Wifi

[WickerBill]

I have a house that is not exactly friendly to wifi signals, either the 2.4ghz or 5ghz variety. Today I pre-ordered Luma (getluma.com) in order to have good security plus a (supposedly) high-end mesh network in my house. I'll let you know how it goes whenever it happens to show up.

But it got me thinking: what do the OCers use for wifi? Do you love your router / AP? If so please tell me what it is and why...

[G.]

I have a house that is not exactly friendly to wifi signals, either the 2.4ghz or 5ghz variety. Today I pre-ordered Luma (getluma.com) in order to have good security plus a (supposedly) high-end mesh network in my house. I'll let you know how it goes whenever it happens to show up.

But it got me thinking: what do the OCers use for wifi? Do you love your router / AP? If so please tell me what it is and why...

My w/l is pretty flaky. I use a couple of Cisco routers, but it appears that one of them is dying. I need to reboot the thing far too often.

Any info on how Luma passes signals from device to device?

[cameraman]

I have two of the new 802.11ac Airport Extremes as a single network using a well hidden Cat6 cable. It works quite well. It is far faster than the internet service to my house which is two red Solo cups and some string.

[nrc]

I have a couple of Netgear wireless routers. I wouldn't say that I love them but they work fine. A WNR3500L in the basement serves as a router and provides wifi for one end of the house. A WNR3500Lv2 has a wired connection on the other side of the house and acts as an AP for that side of the house and a wired switch for the entertainment center.

Having two SSID works ok. Sometimes a device will insist on connecting to the poorer connection of the two. They cover most of the house pretty well but one of the upstairs bedrooms is pretty weak. I was going to add a range extender but then I saw that they add another SSID. A mesh network would be nice. Commercial APs have supported that for a while now so I'm surprised it's not common on consumer gear.

I chose Netgear mainly because they support Linux and allow open router software installs. Something that doesn't really matter to just about anybody.

[gjc2]

I use an Asus RT-N66U Dual-band

It's fast and has good range.

[nissan gtp]

Apple AirPort Extreme. Works fine, and is easy to setup. After a career in IT, I don't want to fiddle about with networking, I just want it to work.

[SteveH]

When we moved into our house (2 stories over a full basement) in 2000 I had the Comcast cable modem in the basement. I pulled CAT 10E Ethernet into two of the upstairs bedrooms for my sons, my office and into the living room as well as run it to the home PC in the basement. A wired home network of sorts. Then came wifi. Added a wifi router but since it was in basement it didn't reach the second floor all that well. But the only room without Ethernet was the master bedroom. No big deal until iPads came along and I bought one for my wife. So after numerous modem upgrades I have been running for the past few years a Buffalo AirStation G in the basement and a Netgear N 900 plugged into the Ethernet port in the living room (using the same network ID and password as the Buffalo), which now paints the upstairs very well. As well as the deck and sun room. So I'm pretty pleased with the coverage. I still use Ethernet for my office and home PC but pretty much all else is wifi. Don't do Netflix or any heavy streaming so running slightly older gear doesn't pose an issue. It will at some point.

[datachicane]

Single Netgear with a couple of big-ass external 9db omni antennas in the basement, provides fine coverage through three floors and the detached garage. I hooked the cheapie omnis up as an experiment and they definitely do the job, even though it's not their intended use. I think I paid $10 each for them at Fry's a few years back while working on a different project.

[Insomniac]

I have an ASUS RT-68U. I have limited choice in placement unless I want to run COAX/Ethernet so I can pretty much predict where the best bandwidth areas are, but I never have signal issues.

[WickerBill]

Any info on how Luma passes signals from device to device?

It's just over 2.4ghz wireless, but the secret sauce is the peer-based (instead of master-slave like a traditional router and bridge) communication. Again, I'll let you know when I get it.

Hopefully before my daughter moves into her apartment at school this fall because I'm intending to use my existing router in her place.

[dirtyboy]

Since moving to Europe I've never fought my Internet more. I have insanely fast 150mbit speed, but it won't penetrate the concrete walls. Thus, if you're not in the living room, you are totally screwed. Every single house I've ever visited has WiFi extenders plugged in everywhere. They really don't work well.

[WickerBill]

Since moving to Europe I've never fought my Internet more. I have insanely fast 150mbit speed, but it won't penetrate the concrete walls. Thus, if you're not in the living room, you are totally screwed. Every single house I've ever visited has WiFi extenders plugged in everywhere. They really don't work well.

Very interesting - I wonder if Luma would help solve your issues. It sure seems to be the exact thing it is supposed to do.

[pfc_m_drake]

I have the Netgear Nighthawk, which I do like, primarily for the multiple channels/bandwidth. That said, I do have a small house (typical 1 story Florida home), so for me range isn't an issue. However today I was over at the neighbors to see if he grabbed my package for me while I was out of town for the weekend, and I noticed my phone was still connected to the network (5 GHz ac) thorough my concrete block walls). But I will confess that I didn't run a Speedtest, so it could have been a crap connection. And the Nighthawk isn't cheap...

On the tech forum I frequent they swear by these: http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Networks-Enterprise-System-UAP-AC-LR/dp/B015PRCBBI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1456698271&sr=8-1&keywords=Ubiquiti+Networks+UniFi+AC+LR+AP+Enterpri se+Wi-Fi+System+%28UAP-AC-LR%29

I haven't personally tried one, so I can't vouch, but they all seem pretty happy.

[SteveH]

Where to put your router for the best possible home wi-fi (http://www.wired.com/2016/03/put-router-optimize-home-wi-fi/)

[Napoleon]

Where to put your router for the best possible home wi-fi (http://www.wired.com/2016/03/put-router-optimize-home-wi-fi/)

And here I had my router in my fish tank.

[G.]

Where to put your router for the best possible home wi-fi (http://www.wired.com/2016/03/put-router-optimize-home-wi-fi/)


Consider even mounting the router on a wall or in a corner by the ceiling if you have two floors because radio waves generally spread out and towards the ground, not up. Think about putting your router on the second floor if you have one.

Good to know. I'll bet that the waves are even heavier if you are downloading war news items, weather disasters, or other sad news. :(

Restrict your downloads to funny cat videos if you want to have good coverage on the 2nd floor. :thumbup:

[SteveH]

:rofl:

[SteveH]

I have a house that is not exactly friendly to wifi signals, either the 2.4ghz or 5ghz variety. Today I pre-ordered Luma (getluma.com) in order to have good security plus a (supposedly) high-end mesh network in my house. I'll let you know how it goes whenever it happens to show up.

But it got me thinking: what do the OCers use for wifi? Do you love your router / AP? If so please tell me what it is and why...

eero: A Mesh WiFi Router Built for Security (http://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/03/eero-a-mesh-wifi-router-built-for-security/)

[dando]

Still using a Netgear (5 years+). Got an extender a few years ago when I was still in the McMansion (since retired it to the box o' cables, etc.). But it's been bullet proof.

[WickerBill]

Since this is now available at Best Buy, I figured I'd throw out my review in case anyone is interested.

The good:
1. Wireless coverage, especially 5ghz and 802.11ac, is vastly improved in the corners of my house and out in my yard.
2. Having an app that shows all devices connected to the network is handier than I thought it would be.
3. Incredibly easy to set up.
4. Built-in security seems to work very well - prohibits known malware from even crossing the network, stops malicious cookies without any sort of user interaction, etc. Sweet. Basically it's network AV for the home.


The bad:
A. Every reason I purchased these things doesn't work yet. Content filtering? If you set any level except "Unrestricted", no pages load. No apps work. They know about this problem and are working on it. App-controlled accept-and-deny? One of the key selling points was that people come into your home, attach to the wireless network, and you get a notification and you can swipe right to allow the device/user, swipe left to deny. That functionality doesn't yet exist. I was really looking forward to the password-less wifi system.
B. No granularity of setup yet. These are clearly easy to set up, and will work out of the box for 99% of buyers. But so far, I can't do port forwarding and I don't have a DMZ, and I want both. They say they're both "coming soon". That being said, I used the DMZ in my previous setup for the Xbox, which eliminated some NAT issues. With Luma, even without DMZ, it senses it is a console, provides full open NAT, and my ping times are half of what they were with ASUS. So, partial win there.


Of course, I bought a kickstarter-type wifi system and I should know I'm going to deal with the bugs. I still think it has loads of potential.

[SteveH]

Review: Comparing Google Wifi to other mesh networking heavyweights (http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/12/review-comparing-google-wifi-to-other-mesh-networking-heavyweights/)


I’ll save you some time up front: I’ve played with just about everything out there, and nothing comes close to the performance of multiple access points with full wired backhaul like the UAPs. To be fair, nothing Wi-Fi at all comes close to the performance of wired Ethernet itself, so don’t get too excited about the “3.2 gigabits per second!” that AC-3200 Wi-Fi router promises you. You’ll never actually see such speed. But if you don’t want wires and you don’t want the possibly intimidating controller systems like Ubiquiti’s UniFi interface, mesh might be for you. Luckily, today happens to be a bit of a boom for mesh offerings.

[nrc]

Review: Comparing Google Wifi to other mesh networking heavyweights (http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/12/review-comparing-google-wifi-to-other-mesh-networking-heavyweights/)

I'm sure that Google has already snooped everything on my home network through our phones so where's the harm in using them for the network itself? :gomer:

[Insomniac]

I'm surprised that these guys aren't integrating their voice/assistant into all these devices. Where is Amazon's Echo WiFi? Apple's Siri enabled Airport?

[nrc]

Any updated thoughts on Luma? Most of the comparisons I'm reading recommend Eero over Luma but Eero appears to be over twice the price of Luma. :saywhat:

[WickerBill]

Zero problems with the Luma system. I keep seeing new ones out there and I'l be honest, I'm a nerd and I'm tempted, but I'm getting 180mb/s to my endpoints and I can do port forwarding and QoS... I don't need to change.

Are they spectacular? Nah. Do I get great coverage? Yes. And I never have to restart the things like my old router.

[cameraman]

I'm surprised that these guys aren't integrating their voice/assistant into all these devices. Where is Amazon's Echo WiFi? Apple's Siri enabled Airport?

Apple doesn't make wifi gear anymore. Go figure.

[Insomniac]

Apple doesn't make wifi gear anymore. Go figure.

I feel like ISPs are going to own most of the US market when it comes to home Wi-Fi.

[nrc]

I had a couple of Amazon gift cards from the Holidays so I decided that it was time to fix our spotty WiFi coverage. I decided to go with Orbi mainly because I've been happy with my other Netgear stuff and the reviews seem to agree that it's one of the better options.

The first priority is coverage. Good, reliable speed through the entire house is more important than blazing speed since our primary multimedia is all wired. That being the case I opted for the three node AC2200 system (RBK23) over the two node AC3000 system (RBK50).

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CQDHPFT/

This seems like the right option because our wired access is at one end of the house and I needed to daisy chain the mesh nodes to reach the other end. Daisy chaining imposes some speed penalty at the far end but the speed is still sufficient.

So far I'm impressed by the coverage. Great signal through the entire house with rock solid connections. Speed is limited only my our 30Mbps cable connection when connected on the wired node with around a 5-10 percent slowdown for each hop through the mesh.

The only negative that I encountered was installation. The installation instructions use a phone app and assume that the Orbi wired node will replace your network router. Unfortunately it's rather limited as a router so I decided to set it up in "Access Point" mode. This means that the app can't find your node on the network requiring you to dig up their instructions for installing through the perfectly serviceable web interface. It's pretty easy to setup once you abandon their instructions and set it up like any other network device.

[dirtyboy]

Since moving to Europe I've never fought my Internet more. I have insanely fast 150mbit speed, but it won't penetrate the concrete walls. Thus, if you're not in the living room, you are totally screwed. Every single house I've ever visited has WiFi extenders plugged in everywhere. They really don't work well.

Well, I'm back in America. First thing I purchased was a Google Wifi router. My God, I love this thing. Super easy to install. I thought I might need two or three for the mesh system, but one seems to have the whole house (and back yard) covered. I was used to rebooting my routers daily and now I've done it twice in six months and only out of habit, it has never failed me once.

[cameraman]

I've set up some Linksys AC3000 Tri-Band Wireless Range Extenders and they work quite well.

[G.]

I flashed a Netgear N900 dual band gigabit router with dd-wrt, and now, I think it might work as an unmanaged switch.
:laugh:

I'll get around to configuring it correctly, someday.

Probably soon, since my Cisco is about to go blammo. (Just a hunch.)

[SteveH]

When we moved into our house (2 stories over a full basement) in 2000 I had the Comcast cable modem in the basement. I pulled CAT 10E Ethernet into two of the upstairs bedrooms for my sons, my office and into the living room as well as run it to the home PC in the basement. A wired home network of sorts. Then came wifi. Added a wifi router but since it was in basement it didn't reach the second floor all that well. But the only room without Ethernet was the master bedroom. No big deal until iPads came along and I bought one for my wife. So after numerous modem upgrades I have been running for the past few years a Buffalo AirStation G in the basement and a Netgear N 900 plugged into the Ethernet port in the living room (using the same network ID and password as the Buffalo), which now paints the upstairs very well. As well as the deck and sun room. So I'm pretty pleased with the coverage. I still use Ethernet for my office and home PC but pretty much all else is wifi. Don't do Netflix or any heavy streaming so running slightly older gear doesn't pose an issue. It will at some point.


Part two. Had upgraded the above with two Asus routers. Worked great. Until we moved to a new house in Jan with all but one TV connected by wifi, no cable connection. Was having plenty of buffering issues. Then on Friday morning I woke up to no internet at all. After an hour of troubleshooting, I narrowed it down to the main router being bad. The lone TV connected by cable worked fine so the house was getting a signal. After a furious google session I decided a three router Eeros system was the was to go and best of all I could get it at the local Best Buy with a 15% discount if I brought in the old router. However when I attempted to I was told in order to get the discount Best Buy had to install. Which was not apparent even in the small print. So I left the store vowing to never return as this is the second significant issue I’ve had with Best Buy in the past 9 months. I ordered from Amazon and it was delivered 24 hours later. Downloaded an app that basically did the install for me. Set up all three routers (they connect either by Ethernet or between themselves with Zigbee). Set up took no more than 15 minutes. Amazingly faster than the previous setup. No buffering.

1 better internet
2 didn’t pay a dime to Best Buy
3 easy as pie to install
4 and since Amazon owns Eeros, I’m sure I’ll be prompted now for products to purchase based on my searches :saywhat: :D

[nrc]

Yeah, I went with Orbi because I don't trust Amazon or Google not to get funny with my traffic. But modern mesh systems have gotten really good. I still hope to wire at least the major rooms in our next place. Wired satellites help avoid multiple wireless hops which can add a lot of latency.

It's amazing how brick and mortar chains like BB almost seem to be trying to drive people away. I'm in a mindset now where I'm actively trying to buy local. But one of the ways retailers seem to be reducing costs is not stocking goods. Order now and pick it up in store in a few days. That's supposed to compete with Amazon?

Instead, often times I just order directly from manufacturer if they offer it at a competitive price with shipping.

[devilmaster]

It's amazing how brick and mortar chains like BB almost seem to be trying to drive people away. I'm in a mindset now where I'm actively trying to buy local. But one of the ways retailers seem to be reducing costs is not stocking goods. Order now and pick it up in store in a few days. That's supposed to compete with Amazon?

And worse, is how these stores now think being an amazon-like web reseller for others is a good idea. :rolleyes:

I've completely given up looking online to see what walmart has in their store. Best buy isn't much better.