Updating home WiFi system.

1
So I have been updating my home Wi-Fi network. It's been interesting.

I have internet service from Time Warner/Spectrum/Charter and so the first step was to update to a faster speed. That was a $20.00 a month hit but I also had to update the modem.

I had just updated the modem when we had the big lighting storm just a while ago and of course the new modem was one of the casualties. I had gone back to the Spectrum modem but it would not work at the higher speeds so add in yet another new modem. Quick BestBuy run though and that was solved. Then call Spectrum to activate the yet again new modem and they could activate the higher speed link.

Next it was update the internal LAN to handle IPV6 and WiFi 6 and the network cards and adapters. For the network I chose to switch to a full mesh system from TP-Link; their Deco X20 which is a pretty much basic modern system, not the fastest or mostest but pretty solid and reliable. It also will handle WiFi 6 as it gets rolled out so should be good for a year or three.

After the normal birthing pains thing seemed to settle down and the next step was to make sure all of the IoT things like lights and cameras and garage door still worked and surprisingly most worked right away and a simple turn off and on solved all of the light bulb issues.

Several of the computers needed tweaks or replacement of the network card or adapter but after a day or three all but one machine was seeing download speeds between 150 and 200 Mbs and upload speeds north of 20 Mbs. The one that is still sluggish is an OLD HP Laptop that began life around when Windows 7 first came out with a network card that is at least two generations back and I'm not sure I will be able to do much more with it.

Coverage now is uniform all over the house and the speeds to misquote Harry's father, "they are feeling MUCH better now".
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Re: Updating home WiFi system.

2
I feel for you having done the same in years past. east few years I have tried to plan ahead and when I bought something it was getting the stuff that would serve me for a few year. Cost more but in the long run it was cheaper than having to replace items more frequently due to obsolesce.

In my neck of the woods Spectrum is a bad name when it comes to the Internet. It has constant outages and the speed is a crawl compared to Frontier. Lucky that Verizon years ago laid the fiber network in Denton and surrounding area. I just upgraded from 500/500 to 1Gbps/1Gbps up and down. . Now I own a router that already has the WiFi 6 but most of my computers and devices only use WiFi 5 or 2.4 for the IoT. When we had the house built we had it wired for ethernet cat 5e. So using 1Gbps switch boxes I can have the non-portable stuff, Desk top and portable computers, Apple TV, LG TV all on the ethernet.

I haven't notice a great difference in download speeds between the 500 and the 1Gbps with the computers. It may show up when I get the new iMac next month.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: Updating home WiFi system.

3
I pay a ridiculous amount of money to maintain high speeds so I can stream movies and also the boys are gamers so. My download spd is 325.1 Mbps Upload 42.2 latency 22 ms IPv6 host local. Not quite as good from a server in LA but close. I have xfinity
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,”

Re: Updating home WiFi system.

4
Same here, Adelphia-Time Warner Cable-Charter Cable and now Spectrum. I was warned about Charter before they took over but they've improved, Frontier doesn't have a good rap in this area. Dish and Hughes are doing hard selling, but I haven't heard good things about them.

It's a rural area so not a lot of options. I'll be buying a new laptop in the next few months and will buy a modem at the same time. I'm using the 3rd or 4th modem from TWC and an ethernet connection, much faster than WiFi.

Some LA LA Landers moved into my town since the pandemic started, heard they're already bitching it's not LA. I'm sure they'll bitch that the internet speeds aren't the same as what they had in LA, so maybe cable speeds will improve.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Updating home WiFi system.

5
Cable speeds are limited by the cable and the number of customers sharing the bandwidth. Think of this as a two lane highway. If you are by yourself on the highway you have great speed. but now your in your neighborhood and at every drive way there is someone getting on the highway. speed drops to a crawl. that is why the cable companies have slower speed everybody shares the same cable and the data travels at the speed of electricity due to resistance in the copper cable.. Now with fiber it doesn't have just one cable in the bundle, but hundreds and so you get two strands for your data, traveling at near light speed, all the way to the switch and the gateway onto the internet. the speed is regulated by the switch and router at the gateway. that why it is much faster.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: Updating home WiFi system.

7
Spectrum cable here in Denton Tx and the surrounding area is still on coax for the last Mile. This is even in my housing area that is less than ten years old my street is only 5yrs old. New areas behind us still coax to the house. I know that because the neighbor’s line was cut when some trench work was done And I watched Spectrum replace the cable.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: Updating home WiFi system.

8
Been running Cat-5 throughout my house since 1999, and upgrades to Cat-6 in 2009. Been using a Zoom 3.0 DOCIS modem--haven't bothered with 3.1 yet.
Rather than a MESH system I have 2 routers set up as satellite access points to the main router. It works. We have 3 desktops, 5 laptops, 2 PS/3s, 3 iPads, multiple phones, 6 Roku boxes and a printer/scanner all connected and it handles it all.
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

Re: Updating home WiFi system.

9
I use xfinity/comcasts xcFi router modem. You can get plug ins (pods) to extend range and dead areas. Stream movies similtaniously on 3 flatscreens easily. It's free if you pay for high speed internet here. Not the plugins though. You have to buy them.
We are on the outskirts of town and still have blazing fast speeds.

We used to buy our own but not anymore. https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/6/21035 ... y-ces-2020
Comcast announced a new version of its xFi Advanced Gateway, one of its modem / router combo products you can lease with your Xfinity internet, today at CES. This new version has support for Wi-Fi 6, which is optimized for faster speeds and to better handle the ever-growing number of networked devices we have in our homes.

In addition to Wi-Fi 6, Comcast says the new router has four dual-band antennas that support both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, one 2.5 Gbps Ethernet port, three 1 Gbps Ethernet ports (the previous version had two), and Bluetooth LE and Zigbee radios to connect to IoT devices. It also comes in a nice-looking new white — the previous generation came in black. And if you use Comcast’s xFi Pods to make a mesh Wi-Fi network at your home, Comcast says those Pods will still work with the new Advanced Gateway.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,”

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