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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?

#301

Post by tguvot »

runjake wrote: post #73
jdeibele wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We downsized from a house built in 1914 with phone jacks everywhere to a house built in 2007 with coax and ethernet ports in every room, some rooms with two. At the 1914 house, I used ethernet-over-powerline adapters so I could have a second router running in access point mode. The alternative was punching holes in the outside walls since there was no way to feasibly run cabling inside lath-and-plaster walls. I don't…

> I don't know how 2025 houses are built but I would be surprised if they didn't have an ethernet jack in every room to a wiring closet of some sort. Not sure about coax. Speaking from a US standpoint, it still not common in new construction for ethernet to be deployed in a house. I'm not sure why. It seems like a no-brainer. Coax is still usually reserved to a couple jacks -- usually in the living room and master be…

i live in 2003 built house in usa. i have 2 x cat5e and 2 x coax (they are bundled together ) coming to outlet in every room. everything goes to (un)structured media enclosure.

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

#302

Post by ssl-3 »

toast0 wrote: post #280
ssl-3 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gigabit ethernet "requires" 4 pairs of no-less-than cat5. The 100mbps standard that won the race -- 100BASE-TX -- also "requires" no-less-than cat5, but only 2 pairs of it. Either may "work" with cat3, but that's by no means a certainty. The twists are simply not very twisty with cat3 compared to any of its successors...and this does make a difference. But at least: If gigabit is flaky over a given span of whatever w…

> Neither end will get stuck trying to make a 1000BASE-T connection with only the orange and green pairs being contiguous. They can get stuck, because negotiation happens on the two original pairs (at 1Mbps), and to-spec negotiation advertises the NIC capabilities and selects the best mutually supported option. Advertising fewer capabilities for retries is not within the spec, but obviously helps a lot with wiring pr…

TIL that they can get stuck in no-man's-mand with 2 pairs. That seems stupidly-incompatible, and it isn't something I've witnessed myself, but it makes sense that it can happen.

My intent wasn't to dissuade anyone from trying to make existing cat 3 wire work (which I've never encountered in any home, but I've not been everywhere), but to try to set reasonable expectations and offer some workarounds.

If a person has a house that is still full of old 2- or 4-pair wire, and that wire is actually cat3, and is actually home-run (or at least, features aspects that can usefully-intercepted), then they should absolutely give it a fair shot.

I agree that the as a practical matter, the specifications are more guidelines than anything else.

I've also gone beyond 100 meters with fast ethernet (when that was still the most commonly-encountered) and achieved proven-good results: The customer understood the problem very well and wanted to try it, so we did try it, and it was reliable for years and years (until that building got destroyed in a flood).

If the wiring is already present and convenient, then there's no downside other than some time and some small materials cost to giving it a go. Decent-enough termination tools are cheap these days. :)

(Most of the cat3 I've ran has been for controls and voice, not data. Think stuff like jails, with passive, analog intercom stations in every cell, and doors from Southern Steel that operate on relay logic...because that was the style at the time when it was constructed. Cat3, punch blocks, and a sea of cross-connect wire still provides a flexible way to deal with that kind of thing in an existing and rather-impervious building -- especially when that building's infrastructure already terminates on 25-pair Amphenols. I'll do it again if I have to, but IP has been the way forward even in that stodgy slow-moving space for a good bit now.)

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

#303

Post by ssl-3 »

phil21 wrote: post #275
ssl-3 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And also, previously: In the dark times when end-user wireless network bandwidth very low and glitchy (and most home users didn't care much), and before "mesh" became a term associated with a single-box collection of items that could be bought at Wal-Mart, Sonos devices were able to mesh together and form their own wireless network that Just Worked. In software-land, they even solved latency inequalities well-enough…

> So a person can hard-wire their Sonos sub, soundbar, and surround speakers into the LAN without fear of badness -- or use one or more of those wirelessly, instead. All without problems. Eh, I just had to go through and disconnect all ethernet from a bunch of Sonos devices in my house a couple months ago due to issues. It's on my list to go through and connect everything to the LAN when I get the time to make anothe…

I thought that was fixed with S2, by basically ditching the glory (and pitfalls) of ye olde SonosNet.

Are you still on S1?

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

#304

Post by applied_heat »

toast0 wrote: post #287
lostlogin wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not as durable Your clearly don’t live in an earthquake prone area. I do. But given how cheapskate New Zealand is, I’m 100% sure that we would build in stone and brick if it was cheaper.

I do live on the west coast of the US. Unreinforced masonry doesn't do well in earthquakes, but reinforced masonry or concrete is probably more durable. I've got 25 year old wood siding, and it might make it to 30, but there's no way it'll be in reasonable shape at 40. It probably won't be too expensive to replace though.

My wood siding is original cedar that has been painted several times since 1970s when house was built … I haven’t considered it not lasting indefinitely

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

#305

Post by bcrl »

gh02t wrote: post #149
bcrl wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DECT phones run on the 1.9 GHz spectrum which doesn't get absorbed by water like 2.4 GHz, and will penetrate through many other materials far better than higher frequencies. Most people place wifi repeaters incorrectly, or invest in crappy repeater / mesh devices that do not multiple radios. A Wifi repeater or mesh device with a single radio by definition cuts your throughput in half for every hop. I run an ISP. Cust…

Eh, multiple APs and roaming being awful isn't just a matter of shitty placement and bad wireless backhaul, it's also client side software. I have two APs on opposite ends of my house and my phone tries to hang on to whatever AP its connected to far longer than it should when moving around the house. My APs are placed correctly, and support 802.11r, yet my phone and most other devices don't try to roam until far, far…

You may need a third access point in the middle of the house then which would enable you to further reduce tx power on the access points while maintaining good reception of client transmissions by the APs, as clients won't roam unless the other access point is of a sufficiently better signal strength. With only 2 access points the signal level in the middle of the house may be too low for either AP to maintain good reception. As always it depends on the materials in the walls, the placement of large metal obstacles like ductwork or appliances, the antenna orientation on the access points.... You would have to measure the signal levels and build up a heat map to figure that out.

Of course with 3 APs instead of 2 the best layout is different.

People are almost always better off more cheap access points than fewer expensive access points, but that's not how most regular folk reason.

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

#306

Post by sidewndr46 »

phil21 wrote: post #277
chrneu wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He said SF with neighbors so I'm assuming condo/apartment. Probably less than 2000sq feet would be my guess. 5 aps for 60 devices is hilarious. I have over 120 devices running off 2 APs without issue. lol

It's way less about device count, and more about AP density - especially in RF challenging environments. I pretty much just deploy WiFi as a "line of sight" technology these days in a major city. Wherever you use the wifi you need to be able to visually see the AP. Run them in low power mode so they become effectively single-room access points. Obviously for IoT 2.4ghz stuff sitting in closets or whatever it's still…

wouldn't that imply you need to run ethernet to every room? couldn't you just plug everything in?

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

#307

Post by zrobotics »

dwood_dev wrote: post #175
BenjiWiebe wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For maximum comedy, I'm imagining running powerline ethernet to supply a network drop to a PoE switch, which then powers the AP.

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

#308

Post by bxparks »

ssl-3 wrote: post #296
bxparks wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are lucky. In 2025 I have to run most of my 20-30 wifi devices on 2.4 GHz because 5 GHz won't penetrate the walls in my house, especially diagonally. My dev laptop is about 10 m (30 ft) away from the wifi access point, but goes through about 6 walls diagonally, due to some weird layout, and 2.4 GHz is way faster. The house has some thick walls. Same with phones. As soon as I'm in a different room, 2.4 GHz is fast…

I've lived in houses like that. My last house, which was rather small (by midwestern American standards, anyway) had some interior walls that were very good at blocking 5GHz transmissions. (I never took them apart to look, but I suspect that some of them had plaster with metal lath as one or more layers.) I started with one access point downstairs at the front (because that's where the cable modem lived) but it didn'…

I also have low-E windows all around, and I still have good cell phone reception. I think it's your aluminum siding.

As I understand, low-E reflects solar thermal infrared radiation (3-8 microns, 37-100 THz), while letting through visible light. I don't think it affects 5 GHz radio waves very much.

But yeah, it would be very satisfying to finally wire the house with ethernet.

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

#309

Post by dwood_dev »

zrobotics wrote: post #307
dwood_dev wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For maximum comedy, I'm imagining running powerline ethernet to supply a network drop to a PoE switch, which then powers the AP.

I have literally done this many years ago. Not a Cisco 2960 or anything fancy, just a dumb 802.3af PoE switch.

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

#310

Post by jdubs1984 »

OJFord wrote: post #270
jval43 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did this years ago using the very thin (3mm, round) Unifi Patch Cables in white. Very clean and reliable, and getting 1 Gbit/s without issue. Another benefit is that I can cram 4 of them inside a single cable runner at the one spot I have to (no space for a switch). Where it's just one cable you run them bare and they look very clean. The old ones I have are still CAT5e, the newer ones they sell are CAT6 at the sam…

Patch cables are meant for connections between equipment, e.g. in a networking cabinet. Cable for the runs between terminal points (like the cabinet's patch panel and a workstation, or your home TV, etc.) is less flexible - more shielded and I think solid core instead of multi-stranded (like twin & Earth vs. flex) - I'm not sure if it's available flat or skinny though.

Patch cables, per the spec are twisted copper pairs not to exceed 15 feet, usually stranded copper if you’re using cheaper options.

Horizontal cabling, from the panel to the jack, is up to I think 350’ of solid core twisted pair.

5e gets you gigabit if it’s done right end to end.

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