|
2 questions for the room. 1)What percentage of (US) home wifi routers are self owned vs rented (supplied by the internet provider) in 2023? 2)What is the expected lifespan of a self owned wifi router? Of a internet provider router?
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2023 18:06
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 17, 2024 02:23 |
|
|
99.999% of home modems/routers are rented or ISP provided I'm sure. Mine isn't, but that's an outlier.
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2023 20:34
|
|
|
Average lifespan is probably not that different between ISP modems and self owned equipment. All mine have lasted long enough until faster speeds were available and I needed to change equipment to utilize it. ISP provided equipment is for convenience if you just want the basics to work hassle free, and they can troubleshoot things for you. Self owned is for when you're a nerd like us and want to tinker and use more advanced features.
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2023 21:03
|
|
|
Shaocaholica posted:2 questions for the room. Some of the biggest ISPs in the country like AT&T require the usage of their own equipment, you can't own your own modem. You can buy your own router and put it behind theirs but you still have the AT&T router. I've had routers and cable modems die over the years. By the time they've died they've been obsolete and newer hardware brought big speed upgrades. The only exception is when my AT&T router died at about 5 years old, but getting a replacement router from them is a service call that doesn't cost anything out of pocket.
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2023 21:09
|
|
|
I'm running both my own modem and router, didn't want to pay rent to the ISP, as well as an Rpi running PiHole. I am very much an outlier in that respect. IME the lifetime of the hardware typically outlast the service life from the manufacturer. My parents house was serviced by a WRT54G that i flashed Open WRT onto for, honestly, probably an inadvisably long time.
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2023 21:17
|
|
|
xfinity keeps trying to tell me that their wifi gateway will improve my wifi experience like I don’t have a 10gig backbone and wifi6 APs covering every floor and back yard 
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2023 21:46
|
|
|
I mean wifi standards are presently changing way faster than it takes for most routers to die so there's probably a bunch of perfectly functioning 802.11 ac routers/APs being ewaste now
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2023 22:08
|
|
|
I run my own modem and router since I hate the idea of paying Comcast to rent my devices, but the one thing that makes me consider getting the ISP gateway is that it would get rid of my data cap. I'm usually comfortably beneath it, but if my usage creeps up I'll have to weigh my options on how best to manage it.
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2023 22:12
|
|
|
Shugojin posted:I mean wifi standards are presently changing way faster than it takes for most routers to die so there's probably a bunch of perfectly functioning 802.11 ac routers/APs being ewaste now Reminds me of running older encryption on my wifi just so the Wii could connect. Then my neighbor brute forced his way in and was torrenting poo poo on my connection and it just started wifi slapfight
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2023 22:33
|
|
|
OK, I've brought this up before and procrastinated and now am in absolute crunch time with no solution... What I want: I'm going to be traveling with access to public-ish WiFi or cellphone hotspot. For work, streaming and general interoperability, I want to plug in a wireless router that connects to the public WiFi, and creates a new local network for our devices that completely appears that it is coming from our home network, because it is. Just, plug in a Firestick, connect to ThreeOlives-WiFi-Travel and all traffic coming from the router doesn't enter or leave the public internet outside of my home network. What I am working with: Gigabit Fiber Internet with a mandatory AT&T router set to forward everything to our home WiFi. TP Deco WiFi Home Network Synology with allegedly a VPN server, but it is just a DS220j, so, very little horsepower Weird home server that I bought and have had plans to mess with, just having bothered yet, Windows 10 Pro, Xeon E5-2699, 128GB RAM, i.e. anything host side intensive should be no problem. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08MKZXGBY I bought this in the hopes of a workable solution as far as I can tell, you can't install any additional packages on it without completely overloading it in some way. Like, literal minimum specs to run what it came with. Completely open to buying a new router to travel with. My idea world would launch an app on my home server, get a code that I plug into a travel router and it creates a tunnel for the tunnel where there is no configuration at all, like Chrome Remote Desktop, but for a travel router. I am willing to pay for this. HELP PLEASE! Three Olives fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Jun 11, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2023 00:42
|
|
|
Three Olives posted:
What more are you looking for out of your travel router? It looks like that device does what you're asking for. It supports wireguard so all you would need to do at home is setup a wireguard server. I use https://hub.docker.com/r/weejewel/wg-easy which is as easy as the steps show on that page if you already have a server running docker. In your case if you are planning on hosting something on windows you'd either have to install docker for windows or find a way to install wireguard server on windows. Which seems possible. https://github.com/micahmo/WgServerforWindows
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2023 01:24
|
|
|
Aggressive Nap posted:What more are you looking for out of your travel router? It looks like that device does what you're asking for. It supports wireguard so all you would need to do at home is setup a wireguard server. OK, this might actually be the solution. The problem is the Window Wireguard server was a loving nightmare to configure and I had unsuccessfully searched for a solution like the WgServer you linked to. I think this might work. Thanks!
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2023 02:22
|
|
|
Sorry by lifetime I mean upgrade lifetime not lifetime to fail. Are there old ppl out there with 802.11g Wi-Fi still?
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2023 03:11
|
|
|
Shaocaholica posted:Sorry by lifetime I mean upgrade lifetime not lifetime to fail. Are there old ppl out there with 802.11g Wi-Fi still? I would not at all be surprised.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2023 04:43
|
|
|
There's still 802.11a and 802.11b out there.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2023 04:44
|
|
|
Here in Northern California, I have the choice of AT&T or Comcast. AT&T gave me a router for free for signing up, 4 years ago. I could disable wifi and plug a new router into AT&T's if I wanted something better. AT&T's router supports: B/G/N/AC Before I moved here, I was in my previous place for about 10 years with AT&T, and I think I was still using the original router they gave me when I left. I had my computers wired there, so I wasn't using wifi except when guests came over. Comcast will rent you one of theirs or let you buy your own. I've been wanting to run ethernet cables throughout my house, but I don't know how to run it through walls and keep it professional looking. The wifi signal throughout my house is really poor, and for some reason on rainy windy days the wifi cuts out. Fozzy The Bear fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Jun 11, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2023 18:53
|
|
|
I have found where all the Ethernet cables terminate in my house. Unfortunately, it’s 1. Up high in the utility closet and 2. None of the cables have jacks on the end. I’ve never wired Ethernet before. Would you recommend I get tool-less or regular jacks and would you recommend I terminate with the male or female RJ45? Just worried about working above my head on a ladder trying to terminate a dozen cables. Note: this is a rental so I’d rather not install an entire patch panel.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2023 19:53
|
|
|
Fozzy The Bear posted:I've been wanting to run ethernet cables throughout my house, but I don't know how to run it through walls and keep it professional looking. The wifi signal throughout my house is really poor, and for some reason on rainy windy days the wifi cuts out. Do you have access to an attic or basement/crawlspace adjacent to every room you want to connect? That makes it a lot easier. Doubly so if there's existing phone or coax runs to the room in a useful location; when I did mine I found where the coax runs terminated in the attic, removed the coax wall plates, attached an extension coax to ensure I wouldn't pull it inside the wall, pulled the coax up into the attic until I found the joint, taped the ethernet cable to the coax, and pulled it back down. Worked great. You then need to put a switch somewhere; in my case the previous owner had drilled a hole from the attic to the basement in a random closet so the various runs then all went through that down to the basement and connected to a patch panel there. If you don't have those, it gets harder; you're going to be stuck drilling holes in things and using fishing line or whatever to try to line it up. Still possible but much more annoying. If you don't want to deal with all of that but also want to get off of wifi, consider either powerline networking or moca bridges. I used the latter for years when I was renting, worked great. dexter6 posted:I have found where all the Ethernet cables terminate in my house. Unfortunately, it’s 1. Up high in the utility closet and 2. None of the cables have jacks on the end. For what it's worth I had near 100% success on female jacks but my attempts to crimp male jacks were a disaster, usually getting like 2/8 connections. I accept I may have just been incompetent and/or bought a lovely crimper, though for what it's worth most female jacks don't require a specialized tool. You might want a cable tester either way; you can get something like this $10 thing on amazon and it'll be good enough for telling you if you hosed up.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2023 20:26
|
|
|
JFC, it's like every other firmware release from Ubiquiti fucks up.. I got the signal from the Network app that my U6-LR got an update so I took it from 6.2 up to 6.5.54, what a mistake.. on reboot nothing could join the network, had to hard reset the AP, set up all the defaults, disable band steering.. And even when I got devices to connect, various speed tests said I was averaging about 30-45 Mb/sec slower on both channels Haven't gone back to 6.2 yet but soon as I get a chance it's happening..
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2023 20:55
|
|
|
With unifi you want to sit out new releases until other people have beta-tested it first.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2023 21:12
|
|
|
And not the beta release, the full one
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2023 21:32
|
|
|
power crystals posted:Do you have access to an attic or basement/crawlspace adjacent to every room you want to connect? That makes it a lot easier. Doubly so if there's existing phone or coax runs to the room in a useful location; when I did mine I found where the coax runs terminated in the attic, removed the coax wall plates, attached an extension coax to ensure I wouldn't pull it inside the wall, pulled the coax up into the attic until I found the joint, taped the ethernet cable to the coax, and pulled it back down. Worked great. You then need to put a switch somewhere; in my case the previous owner had drilled a hole from the attic to the basement in a random closet so the various runs then all went through that down to the basement and connected to a patch panel there. If you don't have those, it gets harder; you're going to be stuck drilling holes in things and using fishing line or whatever to try to line it up. Still possible but much more annoying. There is an attic, and at least some of the rooms have unused old phone lines. Would a handyman be able to do this? Or do I need a special installer company?
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2023 21:35
|
|
|
Shugojin posted:And not the beta release, the full one It showed up as a full release and now I see they pulled it for Gen5 APs and earlier.
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2023 21:41
|
|
|
Fozzy The Bear posted:There is an attic, and at least some of the rooms have unused old phone lines. Probably. They should at least be willing to pull the cable (you may need to confirm what kind of cable so they don't still think cat 5 is current) but they might not be willing to do the termination if they aren't familiar with that. If you run into somebody who's truly not familiar with this stuff the magic words you want are probably "low voltage data cable" (low voltage means a bunch of other rules don't apply), and if you need to buy the cable yourself make sure you get one that's plenum rated to avoid the risk of a cable helping fire spread.
|
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2023 02:51
|
|
|
power crystals posted:Probably. They should at least be willing to pull the cable (you may need to confirm what kind of cable so they don't still think cat 5 is current) but they might not be willing to do the termination if they aren't familiar with that. If you run into somebody who's truly not familiar with this stuff the magic words you want are probably "low voltage data cable" (low voltage means a bunch of other rules don't apply), and if you need to buy the cable yourself make sure you get one that's plenum rated to avoid the risk of a cable helping fire spread. Thank you! Something like this? https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=41485
|
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2023 03:25
|
|
|
Yeah that should do fine.
|
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2023 03:44
|
|
|
Xfinity forces you to use their modem/router if you want their upgraded 100-200 Mbps upload upgrade currently being rolled out.
|
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2023 16:26
|
|
|
Ok, so, I just pulled the trigger on 2 gig frontier fiber. I currently have a ERX. I know they are good up to about a gig, but is there something similar out there that can handle more? Frontier is sending me their amazon Eeyore or whatever, but I'd like to not have their equipment permanently. Also, I would have just gone with 1 gig but it was actually cheaper to go with the 2. Is that a marketing ploy to get me to use the stupid amazon thing? I can't imagine actually using the whole bandwidth anyways...
|
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2023 20:47
|
|
|
I'm processing the same thoughts, however, to take advantage, I would need a 2.5GB or faster router, and card/USB adapter for my PC, plus switches, and a card for my server... I concluded that it's not worth it at this time.
|
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2023 23:22
|
|
|
There’s some “gaming” consumer routers out there that have multigig on the WAN port, and the dream machine pro SE features sfp+. I’d expect to pay between $500-$1500 for a BYOD setup if you want to utilize over 1gig.
|
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2023 23:23
|
|
|
Wibla posted:With unifi you want to sit out new releases until other people have beta-tested it first. I do UniFi firmware updates the same way I do my Nvidia Shield ones. About 6 months after they appear. Too old to be beta testing and rolling back poo poo
|
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2023 23:35
|
|
|
Cyks posted:There’s some “gaming” consumer routers out there that have multigig on the WAN port, and the dream machine pro SE features sfp+. You'll find that high quality Latvian hardware is available at better prices, it looks like you can get a router with 8 10SFP+ ports for under $250 shipped from any of the normal vendors: https://mikrotik.com/product/crs309_1g_8s_in They even have a cut down model with 4 10G, 4 gigabit ports for under $200.
|
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2023 23:40
|
|
|
Twerk from Home posted:You'll find that high quality Latvian hardware is available at better prices, it looks like you can get a router with 8 10SFP+ ports for under $250 shipped from any of the normal vendors: https://mikrotik.com/product/crs309_1g_8s_in Ooooh, totally forgot about mikrotik. Thanks! Cyks posted:There’s some “gaming” consumer routers out there that have multigig on the WAN port, and the dream machine pro SE features sfp+. Also, thanks. I'm still just in the planning stages, too. Thankfully I'm not in a rush and I'll see how the included equipment handles and go from there.
|
|
#
?
Jun 13, 2023 00:03
|
|
|
Twerk from Home posted:You'll find that high quality Latvian hardware is available at better prices, it looks like you can get a router with 8 10SFP+ ports for under $250 shipped from any of the normal vendors: https://mikrotik.com/product/crs309_1g_8s_in Those will route but don't expect multi gig NAT with one of those.. Their performance is awful doing layer 3 and best to use them as their intended purpose as a 10Gig switch.
|
|
#
?
Jun 13, 2023 01:42
|
|
|
I've been looking at this stuff. It looks like I could get a microtik SFP router and plug 2.5Gbase SFP connectors into it all without changing my existing mix of CAT5E and CAT6? I currently have Unifi gear, could I hang out off of one of the router's ports and let it handle dhcp, dns, firewall etc?
|
|
#
?
Jun 13, 2023 03:47
|
|
|
Shaocaholica posted:Sorry by lifetime I mean upgrade lifetime not lifetime to fail. Are there old ppl out there with 802.11g Wi-Fi still? I feel like Wifi ac / 5 is the end of history for what normal people care about. Wi-fi pre-b was extremely rare and expensive. g, n, and ac were all huge upgrades over the previous version. However, Wifi 6 is a marginal improvement for home use cases. Wifi 6E looks to help a lot if you're in a crowded, high density area, but adoption in client devices has been really slow and I bet that we won't see economies of scale kick in like we haven for every previous generation, because 6E is optional. https://www.duckware.com/tech/wifi-in-the-us.html#wifi6 Wifi 7 looks like it's going to be another round of marginal improvements, mostly merging in a lot of what made Wi-fi 802.11ad so fast. Have any of you ever used an ad router or device? It works only in the same room with direct line of sight. In real world situations, Wifi 7 is going to be barely faster than Wifi 5 or 6, just like 6 is barely faster than 5. Its biggest benefits, just like 6, are in the case of many, that is on the order 10+ high bandwidth client devices at the same time. You only get the benefits of 6 or 7 if all of the active clients have Wifi 6 or 7, which is unlikely in home environments. Internet of Things bullshit lasts a long time and people aren't going to go replace their smart lightbulb once a new wifi standard comes out. There were less than 10 years between wifi b and wifi n. Wifi 5 is about 10 years old now, and I'd bet that in 10 years there's still a ton of Wifi 5 both client and WAP devices in usage and that people will be satisfied with them for the most part.
|
|
#
?
Jun 13, 2023 13:33
|
|
|
Also on 6/6E I keep seeing some devices mostly new galaxy phones lol Samsunged again getting confused and they will just connect/disconnect randomly between bands and it fucks everything up
|
|
#
?
Jun 13, 2023 13:41
|
|
|
Twerk from Home posted:I feel like Wifi ac / 5 is the end of history for what normal people care about. Wi-fi pre-b was extremely rare and expensive. g, n, and ac were all huge upgrades over the previous version. However, Wifi 6 is a marginal improvement for home use cases. Wifi 6E looks to help a lot if you're in a crowded, high density area, but adoption in client devices has been really slow and I bet that we won't see economies of scale kick in like we haven for every previous generation, because 6E is optional. https://www.duckware.com/tech/wifi-in-the-us.html#wifi6 Isn't wifi 7 supposed to allow for concurrent connections to different frequency bands (2.4ghz + 5ghz)? Wouldn't that provide better overall performance?
|
|
#
?
Jun 13, 2023 15:35
|
|
|
Since I've been following the testing the UXG-Pro can do multigigabit routing if you aren't doing deep packet inspection. Even with all the features on people have reported up to 3.5G. So definitely a good upgrade over a ERX for this decade. Since like wifi there is diminishing returns for residential service that fast.
|
|
#
?
Jun 13, 2023 16:06
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 17, 2024 02:23 |
|
|
I've got a router that supports 6 ghz Wifi 6 and I don't even bother keeping the band on for because we don't have any devices that support it. Our primary areas are hardwired and we use portable Apple devices that don't support 6 ghz, so it's really not worth keeping on. Maybe in a couple years?
|
|
#
?
Jun 13, 2023 16:24
|
|