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What's the quality like on Linksys factory refurbs? I'm looking for something inexpensive to use as a wireless bridge to push coverage into a dead spot in the house, and a refurb E2000 with Tomato seems like it'd do the job well for about $40 - if the quality's good, anyway.
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Mar 28, 2012 06:07
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UndyingShadow posted:Awful. They aren't so much refurbs as "used," usually coming completete with the previous owners settings. I'm pretty sure Linksys plugs them in, sees they turn on and sends them out the door. I bought an e2000 to use as a 5ghz AP and the wireless wound not stay stable for more than 45 minutes before it required a physical reboot. Probably why it was returned in the first place. Darn. What's worthwhile and cheap, then? I don't need routing, so the CPU could be out of a pocket calculator for all I care, but I would like a good stable radio without blowing $100 on a good router I'll never use at layer 3. Do the Monoprice specials cut corners on build quality, or just performance? Dogen posted:No, but there is nothing wrong with wifi secured by WPA2 really. It's probably no less secure than whatever crazy VPN/terminal software thing you have. Properly set up, WPA2 is secure, but if you're working with data sensitive enough that people might actually target you to steal it, there are some non-obvious concerns. WPA2+TKIP is semi-broken (you can't crack it wide open in <1 minute like WEP, but it's not exactly secure, and a lot of devices do dual-mode AES/TKIP by default), WPS is really broken, and there's always key entropy issues. It's not hard to do it right, and if you're really that important there are all sorts of other avenues of attack, but it's a good idea to keep in mind that a secure WPA2 setup requires more than "turn on 'wireless security' option in setup page, set key to dog's name, done."
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Mar 29, 2012 20:01
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Heresiarch posted:What if it's the dog you grew up with, that has been dead for ten years? Well, if you've set up your key in memory of playing fetch with good ol' DyBpcOQtuJm7P, then you're probably secure. If the dog's name was Rover, not so much.
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Mar 30, 2012 02:29
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bunky posted:So I just upgraded my cable modem to a Linksys DPC3008-CC, but I'm still using my old WRT54G router. Is there any reason that these items wouldn't work well together? I'm getting connection dropouts every 5-10 minutes, wired and wireless. When you say "connection dropouts," are clients losing the connection to the router, or are you losing internet access? If you're losing internet access, take a look at your cable modem's diagnostic page; it's probably at http://192.168.100.1/. What do the downstream and upstream power levels look like? I've seen some cable modems with a marginal connection that try to push too much juice into the upstream to compensate, then shut down and reboot to protect themselves.
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Apr 12, 2012 00:29
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bunky posted:FYI, hooked my old rear end BEFCMU10 back up and I'm running smooth. I only upgraded due to Comcast telling me I was missing out on not having a DOCSYS 3.0 enabled modem. I'm stumped on how to get the new modem working smoothly. Your power levels look OK on the new modem; I'd guess you have a defective unit. Your next step is probably an RMA.
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Apr 12, 2012 02:01
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uapyro posted:I'm trying to figure out the best way to accomplish something. If you want to do this, you'll need to set up WDS. It's a pain in the rear end, and it absolutely kills bandwidth (I hope you weren't hoping to stream any files over that connection) but it should work. Make sure you set both routers to WDS mode, duplicate the wireless setup exactly (same SSID, same channel manually set, same exact security) and give them each other's MAC addresses.
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Apr 20, 2012 02:49
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Shadowmage posted:I'm looking for a new router that is cheap, reliable, supports DD-WRT, and has simultaneous dual-band support. From browsing the thread, it seems like you guys really love the Asus RT-16N, but it's too expensive and doesn't have dual-band support. The E2500 doesn't really have DD-WRT support. If you look on their forums, it turns out the "officially supported" build will actually throw the router into an infinite reboot loop. Apparently, anyone who trusts their official documentation is an idiot who should know it's much better to read all the way through a thread in their forums titled "E2500 DD-WRT WORKING" to pick up on that little warning.
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May 8, 2012 09:43
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A lot of routers with USB ports just do NAS; if you plug a mass storage device into them, they'll expose it to the network. If it doesn't specifically mention support for print server functionality, I wouldn't expect it. You don't need an 802.11n print server; 802.11n 2.4 GHz routers are backwards compatible with 802.11g (and b, for that matter). It won't have a huge impact on the speeds for the rest of the network, either; the n hardware is smart enough to communicate with n clients at n speeds, and with g clients at g speeds. The E2500 doesn't have many choices for custom firmware right now. DD-WRT only has an experimental build (despite what it says in their database; apparently they expect you to go to the forum for accurate information - where the thread titled "Linksys/Cisco E2500 DD-WRT WORKING" has all kinds of stories about non-working 5 GHz hardware, bricked routers, and so on). There's also a build of Tomato floating around out there, but that's even more of an experimental project right now. There will probably be good custom firmware available eventually, but for now, the best option is to wait.
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Jun 16, 2012 21:02
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How do you have it wired? My guess is that you've got the old router hooked into the network by way of its WAN port. This means it's picking up a 192.168.1.x address on the WAN side, off of the "main" router's DHCP server. Since you've still got it set up to do NAT, it doesn't want to have both the LAN and WAN on the same network. Try unplugging the secondary router completely, and refreshing the WAN DHCP configuration. When it figures out that it's not going to get an address, set the LAN side to 192.168.1.2 (or whatever you want it to be, as long as it's outside the "main" router's DHCP pool) and make sure the secondary router's DHCP server is off. Turn off anything related to routing or NAT, and wire it into the network on the LAN side. It should act like a dumb access point; you can still get to the configuration page at 192.168.1.2.
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Jun 27, 2012 09:25
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MMD3 posted:gotcha... guess it may make sense to assign my PC's IP address then for the sake of my Boxee Box that's wired to the Wireless G router. You should be just fine with DHCP for client devices. SMB filesharing can work with several name resolution methods. If you've got a fairly modern router handling DHCP and DNS, your PC will send out its hostname with its DHCP request, and the router's DNS server will associate your PC's name with its assigned IP. The actual name resolution is almost always done over DNS, so when your boxee box looks for smb://MMD3-PC/, it resolves the name to an IP just like it would if it were looking for http://www.netflix.com/. fallenturtle posted:I'm wanting to upgrade my wireless to N to get faster speeds, but I have a few legacy devices in my household, so my understanding is that I need to get a simultaneous dual-band router so that the older devices don't force the newer devices to operate at G speeds. Since I require the router to have gigabit ports I was considering the Linksys E3200 mentioned in the OP, but the OP also mentions the E2000 which is about $20 less. Would it be a stupid idea to instead of running a single dual-band router use 2 routers, one for G devices at 2.5Ghz (an older Asus WL-520GC) and then the E2000 running N at 5 Ghz? You don't need dual-band unless you actually want to operate on the 5 GHz band. 802.11n devices can run at their full speed - and get better range - in 2.4, and you won't see much of a speed penalty by mixing in a few legacy 802.11g devices. Moving to 5 GHz is helpful if you live in a high-density area with congestion on the 2.4 GHz band, and it can be useful if you have devices on both ends that support channel bonding and need tons of spectrum for it, but it's not necessary for full speed 802.11n operation.
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Jun 27, 2012 21:20
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Triikan posted:If you add a single G device to an N network, it makes the entire network run G. If your network does this, there's a configuration issue somewhere. The standard includes provisions for mixed-mode backward compatibility. Try it yourself: Windows reports the current speed in the connection status window. e: fallenturtle posted:Considering I do need the gigabit ethernet ports, I suppose the E2000 is still the best bet for me, yea? What's your goal with the gigabit ports? If you need better than 100 Mbps on the wireless side, keep in mind that there's a gap between theoretical and real-world results, especially with 802.11n. As far as the performance hit is concerned, it can range from "not much" to "quite a bit." In particular, legacy devices do restrict the channel width. In theory, that cuts a big chunk out of your potential speeds; you'll still do better than 802.11g, but you won't hit the speeds listed on the box. In practice, you usually can't do wide channels on 2.4 GHz because it takes a ridiculous amount of spectrum, and range limitations at 5 GHz mean you'll only hit optimal speeds if you set your laptop right next to the router. Space Gopher fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Jun 27, 2012 |
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Jun 27, 2012 21:45
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Dad Jokes posted:I don't think I'm being limited specifically, I talked to my other roommate and tested in his room, but it wasn't much better there, it was 40mbps. As far I know, there are 9 people in this building, 3 in each suite, and I think we're all on the same network. Is this one network running with a bunch of wifi-only repeaters? Adding repeaters on the same network (not in a specialized mesh system, or with a backhaul like ethernet or powerline) absolutely murders performance. You can get away with one, maybe two if coverage is way more important than bandwidth, but after that you're going to get absolute poo poo as almost all the available bandwidth gets eaten by repeaters rebroadcasting each others' transmissions across the network.
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May 1, 2018 08:15
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Fundamentally, all the VPN stuff you are going to do is a site-to-site link between two routers, even if the higher-level architecture looks like a hub and spoke setup. You can think of a VPN connection as the logical equivalent of a physical network cable - it's not exact but it's close enough to build an OK mental model of what VPNs can do. The AWS term for what you're looking for is "transit VPC." It is all enterprisey as poo poo, with prices to match. The sample solution they provide uses the Cisco CSR EC2 image, which goes up to $8.40/hour in EC2/licensing costs alone; feel free to work out the math for per-month pricing on that. it's six thousand dollars. per month. The data transfer costs are going to be steep, too, even if you're not using Direct Connect to a datacenter. Remote backup is surprisingly bandwidth intensive. As nice as it would be to have a central management point with an elastic IP, you'd probably do better to just have a mesh with static routes, and each endpoint having three tunnels to all the others. EdgeOS should be able to do this without trouble; I think you can even do it from the web interface. Make sure that crypto offload is enabled. Finally, be careful about tunneling out of work environments. At lots of places, getting caught doing that without approval is an insta-fire offense. You might just be using it to watch netflix and shitpost from work, but they don't have any way of seeing that; for all they know you're bypassing the firewall to move PCI/HIPAA/trade secret data out and malware in (or, you might have a compromised device on your home network that does the same thing without you even knowing).
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Jun 4, 2018 10:28
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peepsalot posted:BTW, the easy solution to excessively bright lights is electrical tape. That doesn't work well on older Surfboards, because the cases have a lot of ventilation, the front panel LEDs are set back from the panel, and they're so bright you get a strong (and blinking) nightlight effect through the vents even after you cover up the front panel. The solution is to crack open the case and put something opaque over the LEDs on the board itself. Electrical tape didn't do it on mine but adhesive putty worked nicely. Or, just throw the whole thing in a cabinet.
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Oct 16, 2019 15:22
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WattsvilleBlues posted:Are mesh WiFi setups good? Modern mesh with a dedicated backhaul is way better than an old "everything on the same channel" repeater setup, or trying to use a device at the very limits of an AP's range. It's still not as good as wired backhaul, and it'll fall apart if you try to push a bunch of simultaneous traffic over it (security camera systems are notorious for this - people really want to use mesh wifi to simplify their infrastructure and there's just not enough bandwidth to go around). For ordinary home use where you've got a couple devices streaming netflix or running games, it does well.
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May 5, 2020 16:27
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Hadlock posted:I recently found out that they make light bulb socket pass-through adapters with 5v USB out, and need to get wifi down a 100' walkway and out to the pool. I think if I string six of these together in a straight line I ought to be able to get ~5-10mbps of usable signal to check email etc Even if they work perfectly (they won't), a chain of six repeaters with no dedicated backhaul is going to get you a dialup-quality connection at the end of the chain. You might want to look into powerline networking.
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May 12, 2020 15:09
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tuyop posted:The latest C7 is very good for the price, though. I just had to replace an old AirPort Extreme that died after six years of service. I got an A7 (a C7 with some really dumb Alexa gimmicks like turning the LEDs on and off), mostly because it was relatively cheap and available very, very quickly. I was thinking that’d give me enough time to shop around for a permanent replacement, and then I could keep it as a backup. I haven’t bothered shopping for a replacement. It’s ugly, but it hides on top of a bookcase just fine.
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Dec 19, 2020 01:42
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Sneeing Emu posted:No it was built in the 80s. We actually had someone from the cable company come out and test all of the connections recently, and he verified that they all worked. I may have to get them to come back out and verify that they're connected to the same splitter. Can you get a look at the splitter itself? Look for bandwidth ratings, or failing that, a manufacturer name and model number. MoCA runs at pretty high frequencies that aren’t usually used for TV (>1000 MHz). An older splitter might be trashing the signal. Also, if you have a bunch of drops throughout the house, they might have you on a distribution amplifier. Modern amplifiers will pass a passive upstream signal back to the cable company, so cable modems and boxes work, but they won’t let downstream devices talk to each other. This would be easy to identify: your “splitter” would have an active power connection.
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Jan 21, 2021 15:15
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Biowarfare posted:These are $5 if you absolutely don't want to punch things. Port on both ends. And, if that's an ordinary stranded patch cable that was just fished through the wall, it's the only right option - you don't want to put stranded wiring in a punchdown block.
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Jun 18, 2021 16:04
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