Let's talk home networking...

[hentzau]

Just bought a new modem (Arris Surfboard SB6190) to take advantage of the increased speeds being offered by Comcast. But now I'm running into issues with my old router, a Linksys E4200. I installed the modem, and that went well, and a locally attached laptop ran speed tests north of 125mbps. But as soon as I go wifi, it drops down to 20mbps, sometimes less. So, did the obvious things, updated the firmware on the router (last update, 2014) and that didn't help, same slow speeds. Let's try factory resetting the modem. Eureka! Wifi speed tests are up above 100mbps!

But not so fast. After the factory resets, suddenly my router is completely unstable. It reboots every 2-3 minutes. The router has next to no diagnostic logs, so I can't see what is causing the hard reset. Some google searching led me to turning off WiFi Multimedia in the QOS settings. This stabilized the router, but now I am back to sub-20mbps traffic on wifi. But at least it stays up.

So I'm going to go out and get a new router. I've been eyeing the "whole home" solutions from Eero and Google and the like to deal with the major blind spots in the house. Here are my questions:

1. Anyone using one of these setups, and if so, what are your thoughts? Worth the extra money?
2. Would it be OK to buy just one of the devices to start, and then add another one in later? Spread the cost out a bit.

[gilraen]

That's the exact same router we are using right now. We used it several years ago, and then we had the Comcast-provided Arris gateway for a while, which didn't need a separate router. A couple of months ago I bought a Motorola MB8600 modem (I wanted a DOCSIS 3.1-compatible modem, even though Comcast doesn't provide gig speeds in this area yet). So I pulled this router out of the closet, and...I'm really unimpressed.

First it completely refused to work with my Netgear wi-fi extender. The extender would show that it's totally connected, all lights are green...but there would be no internet connection on any device that actually tried using the extender. After spending hours looking for some hidden security settings on the router, I gave up and bought a no-name wi-fi extender (since I figured maybe Netgear and Linksys just don't play well together; this thing is called MECO, never heard of them before but it seems to work fine).

I did factory-reset the router when I was doing that, and also updated the firmware.

Now I'm having all kinds of issues with my Chromecasts. The wired computer is outright refusing to find any cast destinations (even though, again, I spent hours tweaking router settings). One of the Chromecasts disconnects every few days and the only way to bring it back to life is - you guessed it - rebooting the router. I thought it was the older Chromecast model, so I swapped it out for a newer one, that never had any issues before. It's doing the same thing, so it's definitely not the Chromecast.

Last week a Roku stick on a different TV refused to recognize the internet connection. Again, fixed by rebooting the router.

I just tested the wi-fi speed on my laptop - granted, it's sitting only about 10 ft from the router right now, but at least I don't seem to be having problems with the router throttling the speed, it clocked at about 100mbps.

I can't comment on a "whole-home" solution, since I have no plans on setting one up. But I will probably end up buying another router. Shame, really, this Linksys router was a nice expensive model back in the day, but now it's 7 years old and just doesn't play nice with newer devices, firmware updates notwithstanding.

[Daehawk]

It appears that E2400 is supposed to support up to 300 meg. Must be flaking out . I had the world famous Linksys WRT54GL and when I went from 30 meg to 60 meg it couldn't handle it even though it was supposed to. I thought it was my custom firmware I was using..Tomato I think it was. But nope didn't help to change. I marked it up to being old. I hated to change because I never needed to reboot this router and I have heard horror stories of people having to do theirs every day.

This was back when I had some money. So I got a Apple Airport. BIG mistake. Apple basically screwed me and tried to reinsert for more. I sold it on here. Lost money since it was 1 week old so used. I ended up with an ASUS Diamond type. Its been flawless and no reboots required . Its supposed to be good for that gig when I ever get it.

EDIT: This is what I got in 2015.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0049 ... UTF8&psc=1

Asus Dual-Band Wireless-N600 Gigabit Router (RT-N56U)

[Z-Corn]

I also recently upgraded my modem but went with the Surfboard 8200 to also future-proof a bit by getting DOCSIS 3.1. Future-proof but I probably paid twice what you did for your modem.

I then decided I needed to upgrade my 7 year-old Netgear router to get some 802.11AC tech in the house.

I went with a refurb T-Mobile branded ASUS AC1900 for $47. I'm going to have to put some work in cracking it, getting a new bootloader on it so I can flash to non-proprietary firmware. Probably tomorrow's project. It will then, in effect, be an ASUS RT-AC68U which sells for $135 or so.

ASUS just released new firmware to allow this router to work with other similar models to interface in a mesh format.

If you are willing and able to put the research and work in it's a good deal for a refurb router. Even buying three of them will be cheaper than most any whole-home mesh system out now. You just have to put the work in to get there...but I like doing this work!

If anyone is curious I'll report back once I do the upgrade.

Edit to add link to what I bought, it cost a bit more now...https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B075G ... UTF8&psc=1

[LawBeefaroni]

So I'm going to go out and get a new router. I've been eyeing the "whole home" solutions from Eero and Google and the like to deal with the major blind spots in the house. Here are my questions:

1. Anyone using one of these setups, and if so, what are your thoughts? Worth the extra money?
2. Would it be OK to buy just one of the devices to start, and then add another one in later? Spread the cost out a bit.

I have Google and it works with just one. Wouldn't know about the speed though since AT&T only gives me 3-4mMbps. Handles that just fine.

[The Meal]

We had some networking issues at our place which had me try out 4 different routers (3 wifi, one wired only) and also a whole house mesh solution.

We've settled on running our ISP service into the home (we've got a municipal ISP providing gigabit service) through the Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X (wired only router) which then has switches going to some wired devices, but also provides the connection to the mesh solution through www.plumewifi.com. We've got quite a few native wifi devices (3 Hue bridges, 7 in-home cameras, smart phones and tablets, Apple TV, smart TV, Dish receiver, PS4, 2 Sonos speakers, 5 Echo dots, etc.) totaling around 36 total wifi connections. Additionally about once a month we host about 20 folks over, all with smart phones in their pockets (for poker night), so as you can imagine our wifi network gets pretty abused.

I'm extremely pleased with the Plume pods (we've got 8 -- three in the basement, four on the ground floor, one in the upstairs). Last night was the shakedown cruise for how the wifi would hold up with a houseful of guests and things were Rock. Solid. The Plume wifi caps out around 100 Mb/s (significantly slower than the wifi into the house), but there's no device (or combination of devices) which ever push that use case (and any PCs which need file transfers or the like are in the gigabit ethernet network). They recently added the ability to set up a guest network (which is definitely convenient for our use case) and it went off without a hitch (gilraen can possibly attest to this — she was here).

FWIW, my "loser" routers (not because they're deficient, but because they don't match our usage) are:
Netgear Nighthawk AC2300 (R7000P)
Synology RT2600AC
Trendnet AC3200 (TEW-828DRU)

I think of those three, the Netgear is most ready for prime time. I liked the Synology software better, but it seems that they're still figuring out the router game in terms of stability and not pushing out "oh yeah, we forgot..." firmware updates. Hopefully they stick with routers though. The software for the Ubiquity router which is in place overwhelms me with options and is not at all user friendly in terms of navigation.

If you want to know more about the Plume WiFi pods, I can give you more details. I had what is unquestionably my best tech support experience ever with one of their technicians, which ended up resolving our in-home WiFi issues (spoiler alert: it had nothing to do with the Plume Pods). Extremely patient and very very very little BS "did you try to reboot it?" questions. Considering it was a 2-hour phone call (after a week's worth of email exchanges -- relevant details which were kept straight in the technician's mind during our call), that's rather amazing.

[gbasden]

I redid most of my house with Ubiquiti gear and I really like it. My throughput has gone way up over the ASUS router I had before. I didn't go with the Edgerouter, though - I used the Unifi Security gateway as my edge device. The integrated management is really nice, as is the ability to disable my son's ethernet connection when he is ignoring me.

[RunningMn9]

So many happy memories of turning off the interpipes to my son’s XBox when he wasn’t listening. The five seconds on silence followed by angry stomping down the stairs was the best.


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