Home networking

[Skippy722]

I've been given free range to handle all tech related stuff at the new house... internet is at or above 75mbps, at least that's what I can pull from WiFi on my Xbox. I asked our landlord who just gave me a blank stare for a second then said "uh... the fastest one!"

Everything is routed into what you see in the picture. All the blue cables (and one green) go through the blocks and then feed down to the switch. I have no idea what the upper green wires are for... they are marked as Ethernet though. The one stray blue wire plugged straight into the switch goes to a jack in the garage.

I have set up my own WiFi router (Airport Extreme) with identical settings to their existing WiFi network to create a roaming network and extend coverage downstairs in our area where it was a bit weak. Connecting to that gets me speeds in the 50-60mbps range with a bit more packet loss (1-3%).

The switch is a 16 port 10/100 Netgear switch. My question is this... do I need to upgrade the switch to a gigabit switch or is that speed loss just due to long cable runs/interference with their network?

 

[skyactiv]

Not everyone knows it, but there is a new WiFi generation out now called WiFi 6 (802.11 ax)

 

[Skippy722]

Originally Posted by skyactiv
Not everyone knows it, but there is a new WiFi generation out now called WiFi 6 (802.11 ax)


The official standard isn't predicted to be out till late 2019 though, and none of my devices currently support it.

 

[Donald]

So what is the house, a place you rent? Single family house or ??

What you setup with a second WIFI router access-point is not the best way to do it. You really want a mesh where there is a good handoff between access points and all the access points know about each other and work together, What you setup are two separate WIFI networks that happen to have the same SSID and password. Not good.

How about UPS for the networking hardware?

 

[Donald]

Its the ports on a switch or device that determine the speed, not the cable length. Have the cable 1 m to 100 m and its the same speed connection. 100 m is the max distance however.

 

[mk378]

What is the cat number on the installed cables, both the blue ones and the green ones? The green ones on the left are wired for analog phone lines, it looks like someone re-purposed a few of them over to the Ethernet blocks.

Using cable that is too long or inadequate for the speed will not be a graceful slowdown, it will generally stop working entirely. 1 Gb does not have much higher demand on the cable quality than 100 Mb though, other than that all 4 pairs must be wired through. If pairs have been separated out to run two 100 Mb circuits through a single cat5 cable, this will not work with Gb at all. The proper way to run multiple circuits through one cable is with managed switches and VLANs.

If the source of Internet is higher than 100 Mb obviously you need to upgrade to Gb capable hardware throughout the system to take advantage of it.

 

[newbe46]

I'm trying to make sense of what I'm looking at. The blue and green cables go to a patch panel and the patch panel is connected to a Netgear switch? And your problem is because of limited WiFi coverage you have to connect an Airport Extreme and this router has a drop in speed?

If that's the case this may not be an ideal setup because the the Airport Extreme has its own DHCP. Is it not possible to configure the Airport Extreme as a wireless access point?

I have a similar setup before and I do notice a slight drop of performance when connecting to the router that is then connecting to the modem/router from the ISP. After I have changed the wireless router to an access point only there is a performance increase.

 

[Andrew1972]

If your airport connecting to the main router via Wifi? If yes your speed will get closer to the 75Mbps over ethernet cable to your airport however my findings are this with IDENTICAL routers:

* The main TP-Link router connected directly to cable modem allows wifi connections up to 170Mbps and 170Mbps ethernet.
* The 2nd TP-Link router identica to main with DHCP disabled acting as Wireless Access Point (WAP) and connected by ethernet cable only does 70-90Mbps at best with wireless connections. If I connect another cable into 2nd TP-Link Router in the speed test is nearly 170Mbps

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted by Donald
Its the ports on a switch or device that determine the speed, not the cable length. Have the cable 1 m to 100 m and its the same speed connection. 100 m is the max distance however.


While the "official" limit for all types of TP Ethernet cables is 100M, the capability of the media in terms of speed is dictated by the number of twists per foot, which increases as you go from CAT5 to CAT5e to CAT6 and CAT6A. This reduces crosstalk.

In application, this can often have an effect on throughput.

So:
- while a CAT5 cable is "rated" for 10/100Mbit, a short run, it will be able to do gigabit if all four pairs are utilized (the 100Mbit standard only requires two pairs, but most cables are 4-pair)
- while a CAT5e cable is rated for 10/100/1000Mbit, the odds of you encountering crosstalk/interference on extended runs is reasonably high
- while CAT6 is rated for 10/100/1000/10000, it is only capable of 10Gbit at roughly 50% of the distance (55 meters)
- CAT6A is capable of 10Gbit for the whole 100 meter spec distance.

On top of the twists, many CAT6/CAT6A cables are heavier 23 gauge wire (vs 24 gauge for CAT5/CAT5e).

If one were required to make a run that passed the 100 meter limit, it would be wise to do so with the best cable they could get their hands on.

 

[Donald]

Originally Posted by OVERKILL
Originally Posted by Donald
Its the ports on a switch or device that determine the speed, not the cable length. Have the cable 1 m to 100 m and its the same speed connection. 100 m is the max distance however.


While the "official" limit for all types of TP Ethernet cables is 100M, the capability of the media in terms of speed is dictated by the number of twists per foot, which increases as you go from CAT5 to CAT5e to CAT6 and CAT6A. This reduces crosstalk.

In application, this can often have an effect on throughput.

So:
- while a CAT5 cable is "rated" for 10/100Mbit, a short run, it will be able to do gigabit if all four pairs are utilized (the 100Mbit standard only requires two pairs, but most cables are 4-pair)
- while a CAT5e cable is rated for 10/100/1000Mbit, the odds of you encountering crosstalk/interference on extended runs is reasonably high
- while CAT6 is rated for 10/100/1000/10000, it is only capable of 10Gbit at roughly 50% of the distance (55 meters)
- CAT6A is capable of 10Gbit for the whole 100 meter spec distance.

On top of the twists, many CAT6/CAT6A cables are heavier 23 gauge wire (vs 24 gauge for CAT5/CAT5e).

If one were required to make a run that passed the 100 meter limit, it would be wise to do so with the best cable they could get their hands on.


How do they do twists with the flat CAT6 cable I see?

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted by Donald
Originally Posted by OVERKILL
Originally Posted by Donald
Its the ports on a switch or device that determine the speed, not the cable length. Have the cable 1 m to 100 m and its the same speed connection. 100 m is the max distance however.


While the "official" limit for all types of TP Ethernet cables is 100M, the capability of the media in terms of speed is dictated by the number of twists per foot, which increases as you go from CAT5 to CAT5e to CAT6 and CAT6A. This reduces crosstalk.

In application, this can often have an effect on throughput.

So:
- while a CAT5 cable is "rated" for 10/100Mbit, a short run, it will be able to do gigabit if all four pairs are utilized (the 100Mbit standard only requires two pairs, but most cables are 4-pair)
- while a CAT5e cable is rated for 10/100/1000Mbit, the odds of you encountering crosstalk/interference on extended runs is reasonably high
- while CAT6 is rated for 10/100/1000/10000, it is only capable of 10Gbit at roughly 50% of the distance (55 meters)
- CAT6A is capable of 10Gbit for the whole 100 meter spec distance.

On top of the twists, many CAT6/CAT6A cables are heavier 23 gauge wire (vs 24 gauge for CAT5/CAT5e).

If one were required to make a run that passed the 100 meter limit, it would be wise to do so with the best cable they could get their hands on.


How do they do twists with the flat CAT6 cable I see?


The twists are inside the flats, pretty much guarantee those are 24 gauge though. I have one here I can hack open in the name of science if you want to see it

 

[Skippy722]

I'll try to answer everyone's questions as best I can.

It's a house that we rent, long story lol

I thought about a UPS, but there's no servers and the switch comes online pretty much instantly. Not sure if it's connected to the back up generator or not

It's either Cat5 or Cat5e, house was built about 20 years ago. I'll double check later to know for sure.

The airport is connected to the main router via Ethernet, which runs through the switch.

I'm not too hung up on it, if it's just a switch limitation I'll throw a new switch on it because that's an easy fix. 50-60mbps is still plenty fast for Netflix and YouTube lol

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted by Skippy722
I'll try to answer everyone's questions as best I can.

It's a house that we rent, long story lol

I thought about a UPS, but there's no servers and the switch comes online pretty much instantly. Not sure if it's connected to the back up generator or not

It's either Cat5 or Cat5e, house was built about 20 years ago. I'll double check later to know for sure.

The airport is connected to the main router via Ethernet, which runs through the switch.

I'm not too hung up on it, if it's just a switch limitation I'll throw a new switch on it because that's an easy fix. 50-60mbps is still plenty fast for Netflix and YouTube lol


I assume you turned the Airport into an AP and it's not doing any NAT/PAT, correct?

 

[Skippy722]

Originally Posted by OVERKILL
Originally Posted by Skippy722
I'll try to answer everyone's questions as best I can.

It's a house that we rent, long story lol

I thought about a UPS, but there's no servers and the switch comes online pretty much instantly. Not sure if it's connected to the back up generator or not

It's either Cat5 or Cat5e, house was built about 20 years ago. I'll double check later to know for sure.

The airport is connected to the main router via Ethernet, which runs through the switch.

I'm not too hung up on it, if it's just a switch limitation I'll throw a new switch on it because that's an easy fix. 50-60mbps is still plenty fast for Netflix and YouTube lol


I assume you turned the Airport into an AP and it's not doing any NAT/PAT, correct?


Correct. It's also all Cat5e cable as well

 

[OVERKILL]

With a 100Mbit switch, there's no way the switch is the limiting factor if you are only getting 50Mbit from the AP on the far end. Either the connection to the AP is poor or the cable is experiencing sufficient interference that overall throughput is pooping the bed.

If you plug directly into the AirPort and run a speed test wired, what do you get? It should be the same as any other wired connection.

 

[mk378]

Cable Internet you should log into the cable modem and check the signal status. If it's not good, check your inside coaxial wiring and possibly complain to the cable company.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted by mk378
Cable Internet you should log into the cable modem and check the signal status. If it's not good, check your inside coaxial wiring and possibly complain to the cable company.


His complaint appears to centre around there being a drop in performance when going from the main part of the service to his remote AP (AirPort), not with respect to the service itself.

 

[Skippy722]

Originally Posted by OVERKILL
Originally Posted by mk378
Cable Internet you should log into the cable modem and check the signal status. If it's not good, check your inside coaxial wiring and possibly complain to the cable company.


His complaint appears to centre around there being a drop in performance when going from the main part of the service to his remote AP (AirPort), not with respect to the service itself.


Yep, I have checked the levels though and they're all okay.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted by Skippy722
Originally Posted by OVERKILL
Originally Posted by mk378
Cable Internet you should log into the cable modem and check the signal status. If it's not good, check your inside coaxial wiring and possibly complain to the cable company.


His complaint appears to centre around there being a drop in performance when going from the main part of the service to his remote AP (AirPort), not with respect to the service itself.


Yep, I have checked the levels though and they're all okay.


OK, so what's the throughput wired through the AirPort?

 

[Skippy722]

Originally Posted by OVERKILL


OK, so what's the throughput wired through the AirPort?


50-60, main router will read ~75.