Mesh wifi

[Beany]

By coincidence, my Draytek 2866ax shat it's biscuits last night, so I'm now running on my old (oooold) 2830n

Which is....painful. And doesn't like VPNs much. And has shit wifi by modern standards.

The 2866ax is still technically within 2yr warranty, but the RMA process might take a while, so I'm replacing it with this:
https://www.synology.com/en-global/products/RT6600ax



Because I need solid internet for work, obviously. Which today, I did not really have. That older one reaaally doesn't like trying to push 300+mb/sec through the WAN port, it's from back in the day when 80mb/sec was considered outlandishly fast.

The new one above has enough radio on it to host the John Peel Sessions.

And costs £100 less.

And will hopefully not eat it's own local storage, which is what I suspect the Draytek has done.

It also supports meshiness so if I move house to somewhere bigger and see no need to replace it as a router, but need more wifi, I can bang another one in place to boost it a bit.

So that's, overall, fucking annoying - but being paid respectable to what I'm doing for my job for a change means I at least looked at my bank balance and realised I could easily afford it, rather than panicking over how I was going to pull the funds together for it etc.

[Jimexpl]

By coincidence, my Draytek 2866ax shat it's biscuits last night, so I'm now running on my old (oooold) 2830n

Which is....painful. And doesn't like VPNs much. And has shit wifi by modern standards.

The 2866ax is still technically within 2yr warranty, but the RMA process might take a while, so I'm replacing it with this:
https://www.synology.com/en-global/products/RT6600ax



Because I need solid internet for work, obviously. Which today, I did not really have. That older one reaaally doesn't like trying to push 300+mb/sec through the WAN port, it's from back in the day when 80mb/sec was considered outlandishly fast.

The new one above has enough radio on it to host the John Peel Sessions.

And costs £100 less.

And will hopefully not eat it's own local storage, which is what I suspect the Draytek has done.

It also supports meshiness so if I move house to somewhere bigger and see no need to replace it as a router, but need more wifi, I can bang another one in place to boost it a bit.

So that's, overall, fucking annoying - but being paid respectable to what I'm doing for my job for a change means I at least looked at my bank balance and realised I could easily afford it, rather than panicking over how I was going to pull the funds together for it etc.

Have you tried a different power supply for the Draytek? The actual routers rarely fail, but when the power supply becomes weak they can become temperamental.

[Beany]

Power supply is currently, happily, powering the 2830 backup router. So unless it's failing at a very specific load right at startup, then it ain't that.

Besides, Draytek didn't offer to replace it first, so I guess this ain't the first 2866 they've see shit itself in this very specific, seemingly storage related manner.

[KiwiDave]

We use one of these. And then the older 2600ac and two MR2200ac units as the mesh system. Absolutely flawless.

[Beany]

I've just got it set up and I'm seriously impressed.

I've got a Minisform EM680 which is an 80x80x40mm PC, and it's got slightly shonky wifi because, you know, antenna seperation etc.

It was previously barely getting 250-300mb wifi and would regularly drop off the 5ghz channels on AC, and fall back to 2.4ghz, which was terrible.

Since setting this up I've never seen it drop below 500mb/sec

Reflected in real world performance - it's regularly getting north of 300mb/sec on fast.com

Software is solid and very DSM like, and every other device is basically capable of maxing out the WAN out on wifi, which previously was only possible in the office where the Draytek was installed.

Only complication was setting up VLAN tags for WAN (Required for FTTC) which lives under LAN/IPTV settings, rather than WAN where you'd expect it, other than that, everything has been very straightforward.

[IanF]

I've just got it set up and I'm seriously impressed.

TL;DR version: Donkey Pr0n in 4K is amazing!

[Beany]

The market is smaller than I'd like. Which isn't what she said, ho ho ho.

....I'm not proud of that.

[Beany]

I've got a Minisform EM680 which is an 80x80x40mm PC, and it's got slightly shonky wifi because, you know, antenna seperation etc.

It was previously barely getting 250-300mb wifi and would regularly drop off the 5ghz channels on AC, and fall back to 2.4ghz, which was terrible.

Since setting this up I've never seen it drop below 500mb/sec

Now reporting 1729mb/sec links speed

And maxing out the WAN.

[Ascender]

I'll keep an eye on this thread @Beany, need to sort a router and wi-fi mesh for the stone walled cottage....

[Beany]

Honestly, if you have the opportunity to do some DIY in it before 'proper' moving in, just do some cable runs. Not for individual computers etc, but for mesh units.

You can then use them with any mesh setup - the backhaul will be over CAT5 so it'll be fast as fuck for the wifi endpoints, and they'll all be on one wireless network that any decent mesh system will auto-manage for you. The rest of the setup is pretty nice and straightforward.

Most mesh units have a wee switch on the back of them, so if you did want to hardwire a device in locally, you can do that from them, too.

Can't speak to the Synos mesh performance, but I've not seen them being slagged for being useless at it, and they are quite easy to set up on the whole, so they're worth keeping in consideration.

Sure, you can get similar specced units cheaper, but it's the ease of use you're paying for as much as anything else.

[Beany]

Interesting aside, I was checking IDNets site the other day, and saw that the price I pay for 550MB is currently the price they charge for 1gb symmetrical - I'd not been paying attention, and I did get on there pretty early so I guess the price has gone down.

Sent that over to them with some screenshots, and asked nicely if it would be a problem if they quietly bumped me up to 1000mb, and not change anything else.

"We can do that, just confirm it to me with a reply and we'll it sorted"

Which is nice. Lets see what this router can really do

[Simon]

/cries in 60/15

[Jobbo]

Meanwhile I'm waiting (3 weeks now) for a replacement PSU for one of my Orbis to come from Netgear. Took them a week to authorise the replacement but it's taken forever to be sent. And that means our mesh network has not been fully functional all that time. Not massively impressive.

[Swervin_Mervin]

Having migrated to FTTP earlier this year and relocated the router upstairs, we'd both been enjoying far better connectivity. Especially on Teams etc.

However, the TV in the rear snug was suffering on occasions, and if sat in that corner it was clearly a wifi black hole. So, having considered briefly trying the old homeplugs I had I opted instead for an Asus RP-AX58 plug in wifi extender that works with their AIMesh (main router is AIMesh Asus).

I'm sure my brain is now being properly toasted sat in front of the TV but ne'ermind - I can now watch Fallout without it dropping out, or M539 trying to fix his Quattrobroken.

[Simon]

Meanwhile I'm waiting (3 weeks now) for a replacement PSU for one of my Orbis to come from Netgear. Took them a week to authorise the replacement but it's taken forever to be sent. And that means our mesh network has not been fully functional all that time. Not massively impressive.

Where did you buy them? Surely it's simpler just to return them and buy another set as you haven't had them that long?

[Jobbo]

Meanwhile I'm waiting (3 weeks now) for a replacement PSU for one of my Orbis to come from Netgear. Took them a week to authorise the replacement but it's taken forever to be sent. And that means our mesh network has not been fully functional all that time. Not massively impressive.

Where did you buy them? Surely it's simpler just to return them and buy another set as you haven't had them that long?

Costco. And an extra single node from Amazon. To be honest I didn’t expect it to take so long and setting it all up took a while so a replacement power brick shouldn’t have been an issue but it’s starting to annoy me.

[Jobbo]

I have found a way to hard-wire my PS5 and laptop dock by ethernet cable. Sky now install network cables rather than the old coaxial cables, so they have run cables (quite well, externally) from the router to three points in the house. The Sky dish itself now plugs in via an ethernet cable too. So I plugged an extra network cable into the switch behind the main Sky box and have used homeplugs to connect that to my study. Much better ping and lower latency than the wifi, though slightly slower speed. I do need to check that the switch is gigabit...

Anyway, I can probably find a way to run a network cable from the third Sky box in the room above to eliminate the homeplugs too. So thank you to Sky for hard-wiring my house for free

[Jimexpl]

I'm sure my brain is now being properly toasted sat in front of the TV but ne'ermind - I can now watch Fallout without it dropping out, or M539 trying to fix his Quattrobroken.

I was with a client in SW London the other day looking at his network (not my speciality, but my engineers were busy). I carried out a network scan for wi-fi signal quality and his house can 'see' over 200 devices outside of his property. I think the choice of whether you're being fried or not is no longer available, so embrace it!

[Mito Man]

Besides, it’s the 5G you should really be worried about

[Marv]

I've put CAT6a throughout my house. I think the Wifi will only need boosting one end of the house...haven't looked into it fully, but I'm thinking I should just get a Wireless Access Point and connect it upto the switch or router - is that the right thing to do...or should I consider a Mesh set up?