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Does our “need for speed” make our wi-fi suck?

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Re: Does our “need for speed” make our wi-fi suck?

#171

I did some experimentation with UniFi hubs and came to the conclusion that if you can give each device its own WiFi channel that would be ideal -- contention is that bad and often an uncontended channel with otherwise poor characteristics will beat a contended channel that otherwise looks good. The other bit of advice that is buried in there that no-one wants to hear for residences is the best way to speed up your Wi…

For people who don't or can't have Ethernet wiring, I've had great success with Ethernet over coax. My ancient coax wiring gets 800mbps back to my router with a screenbeam MoCA 2.5

MoCA is truly amazing. I'm getting full symmetrical 940 Mbps speeds simultaneously over upload and download using RG59 cable with a pair of ECB6250. It helps that our house is fairly small, as the high frequencies that MoCA uses get attenuated pretty quickly on RG59 cabling, but even still, I'm impressed by the results.

Re: Does our “need for speed” make our wi-fi suck?

#172
post #123
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the best way to speed up your Wi-Fi is to not use it. So true! Other tips I’ve found useful: Separate 2.4ghz network for only IoT devices. They tend to have terrible WiFi chipsets and use older WiFi standards. Slower speed = more airtime used for the same amount of data. This way the “slow” IoT devices don’t interfere with your faster devices which… Faster devices such as laptops and phones belong on 5ghz only netw…

Absolutely. Your IoT devices should be on their own 2.4ghz network running on a specific channel to isolate them. You should also firewall these devices pretty heavily on their own router. The only devices on wifi should be cell phones and laptops if they can't be plugged in. Everything else, including TVs, should be ethernet. When I moved into my last house with roommates their network was gaaarbage cuz everything w…

> When I moved into my last house with roommates their network was gaaarbage cuz everything was running off the same router. The 2.4ghz congestion slowed the 5ghz connections because the router was having to deal with so much 2.4ghz noise.

I don't know why you're saying, a 2.4 GHz device should not interfere with 5 GHz channels unless it's somehow emits some harmonics, which would most definitely make i noncompliant with various FC standards. Or do you mean the modem was so crappy it couldn't deal with processing noisy 2.4 GHz channels at the same time as 5GHz ones? That might be true, but I would assume the modems would run completely different DSP chains on different asics, so this would be surprising.

Re: Does our “need for speed” make our wi-fi suck?

#173
post #128
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

brb ima turn on my microwave halfway through your transfer

or a single shitty wifi chipset in your network thanks to a cheap iot device. Wifi is garbage. This person has no idea what they're talking about. It sounds like they read a blog post like 5 years ago and stuck with it cuz it's an edgy take.

Yes, me and the other literally billions of people who do not use wired Ethernet to their TV are just parroting an old blog. The OP who says Ethernet is an absolute requirement for Netflix is clearly correct. You sure got me.

Re: Does our “need for speed” make our wi-fi suck?

#174
post #36

"The average US household has 21 Wi-Fi devices"... wtf?

It is pretty easy to get there when everyone has a phone, a laptop, and there are a few shared tablets around. Add work + personal machines and it goes up a bit more.

Add a few wifi security cameras and other IoT devices and 30+ is probably pretty common.

Re: Does our “need for speed” make our wi-fi suck?

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For PoE you want two networks for the best performance. One for each phase of your mains. In general they do suck, but they can be pretty decent if you stick them all on one phase, even better if all on the same breaker.

Powerline Ethernet != PoE (power over Ethernet)

Yes, no idea what I was thinking when I typed that. I've used both extensively, in fact this message was sent over a PoE enabled WiFi AP.

Re: Does our “need for speed” make our wi-fi suck?

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have them at home as well and they really suck. They lose connection every 20ish minutes at best, and take about 5 to reconnect. Makes Zoom meetings impossible, among other things.

I’ve used Ethernet over coax in my current apartment. It’s worked well! You do need to be a bit careful as coax signal can be shared with neighbors and others sometimes.

You can isolate your ethernet over coax from your neighbor with a MoCA POE "point of entry" filter which blocks the frequencies used by MoCA.

You can buy them online for around $10 and they install without tools,

Besides neighbors, you may also need a POE filter if you have certain types of cable modem.

Re: Does our “need for speed” make our wi-fi suck?

#177
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethernet will usually hit hardware limits of your HDD or SSD before it actually maxes out. 1gb ethernet is better than wifi in 99% of cases because wifi in the real world is pretty bad, even with modern standards. Why else do they have to continually revamp the standards to get around congestion and roaming issues? Cuz wifi is garbage in the real world. Ethernet = Very little jitter, latency, or packet loss. Wifi = T…

This is the most ridiculous lie in the thread. An ethernet link that can barely keep up with a $150 SSD costs $1250 per switch port, and needs a $1200 NIC and can go only 3m over copper before you need a $1000+ optic assembly. There is nobody with an ethernet setup in their home that outruns consumer-grade SSDs. "Ethernet is limited by SSDs" is a Charlie's Hoes level of wrong.

Yes even an HDD can keep up with 1GbE.

But if you actually want your Ethernet to be similar speed to your SSD, you don't need to spend that much. Get some used gear.

32 port 40GbE switch (Dell S6000) $210 used

Dual port 40GbE NIC (Mellanox MCX354A-FCCT) $31 used

40GbE DAC 1 meter new price $22 or 40GbE optics from FS.com (QSFP-SR4-40G) $43 new + MMF fiber cable

Of course, that's probably not going to be very power efficient for home use - 32 port switch and probably only connecting a handful of devices at most.

Re: Does our “need for speed” make our wi-fi suck?

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could have multiple modems coming into the house using the same provided cable. Why’s that not possible? When I was younger I went and bought a new modem so I could play halo on my Xbox in another room than where my parents had the original modem. Found out then I’d need to pay for each modem.

If you're not sure what a router is, you should probably look that up, because it sounds like you want another router.

It actually sounds like they just want a switch

Re: Does our “need for speed” make our wi-fi suck?

#179
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. Your IoT devices should be on their own 2.4ghz network running on a specific channel to isolate them. You should also firewall these devices pretty heavily on their own router. The only devices on wifi should be cell phones and laptops if they can't be plugged in. Everything else, including TVs, should be ethernet. When I moved into my last house with roommates their network was gaaarbage cuz everything w…

> When I moved into my last house with roommates their network was gaaarbage cuz everything was running off the same router. The 2.4ghz congestion slowed the 5ghz connections because the router was having to deal with so much 2.4ghz noise. I don't know why you're saying, a 2.4 GHz device should not interfere with 5 GHz channels unless it's somehow emits some harmonics, which would most definitely make i noncompliant…

> do you mean the modem was so crappy > but I would assume the modems

Your assumption is sometimes incorrect as cheap devices can share some RF front end. Also apparently resource contention can also occur due to CPU, thermal, and memory issues.

https://chatgpt.com/share/68e9d2ee-01a4-8004-b27b-01e9083f7e... (Note that Prof is one "character" I have defined in the prompt customisation)

Or:

https://g.co/gemini/share/1e8d55831809

Re: Does our “need for speed” make our wi-fi suck?

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so does your phone :)

Yes, but unlike TVs, my phone runs free software (Graphene) and is free of the spyware "smart" TVs are known for.

Most people don't run Graphene so point stands.
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