Home networking help

[maflynn]

I'm not sure if this ought to go in the accessory forum or here, but I'm kicking around some idea on how to improve my internet access at home.

Current issue: I live in an old house (plaster and lathe on the first floor, second floor new construction about 17 years old). Wifi is hit or miss, with slow speeds upstairs. I currently use a two unit Orbi mesh network - I'm largely disappointed with the performance upstairs..

We have comcast broadband, but not tv - just internet, it comes through our cellar and the cable modem with the mesh wifi on the first floor the mesh satellite on the second floor

I'm kicking around the idea of moving the cable modem, and getting a router (type and size TBD) in the cellar running ethernet up to the first and second floors. Multiple runs for multiped needs
Circuit needs (cat 6 or 7, not sure what I need):

• Cellar: 1 line for for house alarm
• First floor - 3 connections: one for my office so my laptop doesn't use wifi, one for my living room and one for a wifi hotspot
• Second Floor - 1 connection. I already have one line run into my daughter's closet. Originally that bedroom was going to be my office - then my wife went and got pregnant ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The two connections are for a wifi hotspot and a connection for my bedroom (smart tv/apple tv). I'm not sure if that existing second floor cable is cat 5/5e or cat 6. If were I were to guess its cat 5. Does that matter?

To summarize, I need a router with at least 5 connections, two wifi hotspots and of course ethernet cable - cat 6 or 7 wire to run up to the first floor.

Any suggestions on what router to start considering and also wifi hotspots? Also buried in the post above - any issues with using cat 5 for the second floor run? Thoughts one how expensive this could run me?

 

[T Coma]

Curious which gateway you're using, as even our older Comcast-issued equipment (XB6?) worked quite well in our old plaster and lath 3 level 100 year old brick home. It oddly didn't work as well in our new (slightly larger, but quite a bit less substantial) stick-built 20 year old home, but Comcast gave us a free mesh extender and newer gateway after doing a remote coverage audit. There were a couple rooms in our finished basement that were loaded with wifi lights that didn't connect well. After they sent the single extender, the coverage was perfect. There has been at least one equipment upgrade since then, maybe two, so if you are not opposed to renting their equipment, you might find you have improved coverage. If not, you can always return it. I used to "enjoy" the challenge of getting the latest and greatest modems and routers, but now I don't think it's worth my effort.

Our new house also had a hub in the master closet for ethernet, phone, cable, and alarm, so I didn't have the same challenge with ethernet. I simply added a cheap switch in the closet and plugged that into the gateway for the computers I wanted to hardwire. Cat5E was sufficient to deliver above promised speeds from our plan - we regularly got 700+ Mbps down.

All that being said, we recently switched to ATT fiber as it was 30% cheaper and of course faster. The old CAT5E (or maybe it's CAT5? I'm not sure how to check wires in the wall) is still sufficient to deliver Gig speeds (about 940 Mbps up and down) while the WiFi varies from 200s to 600s, depending on the device and location.

Good luck, hopefully you can use some of the above info. BTW, a lathe is a machine tool - lath are the wood strips that plaster is applied to. (Sorry, having been in the restoration business, that's one typo that always bugs me.)

EDIT: both the Comcast and ATT mesh units helpfully have ethernet jacks which can be used for signal in and out I believe. Our wifi coverage is sufficient for now that I don't use them.

 

[satcomer]

First start to think bandwidth is like water pressure in your home!! Let me explain think of the size of water pipe coming to typical home then thin thenl8ikwe water pressure as bandwidth from your ISP and bandwidth your will pay for!! say\y if you got business .line bnandwith in you business home you would need to find a modem with 10g port on it! Fiber users could get much higher speed bandwidth and needs an expensive router modem that handle 25g speeds it gives you! So it all depends! Besides better go home 10 home network for less the 500 dollars today! here is video made 3 years ago showing how to do it cheaply:

 

[sublunar]

How fast is your inbound internet? Can you go faster in the future? If you're using Gigabit internet now or can get it in the future you'll definitely want to upgrade the wiring and this will subsequently limit your choice of router.

Cat 5e will allow you a gigabit backhaul, Cat 6 and 7 is useful for a future upgrade to 10 gig ethernet but with Wifi 6 capable of exceeding gigabit ethernet speeds you'd want Cat 6 if you can as a 2.5 Gig minimum speed will be needed to run Wifi 7 (and 7) between the APs in a hard wired mesh network.

If you can used a wired backhaul (link up your mesh units with ethernet) then a mesh network will be aided immensely.

I note that Wifi technology is moving at pace and Wifi 6e routers (but remember wifi 6e is only used in the iPad Pro M2 right now) will soon be superseding some Wifi 6 ones, and Wifi 7 is around the corner. All decent mesh systems are hugely expensive.

 

[hobowankenobi]

If you pull cable, no sense in using anything less than Cat6, and preferably Cat6e.

I use and am very happy with 3 of the low-end Ubiqiti U6 Lite APs to cover a 2 story house plus backyard, powered by a small TPLink POE switch.

With a setup like this, you would just need the basic routing features on the Comcast device. You would turn off the built-in wifi...unless you want run two separate wifi networks (which is messy).

 

[satcomer]

also if you live a NAFTA Country then look at the store that does all kind of cables called Monoprice to save money!

 

[davidg4781]

This may or may not help...

I live in a 1 story home, older, and I believe some of the building materials affect wireless transport.

I finally broke down and bought 3 Linksys Velop nodes. I was trying two of them and it just wasn't doing it. It might be overkill but I finally have coverage all over the house and the back yard. My needs were basically 3 TVs set up in a triangle throughout the house. Having 2 nodes, 1 at 2 of the points, would leave the 3rd one with a poor connection.

Another thing I did was I have the nodes connected wirelessly to each other (I'm too lazy to run cable right now, especially when we might do work soon). I then have them connected wired to the Apple TVs. This cut down a lot on wireless traffic in the house. Now it's just a couple of phones and a MacBook if I'm on it.

 

[PhoenixDown]

I have an older home with plaster, etc.

I have Unifi Access Points -- one in the front of the house and one in the back. I get good reception mostly everwhere but I am planning to add another unit downstairs to cover some gaps and another in the backyard to cover the far end where signal doesn't reach well.

(and my AP's are connected back to my router via ethernet cabling)