Done with Consumer WiFi solutions...

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by EldrickOnIce

Excellent. Thank You.
I understand almost nothing!
Two further questions:
1. If I set up the Decos as access points, will the xfinity box act nice and hand off to the rest of the mesh units? I assume I would factory reset all the decos and start from scratch as access points? If they don't play well together I will bridge the xfinity gateway.

2. I have a cheap network cable tester. 8 plus G, which I assume is ground. On any cabling where all 9 flash (including ground) I have no connectivity to network (deco will not connect via ethernet cable). I have approximately 2 times speed from wired connections to mesh units but most of the cabling is no good, apparently. I always assumed grounded was better than not but none of those grounded connections place nice with my mesh unit.

Thanks for any thoughts.

Oh, I see. I didn't think of PVRs.

I don't know exactly how as I've never used mesh units solely as AP without headache, but I think some form of ethernet hardwiring of the APs would be required. That's the trick with networking sometimes. In theory it could work but it doesn't. In theory it doesn't work but somehow it does. You won't know till you try.

EDIT: TD explained it better.

[EldrickOnIce]

No PVR/Comcast TV. Internet only.

I will bridge the Xfinity gateway.
If I can find a spot to put it where it will work, with that mess of coax, then that will give me a 5th deco in a better spot than in the messy utility area where it currently is. I bought these 5 a month ago at an estate sale for $40.
It's, a big, sprawling full brick house 15 years old, with walls (including most interior) spray foamed. It's a place wifi goes to die. My cheapo cable tester has 9 lights to confirm continuity - 8 for the twisted pairs, one for ground. They did all their own cabling. Most of it is no good. Of those with the 8 lights that blink in succession, all are good except where the 9th light blinks (ground). Those won't work as wired with the Decos. I need to move the gateway and make one more remote connection good to have pretty good connectivity everywhere. I guess I will try to put new ends on the cabling that is no good. This is not something I am good at though. Lol

Thanks again for all the help. I know it's a consumer wifi solution, so kind of derailing.

[TorqueDog]

It might just be down to redoing the RJ-45 ends on the cables to make sure they're done to the same T-568A or T-568B termination at each end, but you'd need to see for sure what the 'CAT' rating on the cable is. My last house was built in 2008 and was all CAT-5e so it worked just fine.

I would try my damnedest to make sure the Decos are hardwired. Having a wired backhaul will pay dividends on your speed and reliability. You can use some of that excessive coaxial cable to run MoCA adapters (Ethernet over Coax) if need be, but it'll add some clutter so make sure you have somewhere to hide the cabling.

[EldrickOnIce]

I have all Decos hardwired, they are just not optimally placed due to errors in cabling. There are plenty of outlets, most of them don't work. But I think I now know how to go about making it right, thanks to the support here.

Assuming that's correct, only problem left will be stable internet to my outdoor TV. I really effed that up during the building of my outdoor space/fireplace last summer.
Tell me again why I must not ever pull ethernet cable through existing electrical conduit. Haha

[TorqueDog]

Ooh yeah, that's a f--k-ton of electrical interference. I don't even know if the extra shielding in CAT-8 would have been sufficient. You may have been better off pulling fiber, save for all the extra cost involved.

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by EldrickOnIce

No PVR/Comcast TV. Internet only.

I will bridge the Xfinity gateway.
If I can find a spot to put it where it will work, with that mess of coax, then that will give me a 5th deco in a better spot than in the messy utility area where it currently is. I bought these 5 a month ago at an estate sale for $40.
It's, a big, sprawling full brick house 15 years old, with walls (including most interior) spray foamed. It's a place wifi goes to die. My cheapo cable tester has 9 lights to confirm continuity - 8 for the twisted pairs, one for ground. They did all their own cabling. Most of it is no good. Of those with the 8 lights that blink in succession, all are good except where the 9th light blinks (ground). Those won't work as wired with the Decos. I need to move the gateway and make one more remote connection good to have pretty good connectivity everywhere. I guess I will try to put new ends on the cabling that is no good. This is not something I am good at though. Lol

Thanks again for all the help. I know it's a consumer wifi solution, so kind of derailing.

No worries. Maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't really consider mesh networking stuff consumer wifi now. Modem only and wifi extenders/POE adapters are the consumer level stuff now.

Mesh is basically borderline enterprise grade (prosumer) stuff but easy set up for non-network people.

[EldrickOnIce]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

Ooh yeah, that's a f--k-ton of electrical interference. I don't even know if the extra shielding in CAT-8 would have been sufficient. You may have been better off pulling fiber, save for all the extra cost involved.

Yeah. It was all dug up. An extra 30 foot conduit run would have been the correct answer at the time! I'm running out of time to live and learn..

[photon]

Originally Posted by photon

My kid reported his wifi was lagging out.. I setup a ping to a work server on my laptop and sure enough every few minutes the pings would drop for a second or go into 1+ seconds.

After trying different things I'm still getting this. It's enough that things like discord or Zoom calls are impacted. On wired connections I don't get the same problem.

There's a used Dream Machine for $300 and an Amplifi Alien for $250 on Facebook, but I guess now I'm a bit leery of used though supposedly the Alien comes with Memory Express extended warranty for 2 more years.

I could get a new Dream Machine for $429 or the Asus ZenWifi XT9 kit for $479. Or I could turn on wifi on my modem and run that and wait for the Express.

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by photon

After trying different things I'm still getting this. It's enough that things like discord or Zoom calls are impacted. On wired connections I don't get the same problem.

There's a used Dream Machine for $300 and an Amplifi Alien for $250 on Facebook, but I guess now I'm a bit leery of used though supposedly the Alien comes with Memory Express extended warranty for 2 more years.

I could get a new Dream Machine for $429 or the Asus ZenWifi XT9 kit for $479. Or I could turn on wifi on my modem and run that and wait for the Express.

Is it just his device or all devices in his room? If wired is OK, then maybe a powerline or ethernet line to his laptop is good enough. Or maybe check driver issues, faulty wifi card, out of memory, overheating, physical interference etc. Going up to Alien or UDM is crazy overkill just to reduce lag on one device.

UDM isn't headache free either. I had to buy a second non wifi 6 AP because only my inlaws #### kept dropping and lagging when they visited (issues with their locked company it settings). The only way to resolve it was restart the whole UDM set up (not just AP). This not long after I sold the same AP to a CP user.

[Aegypticus]

If you're going to order any new Ubiquiti stuff, I'd look at the Ubiquiti website over Memory Express. MemEx seems to put quite a hefty markup on the Ubiquiti stuff, and I think you get 2 years manufacturer warranty instead of 1 if you order direct.

I have a Dream Machine SE at home with a couple PoE APs, a G4 doorbell, and a couple of PoE switches to break out wired connections in other rooms. It was expensive, but I don't regret it for a single second, and I'm looking to get more of their stuff when I need it. It was a ton of fun setting up all the VLANs and routing rules and stuff, and it's so rock solid.

You can also do some pretty neat things like setup a WireGuard server on it, so now my phone is automatically connected to a VPN to my home network whenever I leave my home SSID and I can access everything on my network like I have a local connection.

It's just the right combination of technical depth and user-friendliness for someone like me that can follow guides and has just enough knowledge to get myself into trouble. I know that solutions like PFSense are arguably superior, but I honestly couldn't be happier.

[photon]

Originally Posted by DoubleF

Is it just his device or all devices in his room? If wired is OK, then maybe a powerline or ethernet line to his laptop is good enough. Or maybe check driver issues, faulty wifi card, out of memory, overheating, physical interference etc. Going up to Alien or UDM is crazy overkill just to reduce lag on one device.

It's all devices.. my son first reported it on his laptop and Discord and his bedroom is right above the office where I have the access point.

I then tested it from my laptop which is six feet away from the AP and saw the same thing. Then my dad reported it they've had it with zoom meetings for a few weeks.

There's a few other things I'm going to try, one reddit thread about something similar said there's a certain range of channels where the device has to check with some air traffic signal or something so I'll probably move channels again.. and I found the device is set to USA so I'll switch it to Canada in case there's certain frequencies it's not supposed to use.

[photon]

Yeah here's a graph of the ping from my laptop which is sitting in the same room:



Same kind of test over wired looks perfect on the other hand.

[photon]

Yeah nothing really changed so I switched over to an XB7 that they had sent me because the fan on my XB6 was getting loud, and I had them put it in normal mode instead of bridged and unplugged the Amplifi HD. After that the ping test has been stable for 10 minutes.. one small bump up to 300ms once but the jitter graph has been almost perfect whereas before it was all over the place.

So either the Amplifi HD had some kind of setting that was causing an issue where I am or it was just somewhat defective.

I guess I'll run on the modem wifi for now until I decide what to do long term.

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by photon

Yeah nothing really changed so I switched over to an XB7 that they had sent me because the fan on my XB6 was getting loud, and I had them put it in normal mode instead of bridged and unplugged the Amplifi HD. After that the ping test has been stable for 10 minutes.. one small bump up to 300ms once but the jitter graph has been almost perfect whereas before it was all over the place.

So either the Amplifi HD had some kind of setting that was causing an issue where I am or it was just somewhat defective.

I guess I'll run on the modem wifi for now until I decide what to do long term.

Hmm that's weird. Sorry to hear.

Did you do the Wifiman tests to make sure that the units weren't interfering with each other? That can happen if they're too close. Did you also fully factory reset from the interface/hard reset the units again to make sure the old settings are totally gone?

[photon]

I had never setup the mesh things, it was only ever running on the main unit itself so shouldn't be interference. And yeah did a full factory reset, though I never did any reset on the mesh things because I never plugged them in at all. Unless NOT having them plugged in was causing the issue lol? Maybe it tries to talk to them, can't find them, then freaks out interrupting the main wifi?

I may try another hard reset and set it all up again but now the pressure is off I could set it up as a separate network to test it without taking down the network. We suited our walkout basement so my parents live down there and my kid is in SAIT now so people don't like it when I take down the network

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by wireframe

I'm happy with the Amplifi Alien router. Speed, coverage, and reliability are all much better. Screenshot of a wifi speed test on my phone before and after router change. Nothing else was changed between those two speed tests but I have since upgraded my plan from Telus and the Alien carried the higher speed too.

Spoiler!

The image never posted. But based on your comment about being happy, I'm glad it worked out for you.

It also seems like it was a really easy set up for you as well since you posted pretty quickly soon after acquiring the unit. I'm no AmpliFi rep. I just like hearing the ease of set up anecdotes because it confirms to me that the Amplifi system is a great blanket recommendation to my friends who are complaining about their situations and set ups.

Originally Posted by photon

I had never setup the mesh things, it was only ever running on the main unit itself so shouldn't be interference. And yeah did a full factory reset, though I never did any reset on the mesh things because I never plugged them in at all. Unless NOT having them plugged in was causing the issue lol? Maybe it tries to talk to them, can't find them, then freaks out interrupting the main wifi?

I may try another hard reset and set it all up again but now the pressure is off I could set it up as a separate network to test it without taking down the network. We suited our walkout basement so my parents live down there and my kid is in SAIT now so people don't like it when I take down the network

I hope you figure out the issue without having to replace the set up.

I mean if you really aren't able to figure it out, maybe I might be interested in buying them off you sorta as a spart part scenario so that I can have back up stuff at my parents place and tinker with them occasionally to try figure out what's going on. I'm curious. But I do hope you figure it out and get it running swimmingly instead.

Your theory on it freaking out because no mesh points might make sense if somehow your factory resets aren't totally clean setting wise from the previous seller, it's wondering why the mesh points aren't picking up some slack. I think the system is also intended to be using both mesh points out of the box, so it's possible that there's a setting that's weird like that even with the factory reset. Also, are you on the latest firmware for the HD router? Make sure to check whether those mesh points need updates too if you get around to checking on them.

[EldrickOnIce]

I rearranged some of my mess of wires. Of the 40+ cat6e cables running through home, 4 were good (and in good places for mesh units). The 5th mesh, not running from ethernet, was really slow - so i traced the cable back, installed new ends and now have it running wired. I expect all those are cables have bad end(s). I will coil up all that currently unused cat6 and RG6 in case it might be useful sometime, but I do not expect to ever use it. I am using 6 of about 100 total cables.
I have 1170 Mbps on upstream side of modem
Wired connection directly to gateway is ~920 Mbps
Wireless (checked in about 10 places around house) is low of ~750 Mbps
Im pretty happy with this.
Thanks again to everyone for all the help!

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by EldrickOnIce

I rearranged some of my mess of wires. Of the 40+ cat6e cables running through home, 4 were good (and in good places for mesh units). The 5th mesh, not running from ethernet, was really slow - so i traced the cable back, installed new ends and now have it running wired. I expect all those are cables have bad end(s). I will coil up all that currently unused cat6 and RG6 in case it might be useful sometime, but I do not expect to ever use it. I am using 6 of about 100 total cables.
I have 1170 Mbps on upstream side of modem
Wired connection directly to gateway is ~920 Mbps
Wireless (checked in about 10 places around house) is low of ~750 Mbps
Im pretty happy with this.
Thanks again to everyone for all the help!

Sounds like massive gains for around $100-150 bucks in hardware ($50 in Deco) and a bit of elbow grease and sweat equity. Congrats!

[photon]

I finally got a chance to re-setup the Amplifi HD.. did a hardware reset, then also did a software reset via the app.

Set it up as a separate network inside my network and setup the mesh points. In a continuous ping I still see some instantaneous spikes into +100ms but didn't see 1000+ms ones like before. And the ISP router Wifi has the same kind of spikes so maybe that's normal?

To really test I guess I'd have to get my parents to try a zoom call or my kid on Discord on the test network, assuming it works double-NATed.

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by photon

I finally got a chance to re-setup the Amplifi HD.. did a hardware reset, then also did a software reset via the app.

Set it up as a separate network inside my network and setup the mesh points. In a continuous ping I still see some instantaneous spikes into +100ms but didn't see 1000+ms ones like before. And the ISP router Wifi has the same kind of spikes so maybe that's normal?

To really test I guess I'd have to get my parents to try a zoom call or my kid on Discord on the test network, assuming it works double-NATed.

Were some of these issues around when your router failed?

Did you mean your ISP modem? Or router? If your modem was doing that, I wonder if you may want to investigate a modem replacement/upgrade. It's possible it's the AmpliFi set up as well if the issue doesn't exist when the computer is wired vs wifi... but it's certainly quite odd.

Pings around 100ms aren't a huge deal if you don't notice them, but your situation seems to be that it's actually noticeable. That sucks. I hope you figure it out.

I don't remember OTOH, but does the AmpliFi app/dashboard or wifiman have analytic information that might help determine if it's the mesh system or something else?