 feet and through a wall might be pushing things to begin with depending on what the wall is made of, if there's something like metal shelving in between, etc.

Have you tried powerline networking to connect that next room over? There are some extra considerations in a shared apartment complex like making sure they're pairing with each other and not other residents' devices, but it would let you put another AP in that next room over and potentially wire up some more devices. Make sure to buy from somewhere with a generous return policy in case it doesn't work out - they can be sensitive to different types/configurations of wiring. Try to go with an AV1200 or better model.

Delthalaz
Mar 5, 2003






Slippery Tilde

astral posted:

Have you checked which wifi channels your neighbors are using? You could try changing to a less-crowded channel. You'll have a better wireless experience if as many of those devices as possible are wired, as well.

30 feet and through a wall might be pushing things to begin with depending on what the wall is made of, if there's something like metal shelving in between, etc.

Have you tried powerline networking to connect that next room over? There are some extra considerations in a shared apartment complex like making sure they're pairing with each other and not other residents' devices, but it would let you put another AP in that next room over and potentially wire up some more devices. Make sure to buy from somewhere with a generous return policy in case it doesn't work out - they can be sensitive to different types/configurations of wiring. Try to go with an AV1200 or better model.

Thanks! Hmm, I think I tried power line networking once but I don’t know for sure. One problem with that is I’m already using all the ethernet ports on my router currently. The wall in question is paper thin drywall, no shelving, so I don’t think it should be making too much of a difference.

With regard to channels I checked that once— I think it didn’t make much difference, but it’s been a while. Doesn’t the router choose less utilized channels automatically? I could try again.

astral
Apr 26, 2004

Delthalaz posted:

Thanks! Hmm, I think I tried power line networking once but I don’t know for sure. One problem with that is I’m already using all the ethernet ports on my router currently.

Might be time for a small (8-port) unmanaged switch! These are around $20 and should give you more than enough room to grow. As a bonus, if you end up changing your router to one that doesn't have an integrated switch, you'll still have enough ports. I'm personally a fan of these TRENDnet unmanaged 8-port switches for home desktop (cords all plug in on the back) applications where you don't need to be concerned about seeing port speeds, but you'll have good results with just about any name brand with a nice metal housing. The Netgear ones are pretty popular.

quote:

The wall in question is paper thin drywall, no shelving, so I don’t think it should be making too much of a difference.

That's about as good as it could get as far as not being a wide open space, so if it isn't doing as well as before I'd definitely start looking at whether something changed like the WiFi channel.

quote:

With regard to channels I checked that once— I think it didn’t make much difference, but it’s been a while. Doesn’t the router choose less utilized channels automatically? I could try again.

'Auto' is usually the worst choice for wireless channel, and then there are questions like "When does it determine which channel to use?" and "How frequently does that change?" You'll get a very inconsistent experience that way, especially in an environment dense with WiFi. Definitely run one of those WiFi analyzer apps to see which channels are in use nearby (excluding your own), and then manually pick one that doesn't overlap with those. For 2.4GHz that means picking whichever has the least use out of 1, 6, or 11. For 5GHz, ideally you'd want a non-DFS channel but if they're all being used by neighbors you might have no choice.

Mzuri
Jun 5, 2004

Who's the boss?
Dudes is lost.
Don't think coz I'm iced out,
I'm cooled off.
Hello thread! I've read the OP and tried to skim the last 20 pages, but I still have questions.

I'm moving soon from a small, one-story house with a small garden to a larger, 3-story house with an external garage. The fiber-optic box (ONT? where the optic fiber terminates in the house) is in the basement. The majority of our devices will reside on the 2nd story.

It's an old house, so there is no LAN wiring in the walls - yet, it's on my wish list. Until then, I'm thinking of plugging my old RT-N66U into the ONT, and then using powerline adapters to distribute the signal around the house and plug as many things as practical in to the wired network using a switch or two in rooms with more than one device (playstation, apple tv, computers). The wiring is probably old, so I won't hit top speed, but that's fine - it just needs to pull 30-40mbit for our needs.

However, I'm a bit unsure on how to best set up the wireless network. The OP states that I should get a couple of cheapish routers (Archer C50 maybe?) and plug them at strategic locations around the house, but I'm also hearing good things about mesh networks from e.g. Google and TP-link. I like cheap, but I also like hassle-free and not supporting my wife and kids when they move around the house with their devices. I'm also a bit concerned that routing wireless traffic through a powerline on old wiring may create bottlenecks or slowdowns. Again, we will probably survive waiting an extra second or two for that youtube video to start, but still.

Is mesh networking good? If so, I imagine the best thing is to plug one of the devices directly into my router and distribute the others around the house.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

TraderStav posted:

Can anyone point me to a wikihow or YouTube or something on the best way to PROPERLY run wiring to rooms? Specifically to create an outlet in an already dry walled room. Currently I have wires poking through where the carpet meets the mounding and know that's not proper.

I'll likely be doing a full rewire of my house and want to do it well.

To that end, if I'm bothering to run wire, I should definitely do cat 6, right? Is best practice to run one drop to a room and then if I need more connections in it to put a hub or switch or should I be running as many as I think I will need devices for.

This got a bit lost above, would love some input on this! Thanks!

chippy
Aug 16, 2006

OK I DON'T GET IT

chippy posted:

I need a new router to replace the piece of poo poo that Plusnet gave me. I was going to get an Archer C9 but I don't have a separate fibre modem, my current router has one built in, so I'd have to buy one separately.

I'm thinking that these are basically the C9 but with a built-in modem, is that correct?

And also, does anyone know why, even though they both say Archer VR900, the second one is cheaper and looks different?

https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Wireless...91093316&sr=8-1

https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Wireless...91093316&sr=8-4

edit: Also, does the USB port on these allow you to connect an external hard drive and share it over the network? And does the router have anything in its firmware to back-up said drive to a cloud service?

I think this got a bit lost, so does anyone know if the routers I linked are functionally similar to the Archer C9 with a built-in modem? I presume that since they are both AC1900 they are?

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


TraderStav posted:

This got a bit lost above, would love some input on this! Thanks!

It totally depends on your house construction - brick vs. drywall, if you have a basement/attic, which floor the room is on etc.

My ground floor walls are all brick so running cables involves cutting channels in the walls and pulling wires through the ceiling. I think most homes in the US have it a bit easier.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

Thanks Ants posted:

It totally depends on your house construction - brick vs. drywall, if you have a basement/attic, which floor the room is on etc.

My ground floor walls are all brick so running cables involves cutting channels in the walls and pulling wires through the ceiling. I think most homes in the US have it a bit easier.

Interior construction is typical wood / drywall and I have basement and an attic.

I'm speaking more about once the wire is in the room. Do I remove the molding and drill behind there to pull the wire there? Cut a hole in the wall for the termination point and outlet and pull up there? Most of my connections are able to be pushed upstairs from my basement wherever I want, second floor is another issue that I haven't solved how to get a cable up there yet. Sounds like I would get it to the attic and then drop down into the wall?

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

Mzuri posted:

:words:

However, I'm a bit unsure on how to best set up the wireless network.

:words:

Is mesh networking good? If so, I imagine the best thing is to plug one of the devices directly into my router and distribute the others around the house.

I use mesh networking in my own home - I’ll explain it in a sec. There’s a couple types and I think it’s important to differentiate because it can help you make your choice of hardware.

There’s two broad categories of mesh networking that achieve roughly the same goal but different performance characteristics from what I’ve used:

- mesh networks with a dedicated wireless backhaul (Netgear Orbi fall in this camp)
- mesh networks without a dedicated wireless backhaul (Google WiFi and Eero fall in this camp)

The practical implementation difference for these two is if it has no dedicated backhaul, the devices tend to be smaller and they use the same WiFi network you’d be using for your devices to work as the backhaul. If it has a dedicated backhaul, the devices tend to be bigger and they use an entirely separate wireless frequency or frequencies for the backhaul.

BTW, I keep talking about the backhaul. That’s where the traffic for the mesh nodes talking to each other occurs. This is important in cases where if you have computer A connected to Node A and you’re transferring data to a computer B connected to node B, if there’s a separate backhaul then you won’t be impacting the speed/performance of your WiFi network directly by using precious bandwidth on that channel. If it doesn’t have the dedicated backhaul, then your WiFi network’s performance will be impacted.

If you don’t have crazy fast internet (e.g. 100mbps or less), then the solutions without a dedicated backhaul are fine.

However, I have gigabit so trying to eek out some solid performance across my house is important to me. Additionally, I was looking to hard wire devices to the satellite like my desktop computer that’s across the house from the core networking gear.

After buying a couple and trying them out, I settled on the Netgear Orbi’s but I’ve used the Google WiFi and Eero’s. The Orbi’s by far outperformed the other two when it came to heavy traffic loads. Anything light like streaming didn’t matter too much but since I have a NAS I backup big files to as well as perform Time Machine backups to, the Orbi won out.

My setup is the ONT->Asus RT-AC68U->Orbi Router (bridge mode). Then in two different locations in the house, there are Orbi satellites. One satellite is next to the TV including the XBox One and Apple TV. The other satellite is in my home office, next to my desktop and laptop setups. The NAS is connected to an unmanaged switch directly connected to the RT-AC68U.

To set some expectations, most of the big file transferring occurs from the desktop connected via gigabit directly to the Orbi satellite in the home office. I can do the following simultaneously without the network really flinching:

- transfer 20+ GB file at ~50 MB/s (utilizing the wireless backhaul, not the wifi network)
- stream 4K 2160p content to the Apple TV coming from the NAS via Plex (utilizing wireless backhaul, not the wifi network)
- two active Zoom calls

That’s a pretty good strain on the network. Once in a while we might get a little chop in video but in general, I’ve watched whole movies without any real issue.

So - that same workload was what I used to test out Google WiFi and the Eero and they didn’t really hold up as well. Didn’t fall over entirely but the video for anything streaming got choppy and the file transfer performance was definitely lower. That said, my test was pretty brutal for anything using wireless at some point in the network so it’s not surprising it strains devices.

The cost of the Orbis in total is around $450 at the time I bought them but they’ve paid for themselves in terms of resiliency and not causing me much of a problem once I got them configured the way I want.

TL;DR: If you’re not trying to build a full blown robust network on top of a WiFi backbone, this setup is probably overkill. I believe a 3 node pack of the Google WiFi mesh system is about $300 or maybe even less these days.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

Dick Nipples posted:

I use mesh networking in my own home - I’ll explain it in a sec. There’s a couple types and I think it’s important to differentiate because it can help you make your choice of hardware.

There’s two broad categories of mesh networking that achieve roughly the same goal but different performance characteristics from what I’ve used:

- mesh networks with a dedicated wireless backhaul (Netgear Orbi fall in this camp)
- mesh networks without a dedicated wireless backhaul (Google WiFi and Eero fall in this camp)

The practical implementation difference for these two is if it has no dedicated backhaul, the devices tend to be smaller and they use the same WiFi network you’d be using for your devices to work as the backhaul. If it has a dedicated backhaul, the devices tend to be bigger and they use an entirely separate wireless frequency or frequencies for the backhaul.

BTW, I keep talking about the backhaul. That’s where the traffic for the mesh nodes talking to each other occurs. This is important in cases where if you have computer A connected to Node A and you’re transferring data to a computer B connected to node B, if there’s a separate backhaul then you won’t be impacting the speed/performance of your WiFi network directly by using precious bandwidth on that channel. If it doesn’t have the dedicated backhaul, then your WiFi network’s performance will be impacted.

If you don’t have crazy fast internet (e.g. 100mbps or less), then the solutions without a dedicated backhaul are fine.

However, I have gigabit so trying to eek out some solid performance across my house is important to me. Additionally, I was looking to hard wire devices to the satellite like my desktop computer that’s across the house from the core networking gear.

After buying a couple and trying them out, I settled on the Netgear Orbi’s but I’ve used the Google WiFi and Eero’s. The Orbi’s by far outperformed the other two when it came to heavy traffic loads. Anything light like streaming didn’t matter too much but since I have a NAS I backup big files to as well as perform Time Machine backups to, the Orbi won out.

My setup is the ONT->Asus RT-AC68U->Orbi Router (bridge mode). Then in two different locations in the house, there are Orbi satellites. One satellite is next to the TV including the XBox One and Apple TV. The other satellite is in my home office, next to my desktop and laptop setups. The NAS is connected to an unmanaged switch directly connected to the RT-AC68U.

To set some expectations, most of the big file transferring occurs from the desktop connected via gigabit directly to the Orbi satellite in the home office. I can do the following simultaneously without the network really flinching:

- transfer 20+ GB file at ~50 MB/s (utilizing the wireless backhaul, not the wifi network)
- stream 4K 2160p content to the Apple TV coming from the NAS via Plex (utilizing wireless backhaul, not the wifi network)
- two active Zoom calls

That’s a pretty good strain on the network. Once in a while we might get a little chop in video but in general, I’ve watched whole movies without any real issue.

So - that same workload was what I used to test out Google WiFi and the Eero and they didn’t really hold up as well. Didn’t fall over entirely but the video for anything streaming got choppy and the file transfer performance was definitely lower. That said, my test was pretty brutal for anything using wireless at some point in the network so it’s not surprising it strains devices.

The cost of the Orbis in total is around $450 at the time I bought them but they’ve paid for themselves in terms of resiliency and not causing me much of a problem once I got them configured the way I want.

TL;DR: If you’re not trying to build a full blown robust network on top of a WiFi backbone, this setup is probably overkill. I believe a 3 node pack of the Google WiFi mesh system is about $300 or maybe even less these days.

Can you weigh in on connecting the Google Wifi pucks to a hardwire ethernet for their 'backhaul' rather than relying on them to connect wirelessly? I'm in the process of doing that for a few of my stations right now that seem to be getting less than stellar performance. Does this effectively turn the Google Wifi into a series of APs instead of Mesh? I'm not sure the tradeoffs of having a series of APs versus a Mesh, so I may need to educate myself on that also.

For what it's worth, in the next 6 months I intend to junk my Google Wifi and convert over to a UniFi set up, so am also evaluating if I should be looking into getting UniFI APs or their Mesh solution.

SamDabbers
May 26, 2003



TraderStav posted:

Can you weigh in on connecting the Google Wifi pucks to a hardwire ethernet for their 'backhaul' rather than relying on them to connect wirelessly? I'm in the process of doing that for a few of my stations right now that seem to be getting less than stellar performance. Does this effectively turn the Google Wifi into a series of APs instead of Mesh? I'm not sure the tradeoffs of having a series of APs versus a Mesh, so I may need to educate myself on that also.

For what it's worth, in the next 6 months I intend to junk my Google Wifi and convert over to a UniFi set up, so am also evaluating if I should be looking into getting UniFI APs or their Mesh solution.

Wired backhaul is the best kind of backhaul because it's all dedicated, unshared bandwidth.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

SamDabbers posted:

Wired backhaul is the best kind of backhaul because it's all dedicated, unshared bandwidth.

I saw a passing comment on a reddit thread that it diminishes/eliminates the mesh capability for any pucks that are hardwired. That was my concern, but not knowing enough about what Mesh does is if that matters or if it becoming an AP (if that's true) is better.

thiazi
Sep 27, 2002

TraderStav posted:

I saw a passing comment on a reddit thread that it diminishes/eliminates the mesh capability for any pucks that are hardwired. That was my concern, but not knowing enough about what Mesh does is if that matters or if it becoming an AP (if that's true) is better.

I know there is more technical nuance, but think of WiFi mesh as simply APs with wireless backhaul (dedicated or not). Your clients dictate how they latch onto the APs, it's not like the mesh is actively forcing clients to the best node. (this is my understanding, smarter people will be along to correct me.)

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

thiazi posted:

I know there is more technical nuance, but think of WiFi mesh as simply APs with wireless backhaul (dedicated or not). Your clients dictate how they latch onto the APs, it's not like the mesh is actively forcing clients to the best node. (this is my understanding, smarter people will be along to correct me.)

Ahhh, that does help. So if I am capable of getting a wired backhaul, Mesh is irrelevant for me.

That helps me a lot, and given that I don't think I actually need any wired connections in my second floor, I may not be concerned about getting Ethernet up there any way and just let a first floor AP serve it.

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


TraderStav posted:

Interior construction is typical wood / drywall and I have basement and an attic.

I'm speaking more about once the wire is in the room. Do I remove the molding and drill behind there to pull the wire there? Cut a hole in the wall for the termination point and outlet and pull up there? Most of my connections are able to be pushed upstairs from my basement wherever I want, second floor is another issue that I haven't solved how to get a cable up there yet. Sounds like I would get it to the attic and then drop down into the wall?

Drill up from the basement, and drill down from the attic. Then your only issue is getting all the cables from the basement to the attic but usually there will be services that go the full height of your house (e.g. the vent stack) so find these and you'll have a way in. Dropping cables down from the attic will probably involve you hitting horizontal timbers about halfway up the wall so you might need to open the wall up to drill through these, or just use the upstairs to mount access points, bring the network out inside closet space etc. where it being 2 metres off the ground isn't an issue. I can't really help much more than that as I'm not hugely familiar with how houses are built in the USA.

GnarlyCharlie4u
Sep 23, 2007

I have an unhealthy obsession with motorcycles.

Proof

Thanks Ants posted:

Drill up from the basement, and drill down from the attic. Then your only issue is getting all the cables from the basement to the attic but usually there will be services that go the full height of your house (e.g. the vent stack) so find these and you'll have a way in. Dropping cables down from the attic will probably involve you hitting horizontal timbers about halfway up the wall so you might need to open the wall up to drill through these, or just use the upstairs to mount access points, bring the network out inside closet space etc. where it being 2 metres off the ground isn't an issue. I can't really help much more than that as I'm not hugely familiar with how houses are built in the USA.

I just use a big fuckoff drill bit (like this) to get through the wood fire-stops, but ideally you should actually open the wall and fill the hole with fire-stop putty after you've run your cables anyway. You might run into issues getting through the insulation in your walls. Interior walls are less likely to have insulation, but that doesn't mean it's not there. However, you're also more likely to run into plumbing in your interior walls since builders don't run pipes on exterior walls, at least not in my area.
The advantage of the flex auger bit is that you can cut your hole for the network jack, then just feed the bit in there and drill down into the basement to pass cables through more easily, rather than try and drill up from the basement and have no idea where behind the wall your bit poked through.

I was lucky enough that when I built my house I had the builder install a conduit from the basement to the attic so that I could run a fiber from my rack to my aggregate switch upstairs. I haven't done it yet because I'm lazy, but I have the ability to do it easily once I get around to installing the switch upstairs.

Mzuri
Jun 5, 2004

Who's the boss?
Dudes is lost.
Don't think coz I'm iced out,
I'm cooled off.

Dick Nipples posted:

Snip great info!

TL;DR: If you’re not trying to build a full blown robust network on top of a WiFi backbone, this setup is probably overkill. I believe a 3 node pack of the Google WiFi mesh system is about $300 or maybe even less these days.

Thanks for taking the time to type that up, that was exactly what I was looking for :cheers:

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

TraderStav posted:

Can you weigh in on connecting the Google Wifi pucks to a hardwire ethernet for their 'backhaul' rather than relying on them to connect wirelessly? I'm in the process of doing that for a few of my stations right now that seem to be getting less than stellar performance. Does this effectively turn the Google Wifi into a series of APs instead of Mesh? I'm not sure the tradeoffs of having a series of APs versus a Mesh, so I may need to educate myself on that also.

For what it's worth, in the next 6 months I intend to junk my Google Wifi and convert over to a UniFi set up, so am also evaluating if I should be looking into getting UniFI APs or their Mesh solution.

Basically what others said from what I’ve read. I didn’t test wired backhaul personally because the house isn’t wired for cat5/6 and power line was only hitting about 100mbps. In other words, the most robust wireless backhaul was a deciding factor.

Amplifi Alien from Ubiquiti or the new WiFi 6 versions of the Orbi are on my radar going forward but I’ll wait for that pricing to down a little.

astral
Apr 26, 2004

Dick Nipples posted:

Basically what others said from what I’ve read. I didn’t test wired backhaul personally because the house isn’t wired for cat5/6 and power line was only hitting about 100mbps. In other words, the most robust wireless backhaul was a deciding factor.

Amplifi Alien from Ubiquiti or the new WiFi 6 versions of the Orbi are on my radar going forward but I’ll wait for that pricing to down a little.

Which powerline units were you using?

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

astral posted:

Which powerline units were you using?

TP-Link AV2000. Just did the speedtest again I’m getting about 120-130mbps on the same floor across the house. Meanwhile, speedtest over WiFi connected to the Orbi network is about 220-250mbps.

This house is a flip and I’m guessing there’s some screwy electrical here and there. I used the AV2000 in an older house and was getting drat good speeds. I forget what but something like 500mbps+ which my current router only does 750mbps WAN-to-LAN anyway.

kid sinister
Nov 16, 2002
OP hasn't been updated in 2 years. What's the Wifi 6 router of choice now for personal use?

Inept
Jul 8, 2003

Dick Nipples posted:

TP-Link AV2000. Just did the speedtest again I’m getting about 120-130mbps on the same floor across the house. Meanwhile, speedtest over WiFi connected to the Orbi network is about 220-250mbps.

This house is a flip and I’m guessing there’s some screwy electrical here and there. I used the AV2000 in an older house and was getting drat good speeds. I forget what but something like 500mbps+ which my current router only does 750mbps WAN-to-LAN anyway.

Yeah, as soon as you have to cross the breaker panel, powerline performance drops off significantly.

RestingB1tchFace
Jul 4, 2016

Opinions are like a$$holes....everyone has one....but mines the best!!!
Figured with the lockdown and everyone using wifi, it would be a good time to upgrade the router. Recommendations? Currently have an Asus RT-AC66R. Router placed on middle level. About 5,000 square foot house. Lots of video streaming. Multiple computers going at once. Not really much online gaming or any. Downloading/uploading is minimal.

Is a single point router the best choice? Or would it be a good idea to get something like an Orbi? Router on one level - extender on each of the other two? I see that the extenders and the router have a dedicated band. My house is run for CAT5....so the extenders could be hardwired to the router which I think would increase performance.

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

RestingB1tchFace posted:

Figured with the lockdown and everyone using wifi, it would be a good time to upgrade the router. Recommendations? Currently have an Asus RT-AC66R. Router placed on middle level. About 5,000 square foot house. Lots of video streaming. Multiple computers going at once. Not really much online gaming or any. Downloading/uploading is minimal.

Is a single point router the best choice? Or would it be a good idea to get something like an Orbi? Router on one level - extender on each of the other two? I see that the extenders and the router have a dedicated band. My house is run for CAT5....so the extenders could be hardwired to the router which I think would increase performance.

I just went in my Orbi love fest a few posts back. I have a house less than half the size of yours with 3 Orbi nodes lol.

That said. I really do like them - make sure you get the RBK50 model if you’re thinking of buying them. They use the AC3000 chipset.

Honestly, you don’t need three nodes - I have three because I wanted to hard wire in my office and hard wire my media center stuff to take advantage of the wireless backhaul.

In general, my not scientific at all approach is one WiFi node per 1000sqft in a house. With the amount of traffic I’m pushing around between my wife and I both working from home as well as kids streaming poo poo, I just overbuild poo poo.

RestingB1tchFace
Jul 4, 2016

Opinions are like a$$holes....everyone has one....but mines the best!!!

Dick Nipples posted:

I just went in my Orbi love fest a few posts back. I have a house less than half the size of yours with 3 Orbi nodes lol.

That said. I really do like them - make sure you get the RBK50 model if you’re thinking of buying them. They use the AC3000 chipset.

Honestly, you don’t need three nodes - I have three because I wanted to hard wire in my office and hard wire my media center stuff to take advantage of the wireless backhaul.

In general, my not scientific at all approach is one WiFi node per 1000sqft in a house. With the amount of traffic I’m pushing around between my wife and I both working from home as well as kids streaming poo poo, I just overbuild poo poo.

Thanks for the input. Went through your lengthy post about them earlier. Sounds like you know your stuff.

The RBK50 sounds exactly like what I want. Was looking at the RBK23 with an extra extender....but I'd rather have the better router and buy an extra extender later on if needed.

Bought!

Binary Badger
Oct 11, 2005

Trolling Link for a decade


kid sinister posted:

OP hasn't been updated in 2 years. What's the Wifi 6 router of choice now for personal use?

Still too early to tell since WiFi 6 is still in relative infancy. UniFi has exactly 1 WiFi 6 kit, and it's part of their Alien system, which looks like another mesh product. ($700 for the router and 1 mesh point!)

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

Binary Badger posted:

Still too early to tell since WiFi 6 is still in relative infancy. UniFi has exactly 1 WiFi 6 kit, and it's part of their Alien system, which looks like another mesh product. ($700 for the router and 1 mesh point!)

Basically same story for Netgear’s Orbi offering. The highest end one claims some ludicrous speed though. The RBK853 supposedly does 6gbps and has 2.5gbe ports on the WAN for the router.

It’s also $1000 for the 3 pack lol.

Ham Equity
Apr 16, 2013

i hosted a great goon meet and all i got was this lousy avatar
Grimey Drawer
I have an Archer C9 router, CenturyLink Gigabit Fiber, and a bullshit garbage router they gave me that is the MAC address registered to the account (the connection is wall -> their router -> my router -> my devices, wireless is disabled on their router). I'm looking into getting a VPN for privacy reasons; is there a good implementation of split tunnel for home networking? I'd like to stick Netflix/HBO/Steam on the regular network for the gigabit speeds, and everything else through the VPN.

fletcher
Jun 27, 2003

ken park is my favorite movie

Cybernetic Crumb
I don't really have a need for WiFi 6 at the moment, but when would we expect Ubiquiti to have some WiFi 6 offerings in the UAP line of products?

withoutclass
Nov 6, 2007

Resist the siren call of rhinocerosness

College Slice

fletcher posted:

I don't really have a need for WiFi 6 at the moment, but when would we expect Ubiquiti to have some WiFi 6 offerings in the UAP line of products?

They have an AC Lite out in the early access program right now. I'm not sure of how long they stay in EAP though.

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astral
Apr 26, 2004

fletcher posted:

I don't really have a need for WiFi 6 at the moment, but when would we expect Ubiquiti to have some WiFi 6 offerings in the UAP line of products?

Looks like they have/had a couple in early access, but they're sold out.

e:f;b

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