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Hi guys, have a question and I hope you'll bear with me as a lot of this stuff is over my head. I read the OP but I'm not sure if my answer is located in there. Anyhow here goes... I'm trying to "fix" the internet situation at my parents house. It was working before in some kind of crazy way that my brother setup but he's currently out of the country and I can't quite figure out what it is I need to replace/do. Basically upstairs we have the cable modem coming into the house and there's a desktop up there along with a router. I believe he had the cable modem plugged into the router along with the desktop. After this there was a further cable connection into the wall which ran downstairs to an Apple Airport router (think it's an extreme) which pretty much provided wireless to the rest of the house along with a signal booster on the far end of the house. This setup has worked for quite a good while with no issues. Apparently over the past day or so he apparently mentioned to my mom that the router upstairs had failed as they had no net connection throughout the house. So he basically took it out of the equation and just ran the cable modem directly into the wall running downstairs restoring wifi in the house but knocking the upstairs desktop off as it's no longer getting any kind of connection to the modem. I guess what I'm asking is what's the best way to run this kind of setup? Was he using the router as some kind of access point or something (not sure I'm using the term correctly). What should I buy / hook up to get this back in order so we can have the upstairs comp be on a wired connection and then route everything else so the rest of the house can be on wifi? Sorry, I know this sounds convoluted and difficult to read, like I said I'm not very familiar with networking so I'm kind of at a loss here.
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Apr 21, 2013 06:43
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The short version was that in the old setup, the router upstairs was acting as a full router (internet goes in, local network goes out), and the Airport was acting as an access point (local network in and out). Right now, the Airport is working as the router. Both setups are just fine, and you could just get an inexpensive WiFi adapter for the desktop and have it connect to the Airport as the path of least resistance. If that's not to your liking, you would need to get another router and place it where the old one was, then reconfigure the Airport to act as an AP again. This other router could be another Airport, if you like how they work, or it can be anything else - if it's not serving WiFi, you can get away with a pretty low-end model.
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Apr 21, 2013 07:34
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Ok cool thanks! Guess it wasn't serving as wifi as that's what the Airport downstairs is doing. I suppose I'll try to find a cheap router that I can use in place of the old one. Out of curiosity, any way to tell how a router is failing? Edit: Would using an Airport Express upstairs be a good idea or would it limit me in any way? lilspooky fucked around with this message at 08:03 on Apr 21, 2013 |
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Apr 21, 2013 07:57
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lilspooky posted:Out of curiosity, any way to tell how a router is failing? Eh, well, someone might know better, but I'd go with "Is anything not working? If yes, probably failing." Most routers are based on system-on-a-chip processors, so there really aren't a wide variety of internal components. It's the chip, some RAM, WiFi chipset and radio parts, and the ethernet ports. Plus a little voltage regulation stuff.
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Apr 21, 2013 09:10
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One other quick question. It's not possible to have two routers each sending out wireless signals correct? Coming off of one cable modem that is.
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Apr 21, 2013 11:18
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lilspooky posted:One other quick question. It's not possible to have two routers each sending out wireless signals correct? Coming off of one cable modem that is. It's possible. Just make sure that only one of the routers is doing the actual routing on your network, and the second one can be daisychained off of the first router and switched into bridged mode to make sure it doesn't conflict with the first router. If there's no explicit setting to put the second router into bridged mode, you can just log into the second router and change a few settings to bridge it (Turn off DHCP service and change the router's IP address to *.*.*.2 if the first router is *.*.*.1) and connect the routers together LAN port to LAN port. Small Net Builder goes into it in a bit more detail if you need step-by-step directions on how to do it.
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Apr 21, 2013 14:24
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I'm considering building my own router, partly out boredom, partly to pick up more networking stuff. What are the standard builds for these? I'd like it to have four Ethernet ports plus an extra for taking the DSL modem. WiFi would also be ideal. I know there are four port Ethernet cards, anyone have experience of these? If I got one, I could get it down to needing just two expansion cards (Ethernet, wifi plus using on board Ethernet for the DSL if it's gigabit capable). I want to keep expansion card numbers low so it can be smaller and draw less power, which will obviously be a plus. So, am I being totally unreasonable or is this doable? Anyone who has done this, some info on your hardware would be great.
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Apr 22, 2013 11:06
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The usual setup for this is an older/slower machine with two network cards running Linux (m0n0wall, smoothwall, pfsense, etc.) Just get a switch to distribute Internet, you don't need multiple ports on the machine. You could set up wifi on the machine, but it will require some fiddling with the antenna setup to have ok range- it would make more sense to get a standalone wifi ap of some kind.
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Apr 22, 2013 12:58
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Dogen posted:The usual setup for this is an older/slower machine with two network cards running Linux (m0n0wall, smoothwall, pfsense, etc.) Valid points, yeah. What about DSL? Is the recommended setup for an internal one or an external going into one of the Ethernet ports? EDIT: This looks like a viable board for the routing hardware, especially if coupled with a mini PCI-E gigabit Ethernet board. Anything glaring that'd make it unusable? Experto Crede fucked around with this message at 14:38 on Apr 22, 2013 |
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Apr 22, 2013 13:21
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I've got an 8+ year old surfboard that's started to occasionally freeze up, requiring a power cycle, sometimes as often as once a day or so. The status page at 192.168.100.1 stops loading and all, but the weirdest thing is that stopping or finishing busy torrents seems to trigger it- everything will be fine until I pause my torrents, and then the whole connection flakes out with very high packet loss till the modem is reset. Cox tries to sell me a new modem, a signal booster and 2 dozen overpriced coax splitters every time my cable drops so I don't really value their input on the matter. Does this sound like a dying cable modem? If my cable plan is well inside of DOCSIS 2.0 (20/4 iirc) and that is unlikely to change in the near future, is there any benefit at all to upgrading to DOCSIS 3.0? Also, whats the story on e2000 clock speed? It comes stock at 350ish, which is apparently a factory overclock on a 300mhz chip, and there are reports around of instability that can be solved by underclocking to 300Mhz, but I've also read reports of people (idiots probably) claiming to be stable at 400Mhz without even making provisions for cooling. As long as I'm nowhere near running out of CPU under load would underclocking to 300Mhz be a good idea or is this mostly just unwashed pubbie nonsense? It is alarmingly hot for a router at stock speed that's barely doing anything.
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Apr 22, 2013 19:46
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gggiiimmmppp posted:I've got an 8+ year old surfboard that's started to occasionally freeze up... Upgrade to a DOCSIS 3 modem even if your plan is within DOCSIS 2 limits. The Surfboard 6141 is generally recommended, and it'll pay for itself in under a year with the ~$7/month modem rental fees you'll save. DOCSIS 3 modems can spread your traffic out over multiple channels, where DOCSIS 2 is limited to 1 channel up and 1 channel down. If one channel is particularly congested, it wouldn't affect you as much since your modem would just use the other channels.
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Apr 22, 2013 19:54
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Experto Crede posted:Valid points, yeah. What about DSL? Is the recommended setup for an internal one or an external going into one of the Ethernet ports? With DSL you would generally have the ISP modem connected to the Red/WAN port on your router, and then the Green/LAN port would connect over to a switch. Set the ISP modem in bridged mode and disable DHCP/firewalling on it. Give the router a static IP and have it handle DHCP and DNS instead. You can point the DNS address on the router to the ISP modem if you want to use the ISP DNS servers (this is important for U-Verse in particular). Internal DSL cards probably exist, but if you already have a DSL modem on hand, just use that instead. If it's a multiple-port model, use a LAN ethernet port on the modem and not the WAN port. Make sure to check the supported cards for whatever router OS you're planning to use. Realtek cards are widely supported, but at least with Smoothwall, Intel cards are recommended for higher throughput requirements. The board you've linked should work fine assuming you're getting ~50mbit or less down. Generally with router OS' you want somewhat older hardware for better support, although sticking with Intel parts always helps. You should probably take a look at the Microtik thread as well if you're interested in an all-in-one box with wifi included. future ghost fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Apr 22, 2013 |
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Apr 22, 2013 20:06
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gggiiimmmppp posted:I'm trying to help my parents update their wireless network. Just an update here, I finally convinced my dad just to buy a powerline kit which now connects opposite corners of the house. It's a 500mb kit but it only gets ~55 through the house, which worried me at first, but that's consistent and stable with no latency or packet loss to speak of (and it's plenty fast still for anything they'll ever do). Now there's an e2000 at each end of the house in 2.4Ghz N-only mode and coverage everywhere is great, even in the toilet in the master bathroom which is basically a faraday cage. Just to be safe I set up one of the WRT54Gs as a b/g hotspot at the end of the house that gets the best wifi coverage for compatibility, underclocked the e2000s and set up every router in the house to reboot every night at 4am. With luck, I don't have to think about this again till at least 2020. e: out of curiosity, is there anything that can be done from the router side to encourage roaming? Some things like the ipads seem to be pretty smart about it but some older wifi stuff seems to want to hang on to the lovely connection even when it's right next to another AP with the same security and SSID, until it breaks or you force it to reconnect. poverty goat fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Apr 22, 2013 |
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Apr 22, 2013 22:32
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Experto Crede posted:Valid points, yeah. What about DSL? Is the recommended setup for an internal one or an external going into one of the Ethernet ports? How about this one which has two GigE ports integrated for slightly more? Like grumperfish said, use one port for WAN to your bridged DSL modem, and one to connect to an external switch for your LAN. Or you can pick up a Mikrotik RB951G-2HnD and get the low-power all-in-one goodness you seek in the hardware, with more Linux-based networking features than you'll ever use. SamDabbers fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Apr 22, 2013 |
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Apr 22, 2013 22:37
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SamDabbers posted:Or you can pick up a Mikrotik RB951G-2HnD and get the low-power all-in-one goodness you seek in the hardware, with more Linux-based networking features than you'll ever use.
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Apr 22, 2013 23:48
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Experto Crede posted:I'm considering building my own router, partly out boredom, partly to pick up more networking stuff. You could get a PC Engines ALIX board or one of Soekris Engineering's boards and put pfSense, m0n0wall, or the like on it. Personally, I run a Soekris net6501-70 with pfSense hooked up to an HP Procurve 1410-16G switch and it handles my 100mbps connection just fine. I don't have it doing wireless (it doesn't have a miniPCI slot and even if it did, BSD kinda sucks at wireless), but I have a Ubiquiti Unifi Pro for that. Going this  certainly isn't for everybody, but I'm happy with my setup and I probably won't have to upgrade for a long time unless I decide I want more ethernet ports or a managed switch or something.
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Apr 23, 2013 07:37
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How does the Asus RT-AC66U compare to the latest Apple Airport Extreme? I've ordered the RT-AC66U because it was only a little bit more expensive and it has 802.11ac draft support, but I'm wondering if I made the right decision. (my wireless devices are almost all Apple devices) Range/distance is pretty much most important to me...
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Apr 23, 2013 20:17
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Vinlaen posted:How does the Asus RT-AC66U compare to the latest Apple Airport Extreme? My roommate has an Airport Extreme. The signal strength and performance are pretty good but it does some really weird poo poo on the network. It causes a few things to break and can't be disabled. I wouldn't recommend one as a result.
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Apr 23, 2013 22:00
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urzaserra256 posted:My problem is i currently get my internet 125 feet away from my house in shop which has metal siding. I then have it going to a wireless router, and then underground to a long set of cables with 2 couplers due to cable lengths. From there it connects to a switch. Occasionally i will lose this connection, wierd thing though is the link lights will remain on however the connection doesnt work. Resetting the swithc will fix it but at a random time after the connection will go bad again. Burying another cable isnt realy an option. Can i get a response to this please?
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Apr 23, 2013 23:29
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If I wanted something that runs a normal linux distribution, or at least allows me to manage iptables, isnt a *WRT or Tomato, has 5 gigabit ports on it, wifi, and allows me to do all the configuration, what thing would I get? I'm not interested in building my own.
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Apr 23, 2013 23:42
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urzaserra256 posted:My problem is i currently get my internet 125 feet away from my house in shop which has metal siding. I then have it going to a wireless router, and then underground to a long set of cables with 2 couplers due to cable lengths. From there it connects to a switch. Occasionally i will lose this connection, wierd thing though is the link lights will remain on however the connection doesnt work. Resetting the swithc will fix it but at a random time after the connection will go bad again. Burying another cable isnt realy an option. The underground couplers are probably what's killing your connection. Is the underground segment at least watertight? If not, there's probably not much you can do to fix it, short of burying a new run, which you don't want to do. Going wireless is probably one of the better options. I'd take a look at the Nanostation Loco M5 if you have good line of sight, i.e. no trees/branches in between the two buildings, and adequate Fresnel zone clearance. Goon Matchmaker posted:If I wanted something that runs a normal linux distribution, or at least allows me to manage iptables, isnt a *WRT or Tomato, has 5 gigabit ports on it, wifi, and allows me to do all the configuration, what thing would I get? I'm not interested in building my own. If you absolutely need a general purpose Linux distribution, you could look into building a Soekris or Alix system with an appropriate MiniPCI wireless card. Otherwise, you could also look into Mikrotik devices, which use Linux/iptables but with a proprietary interface. SamDabbers fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Apr 24, 2013 |
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Apr 23, 2013 23:57
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titaniumone posted:My roommate has an Airport Extreme. The signal strength and performance are pretty good but it does some really weird poo poo on the network. It causes a few things to break and can't be disabled. I wouldn't recommend one as a result. The wait what now? How does what you linked break anything on your network? Which is not to say I would recommend one over anything else, but that seems like kind of a wacky assertion Dogen fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Apr 24, 2013 |
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Apr 23, 2013 23:58
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SamDabbers posted:If you absolutely need a general purpose Linux distribution, you could look into building a Soekris or Alix system with an appropriate MiniPCI wireless card. Otherwise, you could also look into Mikrotik devices, which use Linux/iptables but with a proprietary interface. I actually went from an Alix board to a WNDR3500Lv2 because the Alix was no longer meeting my needs. My internet connection was just too much for it when I was running pfSense. The WNDR3500Lv2 is pissing me off because I can't control the iptables rules it generates, and it generates some really stupid rules. I've considered the Mikrotik products but I decided against them because they lather their own proprietary stuff on top of iptables.
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Apr 24, 2013 00:21
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Goon Matchmaker posted:I actually went from an Alix board to a WNDR3500Lv2 because the Alix was no longer meeting my needs. My internet connection was just too much for it when I was running pfSense. The WNDR3500Lv2 is pissing me off because I can't control the iptables rules it generates, and it generates some really stupid rules. I've considered the Mikrotik products but I decided against them because they lather their own proprietary stuff on top of iptables. Actually, iptables is very faithfully exposed in both the CLI and GUI interfaces on Mikrotik. If you like to hand-craft your firewall rules, the Mikrotik won't get in your way at all, and it starts with a blank slate. That said, it does have some peculiar quirks (e.g. crappy DNS implementation) that would be simple to hack around with a more general purpose Linux system, but if you approach it like you would an enterprisey Cisco-type router, it's actually pretty good. I used to run a Soekris 4801 with OpenBSD, which is roughly half the speed of the Alix systems, and also ran into a performance wall. From there I did an Atom build, also with OpenBSD/pf, and ended up with a tiny Routerboard. I now have a FreeBSD server acting as a NAS for my network, and I run my DNS and DHCP off of that, leaving the Mikrotik to do what it's best at: shuffling packets.
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Apr 24, 2013 01:16
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Dogen posted:The wait what now? How does what you linked break anything on your network? I have an aggregated quad-port file server and one of our media devices is his Apple TV. The Airport Extreme will randomly swap IPs with the Apple TV repeatedly while it's in use for no apparent reason and the Apple TV gets shifted to a different port on the file server, breaking whatever it's currently streaming, and sometimes making the Apple TV poo poo itself and reboot. It took a long time to figure out what was causing it and there is a thread discussing it on the pfSense forums. We have had some other issues with it too but that one is the most irritating and you can't turn that poo poo off and it's an idiotic "feature" so I would suggest something else instead.
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Apr 24, 2013 02:02
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Ok, yeah, that is pretty loving stupid.
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Apr 24, 2013 02:30
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Turns out that somehow my router actually has been limiting my (hardwired) internet connection, so obviously in the market for an upgrade from the trusty old WRT54G. OP is 6 months old, what's the latest hot poo poo router? b/g/n, gigabit, etc. Seems like most of the decent ones have a max of 4 ethernet ports, but the more the better.
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Apr 24, 2013 02:52
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They are still good. Routers don't change that fast. If you need more ports buy a switch.
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Apr 24, 2013 02:54
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I know this is an ignorant question and it's been so long since I've actually had to do any networking stuff that I'm uncertain... For the last several years I used an old DSL modem that I think has been starting to act up a bit. It acted ONLY as a modem. My connections for my set-up went Modem-->Router-->Switch and other devices. My newest modem (1 port), though, has two options: Modem + Router or Modem Only. Setting it to only Modem Only let me not have to configure anything else and just reconnect the router and everything was fine and I was online again in seconds. But I'm really not sure if this is the best thing to do or not, but it worked. I'm sort of wondering if I should let the newer modem also do the router work, too, and just try to configure a router to just be there for ports. Overall, I guess my question boils down to: When a modem does both, is it better to let it, or is better to let the modem be just a modem and let a router be the router?
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Apr 24, 2013 06:58
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JediTalentAgent posted:I know this is an ignorant question and it's been so long since I've actually had to do any networking stuff that I'm uncertain... If you're happy with your current router, set the modem to modem only. Often the router implementations that get built in to combo devices aren't very good, but if you dislike your router you could try the included one and see if it meets your needs.
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Apr 24, 2013 10:59
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On advice from this thread I'll be updating my RCA DOCSIS 2.0 Comcast rental to a SB6141 tonight. NewEgg and it's fast rear end shipping in my area is a beautiful thing.
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Apr 24, 2013 14:29
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Parlett316 posted:On advice from this thread I'll be updating my RCA DOCSIS 2.0 Comcast rental to a SB6141 tonight. NewEgg and it's fast rear end shipping in my area is a beautiful thing. I did the same, and tripled my speed while saving $7 a month in the process. It'll have paid for itself in about a year. 
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Apr 24, 2013 16:11
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I did the same thing, upgraded from a sb5000 or something that one company never wanted back(???  ). I don't know if I tripled my speed, but it seems to stay at my previous max indefinitely. Sometimes you have to be careful of what modems your ISP can actually handle. I had a buddy let me borrow an Atrix Docsis3 modem, which they couldn't see on their end at all. Sb6141 is pretty ubiquitous so I wouldn't worry too much though.darkhand fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Apr 24, 2013 |
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Apr 24, 2013 17:55
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I've got an Actiontek MI42WR router at home - it's old as the hills, I've had it since at least 2009 or so. I live in a two story house, with the router upstairs on the right, and my tv downstairs on the left - and I have a hell of a time getting a wifi connection sometimes from the TV area (xbox is so-so, and the new Apple TV will hardly connect at all). I don't know what the distance is, but the house is 1,600sqft - so not too far. What can I do to boost my signal?
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Apr 24, 2013 23:19
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jackpot posted:I've got an Actiontek MI42WR router at home - it's old as the hills, I've had it since at least 2009 or so. I live in a two story house, with the router upstairs on the right, and my tv downstairs on the left - and I have a hell of a time getting a wifi connection sometimes from the TV area (xbox is so-so, and the new Apple TV will hardly connect at all). I don't know what the distance is, but the house is 1,600sqft - so not too far. What can I do to boost my signal? Get a new router is probably your best bet. It seems like those are mostly verizon provided units and people frequently replace them with something less lovely (they've been around since 2007)
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Apr 24, 2013 23:47
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I've been running toastman tomato on an e2000 for a few days now and while I really like the performance of the QoS the router has been crashing under heavy load and I found that I could repeatably crash the router by torrenting and reading the weedthread (lots of gifs and youtubes) at the same time, even if I underclocked it to 300Mhz. Even though it was free floating in the air for airflow as recommended I was getting 120F or higher readings with an IR thermometer through the bottom so I did what anyone would do and cut a big ugly hole in the top with a dremel and found that the CPU was idling at upwards of 150F. One thing lead to another and a copper 7900GS cooler turned into several much smaller heatsinks some of which proceeded to merge with the router and lo and behold it was stable overclocked to 400Mhz doing whatever. Then as a joke I put a 60mm fan on top powered by a salvaged 5v phone charger to take a picture and post on the internet but now it's stable for 4 hours and counting at 480Mhz, no matter what I do I can't crash it, and I can't find a temperature higher than 90F on the whole thing. I guess all I'm saying is that was surprisingly effective. poverty goat fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Apr 25, 2013 |
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Apr 25, 2013 02:35
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gggiiimmmppp posted:<e2000 hot-rod mod.> I'll keep that in mind. Do you have separate access points with that setup, or is the e2000 handling wireless and routing, and were the torrents, GIFs, and YouTubes running over wireless?
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Apr 25, 2013 02:50
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gggiiimmmppp posted:
Care to show us some pictures?
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Apr 25, 2013 02:56
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Fly posted:I'll keep that in mind. Do you have separate access points with that setup, or is the e2000 handling wireless and routing, and were the torrents, GIFs, and YouTubes running over wireless? It's doing both but they weren't running over the wireless, this is all from my desktop/NAS which are plugged into the router directly. I'll play a little more with it over the wifi on my laptop and see how it handles. e: to be honest though I'm using an e2000 because it was $20 on ebay and everything that uses more bandwidth than youtube on an ipad is hardwired. SamDabbers posted:Care to show us some pictures?   Beautiful isn't it? It's pretty hilarious looking but it's the smallest fan I found in the box of old fans, leave me and my fan alone.  That fan might have come out of an xbox, they had 60mm fans didn't they?
poverty goat fucked around with this message at 04:24 on Apr 25, 2013 |
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Apr 25, 2013 03:04
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e: quote != edit
poverty goat fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Apr 25, 2013 |
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Apr 25, 2013 03:09
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