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How many wireless access points in your home?
Topic Started: Jun 16 2017, 01:09 AM (209 Views)
Klaus
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HOLY CARP!!!
I used to get by with just one access point (with good antennas) which covered the whole house (three floors), but in our new home the reinforced steel in the floors seem to make that impossible. I've just installed the third access point, but one floor is still mostly without wireless access. Luckily we have ethernet cables to many places, so it's not a problem to connect the access points.
Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman
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Mikhailoh
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If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
One. But we have a stick built house.
Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball
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George K
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Finally
Only one in the condo. But our building is relatively new construction (2008) so it has concrete floors (not a problem in a 1 floor unit) and the wall studs are all metal. Putting the router in a location that covered the entire unit well was a bit of a challenge.
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"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... "
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Axtremus
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HOLY CARP!!!
https://www.plumewifi.com/
https://www.eero.com/
https://www.netgear.com/orbi
https://www.lumahome.com/
... more if you google mesh wifi products.
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brenda
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..............
We have two. It's a large old house, about 5,000 square feet, and there are three floors of living space, not including the basement. I appreciate having internet access all the way to the front porch. That's my summer office.
Edited by brenda, Jun 16 2017, 04:05 AM.
“Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them.”
~A.A. Milne
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jon-nyc
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Cheers
We have two.
In my defense, I was left unsupervised.
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bachophile
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HOLY CARP!!!
We live on two floors. Upstairs we have an Ethernet access point in a room used as a home office with the router. At the bottom of the stairs is a wifi extender which covers the lower floor. Works fine for everywhere including outside where we have a table for eating in the small back yard.
"I don't know much about classical music. For years I thought the Goldberg Variations were something Mr. and Mrs. Goldberg did on their wedding night." Woody Allen
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Klaus
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HOLY CARP!!!
Axtremus
Jun 16 2017, 02:43 AM
I looked a little. These devices seem to route the data via multiple intermediate access points, depending on the topology of the network.

This seems to be convenient but also rather bad for both bandwidth and latency.

I wonder if these devices would combine different paths through the network to maximize throughput (in that way its theoretical maximum could be approximated) or whether everything is just routed via a single path (which would be a little disappointing). Since you seem to work with these kinds of things, do you have any insights, Ax?

(By the way, even if you are no mathematician, the Max-flow-min-cut theorem linked to above is so elegant and easily understandable that it should be taught in schools, IMO).
Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman
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Jolly
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Geaux Tigers!
1
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Copper
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Shortstop
1 wireless access point but 2 networks

The higher speed 5 GHz network provides good service from the basement through the 3 levels of the house, but doesn't work very far into the back yard.

The slower signal 2.4 GHz works a little further - maybe 40-50 feet from the house. The router is in the basement made of poured concrete, the house is wood frame.

Both signals are provided from the same FiOS-G1100 Router.

User Guide:

https://www.verizon.com/cs/groups/public/documents/adacct/fios-qgr-userguide140925.pdf

The Confederate soldier was peculiar in that he was ever ready to fight, but never ready to submit to the routine duty and discipline of the camp or the march. The soldiers were determined to be soldiers after their own notions, and do their duty, for the love of it, as they thought best. Carlton McCarthy
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rdavis
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Why not get by with zero access points? There's no reason why you can't use cabling in your house to connect a router to a signal splitter, and split WiFi out to the cable outlets, putting an antenna on the outlets. I saw something from Australia like that earlier for cellular, you can do the same with WiFi using Coaxifi IIRC.
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Klaus
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HOLY CARP!!!
rdavis
Jun 16 2017, 09:28 AM
Why not get by with zero access points? There's no reason why you can't use cabling in your house to connect a router to a signal splitter, and split WiFi out to the cable outlets, putting an antenna on the outlets. I saw something from Australia like that earlier for cellular, you can do the same with WiFi using Coaxifi IIRC.
But that would presume that you have coax cable to many places in the house, no?
Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman
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George K
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Finally
Has anyone had any experience with using Ethernet over existing home wiring?
A guide to GKSR: Click

"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... "
- Mik, 6/14/08


Nothing is as effective as homeopathy.

I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles.
- Klaus, 4/29/18
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Axtremus
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HOLY CARP!!!
George K
Jun 16 2017, 10:08 AM
Has anyone had any experience with using Ethernet over existing home wiring?
I assume you mean your home's electrical wiring.

Yes. I use it. Not necessarily better than Wi-Fi due to many factors ... age and quality of your home wiring, whether there is a circuit breaker in the way, etc. There has definitely been a lot more investment put into the R&D of Wi-Fi compared to networking over home wiring. So over the years, Wi-Fi has been improving much faster than data over home wiring, and you can buy Wi-Fi access points cheaper than you can for home wiring networking gear.

Of course, if you can drill a hole through a wall or floor/ceiling and string a Gigabit Ethernet cable through to the next room or next floor, that'd still be the way to get you the best performance without breaking the bank. (Would love to recommend 10 Gigabit Ethernet or 40 Gigabit fiber optics, but the gear is still too expensive past the one Gigabit realm.)
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Copper
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Shortstop
George K
Jun 16 2017, 10:08 AM
Has anyone had any experience with using Ethernet over existing home wiring?

I wonder if you could use the neighbor's Ethernet over existing home wiring.
The Confederate soldier was peculiar in that he was ever ready to fight, but never ready to submit to the routine duty and discipline of the camp or the march. The soldiers were determined to be soldiers after their own notions, and do their duty, for the love of it, as they thought best. Carlton McCarthy
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Axtremus
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HOLY CARP!!!
rdavis
Jun 16 2017, 09:28 AM
Why not get by with zero access points? There's no reason why you can't use cabling in your house to connect a router to a signal splitter, and split WiFi out to the cable outlets, putting an antenna on the outlets. I saw something from Australia like that earlier for cellular, you can do the same with WiFi using Coaxifi IIRC.
Found this: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1577631618/coaxifi-whole-home-wi-fi-over-coax

Certainly worth considering for homes that already have co-ax cables where you want Wi-Fi. Still got to be careful that those cables do not go through regular cable TV splitters though, because those are typically limited to frequencies well below 2 GHz and will block Wi-Fi signal.
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Axtremus
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HOLY CARP!!!
Copper
Jun 16 2017, 05:58 PM
George K
Jun 16 2017, 10:08 AM
Has anyone had any experience with using Ethernet over existing home wiring?

I wonder if you could use the neighbor's Ethernet over existing home wiring.
Yes if you're on the same circuit as your neighbor, and you both use the same encryption key.
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Axtremus
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HOLY CARP!!!
Klaus
Jun 16 2017, 04:29 AM
Axtremus
Jun 16 2017, 02:43 AM
I looked a little. These devices seem to route the data via multiple intermediate access points, depending on the topology of the network.

This seems to be convenient but also rather bad for both bandwidth and latency.

I wonder if these devices would combine different paths through the network to maximize throughput (in that way its theoretical maximum could be approximated) or whether everything is just routed via a single path (which would be a little disappointing). Since you seem to work with these kinds of things, do you have any insights, Ax?
With the exception of the first one, the typical consumer typically gets only 2 or 3 access points to cover his home. Min-Cut-Max-Flow is trivial if you have only 2 or 3 nodes in your network. For the first one, they sell a 6 node pack to a "large" home. Min-Cut-Max-Flow gets a little more interesting for a 6 node network, but not by much. Even then, considering most traffic originates from or travel towards the Internet (i.e., the node connected to the ISP's router) rather than more evenly distributed across all nodes, that renders Min-Cut-Max-Flow even less relevant for this sort of applications.

When analyzed using graph theory, we typically model each "link" as an independent channel. This makes sense for wired networks. But for Wi-Fi, the "links" may use the same wireless channel, and what goes on in one "link" may interfere with what goes on in other "links." This further prevent us from simply applying min-cut-max-flow to wireless mesh networks. You can, of course, choose to divide the spectrum into more channels and then assign each "link" a different channel. But by doing that, you already reduce the bandwidth and thus the capacity of each such channel.

Given all the variables that one can potentially "optimize" to get a higher performing wireless network, most of the practitioners have so far not focus much on min-cut-max-flow. :shrug:
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Rainman
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Fulla-Carp
So if you don't know what you are doing, who do you call, and how do you know you are getting the most up to date solutions?

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rdavis
Newbie
Axtremus
Jun 16 2017, 06:04 PM
Certainly worth considering for homes that already have co-ax cables where you want Wi-Fi. Still got to be careful that those cables do not go through regular cable TV splitters though, because those are typically limited to frequencies well below 2 GHz and will block Wi-Fi signal.
Yup, looks like that's why the Coaxifi kits include WiFi splitters at 2400-6000 MHz for all the WiFi bands. So probably they're a good option for cord cutters, or homes that have dual coaxial runs to each room. I like that they don't require any power input of their own.

There are also some nice choices - on paper - for MoCA Ethernet over coax these days. Yitong has 4 port adapters, Actiontec just has 1 port adapters AFAIK. I stopped using MoCA because the adapters occasionally unpair for no apparent reason. And if the cables with MoCA on them connect to the cableco's line feed, it would require a POE filter to keep neighbors from potentially sniffing your LAN traffic, watching your premium channels, etc.

Ethernet over Cat5e in a home works great. I think around 1995, the TIA wiring standards changed and most homes built since then have Cat5e rather than Cat2 which can't really be used for Ethernet. Most houses have Cat5e crimped with just 2 wires and an RJ11 phone jack, but you can re-crimp for Ethernet with a new wall plate. I have some outlets at home with both Cat5e and coax. I've cut my fingers more than I'd like to admit while stripping Cat5e jackets.
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Axtremus
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HOLY CARP!!!
Rainman
Jun 16 2017, 09:04 PM
So if you don't know what you are doing, who do you call, and how do you know you are getting the most up to date solutions?

You post on TNCR, of course.
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