New life for an old router

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Rob R.
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Post by Rob R. » Wed. Sep. 04, 2019 8:04 pm

A few years ago I decided to upgrade my wireless router for improved performance. My old Netgear N900 was retired, and a Linksys WRT-1900AC took its place. I flashed the router with DD-WRT firmware and have been running that ever since.

For 90% of the home the WIFI signal is very good. I even get a decent signal in my workshop, which is about 100' away. I ran Cat 6 cable to the Roku boxes and media server, and life has been good...until we added a small TV upstairs and tried to stream movies via WIFI. I tried moving the antennas on the router and re-positioning the TV with no improvement. For some reason the signal in this bedroom is poor, as confirmed by several other devices. I considered pulling an Ethernet cable up through a wall, but this TV does not have an Ethernet jack. I decided to setup a new wireless access point instead - using my old Netgear router.

It was much easier to pull Ethernet cable to the attic over the garage, which is right on the other side of the wall from the room with the TV- so that is where the router went. The Netgear router was also running DD-WRT firmware, so I followed the instructions on their wiki: https://wiki.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Wireless_access_point

Now I have a second wireless network that has an excellent signal in the upstairs of the home. The TV that could not stream movies before works great.

 
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Post by CoalHeat » Wed. Sep. 04, 2019 10:58 pm

I did something similar a couple years ago. My WiFi router is upstairs at the end of the house furthest from the kitchen, even with a range extender the signal was weak in the kitchen. I even bought a new Netgear extender to replace the cheap Cisco unit I had.
Did some research and discovered the speed drops significantly when using an extender, which was another problem I was having.
Ended up buying the Netgear Powerline units which use the house's wiring to transmit Internet. Plugged an Ethernet cable from my router into one Powerline which then gets plugged into a 120 volt receptacle, then connected the Netgear range extender to the other Powerline unit downstairs. I also switched the range extender to serve as an access point. WiFi issues solved!
I hung the old Cisco range extender in the window out in the pole barn, I plug it in when I'm out there working so I get a good connection out there as well. Having an access point gives you the same speed as the WiFi router as opposed to an extender which runs significantly slower.

 
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Rob R.
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Post by Rob R. » Thu. Sep. 05, 2019 6:38 am

I have always been curious about the power line units. If I decide to setup an access point in the shop, that is probably what I would try.

 
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Post by CapeCoaler » Thu. Sep. 05, 2019 9:18 am

They work great...
If the copper is clean and connections in the circuit is good...
Have several of them setup in difficult to network locations...
If you don't get a good circuit on one outlet try a different outlet or circuit...
Plug directly into wall...
NO surge suppressor...


 
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Post by CoalHeat » Thu. Sep. 05, 2019 10:28 am

Mine seem to work very well. I could buy an additional unit and access point from Netgear for the barn.
They offer combined units. Since I already had the range extender that I switched to an access point I have 2 pieces of hardware connected with a cable. Looks a little sloppy but I don't care.
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Post by Lightning » Thu. Sep. 05, 2019 7:05 pm

That's cool Rob. I did the same with a second router for my new building. I thought ahead and ran a 200 ft Ethernet cable thru the electric conduit to link it to the home router, works great! Since we recently got Spectrum service, we have 400 meg service in our new building just like in the house :)

 
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Post by Rob R. » Wed. Jun. 10, 2020 9:23 am

Well, something happened to my Netgear router. It started locking up every few days, so I had to decommission it. Having a poor WIFI signal upstairs was a big problem for the boys, who have to use Google Classroom for school. I ended up purchasing a used Google WIFI system, which has multiple access points and creates a mesh network.

https://store.google.com/us/product/google_wifi_first_gen

Normally these come in a 3 pack, but I ended up with 4. The previous owner said he used them for 6 months and upgraded to the latest Google Nest system. The cool thing about these is that you can connect them with an ethernet cable if you want, which allows them to be spaced farther apart - and they all use the same network SSID. I put three in the house, and the 4th in my garage via an ethernet cable. The WIFI signal is excellent everywhere! I also love that I can control the whole thing from my phone.

 
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Post by johnjoseph » Wed. Jun. 10, 2020 8:25 pm

That's a great router with all those features and the price was definitely right. I have a 3 year old Linksys routers and it works well, bit it doesn't have any fancy features. If or when I need to replace it, I may look into one like yours. I like the idea of controlling it by phone and placing the units in different places like a garage, shop or even on a covered deck. I no longer have my sons at home as they are 29 and 20, so I wouldn't have to utilize the features it has available for younger boys, but I wish I would have had it 5 or 6 years ago. Thanks for posting, that's a great system.


 
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Post by Rob R. » Wed. Jun. 10, 2020 9:26 pm

I have the kids devices on a family network which shuts off at a certain time on school nights, and filters adult content. So far I have been very happy with it.

We are also considering a Nest camera, and I imagine it will be quite easy to setup with this system. The app has a separate section for home control devices.

 
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Post by xackley » Thu. Jun. 11, 2020 2:10 am

I was a DD-wrt fan for years, but most routers now days have a one click option to be a wireless repeater or hard wired access point.
And per client QOS, just incase you have a hog that wants to down load and bit torrent too many videos.

Most also have some method of letting you know how much bandwidth is being used. You would be surprised at how little you really need to support a couple tvs and internet phone while simultaneously watching video on the computers. My son and family are living in my house next door, about 150 feet away. Via router set to wireless repeater both houses live well on 20Mbs with excellent quality and response. Even at peak viewing times we have lots of bandwidth to spare.
don

 
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Post by Richard S. » Thu. Jun. 11, 2020 7:05 am

xackley wrote:
Thu. Jun. 11, 2020 2:10 am
Most also have some method of letting you know how much bandwidth is being used. You would be surprised at how little you really need to support a couple tvs and internet phone while simultaneously watching video on the computers.
I've been able to get away with a 3Mbps connection with adequate video. If windows update kicked in or whatever it went to crap. If you were just bouncing around on web sites, email etc you really aren't going to see much difference with faster connection.

Video is really the only activity that is going to consume a lot of bandwidth, downloading a game or other large file might be another thing but that is usually one shot deal. The "HD" on these video streaming sites might be 6Mbps, HD on a Blu-ray disc might be 25Mbps. There is substantial difference in quality. The video service will drop the quality if there is not enough bandwidth available.

The thought just occurred to me to do a calculation for 100GB game using a 56K modem, it's a mere 165 days, 8 hours, 15 minutes, 14 seconds. :lol:

 
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Post by BigBarney » Fri. Jun. 12, 2020 9:56 am

I switched to visible wireless to be able to hotspot the phone to get

unlimited wi-fi since I don't have fast internet available to me.

I usually get 30-50 down and 2-5 up which is good for most uses.

1 phone is $40 then $5 off for each line down to $25 for 4 max..

The service is only available on specific phones some of which they sell.

This supplies all the internet most people need.

https://www.visible.com/shop/smartphones

BigBarney

 
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Post by Rob R. » Wed. Jul. 07, 2021 8:02 am

xackley wrote:
Thu. Jun. 11, 2020 2:10 am
I was a DD-wrt fan for years, but most routers now days have a one click option to be a wireless repeater or hard wired access point.
And per client QOS, just incase you have a hog that wants to down load and bit torrent too many videos.

Most also have some method of letting you know how much bandwidth is being used. You would be surprised at how little you really need to support a couple tvs and internet phone while simultaneously watching video on the computers. My son and family are living in my house next door, about 150 feet away. Via router set to wireless repeater both houses live well on 20Mbs with excellent quality and response. Even at peak viewing times we have lots of bandwidth to spare.
don
I recently had to setup an outdoor WIFI access point to cover our guest cottage, and my observations have been the same as yours. My in-laws are in the cottage, and even with a TV streaming video in each house and the kids using tablets or whatever, we have no issues at all.

As for the Google WIFI system I mentioned a few posts back, it is currently sitting idle on the shelf. I have been looking for a solution to reduce the amount of ads visible on websites without having to install software on every computer. I ended up installing an open source firewall solution on an old PC I had, and setting up packet filtering to block ads. This works great - but it was not compatible with the Google WIFI system in "mesh" mode. I ended up putting my Linksys WRT-1900 back into service as a wireless access point. This time I put the Linksys into a closet in the center of the house, and the WIFI coverage is adequate throughout the entire home (should have done that in the first place).

The software I am running is called OPNsense, and is free to use. I have barely scratched the service with what it can do. Here is a link to their website and a couple screenshots.

https://opnsense.org/

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