ftth wireless setup

Icyseanfitz

hey guys, Finally got my 1gig ftth package installed to check what speeds where actually coming into my f2000 modem i hooked my desktop up via Ethernet and was getting around 900mbs so happy days

Unfortunately when i tried to use my tp link powerline adapters (600mbs rated) to get to the room where my pc is based i was only getting 25mbs, tried moving the adapter around to other sockets but no joy, i then tried the wifi clone through the adapter and got similar speeds.
I then connected to the wifi coming directly from the modem (2.4ghz gives about 2 bars of signal but no 5ghz) with a tplink usb wifi adapter (300mbs rated). This gives me up to 50mbs so thats an improvement.

I know the ideal thing to do would be to run some cat5 cables but that isnt really an option.

My guess is that the wiring in the house isnt great so powerline adapters wont work well. So what im thinking is to get a good range extender/router like this netgear one and hook my desktop up via a very good wifi adapter (any recommendations?).

i would really appreciate some advice on this as my knowledge of network stuff is limited to say the best.

ED E

If you're currently receiving very low levels from the F2000 the improvements from a high end unit will be limited (better antenna, same power output).

tplink usb wifi adapter (300mbs rated)

Pretty much all of these are sh so its not helping you at all. If wireless is the way you're going an .11AC PCI(E) card is the way to go.


Whats the layout of the house, where is the router, solid or cavity walls, new insulation?

To make any use of the 1G link with your actual devices they'll need to be newer (AC, AC wave 2, AD for the room with the router if you feel spendy) and probably place the unit smack bang in the middle of a modest sized home.

Icyseanfitz

ive attached a rough layout of the ground floor, the red dot is the modem, and the orange dot is my desktop. The green lines are block walls 100mm with insulation boards. Purple are not blocks but still have insulation over them. The house was renovated 4 years ago so its all new insulation in the attic and roof etc.

I am kind of lost when it comes to all of this to be honest but i know il have to buy a range extender or something to reach the full house anyway regardless of my desktop.

ive heard of n and ac but never ad, i thought eirs modem only supported up to ac? to be honest i barely understand the differences between them all.

Is going wired the only realistic option to get good speeds? i would really rather not have to go drilling holes as it will piss people off

Icyseanfitz

something like this for the wifi card?

ED E

Insulation like this do you know? If its alu coated stuff your heating bills are probably quite low, but you've built a faraday cage for yourself.


If the above is the case then you'll end up putting in probably four APs with cabling in between them all to get anywhere near 300Mb to wireless clients around the home. Repeaters might be ok on a slow connection but it would be pissing away 1G.

AD is new, 60Ghz but VERY fast. Downside is if you cant see the router you cant use it so its suitable for living rooms only. Devices fall back to 5Ghz AC when they leave the room. For nerds only at the moment due to cost.

ED E

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

something like this for the wifi card?

That's a good one. You can get decent ones for a tad less but depends on how far you wanna go.

kippy

Have you looked at the powerline option?
Not as "invasive" as having to wire up the house with CAT6, and more reliable (in my experience) than any wireless product.
(Obviously this wont help with devices that dont have a NIC but based on what you've said your primary concern in a desktop and you still have the wireless for the other devices.
http://www.techadvisor.co.uk/feature/network-wifi/what-is-powerline-3491484/
Older article but the principles still apply.

ED E

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

Unfortunately when i tried to use my tp link powerline adapters (600mbs rated) to get to the room where my pc is based i was only getting 25mbs,

kippy wrote: »

Have you looked at the powerline option?

Sometimes I wonder.....

kippy

ED E wrote: »

Sometimes I wonder.....

Me too.
I apologise profusely to the OP for my misguided attempt at helping them.
Based on a reread and the correction provided by ED E -
Get a better powerline adapter - ie one that works or check out a few of these tips.
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/6-tips-improve-speed-powerline-network/

Icyseanfitz

yup thats the stuff alright what would you recommend i do?

im thinking i might run a cat6 up the corner of the wall into the attic and down into my office into a router of some kind? what could i use to tidy the cable running up the wall up with?

Icyseanfitz

these are what im using, not super high end but still not really crappy.

ED E

Changing them wont help. 600s are a recent gen (500s are older) so there's very little ground to gain. Noisy mains are noisy mains, they were never designed to be used for signalling.

Icyseanfitz

if i run a cable up into the attic and into a decent router in my office will that cause issues with the modem itself? can both work together or only one at a time? is it a simple matter of sticking a cable into a lan port on the modem and into a input (whatever thats called)

plodder

I've been using powerline for a while, but it has become very unreliable lately. So, when I got Sky TV installed a while back, it occurred to me to run CAT6 cable the same way they did, ie along the gutter outside the house and straight through the walls (or maybe the timber window frames) at both ends. It seems like a fairly straight forward option for my house, but might not suit everywhere.

ED E

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

if i run a cable up into the attic and into a decent router in my office will that cause issues with the modem itself? can both work together or only one at a time? is it a simple matter of sticking a cable into a lan port on the modem and into a input (whatever thats called)

Some units you just enable "AP Mode", some you disable DHCP and pick an IP address. Either way its quite simple.

Johnboy1951

The only reasonable solution seems to be Cat5e or Cat6 cable run to each location.
At least you can be sure of getting full speed at each location.
You can use wire or wireless locally -> per location.

Your powerline adapters might work for adjacent rooms depending on wiring, so might prove useful in future.

If your house is a bungalow then it should not be too disruptive to run the ethernet wiring.
It would be worth the effort.

Icyseanfitz

are there any routers in particular you would recommend? dont mind spending a bit of money for one that can push 5ghz a decent distance, dont think id go so far as ad though as those are quite expensive.

my plan as it is right now is to run a cat6 from the f2000 up into the attic and into a switch, run a cat6 from the switch to my office and into a router giving off wifi, run another cat6 from router into my pc, and have strong wifi for my devices at this one end of the house with the router+modem at different channels any obvious problems?

Johnboy1951

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

are there any routers in particular you would recommend? dont mind spending a bit of money for one that can push 5ghz a decent distance, dont think id go so far as ad though as those are quite expensive.

my plan as it is right now is to run a cat6 from the f2000 up into the attic and into a switch, run a cat6 from the switch to my office and into a router giving off wifi, run another cat6 from router into my pc, and have strong wifi for my devices at this one end of the house with the router+modem at different channels any obvious problems?

You might consider the web managed version of that switch .... about €5 more and it might be useful in future.

There is no need for Cat6 from PC to router.
It won't do any better than Cat5e.
Actually given the apparent distances involved I doubt Cat6 is needed anywhere.

I am one of those who prefer to have routers in different locations completely separate to others.
I edit the SSIDs to suit ...... Kitchen, Office, Guest etc..

Most seem to prefer to be able to roam seamlessly ....

Icyseanfitz

this any good as a router?

Dero

If you're retaining the F2000 as your router, then you don't need another one. What you're looking for is just an access point. These are very good. This particular one has 2x Ethernet ports, so you can connect into your PC as well (I presume it acts as a two port switch). There are lots of access points available though, at all capabilities and price points.

However, if you're running cable to a switch, you could run the cable all the way to the office, and install the switch there. There is no good reason to install the switch in the attic unless you envisage distributing to additional data points in other rooms in the future.

Icyseanfitz

Dero wrote: »

If you're retaining the F2000 as your router, then you don't need another one. What you're looking for is just an access point. These are very good. This particular one has 2x Ethernet ports, so you can connect into your PC as well (I presume it acts as a two port switch). There are lots of access points available though, at all capabilities and price points.

However, if you're running cable to a switch, you could run the cable all the way to the office, and install the switch there. There is no good reason to install the switch in the attic unless you envisage distributing to additional data points in other rooms in the future.

thats exactly what im imaging i will have to do tbh, the house is pretty big, 4000-5000sqf so im thinking id like a powerful router at both ends of the house blasting out 5ghz wifi for perfect coverage, and then run ethernet cables from the router to my pc in the office.

I will look into using access points though

ED E

Its very worthwhile to plan this properly, do it once and do it right. I snaked our old bungalow in a piecemeal fashion and it was a big waste of elbow grease.


What I would suggest is buying a decent CAT5e(or greater) run of 30m so you can move around your F2000 away from the ONT. See how it performs in either end of the corridor and that can inform your planning.

Two Ubi ceiling mounted APs may be ideal as it will mean penetrating a single wall to each room. Pending Mrs approval.

Icyseanfitz

right i might as well ask even if it makes me sound like an idiot what are the differences between a modem, a router, an access point, and a switch?

Dero

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

right i might as well ask even if it makes me sound like an idiot what are the differences between a modem, a router, an access point, and a switch?

Definitely doesn't make you sound like an idiot. The opposite if anything.

Basically:

Modem: Not really relevant in an FTTH context. Originally stood for modulator-demodulator and was used to put a digital signal on an analogue phone line. Still relevant in DSL.

Router: Used to route traffic between disparate networks. In a general domestic sense, that's connecting your internal private network to the public Internet. What we have at home is actually more of a NAT device than a real router, but that's nit-picking and router is close enough.

Access Point: Short for Wireless Access Point. This is a device that connects a wireless network to a wired LAN. You configure a network name (SSID), channels etc. and that's it; it doen't do anything else.

Switch: Essentially, this is a device for connecting multiple ethernet devices together. Internally, any two ports can be "switched" together to form a direct connection between them. Hence the name.

What we usually get from an ISP is a combination of all of the above, which leads to a situation where it gets called a modem or a router or the WiFi thingy or whatever.

Icyseanfitz

wow, thanks for the info!

so the f2000 is basically just acting as a router with eirs ftth and not a modem? does that mean i can just replace the f2000 with a high end router if i wanted to?

Dero

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

wow, thanks for the info!

so the f2000 is basically just acting as a router with eirs ftth and not a modem? does that mean i can just replace the f2000 with a high end router if i wanted to?

Yes, pretty much.

Icyseanfitz

is it pretty much a plug in and away you go job or are there multitude of settings to fiddle with? might get a nice router down the line if its an easy enough job

Dero

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

is it pretty much a plug in and away you go job or are there multitude of settings to fiddle with? might get a nice router down the line if its an easy enough job

Well that's a bit like how long is a piece of string. If you go for something from the like of Netgear etc., then it will be pretty much plug and play. On the other hand, you could go for something from the likes of Mikrotik/Ubiquiti etc. which could be a lot more powerful (in terms of networking features) but has a much steeper learning curve.

So long as it has a gigabit Ethernet WAN port, you should be fine. There may be some degree of configuration required to make it talk to Eir, but their support should sort you out if that's necessary.

Icyseanfitz

im putting a basket together at the moment on amazon for cables, a switch and stuff to keep things tidy. I am thinking of getting a router as well, any opinion on this.

Ive broached access points on the ceiling but thats a no go btw

im going to have a switch in the attic so i can run cat6's to both ends of the house and then il put the router near my pc with a cable running to the pc and maybe some other devices.

Can i have both the f2000 and router giving off wifi simultaneously? if so i could move the f2000 further up the house for better coverage

The high horse brigade

Dero wrote: »

So long as it has a gigabit Ethernet WAN port, you should be fine. There may be some degree of configuration required to make it talk to Eir, but their support should sort you out if that's necessary.

There's no support from Eir if you're not using the supplied F2000. The router will need to have vlan10 assigned to the wan port, not all can do this and it takes a bit of figuring.

Icyseanfitz

The high horse brigade wrote: »

There's no support from Eir if you're not using the supplied F2000. The router will need to have vlan10 assigned to the wan port, not all can do this and it takes a bit of figuring.

would i have problems running a cat6 from a lan port on the f2000 into a switch and then into the wan port of the netgear router i linked above?

The high horse brigade

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

would i have problems running a cat6 from a lan port on the f2000 into a switch and then into the wan port of the netgear router i linked above?

You do not want 2 routers, if you have a router you need to add an access point to extend it. If the Netgear has access point mode this is what you need to use.

Icyseanfitz

oh ok get you, a house only uses one router but can have multiple access points which can be routers just in access point mode. would routers work slower or lose features like tri band or speed limits by setting them into access point mode

The high horse brigade

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

oh ok get you, a house only uses one router but can have multiple access points which can be routers just in access point mode. would routers work slower or lose features like tri band or speed limits by setting them into access point mode

Seeing a device in access point mode disables all routing features, NAT, DHCP, firewall etc.

fbradyirl

The high horse brigade wrote: »

There's no support from Eir if you're not using the supplied F2000. The router will need to have vlan10 assigned to the wan port, not all can do this and it takes a bit of figuring.

Interesting. Is there a post or guide on boards with more detail on what is required to get this working? I have an OpenWRT router so am hoping to replace the F2000 with that.

Hoagy

fbradyirl wrote: »

Interesting. Is there a post or guide on boards with more detail on what is required to get this working? I have an OpenWRT router so am hoping to replace the F2000 with that.

This page has a list of the settings to get a 3rd party router working

http://www.computersupportservices.ie/use-a-third-party-modem-with-eircom-efibre-connection-instead-of-bridging/

Icyseanfitz

well ive ordered in my stuff to get my network up and running (hopefully).

ordered different lengths of this cat7 stuff, hopefully its good enough. Got an 8 port switch, and this netgear router.

My plan is to run a cat7 from the ONT up into the attic and into the f2000 at one end of the house (will i lose speed if i use say the 30m cable?), then run a cat7 from that into a switch at the halfway point in the attic. From there i will run another cat7 from the switch down into the router (n access point mode) in my office. Then i have plenty of options at all points of the house for wired or wireless connections.

Can anyone see any major issues with this plan? am i running too much cable and will i lose speed due to it?

Hopefully it isnt all too much hassle Im handy enough with technology/computers but networking isnt my strong point

The high horse brigade

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

well ive ordered in my stuff to get my network up and running (hopefully).

ordered different lengths of this cat7 stuff, hopefully its good enough. Got an 8 port switch, and this netgear router.

My plan is to run a cat7 from the ONT up into the attic and into the f2000 at one end of the house (will i lose speed if i use say the 30m cable?), then run a cat7 from that into a switch at the halfway point in the attic. From there i will run another cat7 from the switch down into the router (n access point mode) in my office. Then i have plenty of options at all points of the house for wired or wireless connections.

Can anyone see any major issues with this plan? am i running too much cable and will i lose speed due to it?

Hopefully it isnt all too much hassle Im handy enough with technology/computers but networking isnt my strong point

You won't lose any speed over cable

Icyseanfitz

i did get a long cat6 yesterday and ran it from the f2000 and into the pc, was only getting around 500mbs as opposed to the 900mbs i got when i brought the pc in right next to the f2000 a couple of days ago. I did disconnect everything else when i got the 900mbs and there is an xbox one connected getting 200-300mbs so would that account for the lower speeds?

The high horse brigade

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

i did get a long cat6 yesterday and ran it from the f2000 and into the pc, was only getting around 500mbs as opposed to the 900mbs i got when i brought the pc in right next to the f2000 a couple of days ago. I did disconnect everything else when i got the 900mbs and there is an xbox one connected getting 200-300mbs so would that account for the lower speeds?

What length was the cable? Was it stretched out or coiled up? You should get gigabit over cat6 up to about 50-60m

Icyseanfitz

30m had it just running along the ground from one room to another, coiled up most of the way. Must do some testing

Icyseanfitz

got the house to myself so im doing some testing. ive all wifi off on the f2000 and my pc hooked up directly into the f2000 with a cat 6, f2000 is connected to ont via supplied cat6 i assume. Ive nothing but my pc connected so.

windows 10 speedtest app is giving me 337Mbps download and 98Mbps upload.
googles own speedtest is giving me 759Mbps download and 92Mbps upload.
speedtest.com gives me 380Mbps down on limerick server, 550Mbps down on tralee (where i live) but 900Mbps down on cork server, upload is in the 90Mbps range for all.

im confused as all hell, speeds are all over the place. how can i tell what im actually getting?

ED E

You've basically bought a ferrari. But you're living in a country with only dirt tracks.


The 1000Mb (or really 600Mb as thats all that Eir technically guarantee) is to the edge of their network, once it leaves that it totally depends on peering. So you could get 999 to HEANET (Dublin/Cork...) but 10Mb to BT in Belfast and 50 to Net1s network and so on.

Dont use the W10 app, its junk. Try http://broadbandsupport.eir.ie/speedtest/ or https://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/ and grab a large file (remember its MB not Mb you'll see there).

Icyseanfitz

ok so eirs site gives me 950Mbps and 98Mbps upload, is that representative of what im actually getting? not too sure how to use the other link tbh.

How does this translate into real world applications? ive tried steam and thats giving me like 35MB/s (shouldnt it be more like 120MB/s ?) while using ireland as my download server.

ED E

120 would be your theoretical limit yeah. In practice with overhead you'd be looking at 110 ish.

35 is 280Mb which is really fair. Steams servers are collectively referred to as a CDN and as with any CDN will load balance between all clients. They've no reason to pipe data any faster when most users can't exceed 100Mb. Also its likely a UK node you're actually connected to.

Try downloading 3x big games at once to spread the load out with Steam. At 4x games you'll start overloading your own hard drive :pac:


Click this link to download a 1.5GB file from HEANET. They've 10Gb+ to many parts of the country so tend to hit you for full whack.
https://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/ubuntu-cdimage/ubuntu-gnome/daily-live/current/artful-desktop-amd64.iso

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

How does this translate into real world applications?

It doesnt. If you've 1-4 people in your house you'll never max the link out. The use case for 1G is 10 powerusers sharing a connection.

Icyseanfitz

that link is downloading at 35ish MB/s, seems slow?

not that im not happy with the jump from the old fttc i had but i just want to make sure im getting what im paying for

ED E

Whats the laptop? Sounds like a disk bottleneck if Steam and HEANET are hitting the exact same mark.

lawred2

Power line adapters are junk for anything other than very basic needs.

Icyseanfitz

its not a laptop, 6700k gaming pc and connected through a gig Ethernet port. my c drive is on a kingston ssd.

the results i had on steam earlier though where installing games on my other drive which is a cheap and cheerful hdd. just tried with the ssd and i was getting 68MB/s so that is much better. the heanet link still downloads at round 35MB/s, though, although i then tried downloading 2 copies at the same time and both where getting 35MB/s so thats a combined 70MB/s. I can live with real speeds of 700mbps

9726_9726

Congrats on your 1Gbps link!

Just remember that for lots of services you will be accessing, your home broadband will no longer be the bottleneck. This will expose some surprising slow-downs elsewhere on the internet that you wouldn't have noticed before. (Hosting, peering, interconnects, congestion).

Lots of servers only have 1Gb network cards. So many websites, etc. that you will be accessing will be sharing their 1Gbps network port between *all* the users accessing them at that time. You will have a whole gig to yourself.

This is a simplified version but you get the idea.

Once people get FTTH and become used to it, I think the days of running speed tests will come to an end. You won't be concerned with "am I getting what I'm paying for" anymore.

You'll just be like, "I haz internetz' and it just works. Like your water or electricity. You don't run voltage tests!

Icyseanfitz

all up and running anyway



got the f2000 at one end of the house and my new netgear x4s setup as an access point in my office at the other end, and ive a tplink av500 wifi extender giving off wifi at the midway point as well. switch at the halfway point in the attic with 5 free ports that can go anywhere

All in all im happy out, no more 5-16mbps download speeds with crazy high ping