My Unlimited Budget WiFi Upgrade

[jakkuh_t]

 

[TempestCatto]

Meanwhile I'm stuck with one ISP because all the stuff is run underground and no one else wants to deal with that. Not to mention the current stuff underground is very old and outdated. The most we can get is 25mbs down (in therory). In practice we get between 5 and 10 down. Yehaw monopolies! 

[Latvian Video]

13 minutes ago, TempestCatto said:

Meanwhile I'm stuck with one ISP because all the stuff is run underground and no one else wants to deal with that. Not to mention the current stuff underground is very old and outdated. The most we can get is 25mbs down (in therory). In practice we get between 5 and 10 down. Yehaw monopolies! 

We live in the countryside, so there are no cables underground, so we have to use a wireless router. Afaik, the antenna is one of the limiting factors, we get like 15Mbps on the worse days, up to 50Mbps in the nights, one time we had 96Mbps peak while downloading a game from steam overnight. 

[sub68]

My area is bassicly cable internet but its still solid for a lot of things I do.

[Senzelian]

Wait, so the contractor didn't label the cables? I'd be fired if I wouldn't do that lol

[Yriu]

I'm curious about the strategy they followed to name the SSIDs.

Did they name all SSIDs the same and let the devices (phones, tablets...) decide automatically when to switch, or did they name each SSID by the location of the AP and then you can choose manually?

 

I didn't see on the video any clue to their naming, they blured the admin page :(

[Nystemy]

Personally I have never really enjoyed wifi as a technology to be fair.

Yes, it does save a lot of cable clutter at times, but to be fair. Cables are way more reliable in my experience.

 

All though, wifi is nice for certain things, like phones, laptops and other portable devices.

But anything that is more permanent tends to benefit from a wired connection. _{(all though, I can see how some "upgrades" can be easier if using wifi instead of wires, like Linus' thermostat situation. All though, I myself would have just pulled out the old wiring and put in new, considering how the house is already a construction zone, then it seems silly to not just redo the wiring in that situation.)}

[MultiGamerClub]

ahoy what?=

[VLAN]

What sites are there that allow you to upload your floor plan and find the best information as he showed in the video?

[Lurick]

2 hours ago, Yriu said:

I'm curious about the strategy they followed to name the SSIDs.

Did they name all SSIDs the same and let the devices (phones, tablets...) decide automatically when to switch, or did they name each SSID by the location of the AP and then you can choose manually?

 

I didn't see on the video any clue to their naming, they blured the admin page

When you have a controller it handles roaming clients between APs, you have a single (or multiple) SSID(s) and can spread it across all or some of the APs as you want.

[maksakal]

I feel your unifi pain. I started having similar issues with the unifi controller v5 and the new firmware version (I think it's also v5 and up). Unifi is notorious for their compatibility issues. Fortunately for me it was a matter of replacing a wifi card of one laptop and also buying a new wifi stick for one of my customers. Unifi is not compatible with older wifi chipsets, unfortunately these chipsets are really wide spread. So if you have a device with an older wifi chip, stay away from Unifi.

It's not like Unifi doesn't know about these issues because there are enough threads on their forums for years now. The advice from the mods has been "don't use those chips". The weird part is (for me atleast) the chips used to work, until the update to the newer firmware. So it's fair to say there's an issue with the new firmware. I think somewhere I read that the official stance of Unifi is that the chips aren't complaint and thus they refuse to fix it. Anyway, Unifi is the only brand I know of who has these issues.

When it comes to price/quality and user friendlyness Unifi is way ahead of the competition however. The price of the Ruckus AP's puts them out of reach for home use unless you're a die hard fanatic. The R750 costs 1700 euro's including taxes.

[Luscious]

Ah yes, that big smile on your face when you get sent thousands of dollars worth of free shit. You don't need to put a gun to Linus's head to make a video LOL

 

As impressive as this setup is it is also incredibly unrealistic - you running around testing speeds with one device isn't the typical use case either. When you have a DOZEN people over at all trying to watch 4K YT at the same time on their phones/tablets while your Steam client upstairs decides to do a 60GB update AND the wifey needs to get on a Skype call with her bestie... the bottleneck WILL eventually get down to your ISP bandwidth. Businesses can get around it just by hooking into multiple lines from their ISP, but there's a limit to that when it comes to residential installs. You may get a 2nd line if you make a case (home business use) but you wouldn't be getting a 3rd or 4th line in there.

[Nystemy]

23 minutes ago, Luscious said:

Ah yes, that big smile on your face when you get sent thousands of dollars worth of free shit. You don't need to put a gun to Linus's head to make a video LOL

 

As impressive as this setup is it is also incredibly unrealistic - you running around testing speeds with one device isn't the typical use case either. When you have a DOZEN people over at all trying to watch 4K YT at the same time on their phones/tablets while your Steam client upstairs decides to do a 60GB update AND the wifey needs to get on a Skype call with her bestie... the bottleneck WILL eventually get down to your ISP bandwidth. Businesses can get around it just by hooking into multiple lines from their ISP, but there's a limit to that when it comes to residential installs. You may get a 2nd line if you make a case (home business use) but you wouldn't be getting a 3rd or 4th line in there.

I would more worry about congestion as far as wireless bandwidth and all the background heart beats keeping the network up and running "smoothly" being the main drawbacks.

 

Being alone in the local area, then wifi is wonderful.

Add a handful of devices and suddenly the experience is a lot more lackluster. Even if those other devices aren't actually doing anything. And this is why I at least try to run as much as possible over network cables, especially things that aren't going to be moved all that often, like a TV, game console, IoT devices, or computers in general. And having a conveniently prewired network cable at the desk one typically plunks down one's laptop at isn't especially hard either.

 

But yes, eventually the ISP's bandwidth is going to be a bottleneck. Depending on the area, this is however more or less common. _{(I myself run with ADSL that hasn't seen the ISP upgrade it from the 1998 system they installed back then, so a nice 8 Mb/s down and 1 Mb/s up on a good day, so the ISP is practically always the bottleneck. (the system were going to be upgraded to VDSL supporting over 5x more bandwidth back in 2002-2005, but the privatization of the national phone provider stopped that progress, even if it were a relatively cheap upgrade. Now they are trying to flog fiber at people instead for over 10x the cost compared to VDSL2. And VDSL2 speeds is faster than what most people use or even want to pay for. Though, a surprising amount of the costs of an internet plan is for the IPv4 address itself if it is a static IP, not the data delivery....))}

[StephanTW]

Until last year the best offer i had was 30/5, luckily now i have 100/30 and i am especially happy for the extra upload speed.
but worst part is that the main road next to my neighbourhood has fibreglass wires going through them, but because the neighbourhood has a relative high age and with that low internet usage/demand the ISP's have stayed away from laying fibreglass... in 10 years I hope the plans will be made and I'll have access to 1gbit connection

[skywake]

Of course when there's a video about WiFi there are always the two inevitable commenters. The people who don't understand the distinction between "WiFi" and "internet" or why you may want solid WiFi even if you don't have a 100Mbps+ internet connection. Presumably they've never heard of a NAS, steam in-home streaming, security cameras, whole house audio setups, smart home decives. There's also more to solid WiFi than just high speeds. Although I guess this misunderstanding is just amplified every time a video like this comes out where speedtest is the benchmark they use rather than iPerf or, you know, UniFi's built in speed tester..... 

 

(Slight tangent, how do most new TVs still only have 100Mbps ports? There are use-cases for speeds above what streaming services provide. Are we just pretending UHD BluRay rips aren't a thing?)

 

And then there are the nuts who somehow think 1 or even a dozen ~10W access point pushing out non-ionising ratiation is a concern. The same people who will happily go out every day without any protection underneath a fusion reaction that pumps out a few kWh/m^2 radiation daily a fair portion of which is ionising Ultraviolet radiation.... 
 

6 hours ago, VLAN said:

What sites are there that allow you to upload your floor plan and find the best information as he showed in the video?

Not sure about other options but when I was setting up mine I just used the one built into the Unifi controller. Although it seems they've pushed it here now:
https://design.ui.com/

[Luscious]

1 hour ago, skywake said:

Of course when there's a video about WiFi there are always the two inevitable commenters. The people who don't understand the distinction between "WiFi" and "internet" or why you may want solid WiFi even if you don't have a 100Mbps+ internet connection. Presumably they've never heard of a NAS, steam in-home streaming, security cameras, whole house audio setups, smart home decives. There's also more to solid WiFi than just high speeds. Although I guess this misunderstanding is just amplified every time a video like this comes out where speedtest is the benchmark they use rather than iPerf or, you know, UniFi's built in speed tester....

 

A single 1GbE NAS can easily cripple even a relatively fast wifi network, never mind when you are trying to push uncompressed 4K content. A smarter setup is to just place a super compact mini-ITX HTPC next to each TV in the house and avoid wifi altogether. Four 30TB U.2 drives will store between 1500-2000 uncompressed 4K movies, and with multiple boxes in more than one room you get redundancy as well eliminating the need to backup to a central storage server.

 

But yeah, when you have security cameras, multiple PC's and smart devices in the mix you absolutely NEED to take advantage of any and all wired connections you can get first... and only after that look at what's left that requires wifi.

[Roswell]

retracted

[skywake]

15 minutes ago, Luscious said:

A single 1GbE NAS can easily cripple even a relatively fast wifi network, never mind when you are trying to push uncompressed 4K content. A smarter setup is to just place a super compact mini-ITX HTPC next to each TV in the house and avoid wifi altogether.

I mean of course, a wired connection for the kind of applications that demand "solid WiFi" is preffered and having it run locally is even better. But there's flexibility you get with having content stream over a network and even stream over WiFi. With the UHD BluRay rips example I could drop them on a HDD and plug that HDD into the device I want to play the video on. Or I could drop them on a NAS and stream them over a wired connection to my TV (shakes fist at TVs with 100Mbps Ethernet) or over WiFi to a laptop or something

 

The point of having a network is that you're sharing resources. My laptop doesn't need a huge m.2 SSD because I have a multi TB NAS, I don't need a HTPC because I can just stream videos over my network. Hell I don't even need a high end gaming laptop because in-home streaming is servicable and I can just leverage the power of my desktop. Means I'm not buying gear I don't need.... which to be fair is probably less of a concern to someone who's blowing $1000s on stadium tier WiFi

[nbrowser]

Just a question for @LinusTechin the video from about the 15 minute mark when you shut off all but one AP, your screengrabs from your phone states the tests are from your Samsung phone to the Telus Mobility cellular network not your Wifi system. Just a little detail you and your editors missed sir,

[Vishera]

My Wi-Fi setup rivals that of Linus when it comes to speed (it's actually better)...

And i spent a lot less.

 

There is no need to spend that much money to get such an experience.

 

 

[maksakal]

45 minutes ago, nbrowser said:

Just a question for @LinusTechin the video from about the 15 minute mark when you shut off all but one AP, your screengrabs from your phone states the tests are from your Samsung phone to the Telus Mobility cellular network not your Wifi system. Just a little detail you and your editors missed sir,

Telus provides Home Internet services.

https://www.telus.com/en/internet

[nbrowser]

7 minutes ago, maksakal said:

Telus provides Home Internet services.

https://www.telus.com/en/internet

I know...I'm a Telus customer myself...and when doing a Speedtest via the Home LAN (wifi) it says Telus...not Telus Mobility, after the 15 minute mark, all the posted screengrabs were using the Cellular network, not the residential or business high speed service.

[skywake]

51 minutes ago, Vishera said:

My Wi-Fi setup rivals that of Linus when it comes to speed (it's actually better)...

And i spent a lot less.

 

There is no need to spend that much money to get such an experience.

Definitely, although it's mostly because with access points after a certain point you're paying for capacity and range rather than single user throughput. With the Unifi example you can get a WiFi 6 Lite AP for ~$190AU which supports a connection speed of "1.2Gbps" (actually ~700Mbps in real world tests). Going upto the BasestationXG you're spending $2300AU which does connection speeds upto "1.7Gbps". Which on paper seems like a very small gap for the difference in price. But the XG has a significantly higher gain antenna, three 5Ghz radios rather than 1 and a 10Gbps backhaul. Which is usefull but isn't going to be of any value when you have at most half a dozen users....

[Luscious]

4 hours ago, skywake said:

I mean of course, a wired connection for the kind of applications that demand "solid WiFi" is preffered and having it run locally is even better. But there's flexibility you get with having content stream over a network and even stream over WiFi. With the UHD BluRay rips example I could drop them on a HDD and plug that HDD into the device I want to play the video on. Or I could drop them on a NAS and stream them over a wired connection to my TV (shakes fist at TVs with 100Mbps Ethernet) or over WiFi to a laptop or something

 

The point of having a network is that you're sharing resources. My laptop doesn't need a huge m.2 SSD because I have a multi TB NAS, I don't need a HTPC because I can just stream videos over my network. Hell I don't even need a high end gaming laptop because in-home streaming is servicable and I can just leverage the power of my desktop. Means I'm not buying gear I don't need.... which to be fair is probably less of a concern to someone who's blowing $1000s on stadium tier WiFi

I hear you - I've been down all those roads. Started with the slowest wireless-g, cheapest 2 drive Buffalo NAS, single camera, went wired, then went local storage etc...Heck I can remember firing up n for the first time I had the only 5GHz signal on my entire block - a far cry from the 25+ that appear now. A lot of things you can get away with when you are just a single user only doing ONE THING, it's a whole other can of worms when as few as 2-3 users active at the same time demand something "different" or that latest gadget brings your traffic to a crawl. Fortunately it's not too difficult throwing in a switch or second access point to get around small issues. It's the larger headaches demanding a complete network overhaul that are the most difficult, especially if investing $$$ in new equipment, running new wires means getting into walls+floors or that 2.4/5GHz spectrum is getting congested (NY apartment dwellers know what I mean).

[maksakal]

27 minutes ago, nbrowser said:

I know...I'm a Telus customer myself...and when doing a Speedtest via the Home LAN (wifi) it says Telus...not Telus Mobility, after the 15 minute mark, all the posted screengrabs were using the Cellular network, not the residential or business high speed service.

Telus Mobility is the server he is pinging to, not from. Above that it says Telus SM-F926B (Which is the Fold 3), he is pinging from Telus with a Fold 3 to a server operated by Telus Mobility. The speedtest app automatically selects a server near you.

Also Linus has near to no mobile reception but full bars Wifi-6 reception. So it's impossible for him to post those numbers using cellular.