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rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

modeski posted:

When building my house, I naively thought that two Ethernet ports would be enough for my entertainment unit. At the moment I have my WDTV Live and Xbox 360 plugged in. But I’m about to buy a home theatre system, so I’ll need to network the receiver and possibly the TV too. What’s my best option here, an inexpensive four-port switch? Can anyone recommend one? I have a Cat6 network ending in a 1Gb HP switch (1410 series, I think) in my server room (closet). All the wiring’s in my wall and I don’t feel like ripping holes and putting in another drop.

Basic Netgear Gigabit switch should do the trick.

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rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

Megasabin posted:

:words:

I have never encountered this in my life. In any previous move the internet provider was completely willing and able to drill holes and run Ethernet cable to all desired locations in the house.

Is this the new norm or is something amiss here?

Like others said, what you’re describing has never been a thing I’ve encountered. They’ll run a line into the house to the point that you’ve got a sane place to setup your modem or ONT.

And honestly, I don’t really want them tromping in the house. I don’t trust that it won’t be a giant pain in the rear end if there’s a disagreement on the work done or any damage.

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

Megasabin posted:

My previous one was Verizon FIOS, which I guess does that because FIOS directly connects to Ethernet. They 100% wired the house, drilled holes to multiple rooms on multiple floors. They ended up putting 5 ethernet access points in.

I had something similar done in Atlanta about 5 years ago, but I do not remember what provider we used because my housemate paid the bills/set it all up.

Interesting. I have Gigabit Fiber through CenturyLink but they only did the drilling to run the fiber to an ONT they mounted inside.

That said I have an old house that’d be a pain in the rear end to run jacks for so it’s fine.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

Thanatosian posted:

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.

Huh - at least with my CLink Gigabit, I was able to get rid of their router. I just needed the PPPoE credentials and a router that supports VLAN tagging (they use VLAN 201).

That said, the EdgeRouters are always a crowd favorite for more complex stuff like that. You could also get a cheaper NUC-style computer that has two ports and run something like pfSense on it.

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

WarMECH posted:

I guess I was thinking that a mesh product like Eero or Orbi would handle handoff between devices better than multiple standalone APs, but maybe I'm over thinking this.

Definitely overthinking it.

Mesh wifi is less about seamless handoff between access points and more about extending your network when you don't have the ability to run a hard wire.

I know I spent two posts earlier on the page ranting about my love for Orbi. If I had the choice, I'd run Cat6a through the house and setup Ubiquiti AP's everywhere. Unfortunately, I do not have that so picking the best wireless backhaul at the time was my best option.

If you have Cat5e/Cat6/Cat6a running through the house and providing points of hardwired access, absolutely get yourself some Ubiquiti AP's and hook them up. Use the same SSID and WPA2 key and probably try and spread your channels a bit.

Handoff won't be instant, may take a second or two but in general devices are pretty smart about connecting to a stronger signal if they know how to connect to it.

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

TraderStav posted:

For the APs, for most home users are the lites good enough or should I grab a few pros instead?


LRADIKAL posted:

You are not giving enough information. I think it's pretty safe to say that Unifi Lites are fine.

What LRADIKAL said.

But for the sake of argument, please have a look at Exhibit A:



The max rated speed for the Lite is 867mbps for 5GHz (AC). In general, even standing next to an access point, your devices aren't going to break 400mbps over WiFi. There are exceptions, but most of the time if you're lucky, you're in the 300mbps area at the most.

So ya - the Lites are probably fine. Also remember, you're probably not sitting there with sustained usage at those speeds either except if you're copying large files. Streaming 4K is still well below 100mbps (want to say 30ish mbps). And for web browsing or email or even gaming, you care more about latency than raw speed after a certain point.

EDIT: some words.

rufius fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Jun 6, 2020

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

WarMECH posted:

My Ethernet ports are wall units, which is why I was thinking mesh with Ethernet backhaul. Ubiquiti AP need to be ceiling mounted and then I'd lose the ability to add a switch at that location. Right?

Ah. Ya you don’t want mesh I’d you have Ethernet to act as backhaul. The only time mesh makes sense IMO is when there’s no wired backhaul available. Otherwise, always prefer Ethernet backhaul.

There’s no magic on the mesh systems for making the WiFi look like one network. It’s the same tricks, AFAIK, as how you build out a multi-AP WiFi network.

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

Red_Fred posted:

EDIT: Chatting to some of my networking buddies and apparently https hides nearly all traffic when using unsecured networks, is a VPN really necessary now?

So it depends on what your goal is.

If you need to ensure encrypted comms, HTTPS is sufficient to achieve that goal. However it won’t stop the (hostile) network from knowing who you’re talking to. This mostly matters for folks trying to evade location detection like in China.

If anyone has the tech to crack HTTPS (nation states), they could also crack VPN encryption. So ya, it is sufficient for your encryption needs.

If you’re trying to obfuscate where you come from, you’ll need to setup a VPN. There’s usually three options here - host off your home network, pay a service, or use something like Algo VPN to provision your own in AWS/Azure/Google Cloud.

If you your own it’s the most flexible. You can do things like Netflix and they’re none the wiser.

If you use a service, you have to accept that they can see everyone you’re talking to an any unencrypted traffic you might send.

If you provision one in AWS, you own the logging to a point - that is AWS could still conceivably snoop your logs though I don’t know why they would unless you were doing sketchy poo poo. Netflix and other streaming services know the major cloud provider IP ranges and can detect if that’s one you’re connecting to them.

I use an Algo VPN setup for when I’m out and about and don’t want to be on untrusted WiFi.

TL;DR: if you just care it’s encrypted, HTTPS is fine. If you care about location or connection obfuscation on the network, then you need a VPN.

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.
Brief trip report on new networking hardware. Mostly because I was pleasantly surprised.

Old Setup
- ONT from CenturyLink for Gigabit
- Asus Router RT-AC68U - not using the WiFi
- Netgear Orbi setup (RBR50)
- Netgear Gig switch (unmanaged)
- QNAP TVS-471 NAS serving Plex both on intranet and to family over WAN via 4 gigabit links

Interesting Connection Paths:

code:
NAS -> Netgear Unamanged Switch -> Asus Router -> Orbi A -> Orbi B -> Apple TV
code:
NAS -> Netgear Unmanaged Switch -> Asus Router -> Orbi A -> Orbi C -> Desktop
Notes on Old Setup
- Overall, pretty good speeds but it was spikier than I'd have liked. If I started a big file copy from my desktop to the NAS, video playback would stutter occasionally.
- Max speeds internally were for a big file copy from Desktop to NAS were around 45-50MB/s though very spiky. Lots of peaks and valleys.
- Occasionally latency spikes on the intranet depending on load.

New Setup
- ONT from CenturyLink for Gigabit
- EdgeRouter 4
- EdgeSwitch 10 XP
- Netgear Orbi setup (RBR50)
- QNAP TVS-471 NAS serving Plex both on intranet and to family over WAN via 4 gigabit links with 802.3ad link aggregation to the EdgeSwitch

Interesting Connection Paths:

code:
NAS -> EdgeSwitch (managed) -> Orbi A -> Orbi C -> Apple TV
code:
NAS -> EdgeSwitch (managed) -> Orbi A -> Orbi C -> Desktop
Notes on New Setup
- Max speeds consistent with old max speeds - around 45-50MB/s on big file copy. Not super surprising. Speeds are a lot more consistent though - no more peaks and valleys like before.
- Latencies have leveled out a lot. Pretty consistently <7ms pings whereas it used to sometimes spike to 50ms.
- No more stuttering in video playback during big file copies.
- Speeds from the Apple TV running Infuse to the NAS have increased - from ~180mbps to > 350mbps. This was probably the most surprising to me.
- It probably helps that the Router is out of the scheme as well.

TL;DR: Got some nicer networking hardware, internal network is more stable and handling additional load in a more consistent manner. Big surprise.

EDIT: Note: Max copy speeds for Desktop->NAS are 45-50MB/s due to the Orbis being in play. So no hard wire.

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

Tortilla Maker posted:

The OP was last updated in 2018.

Should I just go with CAT7?

Like this one on MonoPrice?

I mean Cat6 is 10G up to 50M. Cat6a is 10G up to 100M. Cat7 is 1G for >100M, 40G for <50M, and 100G for <15M.

Do you think you’ll be investing meaningfully in 10G, 40G, or 100G hardware anytime soon?

If prices is no object, you’re probably fine with Cat7. If you’re trying to future proof the poo poo of yourself, run fiber across the house and patch it to SPF+ modules at your switches.

Most folks aren’t meaningfully saturating 1G networks so Cat6 is fine for most since it’ll transition nicely to 10G.

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

Tensokuu posted:

:words:

Would the Nest Wifi + 1 puck + a gigabit switch just be a good option in general? Should I go for two? I mean, I know the house isn't huge so I imagine the actual router being where it is (in this corner, under the living room) would let the other puck sit say, in our bedroom to cover that end of the house? Then I could just use the switch to plug in my desktop/work laptop/game consoles that I'd prefer to be hardwired.

Honestly, if you're wanting to hard-wire some stuff, it could be worth it to get something like the Orbi with the dedicated wireless backhaul since you have Gigabit.

That said - I don't know a lot about the current Nest WiFi's so they might already do that?

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

Tensokuu posted:

Directly next to the modem (so, in one corner of the house). There's actually nothing on the ground floor of the house that's hardwired in; my office is in the basement as is my BIL's room, and we have the wired connections. Now admittedly I could probably try to centralize the R7000 more towards the middle of the basement to see if that helps, but I'd end up needing to rewire my hard connections with longer cables -- not that I couldn't do that, mind you. Bigger pain in the rear end is that I'd have to mount it on one of the wooden beams as my basement is unfurnished and there's not exactly a great place to put it over there that's not "sitting on top of the AC vents." Also, well, a lack of power plugs on that side of the house too -- they laid out the power in the basement poorly and the previous homeowner solved that by using those power plugs that you get that screw into light sockets. So I'd need to solve that issue too.


Orbi's not a bad price either, really. Well, depending on which setup you end up picking up.

I can't quite tell if the Nest WiFi has a dedicated wireless backhaul, honestly. Likely not, if Orbi's comparison on their site is correct (I imagine it is, but at the same time of course they want to make themselves seem like the clear winner).

I saw previously you suggested the RBK50. Were I to go that route, I imagine the two-pack would probably cover my needs?

Ya the two pack would totally be enough. My placement is two corners off the same floor opposite each other with walls. Then a third in the basement roughly right in the middle.

Works pretty well for my needs.

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

Beach Bum posted:

I know that electronics eventually wear out, but what kind of timeline are we talking about?

:words:

A friend of mine that has done a lot of electronics work and is a computer engineer by trade once told me that “weird issues with device” are very often power issues.

He keeps a huge box of various AC adapters to try with electronics when they start getting flaky. I would start there.

One of the things I do is keep extra hardware around to comparison test if I’m suspicious something is misbehaving. I’ve also got extra power adapters for some of the important stuff.

TL;DR: Check you power source. Try new power adapters. Comparison test with another piece of hardware. Dirty power is real and can gently caress up SOHO appliances.

E: since we’re at it, what’s your network layout?

rufius fucked around with this message at 15:11 on Jun 13, 2020

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

RME posted:

just moved up to gigabit internet on xfinity, kind of regretting not buying something stronger than the ER-X for our home networking setup. What's a good step up to consider, keeping in mind comcast's gigabit is 1000/40 down/up so it's not full symmetric in the first place, but even with hwnat offloading enabled it seems i can top out around 500 combined
Preferably it would also have a PoE passthrough port for the Unifi WAP, which should be fine for anything on our wireless network

How are you testing? What does combined mean?

In general, most places you would pull data from won’t let you pull much faster than 500mbps tops. Usually not more than 250mbps, never mind whatever QoS your ISP is applying on per connection speed.

For example, try as I might, my downlink for Gigabit Fiber never breaks 600mbps I’m a speed test, however if I get enough things downloading I can get up to 880-920mbps which is about as good as can be expected from 1gbps fiber.

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

KS posted:

That's not Steam, your ISP is throttling you or not buying adequate upstream -- or your CPU's maxing out as it's decompressing the data. I can't quite hit 1gbit on a 4790k.

Ya - I suspect in order to protect the health of the network and the influx of higher bandwidth plan subscribers, most Americans with better than 10mbps plans are getting throttled at some point.

Whether that’s per-connection QoS or peak hours stuff. My downstream with CLink has been most affected. My upstream continues to hold strong at gigabit, but per-connection, my downlink is iffy for getting over 400mbps.

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

Thanks Ants posted:

How common are on-net CDNs on US providers? I saw a presentation from BT a while back and at the time more than 40% of the total traffic they served to customers came from CDN providers like Akamai that were already inside the BT network.

At least the heaviest hitters like Netflix/HBO/Hulu/YouTube are in there. It’d be crippling otherwise. That said, I don’t have any sense at all for anything beyond those heavy hitters.

That makes me wonder how many of the major Porn sites like PornHub are also in there. If the anecdata is to be believed, 80% or some bigger percentage of traffic on the Internet is Porn lol.

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

Beach Bum posted:

Infrastructure
Direct run from street box with two straight line connectors > SB6141 > NT-66U

Devices (From NT-66U)

Wired
PC (Cat5E)

Wireless
Frigidaire Gallery 6000 Window AC
IRobot Roomba 600-series robot vacuum
Google Chromecast Ultra

I hadn't considered power. When I made a floating shelf for the modem/router I grabbed a power strip I've had for years to mount on the wall. Might swap it out for a new one, or better yet a good UPS so I can have internet when the power is out. Should really do a UPS anyway...

I don't have any spare power supplies for the infrastructure, crap.

Pretty simple setup. I’d start at power personally.

If you’re willing to spend a few bucks, monoprice has various ac adapters: https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=2220

Might pick up a few that match stated voltage/amperage and look like they might fit.

Other options - grab something like the Asus RT-68U or similar which aren’t *super* expensive but are solid routers. I have one of those as my backup.

Mostly for comparison’s sake.

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

RME posted:

1.10.7, close-ish to the newest non 2.X version, though I hear 2.x has stability issues


Yeah I just plugged directly in the router with a (admittedly pretty long) and tried a few speed tests, i expect most real sites to never really let you hit those wild speeds but I wanted to see how well the er-x could handle it, not sure if there's a better way to do that

My method of testing has been:

- queue big download on XBone
- queue download on Steam
- queue download on Battle.net
- queue download of an ISO of a well known fast mirror

Multiply the steam and battle.net download by number of laptops or desktops you can get in on the cause.

If you get to >800mbps, you’re starting to hit your actual bandwidth limit. 940-950 mbps is the practical limit for WAN-to-LAN speeds.

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

astral posted:

Are you current on the RT-N66U's firmware? Amazingly, it looks like ASUS released a firmware as recently as November 2019.

There’s also an aftermarket firmware I have had good success with - Merlin WRT. It’s compatible with the N66U.

It mostly opens up some power user options like forcing DNS-over-TLS.

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.
Oh sad day re: Merlin WRT.

Welp, I’ll shut up about that then.

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

Red_Fred posted:

This is a bit of a long shot but has anyone setup a PiVPN to work with a Synology NAS? I can connect fine using OpenVPN on my iPhone but when I try to connect the NAS it says the profile is invalid.

Some searching would lead me to believe that Synology is running a really old version of OpenVPN.

Never done what you’re asking but you might look into Entware for updates to stuff like that: https://entware.net

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

Beach Bum posted:

I was one version/iteration behind, 3.0.0.4.382.51640 vs -54641. Updating now, we'll see if my issues persist. Patch notes for the latest version only list "Fix[ed] a DDoS vulnerability".

Still ordering that UPS, I suppose I'll go trawling for the thread I'm sure exists.

Keep in mind, when I mentioned power I wasn’t so concerned with the source as much as I was concerned about the AC adapter. Those can and do go bad based on power outages and surges.

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

cr0y posted:

I am working on a project to move all my network equipment (which right now is just an Archer C7) to my upstairs office, my house is small but I'd like to hardwire an AP to the downstairs area of my house. I'm not yet ready to make the jump to microtik or anything more complicated than just a simple AP to help with coverage. Can someone reccomend some decent bang for your buck APs that are on the market now? I don't need PoE.

Ubiquiti AP Lite always comes to mind. Pretty well regarded if you're looking for a pure AP solution.

Otherwise, Asus routers are usually pretty good and can be thrown in bridge mode.

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

Incessant Excess posted:

I'm in the process of moving into a new apartment and I'm wondering what wifi solutions I should consider to get a good signal from my router (X) to my PC (Y):



I'm on a 500 mbit package from my ISP, so I'd like something that can manage near that speed via wifi. Does anyone have suggestions which products to consider?

So maintaining 500mbit over WiFi is a tall order, especially if any walls are in play.

In general, with 802.11ac, good speeds with walls is anything above 250mbps. For example, I have a two story home and my devices get about 285mbps from just about anywhere (3-node Netgear Orbi RBR50 setup).

You could spring for a WiFi 6 compatible setup like the RBR850 (AX6000 chipset). That might get you a little more but you’re still dealing with physics - i.e. walls are still gonna mess you up. Nevermind the fact that the RBR850 is like $800 for a router + satellite and sold out most places.

Assuming you can’t run hardwire somehow, I would get something like the Orbi RBR50 (802.11ac). The one advantage you get there is it uses multiple 5GHz radios on the backend as the backhaul to eek out a little more performance.

For example, my setup looks like:

- EdgeRouter 4 — via hardwire cat6a —> Orbi A
- Orbi A — via wireless backhaul —> Orbi B
- Orbi B — via hardwire cat6a —> Alienware desktop

That setup gets me in the 360-400mbps range. If used the WiFi NIC in the Alienware desktop instead, it’d get around 300mbps. You *might* eek out an extra 50-100mbps with the more expensive WiFi 6 routers but I don’t think it’s worth it.

Also - keep in mind that most things you do don’t require much more than 100mbps outside of straight up downloading bigass files. Streaming 4K UHD content is <50mbps and latency matters more in gaming than raw speed.

TL;DR: Get something like the Netgear Orbis that has a dedicated wireless backhaul if you’re trying to maximize speed - you’ll get around 350-400mbps depending on placement and what the walls are made of. Google’s Nest WiFi or the Eero products don’t have the dedicated backhaul.

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

Ramadu posted:

Ok but seriously is there any recommendations for a USB wifi adapter that doesn't suck

Generally Asus WiFi adapters are a good bet: https://www.asus.com/us/Networking/Wireless-Adapters-Products/

If it’s stationary, get something with full blown antennas like the USB-AC68. I have the variant of that that is PCI-E (PCE-AC68) and it’s a solid device.

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

Ramadu posted:

Man I'm reading reviews and they all talk about random disconnects and just not seeing the network anymore..does no one make a reliable USB one? I find these complaints all the time

I had a RNX-N600UBE before and it was great but it does after like 10 years of use and I'm trying to find something like it

Ya - unfortunately I can’t speak specifically to the USB ones. I haven’t used one in 10+ years at this point.

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

movax posted:

Pi Hole chat is probably a good time for me to ask... I’d rather not use a Pi as my DNS server. Any equivalent that can run on the ER-4?

I have an ESXi host as well that I’m bringing up but part of the idea of me getting an ER-4 was to divorce network functions from another host. But if a container (podman!) and secondary DNS is the way to go then...so be it I guess.

You could use nextdns.io as your resolver as configured by the ER-4. That's what I'm using - I'm quite happy with it. Though my setup is a little more complex as I'm using a separate appliance to act as a DNS forwarder via unbound so that I can force DNS-over-TLS.

That's the main thing missing with EdgeRouters for me - no builtin DNS-over-TLS. Makes me sad.

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

RocketLunatic posted:

I need some help and my googling was unsuccessful.

I am running OpenVPN on a Synology NAS. My router is an ER-X. How do I open the network up to the VPN server? What I did find was complicated - like different setting up routes and stuff or running openvpn on the er-x - but maybe I am missing the obvious. Do I just need to open a port on the ER-X and point to the NAS?

Assuming you left the ports default, forward 443/TCP and 1194/UDP to the local IP of your NAS.

You’d do this in the ER-X in the firewall section.

E: that said, I would change the TCP port to something like 4443. It’s weird to forward 443 somewhere on your home network because your NAS or something else might respond on it for HTTPS.

E2: wring udp port

rufius fucked around with this message at 14:56 on Jun 28, 2020

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

Biowarfare posted:

Might have typoed, 1194

Oops ya. 1194.

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

JayKay posted:

I need to replace my Netgear Nighthawk R7000 which seems to be making GBS threads the bed after 5 years of service. It's starting to drop packets, freeze up, etc. I'm going to try a last minute Hail Mary with FreshTomato to see if that helps but...

I'm thinking about going the Ubiquiti route, one of the following:

1. USG + CKG2 (or a Pi) + Unifi Switch 60W + AP (probably FlexHD)
2. UDM
3. ER-4 (or ER-X) + Flex HD with an old server box to run the controller.

I'm leaning towards option 3 as USG is old and the UDM seems to have issues.


For what it's worth, my FIOS ONT is installed in the basement and I have a Cat6 line running from it to Router/AP which is on the main floor of the house, centralized location. It's not a big deal for me to run more Cat6 to/from the ONT to my current router location. Edit: I'd probably install the ER + Serverbox Controller in basement and use that current Cat6 run to the AP.

Suggestions?

As mentioned earlier in the thread re: "flaky hardware", try a new AC adapter for the router. That's a pretty common culprit for flaky hardware.

As to the new hardware question, I really like my ER-4 + ES-10XP + Netgear Orbi setup. If you've got ethernet backhaul, skip the Orbis and get Ubiquiti AC Lite's.

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

Lifespan posted:

Hello experts. I am looking for an upgrade to my home network. I currently (like many folks I have seen posting here) am running an R7000 with a spotty history. Right now it is actually running quite well, but I can't seem to take a firmware update without all hell breaking loose or some nasty new bugs showing up. In addition, the range is just not good enough for my home and the simple wireless repeater I was using has decided to instead just fight with the router at all times, so I had to get rid of it. I have one connection heavy area of my home where the cable modem comes in and a number of wired connections are in place for various home automation hubs and game consoles, including a USB drive connected to the router for some basic network storage. Only two folks are living here, but both working full time from home and almost completely wireless.

It appears that a mesh wireless network + network switch for my wired stuff might be the best for me. I assume it is worth paying a little extra for WiFi 6 as a few devices I have support it now and most things will be supporting it in the future. The prices on these devices seem to vary wildly and I have already seen plenty of reviews of Netgear's stuff continuing to have flaky firmware. Any advice?

WiFi 6 isn’t even fully ratified. Everything on the market is beta hardware. Not worth the price right now.

I like the Orbi’s. I have an RBR50 and two satellites. Never given me any trouble in the last couple years. My hardwire stuff is ubiquiti.

Don’t use mesh unless you have no way to do wired backhaul to your access points. If you must do Mesh, prefer one with a dedicated wireless backhaul like Orbi over Eero/Nest WiFi. It’s faster and less flakey in my experience.

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

Lifespan posted:

Interesting, I thought WiFi 6 was signed off late last year and the stuff coming out now was final. Mesh isn't a must and while I could physically run cable, it's just not something I really care to do unless I have to. Most of the important/high bandwidth stuff is in my one location that is mostly wired anyway, this is more about getting better range/coverage. The stuff that is further from my router today is mostly low bandwidth devices like home automation equipment, I just figured I might get a speed boost and improved coverage with mesh. Should I just go back to finding some sort of repeater and wait for the "next gen" stuff to come around?

If that’s the case, get the RBR50 2-pack from Netgear. One router, one satellite. It’ll cover well over 2500 sqft with high signal.

I use one of those in my house, plus another satellite, and we can sustain ~45-50mb/s transfers for large files.

If you don’t care about speed, then Eero or Nest WiFi is probably cheaper.

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

Lifespan posted:

Now you just gave me something else to look at this afternoon...

Also, I just bought the Netgear Orbi AX4200. Either I am a sucker and payed an extra $150 over the AX3000 for fake WiFi6 or the faster wireless backhaul will pay off.

Practically speaking, probably won’t matter that much. A bigger part of WiFi 6 is some of the efficiencies around devices using less power. A nice boon either way.

rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

OSU_Matthew posted:

Any recommendations for a good, 3-5 port managed switch? L2 is fine, so long as it supports 802.1q. Basically I want to relocate my ESXI box as well as my Home Assistant hub, but I'm not keen on trying to run another drop upstairs.

Thanks in advance!

:words:

I like my Ubiquiti EdgeSwitch XP: https://www.ui.com/edgemax/edgeswitch-10xp/

It was really easy to setup and I've got 4 of the ports setup as LACP with my NAS. Also using the SFP port to connect to my EdgeRouter 4 to free up another one of the Ethernet ports so that I can use all 8 for connected appliances.

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rufius
Feb 27, 2011

Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

OSU_Matthew posted:

I do like my PoE unifi switch already in my rack... but I don’t quite need PoE or link aggregation for this, just a trunk port and the ability to tag vlans. Maybe I should see what non poe switches unifi has though, that’s probably the best answer to keep things consistent. For instance, I hate that I have an HP procurve in the setup because of poo poo like the different definitions of basic poo poo like trunking that just make doing anything super obtuse and annoying.

Ya - to be clear I have no need for PoE. Nothing I have used it. It was just cheaper than the 10 port without PoE.

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