How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems
triplebyte.com
How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems
1–10 of 252 posts
Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems
#2We had internal debates about different SSIDs for 2.4 vs 5 GHz, but in the end, this is the optimal configuration we landed on.
I was also surprised by how slow S3 was with a single download connection, but really fast when using aria2 to parallelize the download.
Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems
#3> Use fast DNS servers
I use GRC's DNS Benchmark tool[1] for this whenever I set up DHCP somewhere, and the results are sometimes surprising. If you're on a *nix or macOS, it runs well under Wine.
Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems
#4We had internal debates about different SSIDs for 2.4 vs 5 GHz, but in the end, this is the optimal configuration we landed on. I was also surprised by how slow S3 was with a single download connection, but really fast when using aria2 to parallelize the download.
I use either axel or lftp’s pget (works on SFTP) all the time. Being in Australia the 200-400ms latency means I frequently wont get full speed otherwise.
Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems
#5> Use fast DNS servers I use GRC's DNS Benchmark tool[1] for this whenever I set up DHCP somewhere, and the results are sometimes surprising. If you're on a *nix or macOS, it runs well under Wine. [1] https://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm
Yes, I just used dig's reported timings:
dig triplebyte.com @1.1.1.1 | grep 'Query time'
;; Query time: 2 msec
dig triplebyte.com @8.8.8.8 | grep 'Query time'
;; Query time: 21 msec
Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems
#6>Assign static IPs for infrastructure like access points. This makes them easy to reach when reconfiguration is needed
Am I missing something, or did they buy consumer routers to use as access points?
Triplebyte, I can save you a ton of management, troubleshooting, and learning time: switch to Ubiquiti Unifi or an equivelant now, youll have one pane of glass to reconfigure every device. The devices will talk to each other, to help hand off clients between them. All channel management will be by the devices working together, they can throttle down power if they are causing each other interference. I cant even begin to list all the different benefits with a single set of settings vs devices that dont work together. Even an asus aimesh network would likely be better. Youre asking for a troubleshooting nightmare.
You can either pay a couple hundred a year for the management interface, or $80 for an on prem tiny little stick that hosts it. (paying for the cloud hosted one, has its benefits, and is my recommendation.)
Access Point - https://unifi-hd.ubnt.com/
POE Switch - https://www.ubnt.com/unifi-switching/unifi-switch-poe/
Management Interface - https://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-cloud-key/ OR Cloud Management https://unifi.ubnt.com/
Router - https://www.ubnt.com/unifi-routing/usg/
You should never need to track down or log into individual devices to configure them.
I dont mean to be a complete ballsack, but isnt it weird for a company thats mission is matching talent to problems, to fail to find the talent to adequately address their problem, and to be giving authoritative (mis)advice on something they are not remotely domain experts in. It doesnt seem like the best advertisement.
That said, this is the KIND of post companies should be making when their seo expert says to use keywords. Good job writing about improving the internals of your company, and not just what your company does. Write a V2 of this post once you upgrade, and rename the old one, "How we Created (and then mitigated a Device Management and Troubleshooting Nightmare)
Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems
#7I really wish MacOS would allow you to choose which band or BSSID to connect to.
Every so often I have to physically drag my laptop to the superior AP and restart wifi to get my laptop to stop connecting to the bad AP.
Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems
#8> Use fast DNS servers I use GRC's DNS Benchmark tool[1] for this whenever I set up DHCP somewhere, and the results are sometimes surprising. If you're on a *nix or macOS, it runs well under Wine. [1] https://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm
This is great if you're at home or there's no IT team like in the article (a dream come true!) but if you're in a more corporate network these kinds of tools will usually ping NSFW servers.
I also prefer namebench (https://github.com/google/namebench) since it runs at the command line.
Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems
#9I really wish MacOS would allow you to choose which band or BSSID to connect to. Every so often I have to physically drag my laptop to the superior AP and restart wifi to get my laptop to stop connecting to the bad AP.
I believe Ubiquity has an option to force clients off of individual APs when their signal falls too low.
Bad for WiFi at distance but good for roaming within an office.
Re: How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems
#10I really wish MacOS would allow you to choose which band or BSSID to connect to. Every so often I have to physically drag my laptop to the superior AP and restart wifi to get my laptop to stop connecting to the bad AP.
I believe Ubiquity has an option to force clients off of individual APs when their signal falls too low. Bad for WiFi at distance but good for roaming within an office.
The setting is a mbps setting. If the negotiated rate falls below X, disconnect.