The Home Networking Megathread - Yes the OP is out of date

Naffer · # ¿ Jan 24, 2012 18:19

Star War Sex Parrot posted:

I really need to get a 5GHz router for my girlfriend's apartment.

Also poor college students use really lovely networking equipment; so many Belkin routers.

I have a dual band 2.4GHz and 5GHz router. In my congested area, I can manage about 100 KB/s on the 2.4GHz network in the same room as the router, or about 7000 KB/s on the 5GHz network. Thank god for 5GHz wireless equipment.

Adbot · # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 18:59

Naffer · # ¿ Apr 29, 2012 16:21

Are there any relatively new dual band wifi routers that are well supported by DD-WRT? It looks like the E3200 has some issues with current firmware.

Naffer · # ¿ May 8, 2012 02:11

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.

I've settled with the refurbished Linksys E2500, which is cheaper than the E3000 ($35 on Ebay from the official Cisco seller vs $60) and you only lose gigabit Ethernet support. It seems like it also recently got DD-WRT support. Does anyone have any experience with this router? Is this the best option?

Thanks!

I can't comment on how good this router is, but I can say that Newegg has it refurbished for $30. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833124451

Naffer · # ¿ May 21, 2012 20:24

NOTinuyasha posted:

The E3000 in particular is basically defective and that should probably be noted. Other Linksys products do have poor cooling, but the E3000 is basically unusable for some people.

Also, the WRT400N is long gone (even the OP link is out of stock) and the E1000 has been replaced by the E900 and E1200. Both run DD-WRT.

I was really thinking about buying the E3000 because it's a pretty nice router for the price. Is it worth buying and mounting it vertically or installing a little fan near it?

Naffer · # ¿ Jun 3, 2012 15:36

Bondii posted:

I also have an extra wireless router. Would it be able to gain signal from the wireless router downstairs? Could I set it up near my computer and run an Ethernet cable to the Mac Pro tower? Or do they not work like that?

You should be able to set up this extra router in wireless bridge mode where you'd plug your mac into it and have it join your existing wireless network.

Naffer · # ¿ Jun 5, 2012 03:06

Bondii posted:

I connected my wireless router (Netgear model WNR1000v3 I believe) to the Mac Pro through an Ethernet cord. Now in the System Settings>Network section on the Mac, the "Ethernet 1" port is listed as "Connected." Yet when I try to load any sites, I have no success.

How do I set this up?

Ok I was wrong that router doesn't support wireless bridging out of the box. You choices would be to either buy a wireless network adapter or flash that router to 3rd party firmware that supports functioning as a wireless bridge. The former is the easiest option I think.

Naffer · # ¿ Jun 7, 2012 19:34

Ninja Rope posted:

Do you want to put the SB6121 recommendation into the Op too? And maybe a good DSL modem? It kind of fits in with the "why does my network suck".

I've been considering buying one of these. It seems to hold pretty steady at $88 dollars. (http://camelegg.com/product/N82E16825122015?locale=US) That's a payback of a little over a year at the $7/mo rental fee that comcast charges.

Naffer · # ¿ Jan 25, 2014 19:45

skipdogg posted:

On another note, I had a need for a non wireless connection and I really didn't want to climb my fat rear end up into the attic and run an Ethernet connection through 18 inches of blown-in insulation. I picked up a 40 dollar set of power line networking do-dads and I have a rock solid connection that was setup in less than 60 seconds. I have a newer house with good wiring but these things are pretty awesome to be honest.

This seems like a good option. I was reading about Ethernet over coax recently too and that seems to have come a long way if you're lucky enough to have coax in the walls already but not Ethernet.

Naffer · # ¿ Jan 29, 2014 18:13

z06ck posted:

Fixed. See how good anecdotal evidence is?

My guess is that it's really device specific. I had a WRT54GL with dd-wrt that has run without my having to touch it for years. On the other hand, I have a WNDR3300 with dd-wrt where cron periodically fails, and on two occasions something has gone wrong with the data in the NVRAM and the device has gotten flaky and started losing aspects of its configuration.

Naffer · # ¿ Feb 2, 2014 21:47

GokieKS posted:

My AC66 with DD-WRT has been running great. Though I don't actually have any AC devices (yet - Nexus 5 should be here soon), it's been working great with everything else.

Would you recommend it to others? Over the years the number of features of dd-wrt that I take advantage of has increased to the point where I don't know if I could go back to stock firmware and right now support for AC devices doesn't seem that great.

Naffer · # ¿ Mar 20, 2014 17:55

niss posted:

I just had my old linksys with tomato crap out on me as well.. was just using it to serve wireless to my pfsense box.. upon recommendations here I went with a ubiquiti UniFi AP and couldnt be happier. Setup was super simple and my dozen or so wifi enabled devices have been rock solid since installing. Its mounted in the same location and I get way more overage with it as well. definitely recommended.

It's pretty disappointing that the standalone access points are MORE expensive than a premium consumer router with more utility though.

Naffer · # ¿ Mar 23, 2014 18:53

sellouts posted:

Can I ask why you run Tomato/OpenWRT when you haven't messed with your router since 2003? Within the past 11 years I'm guessing your network topology has changed and yet you haven't made any changes?

I'm all for the Unifi APs, I run 3 of them at my small workplace, but one of them with a PoE injector + EdgeRouter Lite seems like a serious case of overkill if you just want stability and decent range. The routers you mentioned are all pretty drat solid. Hell even something like a refurbished AEBS is going to get you a guest network for wireless and pretty solid range without making you touch anything.

I make changes to mine all the time, but I can probably still answer this. I bought a WRT54GL for my family's place in ~2008. It's configured to reboot once weekly and to wipe the upnp port forwards on reboot. It's been running without any problems since then. The only change I've made was to remotely add the firewall rule that blocks the 2009-era vulnerability in DD-WRT (http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/content/dd-wrt-httpd-vulnerability-milw0rmcom-report).

Naffer · # ¿ Mar 25, 2014 19:55

skipdogg posted:

I saw this on SlickDeals as well. It's a good deal, just beware the 90 day warranty and check the return policy. I suggest picking up a square trade warranty and/or using a credit card to protect yourself.

It goes on sale for this price about once every month or so. I've been thinking about picking one up, but the fact that it has a much lower rating than the new version of the router has given me pause.

Naffer · # ¿ Apr 8, 2014 02:10

uG posted:

I need a router that can maintain a 50Mb/s openvpn tunnel. I have an ERL3 but it maxes at 15Mb/s while maxing a single core (openvpn is single threaded). Do I have any options besides building a pfsense box?

Someone posted this in a thread about the ERL3 on SmallNetBuilder. Can you try IPsec?

http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showpost.php?p=100964&postcount=63 posted:

All 4 models of EdgeMAX have VPN (ipsec, openvpn, pptp, l2tp). Of those ipsec is the fastest since there is hw offload support for that.

Naffer fucked around with this message at 02:13 on Apr 8, 2014

Naffer · # ¿ Apr 8, 2014 23:49

CLAM DOWN posted:

I'm having the most annoying loving problems with my wireless speed/latency on a new RT-N56U. I can be on my phone (Nexus 5), on 5Ghz, literally sitting 1 meter from the router, and it there is a multiple second delay to respond to any networking action (ie. refreshing Facebook, navigating to a website, etc). Mobile speedtest results are fine, but there is the same delay in starting the tests that is somehow not recorded in the ping part of the speed test (still <50ms).

Wired is totally fine, but this wireless delay will happen on any device. I live in a pretty dense apartment building so I know the 2.4Ghz spectrum is jammed full, but this shouldn't be a problem on 5Ghz.

I'm on the most up-to-date stock firmware.

Has anyone else had a problem with this router model before?

This is a shot in the dark, but could it be a DNS problem? If your DNS server is responding really slowly that could cause some of those symptoms. Maybe try configuring Google DNS? https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/

Naffer · # ¿ Apr 12, 2014 19:01

Dogen posted:

Moca is similar, but uses coax cable instead of electric lines. The equipment is more than $20 but if you have issues with your electric wiring it's another alternative. I use it because my tivos use it so I don't have to wirelessly connect them and they serve as bridges to other equipment.

For an even cheaper option you can buy DECA Ethernet adapters on ebay. They're like MOCA but can't coexist with cable signals on the same coax line, so you have to make sure you can isolate coax lines from your cable system. Unless I'm wrong both MOCA and DECA are half-duplex.

Naffer · # ¿ Apr 23, 2014 18:11

ErikTheRed posted:

So I just moved into a new house and for the time being I'm using an old router (Asus RT-N10+) running dd-wrt to connect my desktop to our wireless network in client mode. This thing is pretty low-end so it seems like client bridge mode is not available (it's completely missing from the dropdown where it should be).

The basic setup is like this:

Main router network: 192.168.1.x
Client router network: 192.168.2.x

I'm unable to access my desktop from any computers connected to the main router, but I can access things on the 192.168.1.x network from my desktop. How can I fix this? I assume I probably just need to do something like add a route to the 192.168.2.x network via the client router's IP. But please just give me a sanity check here.

There are a few things that could be going wrong, but why not put your desktop on the same subnet as your main network? I don't know which options are missing in your dd-wrt setup, but is it working enough that you can follow this config instructions: http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Client_Bridged

Naffer · # ¿ Apr 23, 2014 18:36

ErikTheRed posted:

Ideally this is what I would do, but as I mentioned before the "client bridge" mode is not available on my router. I think it's using a limited version of dd-wrt because of the low amount of flash on the router.

Sorry, you're right. That router uses an Ralink chipset that doesn't support client bridged mode. Have you tried turning off all the firewall options on the client router?

Failing that you can try setting it up as a repeater bridge with a startup script containing "ifconfig ra0 down"
Some details are here:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=686014
and here is someone's (perhaps unsuccessful) attempt to do something like this:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=178446&highlight=

Naffer · # ¿ Apr 29, 2014 23:11

Ok I have kind of a weirdo question. I have the following setup that doesn't quite work properly:
192.168.100.1 (Modem)
192.168.1.1 (router)
192.168.1.100 (Linux box)

Linux box has a routed VPN server that has an internal IP address of 192.168.2.1 that gives out IP addresses from 192.168.2.2-8.
I added a static route on the router that sends traffic to the 2.0 network through 192.168.1.100.

Now my VPN client can connect and see everything inside the network, except it can't see anything on the WAN side of the router. If I run tracert 192.168.100.1 I get a hop at the VPN server then a hop at the router, then nothing.

What did I miss in this configuration?

Naffer · # ¿ Apr 30, 2014 20:02

Kreeblah posted:

Do you have a gateway set up for your VPN connections?

I did and I absolutely could not understand what was wrong. The vpn client would TRY to access to internet via the gateway but couldn't touch anything outside of the WAN port of the router.

Fighting with the VPN server config turned out to be a red herring. It turns out my router was only doing NAT for the first subnet and not the one that the VPN client was on.
I ran this on the router running DD-wrt and it fixed everything:

code:

iptables -t nat -I POSTROUTING -o `get_wanface` -j SNAT --to `nvram get wan_ipaddr`

source:
http://blog.patrikdufresne.com/2012/11/multiple-subnets-routing-with-dd-wrt.html

Naffer · # ¿ May 7, 2014 18:33

Kinfolk Jones posted:

I have a few questions about items to purchase. I'm going to be moving into a new apartment, and getting Comcast. My current router is a WNDR3700, but that is going to my girlfriend. My question: should I go with an AC router or is something like the RT-N66U more than enough. I don't have anything with AC now, but down the line I'm sure devices will start including it. Any good recommendations for an AC router that isn't more than $200? Also, I'm trying to compare the Motorola SB6121 and the SB6141. Will the additional features of the 6141 really be necessary for a 25 Down/5 Up connection?

If you have a WNDR3700 it probably isn't worth upgrading unless you have AC devices already, and I certainly wouldn't upgrade to another dual-band N router unless you're having problems.

Regarding the modems, those two differ primarily in how many downstream channels they can bond together for a single connection. The 6121 is plenty for a 25/5 connection and could handle a connection several times faster than that. You could do 100 megabit with it and still not need a 6141. That said, if the price difference is small there isn't any reason not to get the better one, but you probably won't notice any difference at all.

Naffer · # ¿ May 14, 2014 17:47

skipdogg posted:

I do all this stuff at home with my Airport Extreme 6th gen. It's been rock solid. No DD-WRT or robust user interface, or external antennas, but it is a beastly rock loving solid router that easily lets me do everything you want it to do. At any given time I can have HD streaming going on 3 iPad's, an AppleTV, and 2 laptops doing internetty things and it's never once hiccuped. I have a mix of 2.4/5 clients and one AC client right now.

Other than the Airport, I'd look into the Netgear Nighthawk or the newest ASUS unit. Buy from somewhere with a good return policy.

At my work, we use a previous generation Apple Time Capsule as the access point for more than a dozen people with cell phones and laptops. It's actually pretty impressive for a consumer item.

Naffer · # ¿ May 15, 2014 23:53

Illusive gently caress Man posted:

Edit: Okay, I had to add some iptables commands to the dd-wrt firewall script to enable something called 'nat loopback' or 'nat reflection' or something. It works now.

DD-wrt used to have NAT loopback enabled by default. Now they make you add it to your firewall script. It's kind of a bummer to have to find these things out while troubleshooting new problems.
One thing I found out about DD-wrt recently is that it won't route traffic from outside the primary subnet to WAN. So by your example, if you add a device to 10.1.1.1 it'll be able to communicate with other clients on the LAN side by not out onto the WAN without an extra firewall rule.

Naffer · # ¿ May 17, 2014 18:04

Jotunn posted:

Networking newby here,

I'm looking to upgrade my cave with a wireless access point of it's own, since it's just out of range of the rest of the house's wireless. My desktop computer is connected to the network via a Netcomm powerline network, and I'm trying to find a wireless router but beyond dual band, all the technical jargon is defeating me.

I just want something that will plug in between between my powerline network plug and my computer - can anyone give me an idea of what to go for/avoid?

It sounds like for your application you don't really want a router, but an access point and switch (or a combo) since presumably you have a router on the other end of the powerline network. You can use certain routers for this task provided they let you turn off certain features. I don't have a specific recommendation for an access point however.

I made you this terrible graphic representing your network.

Only registered members can see post attachments!

Naffer · # ¿ May 29, 2014 18:47

IceLicker posted:

Ah, now I get it, thanks. Testing on my present setup is working as intended so far, everything seems much smoother after a bit of reworking. Now I'll just need a gigabit router (an extra of which I may have at work) and a gigabit switch or two.

To add to this, you should look at your cables and figure out if they are Cat5 or Cat5e. When I upgraded a segment of my network to gigabit recently, I found that one of my devices wouldn't connect at gigabit speeds because it was using a lower quality cat5 cable. You probably won't have this problem with all Cat5 cables, but they might be less likely to work at gigabit than cat5e and cat6.

Naffer · # ¿ Jun 3, 2014 05:02

Scott808 posted:

Where does the AC66U/A66R go on sale regularly for $90? New or refurbs?

If those are new, at that price I probably would have taken the chance on that instead of getting the N66U.

Newegg regularly has the refurbs for $105 and intermittently for about $95 I think. I haven't seen the new ones for less than $120-130ish I think. I'm not certain about that last one.

Naffer · # ¿ Jun 5, 2014 21:21

skipdogg posted:

Can you maybe give us a little more information about this statement. Nighthawk due for a price drop? V2 coming soon?

I assume they're referring to the fact that AC2300 routers are coming very soon, as well as to the fact that the WRT1900AC is Netgear's new top-end, which might lead to a price drop on the Nighthawk eventually.

Naffer · # ¿ Jun 8, 2014 21:57

DarkHorse posted:

I just got fiber (FTTH) in my neighborhood, and they're doing a promotion for it! 3-5x the speed, plus cable and HBO, for about twice the price!

Everything seems to work ok, but I'd like to make sure I have my network set up properly. Generally, there's a lot of it that seems dumb to me:

The fiber comes into the modem in the garage which then runs Cat5 around the outside of the house until it gets to the "modem" (really a router) inside the first floor. The things I have labeled "Satellites" look like an AP and Client necessary for the TV signal to come through. The ISP router has its own antenna and wireless, however if I disable it in the ISP's router the TV won't work, and the technician warned me ahead of time that trying to connect the FOTV without using the AP wouldn't work, so all I can guess is both signals are required for access. Granted, I didn't spend a ton of time troubleshooting and it's possible things were still booting up, but I have my doubts.

The upshot is that now my router and bridge are behind another layer that apparently I have to use if I want TV. I don't see any way to remove more equipment, because the access points only have one port. I could connect everything on the first WRT54GL to the ISP's router, but it has dumb firmware that as far as I can tell isn't password protected and doesn't give you the option to set one. (it at least seems to generate random keys for wireless connections). This is frustrating, because it's easily doubled the number of used outlets for a bunch of dumb wall warts sucking power for no reason 90% of the time.

I also think it's possibly messed up my NAT, since the XBox is now reporting "Moderate" where before it was "Open". Is there a better way to configure everything to avoid problems?

Does your ISP router thing support being placed into bridged mode? What are the IP addresses of the modem and router? Will the modem give a public IP address to both your router and the ISP router if you put a switch in between? Does TV work if you plug the ISP router into your router, and your router into the modem?

Naffer · # ¿ Jun 9, 2014 17:35

Etrips posted:

So I ended up getting an ASUS N66U/W router, but I'm on the fence if I should even bother installing TomatoUSB. What exactly are the benefits? Will it increase my wifi speeds on multiple devices? Should I just shut up and do it already?

I don't know the answer for that particular device, but usually 3rd party firmware is equal to or slower than first party. The reasons to switch firmware are 1) for features not available in the first party firmware or 2) if the first party firmware is unstable. If you're happy with your router as is I probably wouldn't change anything. I would make sure you have the newest version of the first party firmware however, because I seem to recall that there was some vulnerability recently.

Naffer · # ¿ Jul 2, 2014 15:00

Mesothelioma posted:

Won't cause any latency? I'm a super sperg about muh speed

In case it's helpful, here's the result of a ping between a Linux box and my cable modem which are separated by 3 cheap consumer switches and a router.
PING 192.168.100.1 (192.168.100.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.100.1: icmp_req=1 ttl=63 time=1.23 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.100.1: icmp_req=2 ttl=63 time=1.21 ms

And here's a ping sent to a device on the same switch as the Linux box.
PING 192.168.1.2 (192.168.1.2) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2: icmp_req=1 ttl=64 time=0.972 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.2: icmp_req=2 ttl=64 time=0.982 ms

Naffer · # ¿ Jun 11, 2015 20:08

I have a potentially silly question. I just did some wiring with Cat 6 (500 MHz, Monoprice brand) terminated with cat6 keystones (http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=105&cp_id=10513&cs_id=1051303&p_id=1044&seq=1&format=2) and all of my devices negotiate at 1 Gbit. I have a laptop with an intel NIC that has a cable quality tool that I ran for fun, and it rated the cable as "poor."
I get 500-700 mbit across the network (copying from an old hard drive, I think this is the limiting factor). Did I do something wrong or should I just leave it alone and assume everything is peachy and that the nic's cable software is just being difficult?

Naffer · # ¿ Jun 11, 2015 21:21

niss posted:

I wired my entire house using cat6 from monoprice as well and its been great. I wouldn't worry about it, those results sound similiar to mine when I was testing mine after I got done. You can use iperf to give you a better idea of throughput on the network if you want, but I agree with your assessment of the situation.

That all sounds good. I had large designs, but after finishing the important runs I realized I didn't really need two gigabit Ethernet pulls to every empty bedroom. I ended up using <250 feet of my 1000 foot roll.

Naffer · # ¿ Sep 5, 2015 18:59

redeyes posted:

That's sad. I figured it would be able to keep up with Google Fiber. Nope.

Has anyone compared this thing to the "Network Box" that Google already ships with google fiber?

Naffer · # ¿ Sep 6, 2015 21:04

Antillie posted:

However the OnHub is crammed with a beyond suspicious amount of interesting hardware that is not currently enabled. So clearly the OnHub is supposed to do all sorts of things in the future that it cannot do at the moment. What those things are and when/if they will be made available is anyone's guess.

I guess it just seems odd to me that that google wouldn't just standardize on a single router box, or at least find a way to integrate them.

All these un-initiated features reminds me of the Nexus Q. Hopefully they learned their lesson and actually have plans for the hardware.

Naffer · # ¿ Nov 15, 2017 15:04

I've got a pretty long ranch-style house (>100 feet from end to end) that I've already wired with Ethernet. Currently the wifi is provided by two old routers (one quite old) repurposed as WAPs on either end of the house. I'd like to upgrade them with some decent AC gear and have been thinking about the UniFi APs, but the spouse is not thrilled about ceiling mounted equipment. Are there any decent APs that are designed to sit on table tops?

Naffer · # ¿ Nov 15, 2017 18:15

Ok I'm convinced. I'm going to buy the Unifi's and see if I can convince the spouse to let me celling mount them.

Naffer · # ¿ Nov 18, 2017 17:46

emocrat posted:

fwiw, the Unify AP's when mounted on a white ceiling are pretty invisible, they look like very low profile smoke detectors if anything. The LED can be turned off with a check box in the control software. I have 2, one in a hallway and one in a dining room and you never notice them.

I put up my new UniFi AP-AC-LR today. For some reason I was expecting something the size of a big plate, but it really is very smoke detector-sized. I'm surprised how easy it is to miss on the ceiling. It does seem to be pretty finicky about gigabit wiring. I couldn't get it to negotiate at 1000mbit even after replacing both patch cables on either side of the poe injector and rewiring the keystones I used on the long cat6 run in the attic. I finally traced the problem to a 1 foot commercial cat6 patch cable I had used to connect it to the keystone. I have used this cable before without any trouble, so it seems to be pretty picky.

Naffer · # ¿ Nov 30, 2017 17:45

How bad an idea is trying to make your own gigabit patch cables? I have half a spool of 24AWG solid core cat6 cable leftover from my house wiring project, and it seems wasteful to be buying new cat5e/6 patch cables as I've slowly been replacing all of the 100 mbit devices that are connected using cat5 cables.

Is crimping on connectors as miserable (and unreliable) as people seem to suggest it is?

Naffer · # ¿ Dec 3, 2017 00:31

Internet Explorer posted:

Sorry, but if you make your own patch cables you're a bad person.

Got it. Sounds like my spouse will end up trying to give away this half-used roll of cat6 when I die.

I assume I got the idea from this thread, but I replaced the crummy old router running a 6 year old version of dd-wrt with an Edgerouter Lite I picked up on ebay for <$50. The cable company recently bumped me past 40 megabit, and the old router couldn't do it.

I will say that the Ubiquiti controller software is an extremely effective marketing tool. Having all of the features visible but disabled unless you buy a UniFI router and switch almost convinced me to pay $100 for their PoE 8-port switch. If I'd set up the AP before buying the Edgerouter lite I would have sprung for the USG just for more widgets in the interface.

Adbot · # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 18:59

Naffer · # ¿ Dec 14, 2017 18:03

Chimp_On_Stilts posted:

EDIT: And re. the Ubiquiti suggestion -- thanks! It looks interesting and I think I'd enjoy tinkering with it, but my apartment is tiny and my needs are very straightforward. If I buy a house I'll revisit the idea.

The management console they demo looks great. I love dashboards. But, it's hard to justify right now.

The edgerouter line doesn't use that dashboard. You have to buy one of the UniFI security gateways to get routing functions that use that dash. You also have to run the dashboard separately on a server you have or buy the "cloud key" device that acts as a standalone dashboard server. Don't get me wrong, it's a cool dashboard if you're all-in on UniFi gear but it does sort of lock you into buying only certain devices if you want to use the functions.