Nobody wants my info dump. I know way too much about networking and computers. The topics are massively deep, like iceberg levels of deep. One for each topic.
I could lecture for an entire day on the nuance and considerations of picking a Wi-Fi channel, or you can ignore me and just hit “auto” which may or may not take some, or all, of my considerations into account when selecting a channel.
If anyone is keen to hear some generally good advice about home networking, here’s my elevator speech:
Wire when you can, wireless when you have to. Wi-Fi is shared and half duplex, every wired connection is exclusive to the device and full duplex.
If you can’t Ethernet, use MoCA, or powerline (depending on what internal power structures you have, this can be excellent or unusable, keep your receipts). Mesh is best with a dedicated backhaul, better with a wired backhaul. Demand it from any system you consider.
The latest and greatest Wi-Fi technology probably won’t fix whatever problem you’re having, it will only temporarily reduce the symptoms and you won’t notice it for a while. Be weary about upgrading and ask yourself why you require the upgrade. Newer wireless won’t fix bad signal, or dropouts.
For everything else, Google. That’s how I find most of the information I know.
Good luck.
I’ll be around in case anyone has questions. No promises on when I’ll be able to reply tho.
Would like to ask, is it worth entering networking as a career right now? I’ve been of the belief that it’ll be necessary as long as the internet is around, so certainly within my lifetime, but the current AI bubble and the direction it’s taking is making me think otherwise.
Networking is a pretty specific niche, the biggest challenge I’ve faced in my career is that I can’t find any local jobs, or remote work positions that are networking focused. It’s still a passion of mine, but I tend to be stuck in sysadmin type roles.
As far as I’m concerned, until AI can plug itself in and fix it’s own servers, humans will always need to be involved in the setup and maintenance of the hardware that connects our world. I don’t think it’s practical or realistic for AI to put satellites in orbit or run intercontinental fiber along the ocean floor. Not anytime soon and not in our lifetimes.
The thing about computers is that they’re not very adaptable to their environment, so the environment needs to be adapted to computers. We, as humans, are extremely adaptable to our environment. This is very slowly shifting that computers are starting to be able to adapt to different working environments; but I don’t think that will happen in fully within our lifetimes.
Programming can be a minefield right now, but that shouldn’t dissuade you if that’s your interest/passion. Networking will be required, and tech jobs are some of the most recession proof, though not completely recession proof. Tech fields have slowed but it’s extremely rare that we see negative growth in tech. The players might change but the jobs are there and need people in chairs to fulfill them.
My advice is to pursue what interests you, and adapt to whatever life throws at you. Maybe you’ll start with cybersecurity and move into a coding role, or like me, study networking and then work as a generalist. When you get to that point, when interviewing for jobs, make sure you know what the job is, review the job posting with your interviewer if you are uncertain at all. The job should fit you as much as you fit it. I didn’t do that for one job and it was one of the most unpleasant years of my life working there. I got on the job and discovered that what I thought I’d be doing, was not what I was going to be doing.
What are the nuances between APs and how they handle choosing a channel? Also, I was told at one point it’s better to “stack” on top of other SSIDs using the same channel than to go one channel higher (assuming there isn’t room higher up in the spectrum).
I can answer the second thing quickly, “stacking” the ssids as you say, makes the inference into what we call “co-channel” interference. Most of the wireless headers are unencrypted, though your payload is encrypted (the data being transferred) but not so much for the headers. Because of this, and the fact that each ap is talking on the same frequency, there’s a small amount of collaboration that can occur between wireless networks. If someone starts a wireless multimedia (WMM) session that will last 8.2ms, then all radios on channel will know that the channel is occupied for the next 8.2ms, and basically go idle for that much time. If you’re on differing channels, but still interfering, aka adjacent channel interference, then those messages may not be understood, causing a lot more collisions. Collisions being when two radios transmit at the same time and the channel needs to clear and everyone backs off, and you try again (usually happening on the order of milliseconds, and possibly several times per second). Collisions will negatively impact your performance more than the channel simply being busy. The protocol in use for wireless collision avoidance is CSMA/CA or carrier sense multi access with collision avoidance, which is an amended version of CSMA/CD (collision detection) used in half duplex wired communication.
How’s that for a “short” answer?
For channel conditions, I’m looking at walls, building materials, open air distances, appliances, furniture… Anything that may attenuate, reflect, refract, or otherwise degrade signal strength whenever I start to assess an area for wireless. This is important so I know how many access points I need and how close together they need to be to overcome the obstacles placed in the environment. Once I have a rough idea of how many access points I need and how close together they should be, my next consideration is the expected client density and the objectives of the network. Something made for a busy stadium will have more access points than something made for a local cafe. If I’m doing a large number of access points my focus will be on maximizing how many clients can be connected, and driving that number as far down per access point/radio, as possible. Fewer people on a channel means more free airtime for their traffic, which equates to faster speeds. I’d be looking at using most of the 5ghz spectrum on the smallest channel width and have each radio be on its lowest power setting. You’ll have clients moving between access points a lot, but you won’t end up with more than a couple dozen per radio. I’d look into directional antennas, to minimize the broadcast range so I can reuse channels closer together. In such a high density space I would want to have some kind of Wi-Fi blocking or attenuation tech installed in the exterior of the building to prevent outside signals from coming in and inside signals from going out. Both for security and control over the airspace. Fewer things to interfere with; you only have to worry about what’s inside that perimeter. Then it’s a matter of setting up the channels for use in accordance with local laws, and letting the system handle channel assignment. With a huge number of access points, manually setting the channels is impractical. So everything I’ve said about it until now isn’t even for channel selection, it’s all things that support channel selection.
For small networks, especially in high density scenarios where the density is due to neighbors, whether that’s commercial neighbors in a plaza or mall, or residential neighbors if you’re in a suburb, an apartment, or a condo; for this, you want to pay careful attention to not only what other networks are around, checking from multiple points not only inside but outside of the premise as well, but what channels they’re on and what their relative signal strength is. If signal strength is low then not a lot to think about. Avoid the channel if you can, but if you can’t, there are worse selections. I’m also looking at the attenuation obstacles here, environments with large obstacles will benefit from lower band channels, either 2.4ghz or UNII 1 for 5ghz, and environments with a lot of radios on the 5ghz spectrum, may benefit from enabling the UNII 2 DFS channels (dynamic frequency selection). A lot of cheaper gear can’t operate in the UNII 2 DFS space because they haven’t bothered to implement DFS, which is a legal requirement for anything operating in that band. So the guys in the apartment next door that are using an off the shelf, cheapo router on sale from best buy probably won’t have the ability to even select those channels for use, and you’ll be free to use them with little to no interference… Unless the DFS triggers that is… For less dense areas I want to tend towards UNII 1 and 3 for stability, and only have enough 2.4ghz to cover the area. 20 MHz wide channels on 2.4ghz, 40 wide on 5/6Ghz. Should net about 400mbps or so per radio, and unless you have gigabit + Internet, with everything on Wi-Fi, some remarkably clear airspace, and only a single access point, going to 80mhz channel width is usually unhelpful.
I’m looking at not only the channels with low/no occupancy, but I also want to look at how busy those channels are, but this aspect usually requires monitoring over a duration of time, with specialized hardware. I would choose to overlap with a dormant network with a stronger signal, than overlap with a network that is much weaker in signal strength, but very busy all the time.
I also prefer channels 1/6 on 2.4 GHz because channel 11 is near the upper limit of 2.4ghz, and just above that limit is the frequency used by microwave ovens. If any microwave ovens don’t have perfect shielding and you’re on channel 11, you’re going to have a bad time. In environments with more than one access point on 2.4ghz, I don’t worry too much about it since any affected client can hop to another access point when interference ramps up.
every wired connection is exclusive to the device and full duplex.
That doesn’t seem quite right in reality, since the moment you have multiple devices connected to one switch and both sending data to the router, they’re sharing the connection. Switches can handle multiple connections at the same time way better than an AP, being able to receive from multiple devices at once, but the bandwidth will ultimately still be shared between the devices.
I see what you’re saying and this is a good inquiry. The reality is that most networks are what we call North/South traffic exclusive. In this context, we use “North” to describe towards the Internet, “South” to be from the Internet, and east/west to be LAN to LAN traffic.
Networks that are primarily or exclusively North South, your contention will always be your ISPs committed speed (the speed they’re allowing you to use). So most of what’s South of that is pretty trivial, as long as it can keep up with, or exceed the speed of the North connection.
That changes if you do any East/West traffic. Whether that’s a home lab, a home server, or even just a NAS, or computer to computer file sharing… Once that traffic is more than a trivial amount of the network traffic, then you see a lot of benefit from wired connections to your computers. The switch backplane can handle a lot more bandwidth than any individual port, and the only way you’ll see that bandwidth is if some traffic is going somewhere other than your router, or the Internet.
To say most home networks are North/South heavy is obvious. Business networks frequently have servers and other LAN resources that are frequently utilized. So East/West traffic is usually non-trivial.
To spin an example, if your ISP is providing a 100mbps committed rate, and you gave full gigabit ethernet inside and at least 802.11ac wireless, with almost all traffic going to the Internet and back, you’re going to see little difference between Wi-Fi and Ethernet. The only major change moving from Wi-Fi to Ethernet is that your ping time will be more consistent and lower overall. It won’t be a huge change, something in the range of 10s of ms, but it’s literally the only thing you’ll notice a difference with.
Another example where it will make a big difference is if you have a NAS or home server, where you have files stored. Compared to a file storage service like drop box or Google drive. The LAN specific traffic will move at line rate, or the speed of whatever storage the data ultimately rests on, whichever is slower. In that context, the East/West traffic benefits greatly from Ethernet, and the full duplex connection between the two devices.
It’s all subjective to how you are using your network. You’ve made a good point, so thanks for that. Have a good day.
Dude these type of replies are what had made reddit such a great time sink, even random browsing you may find something incredible in the comments. Thank you
High end consumer aka prosumer, which is only really one brand, ubiquiti. Specifically their unifi stuff.
Or used mid range business stuff, Cisco, Aruba, juniper. The pinch here is that you usually need specialized knowledge to configure this class of device. I’ve also used Cisco, watchguard, Fortinet, Sophos, sonicwall, and probably others for firewalls. I prefer Sonicwall for some very specific reasons about how they structure their configuration, but for anyone who isn’t a certified sonicwall tech, I’d point at Sophos. Their stuff seems to be a fair balance of configurability and user friendliness.
If you’re instant on new business stuff and you have the money for it, Sophos for the firewall, Aruba instanton for switching and Wi-Fi.
The benefit to unifi is user friendliness and a unified control console. If you’re not an IT professional or a similar technical job, unifi will provide plenty of what you need and leave out the unnecessary knobs that needs like me want to see.
Be prepared to spend several hundred on the networking if you’re going to do it right, there are some places you can trim some costs, but before you nope it from sticker shock, consider how much you spend per year on Internet service, and then consider how much the router/firewall + switch + access points are in comparison… And those are things you don’t need to buy every year.
Edit: I forgot to mention the backhaul. The decision will depend on the wireless environment. You might be able to save some cash having 5ghz backhaul, but it’s going to struggle in dense environments, so consider spending some extra on 6ghz if you’re in a medium to high density housing situation.
Good luck
No argument here. The earlier stuff is still very bandwidth constrained, some pieces are incapable of meeting line rate, like the UDM pro. It has 10G connections but the throughput of the unit is around 6Gbps. Still much faster than most people’s Internet connections (who in their right mind has a 5+ Gbps Internet connection at their house?) but it’s a limitation worth knowing before you buy.
Solid gear otherwise. I haven’t seen how their end of life looks, so I can’t really comment, but most companies just announce that they’re no longer supporting a piece of gear and suggest a replacement. Called an EOL notice, or something similar. EOL being end of life. Usually includes a recommendation for an upgrade to something supported that’s a similar class of device.
Time will tell on that one. I have a UDM pro in a network I manage so I’m waiting for that EOL notice.
The first six hexadecimal digits of the Mac address are referred to as the oui, or organizationally unique identifier. They are supposed to all be registered, but with modern systems, mac address randomization is common, so the Mac address in use can be little better than nonsense.
I have a theory that some of the more budget oriented manufacturers (think Ali express), just don’t bother using a registered mac address at all.
This all makes my job harder as a network admin, I usually need to look up what a device is by mac address to help identify what it is and what it’s doing. I need to make sure everything is on the right network, and I can’t do that if I don’t know what anything is.
The last six hexadecimal digits of the Mac are simply to uniquely identify the interface that the Mac is burned into. This also means that any systems with multiple network ports, have different mac address on each port. Some things are exempt, like network switches, but for the most part, every interface has, or is supposed to have, a unique mac address.
Also, the mac isn’t hex, it’s binary. Hex is just how we’ve decided to present it to users. The switches, routers, and interfaces don’t work with the hex, only the binary.
Same for IP addresses, which normal are shown in “dotted decimal notation”, but are just binary. But you didn’t ask about IP.
Did you need me to whisper ouis into your ear and you can guess what company is registered to that oui?
The MAC, at least as it was conceptualised (as they said, MAC randomisation etc. mess with this), is a unique identifier for that specific device. It doesn’t change, and only one device has that specific MAC.
Or more specifically, that specific network adaptor, the hardware responsible for connecting to networks. So one computer might have multiple MACs if, for example, it has an Ethernet port and a wifi card.
Fun fact, when I worked for Alstom and programmed their electric substations, they had a 10bit network and proprietary network cards, and the prototypes sometimes had the same MAC address 😁😅
Thanks a lot for sharing you experience! I recently saw some people I follow on youtube talk about fibre as an alternative for ethernet cables, do you have an any experience with that?
If ethernet works, you’re just using a more expensive option to go with fiber.
Unless you need something unique about fiber, like distance (which can still be dubious for consumer grade hardware), or a non-electrical based signal (dubious requirement in most cases), then you’re just throwing money at being able to say you use fiber.
I feel like fiber only makes sense for long runs or extremely high bandwidth needs. For a typical home network, I don’t see any benefits for fiber over ethernet.
Yes. Fiber is great but extremely nuanced. SMF, MMF, UPC, APC, OM3, OM4, OS2… All different parts of just the cabling… Not to mention the connectors, LC, SC… You get the idea.
Everyone I tend to talk to about it seem to think multi-mode is cheaper, and it can be, but in my experience, single mode is usually the better choice and usually not much of a price uplift if you’re buying from a good company. Look at FS.com and do some comparison shopping against them. They make some high quality stuff, and it’s at pretty incredible pricing for what you get, but the equipment can add up fast.
Multi mode can only really carry one connection per fiber and usually needs to be duplexed (two strands per link) while single mode can leverage WDM to carry multiple independent signals on different wavelengths. This can be leveraged for bi-directional single strand links, multiple links that are aggregated into a single connection in hardware (this is how 40Gbit works, it’s actually 4x10G connections on different wavelengths)…
It’s still more costly and requires more specialized equipment and training to work with, compared to copper Ethernet, so it’s pretty uncommon to see in residential or home networks.
I wired my house with cat6 when I moved in. The overall setup looks like 10G fiber to the house -> 2.5G capable router -> 2.5G capable NAS running *arr stack. Also off the router is a single cat6 run downstairs -> 8 port 1G unmanaged switch, which is connected to my desktop, work dock, parters dock, TV, and backhaul run to the back of house wifi extender. The desktop, both docks and wifi extender are 2.5G capable. The TV is 100M. This has been extremely reliable. I plan on upgrading the switch to a 10g capable one at some point, and then the router. Since the switch is unmanaged, is there a good way to know when it is the limiting factor and I should update it?
A managed switch can give you telemetry, like port utilisation, and you can observe how much upstream is in use.
My concern is that you have a 1g switch connecting 2.5g capable devices to a 2.5g capable upstream network. That’s a bottleneck that I would want to eliminate. I know serve the home has a roundup of 2.5g switches that might be useful for you. I’m not saying you should switch to managed either, you may be well served by an unmanaged switch, and it will save you money. The telemetry for managed switches usually requires a system to collect and store it, usually an NMS, or network monitoring/management system.
Some manufacturers build NMS style telemetry into their products, ubiquiti does this to a limited extent. Other vendors may be better or have nothing at all. Something to think about when picking gear, if you like that sort of visibility. NMS usually operates over SNMP, which can become a whole thing; but for monitoring, setting up read only SNMP can be rather easy.
A word of caution. 10G and 2.5/5G were developed independently, and 10G came first. It was expensive which is why 2.5/5g Ethernet became a thing. Because of this checkered past, there’s a lot of 10G equipment that will not support operating at 2.5 or 5gbps. So if you get a 10G switch, check if there’s 2.5G, or 5G capability separately, or included on the 10G ports.
In my experience, most 10G ports are 1 or 10G, with nothing in between. Most 2.5G ports can’t do 10G. So the best idea would be to have a switch with a couple of 10G for fast uplinks and some 2.5G connections for your devices. Unless you can find a unicorn of a switch that supports all speeds on all ports, a switch split between 2.5G and 10G ports is probably your best bet.
Oh, ok thanks! I’ve been wondering about the split 2.5/10G switches I’ve seen and wondered why. That makes a lot of sense now! I’ll take a look at them again.
What’s the pros & cons of a managed vs unmanaged switch? Or of just running multiple cables out of the router? (Assuming your router has sufficient ports.)
My router only has four downstream ports, and due to the layout of my house I only want to run one cable from the router to my home office anyway. If it had enough ports and the house was laid out differently I wouldn’t have bothered with the switch.
Unmanaged switches are usually quite a bit cheaper and just work. You plug everything in and that’s it. Managed switches need configuring and cost more. I paid $25 for my 8 port 10/100/1000 switch, while the managed version is about $120. With a managed switch you can do things like turn individual ports on and off, traffic limit and monitor per port, and other fancy networking things that I’ve never bothered with.
That’s that speed the ports are capable of. 10/100/1000 megabits per second. Most things with an Ethernet port nowadays are 10/100/1000 capable, and 2.5Gb is becoming reasonably common.
Weirdly, Roku and other smart TVs are often only 100Mb capable since 4k streaming only requires about 60Mb and if you are squeezing pennies a 1Gb port is a bit more expensive.
10Gb is just starting to get available for high end consumer devices.
All of the ports support all three speeds. When you first plug in, there is a quick round of negotiations where both sides basically say “Here are the speeds I can work, what about you?” Then they go with the highest that both support.
The elevator pitch is wonderful and I’m glad to be following your recommendations already. Wired everything is not practical for me without drilling through the floor, so a mesh router with dedicated backhaul and a wired connection to the downstairs node is working like a charm.
Just read up on that, seems very interesting. I don’t think it’s a great option for my setup since there’s only one coax port in the house, but I learned something new today.
And if you can’t use MoCa - say, bc the cable installers cut all the other coax cords on the house (true story!) - you can also consider powerline adapters to send Ethernet over your electrical wiring. It’s a crapshoot depending on the quality of your wiring but I can usually get at least the same speed as my wifi with it.
I know not everyone can run Ethernet. Whether it’s because you’re in a rental, or you simply don’t have the budget for it, the reason doesn’t matter all that much. There’s plenty of good reasons not to.
Usually mesh nodes have Ethernet on them as well and it just bridges into the LAN. Using that can actually cut down on wireless traffic overall. Maybe something to look at which could help if you have any troubles.
I’ve been switching a lot of my devices to ESP-NOW instead of WiFi so that they can just fart out their data to anyone who can hear it and then go back to sleep, no connecting or handshaking or authenticating or overhead. Should clear up my wifi network I think.
If I’m not mistaken, they still use 2.4 GHz, which is also used by wifi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, a bunch of other stuff… Microwave ovens…
And anything operating on a frequency, regardless of protocol, will interfere with eachother. I think the main benefit for you would be the brief amount of active time, could reduce the airtime being used by the devices.
I hope it works out for you and your wifi works excellently. Just be aware that it could still interfere.
Use 5ghz when possible.
It’s a single frequency for all people, including those that are on the same or adjacent/overlapping channels. If you ever used walkie talkies, they don’t work so well when more than one person is talking.
Same idea.
Wi-Fi 7 is introducing multi link, which could improve the duplex operation, but it’s far from perfect. Even if you use one channel for download and one for upload, you’re still competing with everyone else on the channel - whether they’re connected to your network or not. They can still interfere with you if you’re on the same channel but different networks.
Yes but also no. Originally MIMO, or multi-in, multi-out, was what is now called SU-MIMO, or single user MIMO. In wireless AC, they did multi-user MIMO on the access point transmission side, then AC wave2 brought it to the client as well. Wi-Fi 6 should have MU-MIMO supported on all points, but I forget if it’s a requirement of the spec or just a feature. In the later case, manufacturers would not have a requirement to include it.
The difference is in how many nodes are “talking” at once. They use beam forming to enhance signal strength where the recipient node is, which sacrifices signal strength everywhere else. That’s SU-MIMO. This came with the promise of MU-MIMO, which is using beam forming to transmit different messages to multiple nodes at the same time. Which effectively doubles throughput for that duration, but also requires very specific conditions in an environment that’s constantly changing, especially for mobile phones. Tapping the screen or rotating the device slightly could put your device into a situation where MU-MIMO may start or stop working. Millimeters of travel can be the difference here. Even a laptop slightly shaking from someone bumping the surface it’s on, or someone typing on the keyboard could affect it. It also may not.
The point is, MU-MIMO is great when it works, but you have no reasonable promise that you’ll get any benefit from having it. It’s especially useless in areas with a lot of reflections. But I digress.
The game changer tech is coming with WiFi 7 and multi link operation, we can basically go to a pseudo full duplex operation on Wi-Fi using it, which would be a huge boost for overall speed.
I’m side tracked. The issue you have on your friends network has nothing to do with the wifi. It is a matter of contention. Your upload usage is basically causing drops, or at least significant delays, for other traffic going up to the Internet. So when the client device requests to download a file, or a webpage, or a document, or start a media stream or whatever, the request can’t go out, and every so often the downloading client needs to tell the server “I have this data, send me more” and those messages (called acknowledgments) are not going through.
Two options to fix this. The easiest is to turn off your torrent software. If you must have it on, when the network is dormant, do a speed test, and set an upload limit in your software for less than the upload of the connection. 75% is probably a good place to be, so if they have 10mbps upload, set your software to 7.5mbps. (be weary of Mbps vs MBps)
The other option is going to be a bit more involved and depending on what hardware your friend has, may not be possible at all. This will, however, permanently fix the problem moving forward, both with your computer on his network, but also with everyone else’s. Implement QoS. Some routers can fall over in terms of performance with QoS on, so your mileage may vary, and there’s no guarantee that QoS is even available on their router. If it is, you need some basic settings in place for it to work correctly, most importantly, it needs to know how fast the upload and download are for the WAN. I would also build in a margin here, and only enter about 90% of the actual speed of the connection, the overhead will be used for high priority traffic when the link is otherwise fully occupied. My recommendation, if you have the option, is to set QoS to drop instead of buffer. This reduces buffer bloat, and the information that’s getting dropped can and will be retransmitted (calling back to those acknowledgments I mentioned earlier).
QoS if implemented correctly will prevent the connection from being over saturated by any one thing, and traffic will continue in a high bandwidth use situation. It will still be impacted by how much is going on, but it should at least function. Acknowledgments usually have a slightly higher priority than other traffic, so those should be sent before other traffic.
Thanks! It’s just weird that there’s such difference in behaviour between routers in regard to the up-down contention. Mine is an about fifteen-year-old Asus, and it works splendidly, unfazed by torrents or whatnot.
Yeah, that can certainly happen. It really depends on how the router handles contention, it’s overall capability and performance, and what loaf balancing algorithms, if any, have been implemented. QoS basically guarantees that some form of traffic management is happening. With it off, it’s really just a guessing game whether something will work well or fall over, as you’ve discovered.
This is also why its generally better to turn your wifi signal power down to a low or middle power as long as all your devices can still connect.
Less range, less overlap, less competition for shared bandwidth between different access points. The more people that do it, the better the wifi gets for everyone.
The general rule I’ve read for wifi is to use channels 1,6 and 11 for 2.4 GHz as those do not interfere with each other. So I use a wifi scanner on my phone at the furthest point in my home from the router and check which is the least busy from the surrounding neighbors. Do you think that’s a good technique to use?
For 5GHz, I try to pick between 36,48,149,161 and pick by the same rules as above.
I also keep my channel size at 20Mhz for both.
There’s some nuance with 5ghz, let’s talk 2.4 GHz first.
You’ve heard correctly, 1, 6, and 11 are the “non overlapping” channels, if anyone is on, say, channel 9, then everyone on 6 and 11 are going to have a bad time. But this is entirely based on everyone using 20mhz wide channels. Anyone using 40mhz wide channels are just going to fuck up the airspace. 40mhz wide channels basically occupy two of the three non-overlapping channels on 2.4ghz. never use 40mhz wide on 2.4 GHz. IMO, it shouldn’t have ever been an option.
5ghz is a UNII band, and there’s three, technically four or five, main sections of the band that are relevant UNIi 1 is the low end of 5ghz, I don’t have the channel numbers off the top of my head, but I know it ends at or around channel 90 or so? I’m tired and I’ve been ill today, so please forgive me. Some of the specifics are slipping away right now and I don’t have the brain power to cross reference it. You can look all this up anyways.
UNII 1 is pretty typical, very similar to how 2.4 GHz works, just on a different band.
I’ll circle back on UNII 2
UNII 3 is the high part of the band and the only nuance here is that the 5.8 GHz ISM channels overlap with a lot of this, so any consumer electronics like cordless phones that use 5.8 GHz, might cause problems with some of these channels. Use of the ISM band here has been on the decline for a while, so it’s probably not an issue, but something to be mindful of.
UNII 2 is a whole thing. You’ll need to look up what is allowed for your country, but some channels are off limits and this band actually interferes with radar operations, so anything operating UNII 2 channels needs to have radar avoidance built in. That’s pretty much automatic, or it should be.
The key take away with these channels is that you need to let the system pick the channel or will use in the band, so that it can change the channel to avoid radar if needed. Setting a static channel on your Wi-Fi in the UNII 2 band might land you in hot water.
Some 5ghz channels can only be used indoors, some can only be used in specific countries, so look it up for your situation. Wikipedia has a comprehensive article on it, and I would encourage you to familiarize yourself with it.
6ghz regulation is starting to settle down but it’s looking to be a bit more open and consistent between countries which would be a nice change.
Also, there are different power restrictions on different channels, don’t worry yourself too much with that since most consumer access points and Wi-Fi routers don’t push enough power to exceed even the lowest restriction.
Feel free to move to 40mhz for 5ghz, there’s a lot more channels and 40mhz wide can really enhance your speeds. Stick to 20 for 2.4 GHz; but don’t feel limited for 5 or 6ghz.
Your methodology is good. But please understand that the graphs are an estimation, a real waterfall examination with an SDR that’s capable of observing the channel would be the only way to really know what’s happening in the airspace. Generally that’s overkill for residential installations. Just bear in mind, those scanner apps will only show other Wi-Fi networks. Non-Wi-Fi interference will not be shown. Don’t hesitate to try a different channel if one isn’t working great for you. Might just be alien interference (in this context, alien means non-Wi-Fi).
Thanks for the long reply.
I was using 20 for 5GHz for the range as on the other side of my home, the signal is quite weak. So I figure its more stable at 20 than using 40, even if 40 would be faster.
Actually reading up on it more, the lower bands would be better in my case as they offer better wall penetration, which I think is my problem. I’m currently set to 161, let me try to swap to 36 and see if my signal improves. And I’ll test it out to 40MHz, might as well go for broke.
The difference between high and low ranges in the 5 GHz band shouldn’t be significant. My understanding of the rule with penetration is that the signal will be attenuated by something that is half of the wavelength in thickness. Which for 5 GHz frequencies with a wavelength between 50 and 60 mm. Anything thicker than 25mm will impact performance. The lower end, channel 36 will be closer to 30mm
5mm isn’t significant enough to worry too much about. Certainly worth testing either way.
By comparison 2.4ghz has a wavelength of ~125mm.
For wall penetration 2.4 GHz is better, but you’ll suffer on speed. I think the phy rate caps out around 150mbps on 20mhz wide channels. I can double check that, but I don’t think it’s far off. I think you could get up to ~300mbps? But I’m pretty sure that was 40mhz wide… So as far as I’m concerned that’s not valid.
Good luck. Test, document it, see what’s what. Remember, the difference between science and fucking around is writing it down.
I suppose, but I usually don’t check my messages on Lemmy very often, I look at my comment replies, but not my messages. I should have Matrix connected, if you use that… I have no idea if I set up Matrix right, or if I linked it correctly… I haven’t looked at it since I did the setup.
I’m curious why you would want to DM rather than discuss it publicly where the information might help others?
You don’t need to justify yourself to me. That question is intended for you to answer it for yourself, and if that doesn’t change that you would rather do the discussion over DM, then I won’t hold that against you.
It was more of a general question if you’re open to that. I’m unaware if there is a profile section on Lemmy to know if people consent to being message directly. So, I just ask if it’s cool.
You seems really knowledgeable so I’m imagining someone might want to ask sensitive questions.
Well, I’m not opposed to it. If someone has an operational security issue that they want my take on, I’m happy to take that to DM.
The same promise, or lack thereof, for replies, will apply. Heh. I’m busy, so I can’t spend all my time on Lemmy. I love you all, but Shaka six feet dude.
Just adding my 2p, when it comes to cabling, unless you have a specific need (or anticipate one) for a specific connection to need more than 1gbps, CAT5e is plenty good enough for 99% of domestic usage. CAT6 maybe a good idea to anticipate future demands going up dramatically on your home network but anything more is just exponentially more expensive overkill.
I always recommend Cat6, mainly because it can carry 10G up to 55m, which is basically your entire house, unless you live in a mansion or something.
10G might work on 5e, but it won’t be reliable.
Even if you’re not planning to go for 10G any time soon, do yourself a favor and run Cat6. In 5 or 10 years when you want 10G for any reason, you can just upgrade the equipment on both ends and it will just work.
The cost difference isn’t significant enough for cat5e to make any sense for new installs.
Basic configurations shouldn’t be too stressful. When you get into large segmented networks that use routing protocols, then you’ll have some headaches. I think you’ll be fine.
But that opens a whole can of worms. You could go with something more tried and true, like Ike/IPsec, if your routers have that option. Usually that’s the way for firewalls, but it’s a bit hit and miss for routers.
Or you can go with something a bit more modern, like tailscale, wireguard, or zero tier. But then you need some way to put that on your NAS. I’m partial to zero tier, but there’s plenty of good options, even beyond what I’ve mentioned.
Researching this becomes a mine field without the right vocabulary, because having a “VPN” is such a broad definition that there’s a lot of commercial VPN solutions, designed to give you operational security when browsing the Internet, which are completely useless at securing traffic between computers on different LANs over the Internet. Services like PIA, NordVPN, surfshark, proton VPN, Express VPN… So many others. They’ll secure your traffic to the Internet itself, not between private locations connected by the Internet.
I don’t know what hardware you’re specifically using as a router at each location or what works with what. I know ubiquiti has some VPN features in their gateway products, and that could make quick work of the problem. Just food for thought I guess.
what i’ve done is simply lower the power of my 2.4GHz network so i have reliable coverage in my apartment, but by the time i’ve walked 2 floors down my phone is utterly unable to even see the network.
super simple way to avoid polluting the local airwaves, though i presume it’s not really something you can do on most standard router interfaces…
Well, SNMP is pretty great. There’s three variants in common use, v1, v2c, and v3. I’m a big fan of v2c, because I usually run SNMP over my trusted LAN, and read only, so there’s little or no risks there. I just want all the information! Haha
I would consider v3 if I was doing any kind of read/write work with SNMP. To date, I’ve never had to, so I just don’t bother with it. It’s a bear to set up compared to v2c.
ARP is on layer 2/3 of both the OSI model and the 5 layer TCP model. The OSI model has never been implemented in a production network, it’s just a reference to visualize how things operate. TCP/IP and ipv6 generally stop around the OSI model layer 5. 6/7 is handled by the software, in theory, and layer 8 is where you get the most problems, by far.
ARP is considered to be both layer 2 and layer 3, sometimes noted as layer 2.5, because it’s bridging layer 2, which is Ethernet Mac addressing in most networks, and layer 3 which is IP addressing. It almost entirely operates on layer 2 however.
There’s a new, revised version of the TCP model that I’m aware of that blurs the line between what is known as layer 1 and 2 in the OSI model, kind of bundling them together. It’s weird, but something I’ve seen around.
The question I never got an answer to was about Ethernet. I have searched the internet high and low and have yet to find a credible reference that indicates what the real answer is. There’s a white paper but you have to pay to see it, I’m pretty sure the answer is in there, obfuscated by some fancy math algorithm… The question is: how much voltage is used for Ethernet baseband signaling when PoE is not used? What constitutes a “high” signal, and what is a “low” signal? A lot of sources seem to point to 5v and 1v, but never have any references to back up the claim. There are other sites that provide different voltages for high and low too. 5/1 is just the most common that I’ve seen mentioned.
Should I learn iptables or is it more sane to use a front end like ufw?
I have an RPI with dual Ethernet between my modem and consumer router so I don’t have to depend on the obsolete and limited consumer router software. I’m using OpenWRT at the moment but curious if you have other recommendations. I like the Luci gui so if I switched to headless Debian or something then I’d still want a luci equivalent.
I’m self hosting with docker and I want to set up a wireguard vpn container that joins a network with a select set of containers. So I’d have containers that are accessible only by actual LAN users and then others that are in this isolated group that only the VPN (i.e. WAN people) can access. I thought that’s what docker was all about! But by default it seems all authenticated VPN peers just get to be on the LAN. Sure, they can’t get at containers on a different docker bridge network, but they get to access the host itself! This is why I asked about iptables above, but it’s daunting. Any ideas on how to achieve “two levels of trust” for self hosted services?
I’m hoping that not all of that is running on a single pi. I mean, it can, but you might hit limitations when everything is engaged with doing things. I just feel like, that’s a lot for one raspberry Pi…
Anyways, iptables are good to have a general grasp of, but they’re generally GNU/Linux specific. There’s other routing implementations that run on Linux, and hardware appliances generally have their own bespoke, vendor specific stuff. One project I’m aware of is free range routing. There’s a lot more, but this is one that I know of. Using FRR, vs iptables, they’re very different beasts. But you shouldn’t need FRR, it’s a monster in terms of memory use and designed to operate in ISP class networks. You don’t need it. I’m just using it as an example of what is out there.
The best advice I can give about this is that learning the concepts behind routing is more valuable than any specific product. Knowing the difference between an RIB and FIB, and how to structure routes, priorities, costs, etc… All very important. Can you learn that with iptables? Sure, and probably more, since iptables can also function as a low end firewall.
The important thing is that you learn the meaning behind what you’re doing in whatever routing platform you are working with.
I’ve worked with so many different ways of handling routing and firewall work that I get annoyed when vendors come up with dumb marketing terms that leak into the device user interface, for a very common routing, firewall, or VPN technology. I don’t care whether I’m on a router or firewall that’s custom and running open WRT, ddwrt, opnsense, or one from Cisco, Sonic wall, watchguard, Fortinet, Palo Alto, or any of the dozens of other vendors. A VPN is a VPN. IKE and IPsec don’t change because it’s vendor x or y. Don’t start calling the IKE identifier something else.
… Sorry, rant.
Anyways, I don’t really see the vendor’s interface as anything more than a code I have to convert into the industry standard protocol information that everyone uses. It’s a filter by which that vendor portrays the same options that everything else has. Some have quirks. Some are more straight forward. But they all have the same options in the end. Allow the traffic or don’t, do it by port and protocol or by IP. Apply content filters or don’t, use Ethernet, DHCP, pppoe, or something else like ATM or ipx/SPX for signaling. Who cares.
If you understand the concepts, the skills are transferable, no matter what platform you end up using, you’ll know what needs to be done, you’ll just be stuck figuring out how you do it on this platform.
Also, don’t use the wifi routers provided by Cocmast. Cocmast uses them to provide their xfinity-branded wifi, so as their customer you are literally sacrificing bandwidth and paying their electric bill. I assume all cable companies do this but Cocmast is the only one I know about for sure.
ISP provider doesn’t matter. Put your ISP modem into bridged mode and get your own router.
ISPs usually don’t buy good, or reliable stuff for their clients, they buy whatever gives them the marketing buzzwords and costs them the least. Usually, they’re great at doing modem things, not so good at anything else. Bridged mode just limits them to just doing what they’re good at.
Yes and no, usually the ISP router is also the modem, converting from either VDSL, DOCSIS, or some flavor of GPON, and most people don’t have the knowledge or patience to figure out how to do a modem delete for their ISP.
Having the ISP put the modem in bridged mode usually nullifies the instability of it. Bridged mode turns the ISP modem router thing effectively into just a modem.
You can improve communication by removing it entirely, if you can sort out the modem delete, but unless there’s a pretty clear demarcation between the line handling gear and the ISP router, you might be up a creek.
The other caveat is that with a modem delete, you won’t get help from the ISP. You have to revert to their gear before they will troubleshoot your connection. To them, that modem router is their demarcation line, so it must be in the path somewhere, or they get pretty grumpy about it all.
But, if you have the skill and the aptitude to do it, you can cut ping times by quite a bit. On my VDSL line, when I did a modem delete, replacing whatever lowest bidder modem router my ISP gave me with a Cisco 1911, and a VDSL2 line card, I got my, already quite reasonable ping times (somewhere around 10ms? Or so, to the local datacenter), down to about 4ms. Over VDSL2. That’s crazy good. Nearly FTTH speed.
I did something similar when I was on FTTH for a bit, I got a fiber ont SFP transceiver that could be reconfigured, programmed it with the MAC and other critical information from my ISPs device, and used that in my own router. Which also cut ping times from ~5ms? To ~2ms maybe? So, yeah. There’s benefit to it, but it requires specialized expertise most of the time. If you have an easy path to a modem delete with your ISP, then it’s a no brainer.
Disabling the routing in your ISPs combo router/modem, is essential for any mid sized household that values their performance.
The size of the splitter isn’t super important, though if there’s enough branches the signal may degrade to the point of not working, so it can be a problem. I would break out the splitter, as in, buy a couple of new splitters, MoCA compatible, and put half the connections on one, half on the other, then use a MoCA blocking splitter to join them to the upstream coax. This will prevent the two halves from talking to eachother and from talking to anyone outside your home. Then use two MoCA connections, one on each coax “segment”.
It will cost more to do it this way, but you’ll get a better, more reliable connection, no matter where you connect.
Since you would need all the gear for the split that you would for the single node, I would say, buy one node for the “head” end first and test if it works, if not, plan for the split idea. Also be mindful that MoCA is a different frequency than cable TV, so not all TV splitters will bridge MoCA connections. You can look up the frequencies in use, they’re all published on Wikipedia. There’s also different coax splitters for cable vs satellite, etc so it gets a bit nuanced. The supported frequencies should be on the label of any coax splitters. Make sure they all include the MoCA frequencies.
Will keep that in mind. The original application was for my friends place but they’re moving. Lease ends next month and they’re not renewing. My moca setup was for my router and now it’s a cat 8 cable. (I have fiber).
I never really got a straight answer regarding splitters and moca. That’s super cool
That’s fair. I feel a little called out, rightly so.
What you want to do is look at the MoCA frequencies, which is ~450-1625mhz or so and see if your splitters include that range. If so, you’re golden, if not, there’s a good chance your MoCA signal will be attenuated by the splitter. Each splitter will cut the power by the number of connected branches, so 2 branches will be half power per branch, 4 will be a quarter. Etc. MoCA can handle some loss, but too much and it will fall over. There are splitters that you can buy that specifically include MoCA frequencies, some that don’t, and they’re will be some that specifically block it. The last type is good for separating MoCA segments, or at service entry points so you don’t end up sharing your network with neighbors.
Each splitter will have a label that specifies what frequencies it’s been tested with and that are validated to work. It should be printed on the splitter. If it’s not, throw it out and buy something that’s not in disrepair.
To clarify what’s going on a bit, the coax is just an antenna line, with no antenna. It can handle many different frequencies of transmissions. Like with the radio in your car, you can “tune into” different radio stations. The other radio stations on air don’t interfere with the one you’re listening to and vice versa. It’s the same idea with coax. Some frequencies are used to send cable TV, others are used for Internet (otherwise known as DOCSIS) and some are used for MoCA. All coax handling gear will support and be tested for some frequencies, and unless otherwise stated, anything outside of that range will be unknown. Most cable splitters support cable TV and DOCSIS frequencies primarily. There are different coax splitters for satellite, which uses all different frequencies, and there’s others that support much broader frequency ranges. Some can connect a wide spectrum but are only validated for a small part of what they can carry.
Your mileage may vary, and it’s really up to what you have and what the manufacturer did with the design of that specific splitter.
Nobody wants my info dump. I know way too much about networking and computers. The topics are massively deep, like iceberg levels of deep. One for each topic.
I could lecture for an entire day on the nuance and considerations of picking a Wi-Fi channel, or you can ignore me and just hit “auto” which may or may not take some, or all, of my considerations into account when selecting a channel.
If anyone is keen to hear some generally good advice about home networking, here’s my elevator speech:
Wire when you can, wireless when you have to. Wi-Fi is shared and half duplex, every wired connection is exclusive to the device and full duplex. If you can’t Ethernet, use MoCA, or powerline (depending on what internal power structures you have, this can be excellent or unusable, keep your receipts). Mesh is best with a dedicated backhaul, better with a wired backhaul. Demand it from any system you consider. The latest and greatest Wi-Fi technology probably won’t fix whatever problem you’re having, it will only temporarily reduce the symptoms and you won’t notice it for a while. Be weary about upgrading and ask yourself why you require the upgrade. Newer wireless won’t fix bad signal, or dropouts.
For everything else, Google. That’s how I find most of the information I know.
Good luck.
I’ll be around in case anyone has questions. No promises on when I’ll be able to reply tho.
If you can’t run cables through your walls you could look into fiber that hides in plain sight https://youtu.be/Z2FbzCyiNr4
Would like to ask, is it worth entering networking as a career right now? I’ve been of the belief that it’ll be necessary as long as the internet is around, so certainly within my lifetime, but the current AI bubble and the direction it’s taking is making me think otherwise.
Networking is a pretty specific niche, the biggest challenge I’ve faced in my career is that I can’t find any local jobs, or remote work positions that are networking focused. It’s still a passion of mine, but I tend to be stuck in sysadmin type roles.
As far as I’m concerned, until AI can plug itself in and fix it’s own servers, humans will always need to be involved in the setup and maintenance of the hardware that connects our world. I don’t think it’s practical or realistic for AI to put satellites in orbit or run intercontinental fiber along the ocean floor. Not anytime soon and not in our lifetimes.
The thing about computers is that they’re not very adaptable to their environment, so the environment needs to be adapted to computers. We, as humans, are extremely adaptable to our environment. This is very slowly shifting that computers are starting to be able to adapt to different working environments; but I don’t think that will happen in fully within our lifetimes.
Programming can be a minefield right now, but that shouldn’t dissuade you if that’s your interest/passion. Networking will be required, and tech jobs are some of the most recession proof, though not completely recession proof. Tech fields have slowed but it’s extremely rare that we see negative growth in tech. The players might change but the jobs are there and need people in chairs to fulfill them.
My advice is to pursue what interests you, and adapt to whatever life throws at you. Maybe you’ll start with cybersecurity and move into a coding role, or like me, study networking and then work as a generalist. When you get to that point, when interviewing for jobs, make sure you know what the job is, review the job posting with your interviewer if you are uncertain at all. The job should fit you as much as you fit it. I didn’t do that for one job and it was one of the most unpleasant years of my life working there. I got on the job and discovered that what I thought I’d be doing, was not what I was going to be doing.
Good luck.
What are the nuances between APs and how they handle choosing a channel? Also, I was told at one point it’s better to “stack” on top of other SSIDs using the same channel than to go one channel higher (assuming there isn’t room higher up in the spectrum).
Thank you for your time and expertise!
I can answer the second thing quickly, “stacking” the ssids as you say, makes the inference into what we call “co-channel” interference. Most of the wireless headers are unencrypted, though your payload is encrypted (the data being transferred) but not so much for the headers. Because of this, and the fact that each ap is talking on the same frequency, there’s a small amount of collaboration that can occur between wireless networks. If someone starts a wireless multimedia (WMM) session that will last 8.2ms, then all radios on channel will know that the channel is occupied for the next 8.2ms, and basically go idle for that much time. If you’re on differing channels, but still interfering, aka adjacent channel interference, then those messages may not be understood, causing a lot more collisions. Collisions being when two radios transmit at the same time and the channel needs to clear and everyone backs off, and you try again (usually happening on the order of milliseconds, and possibly several times per second). Collisions will negatively impact your performance more than the channel simply being busy. The protocol in use for wireless collision avoidance is CSMA/CA or carrier sense multi access with collision avoidance, which is an amended version of CSMA/CD (collision detection) used in half duplex wired communication.
How’s that for a “short” answer?
For channel conditions, I’m looking at walls, building materials, open air distances, appliances, furniture… Anything that may attenuate, reflect, refract, or otherwise degrade signal strength whenever I start to assess an area for wireless. This is important so I know how many access points I need and how close together they need to be to overcome the obstacles placed in the environment. Once I have a rough idea of how many access points I need and how close together they should be, my next consideration is the expected client density and the objectives of the network. Something made for a busy stadium will have more access points than something made for a local cafe. If I’m doing a large number of access points my focus will be on maximizing how many clients can be connected, and driving that number as far down per access point/radio, as possible. Fewer people on a channel means more free airtime for their traffic, which equates to faster speeds. I’d be looking at using most of the 5ghz spectrum on the smallest channel width and have each radio be on its lowest power setting. You’ll have clients moving between access points a lot, but you won’t end up with more than a couple dozen per radio. I’d look into directional antennas, to minimize the broadcast range so I can reuse channels closer together. In such a high density space I would want to have some kind of Wi-Fi blocking or attenuation tech installed in the exterior of the building to prevent outside signals from coming in and inside signals from going out. Both for security and control over the airspace. Fewer things to interfere with; you only have to worry about what’s inside that perimeter. Then it’s a matter of setting up the channels for use in accordance with local laws, and letting the system handle channel assignment. With a huge number of access points, manually setting the channels is impractical. So everything I’ve said about it until now isn’t even for channel selection, it’s all things that support channel selection.
For small networks, especially in high density scenarios where the density is due to neighbors, whether that’s commercial neighbors in a plaza or mall, or residential neighbors if you’re in a suburb, an apartment, or a condo; for this, you want to pay careful attention to not only what other networks are around, checking from multiple points not only inside but outside of the premise as well, but what channels they’re on and what their relative signal strength is. If signal strength is low then not a lot to think about. Avoid the channel if you can, but if you can’t, there are worse selections. I’m also looking at the attenuation obstacles here, environments with large obstacles will benefit from lower band channels, either 2.4ghz or UNII 1 for 5ghz, and environments with a lot of radios on the 5ghz spectrum, may benefit from enabling the UNII 2 DFS channels (dynamic frequency selection). A lot of cheaper gear can’t operate in the UNII 2 DFS space because they haven’t bothered to implement DFS, which is a legal requirement for anything operating in that band. So the guys in the apartment next door that are using an off the shelf, cheapo router on sale from best buy probably won’t have the ability to even select those channels for use, and you’ll be free to use them with little to no interference… Unless the DFS triggers that is… For less dense areas I want to tend towards UNII 1 and 3 for stability, and only have enough 2.4ghz to cover the area. 20 MHz wide channels on 2.4ghz, 40 wide on 5/6Ghz. Should net about 400mbps or so per radio, and unless you have gigabit + Internet, with everything on Wi-Fi, some remarkably clear airspace, and only a single access point, going to 80mhz channel width is usually unhelpful. I’m looking at not only the channels with low/no occupancy, but I also want to look at how busy those channels are, but this aspect usually requires monitoring over a duration of time, with specialized hardware. I would choose to overlap with a dormant network with a stronger signal, than overlap with a network that is much weaker in signal strength, but very busy all the time. I also prefer channels 1/6 on 2.4 GHz because channel 11 is near the upper limit of 2.4ghz, and just above that limit is the frequency used by microwave ovens. If any microwave ovens don’t have perfect shielding and you’re on channel 11, you’re going to have a bad time. In environments with more than one access point on 2.4ghz, I don’t worry too much about it since any affected client can hop to another access point when interference ramps up.
There’s more but my brain is tired today.
That doesn’t seem quite right in reality, since the moment you have multiple devices connected to one switch and both sending data to the router, they’re sharing the connection. Switches can handle multiple connections at the same time way better than an AP, being able to receive from multiple devices at once, but the bandwidth will ultimately still be shared between the devices.
I see what you’re saying and this is a good inquiry. The reality is that most networks are what we call North/South traffic exclusive. In this context, we use “North” to describe towards the Internet, “South” to be from the Internet, and east/west to be LAN to LAN traffic.
Networks that are primarily or exclusively North South, your contention will always be your ISPs committed speed (the speed they’re allowing you to use). So most of what’s South of that is pretty trivial, as long as it can keep up with, or exceed the speed of the North connection.
That changes if you do any East/West traffic. Whether that’s a home lab, a home server, or even just a NAS, or computer to computer file sharing… Once that traffic is more than a trivial amount of the network traffic, then you see a lot of benefit from wired connections to your computers. The switch backplane can handle a lot more bandwidth than any individual port, and the only way you’ll see that bandwidth is if some traffic is going somewhere other than your router, or the Internet.
To say most home networks are North/South heavy is obvious. Business networks frequently have servers and other LAN resources that are frequently utilized. So East/West traffic is usually non-trivial.
To spin an example, if your ISP is providing a 100mbps committed rate, and you gave full gigabit ethernet inside and at least 802.11ac wireless, with almost all traffic going to the Internet and back, you’re going to see little difference between Wi-Fi and Ethernet. The only major change moving from Wi-Fi to Ethernet is that your ping time will be more consistent and lower overall. It won’t be a huge change, something in the range of 10s of ms, but it’s literally the only thing you’ll notice a difference with.
Another example where it will make a big difference is if you have a NAS or home server, where you have files stored. Compared to a file storage service like drop box or Google drive. The LAN specific traffic will move at line rate, or the speed of whatever storage the data ultimately rests on, whichever is slower. In that context, the East/West traffic benefits greatly from Ethernet, and the full duplex connection between the two devices.
It’s all subjective to how you are using your network. You’ve made a good point, so thanks for that. Have a good day.
Dude these type of replies are what had made reddit such a great time sink, even random browsing you may find something incredible in the comments. Thank you
Thanks. I’ve been on hiatus for a bit. I’m around.
I still won’t go back to that place either way
5 or 6Ghz backhaul on the mesh?
Should I buy consumer or small business hardware?
Recommended brand(s)?
High end consumer aka prosumer, which is only really one brand, ubiquiti. Specifically their unifi stuff.
Or used mid range business stuff, Cisco, Aruba, juniper. The pinch here is that you usually need specialized knowledge to configure this class of device. I’ve also used Cisco, watchguard, Fortinet, Sophos, sonicwall, and probably others for firewalls. I prefer Sonicwall for some very specific reasons about how they structure their configuration, but for anyone who isn’t a certified sonicwall tech, I’d point at Sophos. Their stuff seems to be a fair balance of configurability and user friendliness. If you’re instant on new business stuff and you have the money for it, Sophos for the firewall, Aruba instanton for switching and Wi-Fi.
The benefit to unifi is user friendliness and a unified control console. If you’re not an IT professional or a similar technical job, unifi will provide plenty of what you need and leave out the unnecessary knobs that needs like me want to see.
Be prepared to spend several hundred on the networking if you’re going to do it right, there are some places you can trim some costs, but before you nope it from sticker shock, consider how much you spend per year on Internet service, and then consider how much the router/firewall + switch + access points are in comparison… And those are things you don’t need to buy every year.
Edit: I forgot to mention the backhaul. The decision will depend on the wireless environment. You might be able to save some cash having 5ghz backhaul, but it’s going to struggle in dense environments, so consider spending some extra on 6ghz if you’re in a medium to high density housing situation. Good luck
Love the Unifi gear; their first gen stuff used isn’t terribly priced. And the single pane of glass is very nice.
No argument here. The earlier stuff is still very bandwidth constrained, some pieces are incapable of meeting line rate, like the UDM pro. It has 10G connections but the throughput of the unit is around 6Gbps. Still much faster than most people’s Internet connections (who in their right mind has a 5+ Gbps Internet connection at their house?) but it’s a limitation worth knowing before you buy.
Solid gear otherwise. I haven’t seen how their end of life looks, so I can’t really comment, but most companies just announce that they’re no longer supporting a piece of gear and suggest a replacement. Called an EOL notice, or something similar. EOL being end of life. Usually includes a recommendation for an upgrade to something supported that’s a similar class of device.
Time will tell on that one. I have a UDM pro in a network I manage so I’m waiting for that EOL notice.
Tell Me everything you want about MAC addresses
Is this a kink?
The first six hexadecimal digits of the Mac address are referred to as the oui, or organizationally unique identifier. They are supposed to all be registered, but with modern systems, mac address randomization is common, so the Mac address in use can be little better than nonsense.
I have a theory that some of the more budget oriented manufacturers (think Ali express), just don’t bother using a registered mac address at all.
This all makes my job harder as a network admin, I usually need to look up what a device is by mac address to help identify what it is and what it’s doing. I need to make sure everything is on the right network, and I can’t do that if I don’t know what anything is.
The last six hexadecimal digits of the Mac are simply to uniquely identify the interface that the Mac is burned into. This also means that any systems with multiple network ports, have different mac address on each port. Some things are exempt, like network switches, but for the most part, every interface has, or is supposed to have, a unique mac address.
Also, the mac isn’t hex, it’s binary. Hex is just how we’ve decided to present it to users. The switches, routers, and interfaces don’t work with the hex, only the binary. Same for IP addresses, which normal are shown in “dotted decimal notation”, but are just binary. But you didn’t ask about IP.
Did you need me to whisper ouis into your ear and you can guess what company is registered to that oui?
So if you plug the same device into a different network using the same port, it’s the same MAC?
The device mac doesn’t change unless mac randomization is on.
I hate that, as far as I know, on Android you can’t choose the “randomized” MAC
You want to pick your own MAC? At least you can set it to not be random for a specific network.
Yes, by picking my own MAC as with my linux laptop I could share pre approved network access on both devices (although not at the same time)
And that is exactly why it’s not allowed.
The MAC, at least as it was conceptualised (as they said, MAC randomisation etc. mess with this), is a unique identifier for that specific device. It doesn’t change, and only one device has that specific MAC.
Or more specifically, that specific network adaptor, the hardware responsible for connecting to networks. So one computer might have multiple MACs if, for example, it has an Ethernet port and a wifi card.
Fun fact, when I worked for Alstom and programmed their electric substations, they had a 10bit network and proprietary network cards, and the prototypes sometimes had the same MAC address 😁😅
Nothing sexier than someone who knows what they’re talking about.
Sorry, I’m married.
:p
My wife doesn’t think it’s sexy, she usually just falls asleep whenever I get into a topic I’m passionate about. Oh well.
Haha, you win some, you lose some.
Thanks a lot for sharing you experience! I recently saw some people I follow on youtube talk about fibre as an alternative for ethernet cables, do you have an any experience with that?
Alternative? Sure. Though why?
If ethernet works, you’re just using a more expensive option to go with fiber.
Unless you need something unique about fiber, like distance (which can still be dubious for consumer grade hardware), or a non-electrical based signal (dubious requirement in most cases), then you’re just throwing money at being able to say you use fiber.
Additionally, fiber is more fragile than a copper cable. One bad hit with a vacuum cleaner and it’s toast
Maybe you shouldn’t vacuum your cables?
I don’t vacuum them, I vacuum near it. But you can always accidentally go too far and bump the cable
I feel like fiber only makes sense for long runs or extremely high bandwidth needs. For a typical home network, I don’t see any benefits for fiber over ethernet.
Yes. Fiber is great but extremely nuanced. SMF, MMF, UPC, APC, OM3, OM4, OS2… All different parts of just the cabling… Not to mention the connectors, LC, SC… You get the idea.
Everyone I tend to talk to about it seem to think multi-mode is cheaper, and it can be, but in my experience, single mode is usually the better choice and usually not much of a price uplift if you’re buying from a good company. Look at FS.com and do some comparison shopping against them. They make some high quality stuff, and it’s at pretty incredible pricing for what you get, but the equipment can add up fast.
Multi mode can only really carry one connection per fiber and usually needs to be duplexed (two strands per link) while single mode can leverage WDM to carry multiple independent signals on different wavelengths. This can be leveraged for bi-directional single strand links, multiple links that are aggregated into a single connection in hardware (this is how 40Gbit works, it’s actually 4x10G connections on different wavelengths)…
It’s still more costly and requires more specialized equipment and training to work with, compared to copper Ethernet, so it’s pretty uncommon to see in residential or home networks.
YMMV. Good luck.
Fiber is complete overkill for home networking. Also, POE is very nice to have for things like WAPs or cameras.
I wired my house with cat6 when I moved in. The overall setup looks like 10G fiber to the house -> 2.5G capable router -> 2.5G capable NAS running *arr stack. Also off the router is a single cat6 run downstairs -> 8 port 1G unmanaged switch, which is connected to my desktop, work dock, parters dock, TV, and backhaul run to the back of house wifi extender. The desktop, both docks and wifi extender are 2.5G capable. The TV is 100M. This has been extremely reliable. I plan on upgrading the switch to a 10g capable one at some point, and then the router. Since the switch is unmanaged, is there a good way to know when it is the limiting factor and I should update it?
An unmanned switch? Nothing concrete.
A managed switch can give you telemetry, like port utilisation, and you can observe how much upstream is in use.
My concern is that you have a 1g switch connecting 2.5g capable devices to a 2.5g capable upstream network. That’s a bottleneck that I would want to eliminate. I know serve the home has a roundup of 2.5g switches that might be useful for you. I’m not saying you should switch to managed either, you may be well served by an unmanaged switch, and it will save you money. The telemetry for managed switches usually requires a system to collect and store it, usually an NMS, or network monitoring/management system.
Some manufacturers build NMS style telemetry into their products, ubiquiti does this to a limited extent. Other vendors may be better or have nothing at all. Something to think about when picking gear, if you like that sort of visibility. NMS usually operates over SNMP, which can become a whole thing; but for monitoring, setting up read only SNMP can be rather easy.
A word of caution. 10G and 2.5/5G were developed independently, and 10G came first. It was expensive which is why 2.5/5g Ethernet became a thing. Because of this checkered past, there’s a lot of 10G equipment that will not support operating at 2.5 or 5gbps. So if you get a 10G switch, check if there’s 2.5G, or 5G capability separately, or included on the 10G ports.
In my experience, most 10G ports are 1 or 10G, with nothing in between. Most 2.5G ports can’t do 10G. So the best idea would be to have a switch with a couple of 10G for fast uplinks and some 2.5G connections for your devices. Unless you can find a unicorn of a switch that supports all speeds on all ports, a switch split between 2.5G and 10G ports is probably your best bet.
Good luck.
Oh, ok thanks! I’ve been wondering about the split 2.5/10G switches I’ve seen and wondered why. That makes a lot of sense now! I’ll take a look at them again.
What’s the pros & cons of a managed vs unmanaged switch? Or of just running multiple cables out of the router? (Assuming your router has sufficient ports.)
My router only has four downstream ports, and due to the layout of my house I only want to run one cable from the router to my home office anyway. If it had enough ports and the house was laid out differently I wouldn’t have bothered with the switch.
Unmanaged switches are usually quite a bit cheaper and just work. You plug everything in and that’s it. Managed switches need configuring and cost more. I paid $25 for my 8 port 10/100/1000 switch, while the managed version is about $120. With a managed switch you can do things like turn individual ports on and off, traffic limit and monitor per port, and other fancy networking things that I’ve never bothered with.
Ah that’s interesting. Thanks!
What does 10/100/1000 mean?
That’s that speed the ports are capable of. 10/100/1000 megabits per second. Most things with an Ethernet port nowadays are 10/100/1000 capable, and 2.5Gb is becoming reasonably common.
Weirdly, Roku and other smart TVs are often only 100Mb capable since 4k streaming only requires about 60Mb and if you are squeezing pennies a 1Gb port is a bit more expensive.
10Gb is just starting to get available for high end consumer devices.
So is it some ports support 10, some support 100, and some support the full 1000? Or how does it work with the three different speeds?
All of the ports support all three speeds. When you first plug in, there is a quick round of negotiations where both sides basically say “Here are the speeds I can work, what about you?” Then they go with the highest that both support.
The elevator pitch is wonderful and I’m glad to be following your recommendations already. Wired everything is not practical for me without drilling through the floor, so a mesh router with dedicated backhaul and a wired connection to the downstairs node is working like a charm.
They mentioned MoCa. If you have cable (like for the tv) you can probably use MoCa. It’s fantastic.
Just read up on that, seems very interesting. I don’t think it’s a great option for my setup since there’s only one coax port in the house, but I learned something new today.
And if you can’t use MoCa - say, bc the cable installers cut all the other coax cords on the house (true story!) - you can also consider powerline adapters to send Ethernet over your electrical wiring. It’s a crapshoot depending on the quality of your wiring but I can usually get at least the same speed as my wifi with it.
Awesome. That’s good to hear.
I know not everyone can run Ethernet. Whether it’s because you’re in a rental, or you simply don’t have the budget for it, the reason doesn’t matter all that much. There’s plenty of good reasons not to.
Usually mesh nodes have Ethernet on them as well and it just bridges into the LAN. Using that can actually cut down on wireless traffic overall. Maybe something to look at which could help if you have any troubles.
Good luck friend.
I’ve been switching a lot of my devices to ESP-NOW instead of WiFi so that they can just fart out their data to anyone who can hear it and then go back to sleep, no connecting or handshaking or authenticating or overhead. Should clear up my wifi network I think.
If I’m not mistaken, they still use 2.4 GHz, which is also used by wifi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, a bunch of other stuff… Microwave ovens…
And anything operating on a frequency, regardless of protocol, will interfere with eachother. I think the main benefit for you would be the brief amount of active time, could reduce the airtime being used by the devices.
I hope it works out for you and your wifi works excellently. Just be aware that it could still interfere. Use 5ghz when possible.
Sorry, I know there was more, but all wireless is half-duplex!? I never knew…
It’s a single frequency for all people, including those that are on the same or adjacent/overlapping channels. If you ever used walkie talkies, they don’t work so well when more than one person is talking.
Same idea.
Wi-Fi 7 is introducing multi link, which could improve the duplex operation, but it’s far from perfect. Even if you use one channel for download and one for upload, you’re still competing with everyone else on the channel - whether they’re connected to your network or not. They can still interfere with you if you’re on the same channel but different networks.
Odd that my router has zero problem with seeding torrents, but at a friend’s place, downloads get clobbered whenever anything is uploading.
Doesn’t MIMO help with duplexing? Which was around since 802.11n.
Yes but also no. Originally MIMO, or multi-in, multi-out, was what is now called SU-MIMO, or single user MIMO. In wireless AC, they did multi-user MIMO on the access point transmission side, then AC wave2 brought it to the client as well. Wi-Fi 6 should have MU-MIMO supported on all points, but I forget if it’s a requirement of the spec or just a feature. In the later case, manufacturers would not have a requirement to include it.
The difference is in how many nodes are “talking” at once. They use beam forming to enhance signal strength where the recipient node is, which sacrifices signal strength everywhere else. That’s SU-MIMO. This came with the promise of MU-MIMO, which is using beam forming to transmit different messages to multiple nodes at the same time. Which effectively doubles throughput for that duration, but also requires very specific conditions in an environment that’s constantly changing, especially for mobile phones. Tapping the screen or rotating the device slightly could put your device into a situation where MU-MIMO may start or stop working. Millimeters of travel can be the difference here. Even a laptop slightly shaking from someone bumping the surface it’s on, or someone typing on the keyboard could affect it. It also may not.
The point is, MU-MIMO is great when it works, but you have no reasonable promise that you’ll get any benefit from having it. It’s especially useless in areas with a lot of reflections. But I digress.
The game changer tech is coming with WiFi 7 and multi link operation, we can basically go to a pseudo full duplex operation on Wi-Fi using it, which would be a huge boost for overall speed.
I’m side tracked. The issue you have on your friends network has nothing to do with the wifi. It is a matter of contention. Your upload usage is basically causing drops, or at least significant delays, for other traffic going up to the Internet. So when the client device requests to download a file, or a webpage, or a document, or start a media stream or whatever, the request can’t go out, and every so often the downloading client needs to tell the server “I have this data, send me more” and those messages (called acknowledgments) are not going through.
Two options to fix this. The easiest is to turn off your torrent software. If you must have it on, when the network is dormant, do a speed test, and set an upload limit in your software for less than the upload of the connection. 75% is probably a good place to be, so if they have 10mbps upload, set your software to 7.5mbps. (be weary of Mbps vs MBps) The other option is going to be a bit more involved and depending on what hardware your friend has, may not be possible at all. This will, however, permanently fix the problem moving forward, both with your computer on his network, but also with everyone else’s. Implement QoS. Some routers can fall over in terms of performance with QoS on, so your mileage may vary, and there’s no guarantee that QoS is even available on their router. If it is, you need some basic settings in place for it to work correctly, most importantly, it needs to know how fast the upload and download are for the WAN. I would also build in a margin here, and only enter about 90% of the actual speed of the connection, the overhead will be used for high priority traffic when the link is otherwise fully occupied. My recommendation, if you have the option, is to set QoS to drop instead of buffer. This reduces buffer bloat, and the information that’s getting dropped can and will be retransmitted (calling back to those acknowledgments I mentioned earlier).
QoS if implemented correctly will prevent the connection from being over saturated by any one thing, and traffic will continue in a high bandwidth use situation. It will still be impacted by how much is going on, but it should at least function. Acknowledgments usually have a slightly higher priority than other traffic, so those should be sent before other traffic.
Good luck.
Thanks! It’s just weird that there’s such difference in behaviour between routers in regard to the up-down contention. Mine is an about fifteen-year-old Asus, and it works splendidly, unfazed by torrents or whatnot.
Yeah, that can certainly happen. It really depends on how the router handles contention, it’s overall capability and performance, and what loaf balancing algorithms, if any, have been implemented. QoS basically guarantees that some form of traffic management is happening. With it off, it’s really just a guessing game whether something will work well or fall over, as you’ve discovered.
Have a great day.
This is also why its generally better to turn your wifi signal power down to a low or middle power as long as all your devices can still connect.
Less range, less overlap, less competition for shared bandwidth between different access points. The more people that do it, the better the wifi gets for everyone.
Hallelujah.
Preach it!
The general rule I’ve read for wifi is to use channels 1,6 and 11 for 2.4 GHz as those do not interfere with each other. So I use a wifi scanner on my phone at the furthest point in my home from the router and check which is the least busy from the surrounding neighbors. Do you think that’s a good technique to use?
For 5GHz, I try to pick between 36,48,149,161 and pick by the same rules as above. I also keep my channel size at 20Mhz for both.
There’s some nuance with 5ghz, let’s talk 2.4 GHz first.
You’ve heard correctly, 1, 6, and 11 are the “non overlapping” channels, if anyone is on, say, channel 9, then everyone on 6 and 11 are going to have a bad time. But this is entirely based on everyone using 20mhz wide channels. Anyone using 40mhz wide channels are just going to fuck up the airspace. 40mhz wide channels basically occupy two of the three non-overlapping channels on 2.4ghz. never use 40mhz wide on 2.4 GHz. IMO, it shouldn’t have ever been an option.
5ghz is a UNII band, and there’s three, technically four or five, main sections of the band that are relevant UNIi 1 is the low end of 5ghz, I don’t have the channel numbers off the top of my head, but I know it ends at or around channel 90 or so? I’m tired and I’ve been ill today, so please forgive me. Some of the specifics are slipping away right now and I don’t have the brain power to cross reference it. You can look all this up anyways.
UNII 1 is pretty typical, very similar to how 2.4 GHz works, just on a different band.
I’ll circle back on UNII 2
UNII 3 is the high part of the band and the only nuance here is that the 5.8 GHz ISM channels overlap with a lot of this, so any consumer electronics like cordless phones that use 5.8 GHz, might cause problems with some of these channels. Use of the ISM band here has been on the decline for a while, so it’s probably not an issue, but something to be mindful of.
UNII 2 is a whole thing. You’ll need to look up what is allowed for your country, but some channels are off limits and this band actually interferes with radar operations, so anything operating UNII 2 channels needs to have radar avoidance built in. That’s pretty much automatic, or it should be. The key take away with these channels is that you need to let the system pick the channel or will use in the band, so that it can change the channel to avoid radar if needed. Setting a static channel on your Wi-Fi in the UNII 2 band might land you in hot water.
Some 5ghz channels can only be used indoors, some can only be used in specific countries, so look it up for your situation. Wikipedia has a comprehensive article on it, and I would encourage you to familiarize yourself with it.
6ghz regulation is starting to settle down but it’s looking to be a bit more open and consistent between countries which would be a nice change.
Also, there are different power restrictions on different channels, don’t worry yourself too much with that since most consumer access points and Wi-Fi routers don’t push enough power to exceed even the lowest restriction.
Feel free to move to 40mhz for 5ghz, there’s a lot more channels and 40mhz wide can really enhance your speeds. Stick to 20 for 2.4 GHz; but don’t feel limited for 5 or 6ghz.
Your methodology is good. But please understand that the graphs are an estimation, a real waterfall examination with an SDR that’s capable of observing the channel would be the only way to really know what’s happening in the airspace. Generally that’s overkill for residential installations. Just bear in mind, those scanner apps will only show other Wi-Fi networks. Non-Wi-Fi interference will not be shown. Don’t hesitate to try a different channel if one isn’t working great for you. Might just be alien interference (in this context, alien means non-Wi-Fi).
Thanks for the long reply. I was using 20 for 5GHz for the range as on the other side of my home, the signal is quite weak. So I figure its more stable at 20 than using 40, even if 40 would be faster. Actually reading up on it more, the lower bands would be better in my case as they offer better wall penetration, which I think is my problem. I’m currently set to 161, let me try to swap to 36 and see if my signal improves. And I’ll test it out to 40MHz, might as well go for broke.
The difference between high and low ranges in the 5 GHz band shouldn’t be significant. My understanding of the rule with penetration is that the signal will be attenuated by something that is half of the wavelength in thickness. Which for 5 GHz frequencies with a wavelength between 50 and 60 mm. Anything thicker than 25mm will impact performance. The lower end, channel 36 will be closer to 30mm
5mm isn’t significant enough to worry too much about. Certainly worth testing either way.
By comparison 2.4ghz has a wavelength of ~125mm.
For wall penetration 2.4 GHz is better, but you’ll suffer on speed. I think the phy rate caps out around 150mbps on 20mhz wide channels. I can double check that, but I don’t think it’s far off. I think you could get up to ~300mbps? But I’m pretty sure that was 40mhz wide… So as far as I’m concerned that’s not valid.
Good luck. Test, document it, see what’s what. Remember, the difference between science and fucking around is writing it down.
It’s okay to message you?
I suppose, but I usually don’t check my messages on Lemmy very often, I look at my comment replies, but not my messages. I should have Matrix connected, if you use that… I have no idea if I set up Matrix right, or if I linked it correctly… I haven’t looked at it since I did the setup.
I’m curious why you would want to DM rather than discuss it publicly where the information might help others?
You don’t need to justify yourself to me. That question is intended for you to answer it for yourself, and if that doesn’t change that you would rather do the discussion over DM, then I won’t hold that against you.
Be well.
It was more of a general question if you’re open to that. I’m unaware if there is a profile section on Lemmy to know if people consent to being message directly. So, I just ask if it’s cool.
You seems really knowledgeable so I’m imagining someone might want to ask sensitive questions.
Well, I’m not opposed to it. If someone has an operational security issue that they want my take on, I’m happy to take that to DM.
The same promise, or lack thereof, for replies, will apply. Heh. I’m busy, so I can’t spend all my time on Lemmy. I love you all, but Shaka six feet dude.
Just adding my 2p, when it comes to cabling, unless you have a specific need (or anticipate one) for a specific connection to need more than 1gbps, CAT5e is plenty good enough for 99% of domestic usage. CAT6 maybe a good idea to anticipate future demands going up dramatically on your home network but anything more is just exponentially more expensive overkill.
I always recommend Cat6, mainly because it can carry 10G up to 55m, which is basically your entire house, unless you live in a mansion or something.
10G might work on 5e, but it won’t be reliable.
Even if you’re not planning to go for 10G any time soon, do yourself a favor and run Cat6. In 5 or 10 years when you want 10G for any reason, you can just upgrade the equipment on both ends and it will just work.
The cost difference isn’t significant enough for cat5e to make any sense for new installs.
CAT6 is so cheap you might as well get that by default now. 7/8 is where it gets expensive.
But if you can’t find 6 for a good price, 5e will do everything you need it to.
I’m planning on setting up a NAS, so I will be reading into networking aswell. Hopefully I won’t get to frustrated lol
Good luck.
Basic configurations shouldn’t be too stressful. When you get into large segmented networks that use routing protocols, then you’ll have some headaches. I think you’ll be fine.
Thanks!
Yes, the only tricky part for me, I think, will be setting up external access for my familiy.
I did wonder about security though. Is it possible to set this up in a way where my families and my own ISP don’t see what is being shared?
Oh yes. You’re taking about a VPN.
But that opens a whole can of worms. You could go with something more tried and true, like Ike/IPsec, if your routers have that option. Usually that’s the way for firewalls, but it’s a bit hit and miss for routers.
Or you can go with something a bit more modern, like tailscale, wireguard, or zero tier. But then you need some way to put that on your NAS. I’m partial to zero tier, but there’s plenty of good options, even beyond what I’ve mentioned.
Researching this becomes a mine field without the right vocabulary, because having a “VPN” is such a broad definition that there’s a lot of commercial VPN solutions, designed to give you operational security when browsing the Internet, which are completely useless at securing traffic between computers on different LANs over the Internet. Services like PIA, NordVPN, surfshark, proton VPN, Express VPN… So many others. They’ll secure your traffic to the Internet itself, not between private locations connected by the Internet.
I don’t know what hardware you’re specifically using as a router at each location or what works with what. I know ubiquiti has some VPN features in their gateway products, and that could make quick work of the problem. Just food for thought I guess.
what i’ve done is simply lower the power of my 2.4GHz network so i have reliable coverage in my apartment, but by the time i’ve walked 2 floors down my phone is utterly unable to even see the network.
super simple way to avoid polluting the local airwaves, though i presume it’s not really something you can do on most standard router interfaces…
What about the SNMP protocol? And is ARP level 1 or 2? Edit 2 or 3 ofc!
I love low level network stuff, but nowadays nobody needs that anymore.
Well, SNMP is pretty great. There’s three variants in common use, v1, v2c, and v3. I’m a big fan of v2c, because I usually run SNMP over my trusted LAN, and read only, so there’s little or no risks there. I just want all the information! Haha I would consider v3 if I was doing any kind of read/write work with SNMP. To date, I’ve never had to, so I just don’t bother with it. It’s a bear to set up compared to v2c.
ARP is on layer 2/3 of both the OSI model and the 5 layer TCP model. The OSI model has never been implemented in a production network, it’s just a reference to visualize how things operate. TCP/IP and ipv6 generally stop around the OSI model layer 5. 6/7 is handled by the software, in theory, and layer 8 is where you get the most problems, by far.
ARP is considered to be both layer 2 and layer 3, sometimes noted as layer 2.5, because it’s bridging layer 2, which is Ethernet Mac addressing in most networks, and layer 3 which is IP addressing. It almost entirely operates on layer 2 however.
There’s a new, revised version of the TCP model that I’m aware of that blurs the line between what is known as layer 1 and 2 in the OSI model, kind of bundling them together. It’s weird, but something I’ve seen around.
The question I never got an answer to was about Ethernet. I have searched the internet high and low and have yet to find a credible reference that indicates what the real answer is. There’s a white paper but you have to pay to see it, I’m pretty sure the answer is in there, obfuscated by some fancy math algorithm… The question is: how much voltage is used for Ethernet baseband signaling when PoE is not used? What constitutes a “high” signal, and what is a “low” signal? A lot of sources seem to point to 5v and 1v, but never have any references to back up the claim. There are other sites that provide different voltages for high and low too. 5/1 is just the most common that I’ve seen mentioned.
Hey you know your stuff 🫡 well done!
Yay!
Should I learn iptables or is it more sane to use a front end like ufw?
I have an RPI with dual Ethernet between my modem and consumer router so I don’t have to depend on the obsolete and limited consumer router software. I’m using OpenWRT at the moment but curious if you have other recommendations. I like the Luci gui so if I switched to headless Debian or something then I’d still want a luci equivalent.
I’m self hosting with docker and I want to set up a wireguard vpn container that joins a network with a select set of containers. So I’d have containers that are accessible only by actual LAN users and then others that are in this isolated group that only the VPN (i.e. WAN people) can access. I thought that’s what docker was all about! But by default it seems all authenticated VPN peers just get to be on the LAN. Sure, they can’t get at containers on a different docker bridge network, but they get to access the host itself! This is why I asked about iptables above, but it’s daunting. Any ideas on how to achieve “two levels of trust” for self hosted services?
Sorry this took me a bit to get to. Hello!
I’m hoping that not all of that is running on a single pi. I mean, it can, but you might hit limitations when everything is engaged with doing things. I just feel like, that’s a lot for one raspberry Pi…
Anyways, iptables are good to have a general grasp of, but they’re generally GNU/Linux specific. There’s other routing implementations that run on Linux, and hardware appliances generally have their own bespoke, vendor specific stuff. One project I’m aware of is free range routing. There’s a lot more, but this is one that I know of. Using FRR, vs iptables, they’re very different beasts. But you shouldn’t need FRR, it’s a monster in terms of memory use and designed to operate in ISP class networks. You don’t need it. I’m just using it as an example of what is out there.
The best advice I can give about this is that learning the concepts behind routing is more valuable than any specific product. Knowing the difference between an RIB and FIB, and how to structure routes, priorities, costs, etc… All very important. Can you learn that with iptables? Sure, and probably more, since iptables can also function as a low end firewall.
The important thing is that you learn the meaning behind what you’re doing in whatever routing platform you are working with.
I’ve worked with so many different ways of handling routing and firewall work that I get annoyed when vendors come up with dumb marketing terms that leak into the device user interface, for a very common routing, firewall, or VPN technology. I don’t care whether I’m on a router or firewall that’s custom and running open WRT, ddwrt, opnsense, or one from Cisco, Sonic wall, watchguard, Fortinet, Palo Alto, or any of the dozens of other vendors. A VPN is a VPN. IKE and IPsec don’t change because it’s vendor x or y. Don’t start calling the IKE identifier something else.
… Sorry, rant.
Anyways, I don’t really see the vendor’s interface as anything more than a code I have to convert into the industry standard protocol information that everyone uses. It’s a filter by which that vendor portrays the same options that everything else has. Some have quirks. Some are more straight forward. But they all have the same options in the end. Allow the traffic or don’t, do it by port and protocol or by IP. Apply content filters or don’t, use Ethernet, DHCP, pppoe, or something else like ATM or ipx/SPX for signaling. Who cares.
If you understand the concepts, the skills are transferable, no matter what platform you end up using, you’ll know what needs to be done, you’ll just be stuck figuring out how you do it on this platform.
Also, don’t use the wifi routers provided by Cocmast. Cocmast uses them to provide their xfinity-branded wifi, so as their customer you are literally sacrificing bandwidth and paying their electric bill. I assume all cable companies do this but Cocmast is the only one I know about for sure.
ISP provider doesn’t matter. Put your ISP modem into bridged mode and get your own router.
ISPs usually don’t buy good, or reliable stuff for their clients, they buy whatever gives them the marketing buzzwords and costs them the least. Usually, they’re great at doing modem things, not so good at anything else. Bridged mode just limits them to just doing what they’re good at.
Why use the ISP router at all? If your ISP uses IPoE or can provide you the PPPoE connection details, can’t you use any router you like?
Yes and no, usually the ISP router is also the modem, converting from either VDSL, DOCSIS, or some flavor of GPON, and most people don’t have the knowledge or patience to figure out how to do a modem delete for their ISP.
Having the ISP put the modem in bridged mode usually nullifies the instability of it. Bridged mode turns the ISP modem router thing effectively into just a modem.
You can improve communication by removing it entirely, if you can sort out the modem delete, but unless there’s a pretty clear demarcation between the line handling gear and the ISP router, you might be up a creek.
The other caveat is that with a modem delete, you won’t get help from the ISP. You have to revert to their gear before they will troubleshoot your connection. To them, that modem router is their demarcation line, so it must be in the path somewhere, or they get pretty grumpy about it all.
But, if you have the skill and the aptitude to do it, you can cut ping times by quite a bit. On my VDSL line, when I did a modem delete, replacing whatever lowest bidder modem router my ISP gave me with a Cisco 1911, and a VDSL2 line card, I got my, already quite reasonable ping times (somewhere around 10ms? Or so, to the local datacenter), down to about 4ms. Over VDSL2. That’s crazy good. Nearly FTTH speed.
I did something similar when I was on FTTH for a bit, I got a fiber ont SFP transceiver that could be reconfigured, programmed it with the MAC and other critical information from my ISPs device, and used that in my own router. Which also cut ping times from ~5ms? To ~2ms maybe? So, yeah. There’s benefit to it, but it requires specialized expertise most of the time. If you have an easy path to a modem delete with your ISP, then it’s a no brainer.
Disabling the routing in your ISPs combo router/modem, is essential for any mid sized household that values their performance.
How would I setup MoCA in a house when it has a really large splitter?
The size of the splitter isn’t super important, though if there’s enough branches the signal may degrade to the point of not working, so it can be a problem. I would break out the splitter, as in, buy a couple of new splitters, MoCA compatible, and put half the connections on one, half on the other, then use a MoCA blocking splitter to join them to the upstream coax. This will prevent the two halves from talking to eachother and from talking to anyone outside your home. Then use two MoCA connections, one on each coax “segment”.
It will cost more to do it this way, but you’ll get a better, more reliable connection, no matter where you connect.
Since you would need all the gear for the split that you would for the single node, I would say, buy one node for the “head” end first and test if it works, if not, plan for the split idea. Also be mindful that MoCA is a different frequency than cable TV, so not all TV splitters will bridge MoCA connections. You can look up the frequencies in use, they’re all published on Wikipedia. There’s also different coax splitters for cable vs satellite, etc so it gets a bit nuanced. The supported frequencies should be on the label of any coax splitters. Make sure they all include the MoCA frequencies.
Good luck.
Will keep that in mind. The original application was for my friends place but they’re moving. Lease ends next month and they’re not renewing. My moca setup was for my router and now it’s a cat 8 cable. (I have fiber).
I never really got a straight answer regarding splitters and moca. That’s super cool
That’s fair. I feel a little called out, rightly so.
What you want to do is look at the MoCA frequencies, which is ~450-1625mhz or so and see if your splitters include that range. If so, you’re golden, if not, there’s a good chance your MoCA signal will be attenuated by the splitter. Each splitter will cut the power by the number of connected branches, so 2 branches will be half power per branch, 4 will be a quarter. Etc. MoCA can handle some loss, but too much and it will fall over. There are splitters that you can buy that specifically include MoCA frequencies, some that don’t, and they’re will be some that specifically block it. The last type is good for separating MoCA segments, or at service entry points so you don’t end up sharing your network with neighbors.
Each splitter will have a label that specifies what frequencies it’s been tested with and that are validated to work. It should be printed on the splitter. If it’s not, throw it out and buy something that’s not in disrepair.
To clarify what’s going on a bit, the coax is just an antenna line, with no antenna. It can handle many different frequencies of transmissions. Like with the radio in your car, you can “tune into” different radio stations. The other radio stations on air don’t interfere with the one you’re listening to and vice versa. It’s the same idea with coax. Some frequencies are used to send cable TV, others are used for Internet (otherwise known as DOCSIS) and some are used for MoCA. All coax handling gear will support and be tested for some frequencies, and unless otherwise stated, anything outside of that range will be unknown. Most cable splitters support cable TV and DOCSIS frequencies primarily. There are different coax splitters for satellite, which uses all different frequencies, and there’s others that support much broader frequency ranges. Some can connect a wide spectrum but are only validated for a small part of what they can carry.
Your mileage may vary, and it’s really up to what you have and what the manufacturer did with the design of that specific splitter.
I’m sorry the answer isn’t more straight forward.
Every single time I looked for an article I got confused. Explaining it like “coax is just an antenna” was the gap in my knowledge.
Thank you
You are very welcome my friend.