COSPILOT

Interesting that PoE has different meanings. In my industry, it stands for power over Ethernet.

KRSW

For what it's worth, Asus now allows you to use some of their routers in a mesh configuration, where it takes one of the 5GHz radios and dedicates it to backhaul between routers and leaves you with at least 1x 2GHz and at least 1x 5GHz radio per router. You can pick up a T-Mobile badged Asus RT-AC68U off Amazon for $59 'refurbished'. ( https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-AC19...dp/B075GYWPCJ/) Re-flashing the T-Mobile version of firmware to the standard Asus RT-AC68 firmware isn't a beginner task, but there are a few step-by-step guides on the 'net which will walk you through it. Once you have them running stock Asus mesh firmware, they practically set themselves up.

More about Asus' mesh network (https://www.asus.com/AiMesh/ )

cblaisd

Still haven't pulled the trigger on another solution (and am SO appreciative of all the assistance from everyone!), but another friend suggested to me that the first thing to try is to increase the speed of the connection. Mrs. cblaisd set up the internet account before I arrived and I have discovered that it's a 12 Mbps down/2 Mbps up connection via the local cable company and its isp.

One friend suggested that that was the issue, that I was probably a) only getting 75% of that speed anyway, and b) when one of us is streaming something, that will "suck up most of the data." I would also point out that on the network connected to the wifi are a couple of phones, a half dozen or so Wemo devices, two laptops, two iPads (although one is rarely in use, and the other is often in use streaming video in the evenings).

The isp offers a couple of speed upgrades:

20 Mbps down for an additional $17/month
30 Mbps down for an additional $27/month.
55 Mbps down for an additional $47/month

For $45/month (plus junk fees) I could get my own 20Mbps DSL line and have only the man cave's electronics (laptop, NAS, etc.) on it.

So, given all of that a) is it your experience that provisioned speed could make the kind of difference I'm seeing when one of us is streaming (and it knocks the other's data speeds down to almost nothing), b) what option would you choose: upgrade current ISP's speed or get a dedicated DSL line?

One option that's not on the table, please: switching the whole house to a different internet/tv provider. There is an alternative cable company available (but they want to run a line directly over the backyard and that's not acceptable) and there is gigabit DSL available with TV, but Mrs. cblaisd would likely not want to learn a new TV/DVR system

gfunkdave

Gigabit DSL? That's not a thing except in the lab or if you are verrrrrry lucky and have an ISP who provides fiber to the node and VDSL...and even then I think it's limited to around 600Mbps. You can usually get a cable company to bury a new line though it might cost more.

My attitude is that there's no such thing as too much bandwidth. Streaming HD requires 5-8 Mbps. Streaming 4k requires 25Mbps. FWIW, the FCC's definition of "broadband" is 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload.

I was pretty content with 60 Mbps service; Spectrum recently bumped everyone up to 100, which is nice.

Who's your ISP? If you don't mind two bills, another DSL line might be good. Only caveat would be regarding roaming between the two wifi networks - could cause interruptions if you're on a call or streaming something.

KRSW

Before you go chasing your tail and wasting too much money on this, what problems exactly are you having and on what type of devices? How are they connected to the network?

What other wireless devices (cameras, baby monitors, wireless speakers, etc.) do you have running? How is the house constructed (concrete block, solid pour concrete w/rebar, wood-frame, metal floor deck, etc.)? Are there any large metal (ductwork) or dense objects (appliances) in the line-of-sight between the router and target devices? Are there certain times which everything works flawlessly or other times of day when you know it's going to be bad? Which cable modem are you using? Some are known to have issues with streaming video.

I ask all of these questions as it's important to figure out where the breakdown is occurring. There's 5 main variables: 1) Your ISP (upstream), 2) The connection from your ISP to your house. 3) Your router, 4) WiFi, 5) Your device(s). The solution for all of these is different.

On the router, your Asus AC66U is new enough and has a powerful enough processor that it's likely not the bottleneck. It's not the best long-range WiFi router out there, but does well enough. Is there a more central spot in the house where you can put the cable modem & router?

On the WiFi side of things, 802.11g came out in 2003 with a theoretical 54Mbps rate, practical ~20-25Mbps. FWIW, Netflix recommends 5Mbps for HD streaming. Unless you're watching more than 2 Netflix streams simultaneously, 12/2 should be sufficient. For 85% of homes out there, this is more than sufficient as long as the signal is strong enough.

How are your devices connected to the router? 2.4GHz travels further through most building materials than 5GHz will. Conversely, 5GHz has more bandwidth available so it will be faster in most cases, provided the signal is strong enough. If I can run a hardwire cable to a device, I do so. Wireless still can't compete with hardwire for speed, interference rejection, and stability. When I have to go wireless, I try to keep all of my streaming devices and computers on 5GHz and let everything else hang out on 2.4GHz. Cheaper devices (security cameras, automated lights, etc.) are usually 2.4GHz anyway.

Depending on how the house is built, you might benefit from using some commercial WiFi gear to get the signal from upstairs to downstairs and

I don't think DSL is the smart answer here. $45/mo usually will work out to $55-$60/mo with fees. That's $720/year...or another way to look at it, that's $720 you should have spent coming up with a permanent solution.

cblaisd

1) There are four walls plus two sets of metal ductwork, so I'm sure that's one of the issues.

2) The times when things crawl in the man cave are when Mrs. cblaisd is streaming video. According to @ScottC , who has been my tech guru for 20 years, a) 12Mbps is actually probably only 80% of that and b) the iPad will suck up virtually all of that bandwidth.

I also discovered that the CenturyLink option is NOT DSL, but Fiber-to-the-house.

cblaisd

Rather than start a new thread, I'll put this here since it's relevant to the topic at hand.
I confess I do not understand how wifi speed and quality is measured. Lenovo's Access Connections software reports that Windows Wireless Service is currently reporting a speed of 9.0 Mbps, while at the very same moment, Wifi Scanner 3.4 is reporting 86.7 Mbps (but also has the dBm measure and "link quality," whatever that is). (For what it's worth, at this moment, it's acting much like like a 9.0 Mbps connection than an 86 one!)


Why the huge difference between the two? What IS the best way to measure speed and quality of a given wifi signal?

gfunkdave

They are different measurements of the capacity of the link. The "Max Rate" is I believe based on the channel width, frequency band, and Wifi spec (802.11n). I'm not sure how the "Achieveable" is calculated but might be the software's guess of actual possible throughput at this time. The Windows 9.0 Mbps is either Windows' guess at achievable throughput or maybe the base data rate that your Wifi card has negotiated (I don't fully understand that part, so I might be misspeaking).

Best way to test the actual wifi network's throughput is to plug in a computer to ethernet and run iperf on it and your wifi laptop.

Generally, it's best to use only channels 1, 6, or 11 in the 2.4GHz band since they are the only ones that don't overlap. Also keep it to 20 MHz channel width in 2.4GHz band; 40 MHz channels take up almost all the available channel space.

In 5GHz band, you can use 40 or 80 MHz channel width and any available channel.

There is a free Windows program called Acrylic Wifi Analyzer that shows all wifi networks in the area and their spectra. You also generally want to see a received signal strength of more than about -75 or -80 dBm.

cblaisd

Thank you. Changing the 2.4 channel helped a bit.

The WifiScanner 3.4 also does what you describe.

nkedel

As long as it's on the same main panel, it should still work. It's not super-reliable, but it's cheap as dirt, and pretty fast. The newer Home Plug AV2 standard (usually on 1000+Mbps models) will work more reliably for powerline, but you're looking at modestly more expensive ($100 for a pair vs. $25ish for the basic speed grade... still cheaper than active ethernet over coax); could just get the basic cheapon 200-500 models from someplace with a good return policy and see if it works well enough before going to the better. (edit: replying as I go, looks like you've done that.)

My experience with the cheaper passive ethernet-over-coax has not been good. The more expensive active ones may work well -- I haven't tried them -- but they at least moderately more expensive. In the case of the passive ethernet over coax, I've only tried it on wiring that's otherwise disconnected, rather than shared with live cable, so I'd take into account other folks' comments about issues coexisting with cable (or not.)

We use the AV1000 TP-Link ones to go outside one house, through a meter and into another at our summer house (actually 2 cabins with their own meters), and since there's no transformers it does work. It's all old wiring, though -- no AFCI.

The ideal case with two ISPs is to have one router behind both that handles splitting up traffic.

The gigabit "DSL" it probably FTTH or in some multi-unit developments, FTTN and then Ethernet rather than VDSL. As far as I know, VDSL2 tops out at about 200Mbps per channel (I'm literally about 100 feet from the DSLAM and we were topping out at a measured 150 per channel not that AT&T would actually provision that.)

12Mbps is super-slow by modern standards; one HD stream will come pretty close suck up all that bandwidth in most cases, and in the worst case exceed the actual usable bandwidth.

If you can get gigabit FTTH, and it's not too pricy, get it. It's amazing.
(Amusingly, it's actually $17/month cheaper than my top-grade 75mbps DSL was, both from AT&T)


Also depends on how the house is laid out; ethernet cable is pretty cheap, and in the simplest case of baseboard or ceiling surface wiring you just have to go through a few walls and would typically be nowhere near live AC wiring. Ditto if there's an attic or crawlspace. Hiring an electrician for simple low-voltage stuff is total overkill.

gfunkdave

Yeah, it's CenturyLink FTTH. I hear it's nice once they get it set up but doing business with them is vexing.

I had no idea AT&T did VDSL in the US. I thought it was mainly a Europe thing.

cblaisd

It was amazingly fast until it blew a couple of the AFCI breakers, and kept doing so. And there are 8 of them in the panel so replacing would be counter-productive, and not-at-all a sure thing even with the AFCI breakers that are supposedly friendly to Ethernet over Powerline.

The locations are too far apart.

Yup!

I wish I could easily run the cable, but the layout is simply inscrutable for how the run would need to go.

Dealing with them entirely via Twitter was almost a pleasure! I'll never go back to calling/chatting again if I can help it.

Thanks again to you both.

nkedel

No idea how widespread it is, but the initial roll-out of UVerse in my area was FTTN VDSL2, which they then started offering channel-bonded (not really clear why, in my case; they could have offered the channel bonded speeds on a single wire if the router's own estimates of the link speeds were to be believed.) They've since started also offering FTTH gigabit in my area; the symmetric upstream is a game changer.

I'd be a little curious if the newer standard ones which use two sending wires rather than one might play better with AFCI, but there's a very real possibility they'd be worse rather than even the same.

There are always ways around that, but they involve running wire (preferably Ethernet, or if the runs are horribly long, fiber.)

Without being near enough to come by, there's little specific I can suggest. In the longer run, if you're mostly using this for external internet access at this point paying someone to run the wire is almost certainly overkill. If you end up in the future doing more things that might stress out available wireless bandwidth (IP cameras, or a big home server are the two that immediately come to mind), you can always reassess then.

cblaisd

The CenturyLink installer just left. Really helpful guy and elegantly installed per my requests.

And -- OMG. The speed, the speed. Never had fiber-to-the-house before. Amazing.

gfunkdave

This is gfunkdave being green with envy.