[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: MoCA Losing some Upstream Channels when adding splitter

Hey Guys,

I have been running a MoCA network for awhile now. Recently I swapped out two of my adapters for two of the goCoax 2.5 adapters. I have a 200/10 internet plan.
Right now, I have the coax going into one of the goCoax adapters, and a line coming out of the TV port into the cable modem. I have a picture (attached) showing what the cable modem looks like when using this setup.
If I change the setup to add a moca compatible 2-way splitter (I have tried multiple different types and even a POE filter in front of the cable modem), I instantly lose two of the Upstream bonded channels. Eventually, I lose three of the upstream channels and the modem will reset and cause the router to also reboot.

If I leave my current configuration is as, I dont have any issues - but, once in awhile, the adapter has an issue and instantly caps my network speed to 40 down. If I unplug and plug it back in, the adapter resets and voila, back to normal.

Does anyone have a guess as to why I lose my upstream channels the moment I add a splitter? the numbers look ok. My cable Modem is a Netgear CM600. If I recall, I lose the higher frequency upstream channels.

[Assistant]
too much signal loss between the modem and the ISP.
The splitter adds about 3.5dB loss to the line.
You may have to use an amplified splitter - a 0 gain MOCA powered splitter should work if your current setup doesn't have issues. If it does, you likely need additional amplification in the signal path.

A full map of your coax would be helpful to identify the best location for an amp. It may be that you can amplify at the first entry to your house.
Have you talked with the ISP about increasing the power from their end ? Particularly if you are intermittently loosing bandwidth as is.

degrub said:
too much signal loss between the modem and the ISP.
The splitter adds about 3.5dB loss to the line.
You may have to use an amplified splitter ...

A full map of your coax would be helpful to identify the best location for an amp.
This. And a detailed description or diagram (however rough) of your coax plant might highlight an alternative to a powered amp, depending on how the coax run to the modem location is currently split off the coax plant. The preferred approach is using a 2-way splitter as the top-level splitter, to get the maximum signal strength (passively) possible to the modem.

e.g.

Mark070 said:
If I leave my current configuration is as, I dont have any issues - but, once in awhile, the adapter has an issue and instantly caps my network speed to 40 down. If I unplug and plug it back in, the adapter resets and voila, back to normal.
Does this occur even if the modem (CM600) is protected by a separate MoCA filter?


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Coaxial One Way Filter?

Is there such a thing as a coax one way filter? I've been troubleshooting a cable modem issue and I've determined it's a branch of my house coax cabling that seems to be acting as an antenna and introducing noise into all the other cables every few hours including the cable connected to my modem. The simple solution would be to disconnect the "bad" cable but I have a TV connected there. So I was wondering if there's such a thing as a one way coax filter that would allow TV signals through but prevent any signals in the other direction. Searching for one way coax filter doesn't bring up any such products.

[Assistant]
If that line is acting as an antenna picking up strong local signals then it's probably also is RADIATING signals from the coax.
While this might not be a problem for you directly it does cause noise and interference on the US Aircraft band.
The FCC has strict regulations for this type of interference. I'd recommend correcting the problem by replacing the bad coaxial cable or at the very least having new connectors installed.
Your local cable company might even be willing to assist with this so planes in your area aren't hindered from communicating by the interference caused by a leaky cable TV coax.

Most cable issues are termination issues. I would redo those first unless you can find physical damage or have access to a time domain reflectometer.

a quick test might be to lay in a separate temporary coax run and disconnect the offending cable.

you were able to rule out the TV itself ? Or other loose or corroded ground/shield connections ?


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Need a little help setting up my MOCA network

I recently bought a set of these Translite Global Moca 2.5 adapters. I tried setting it up in my room according to the tutorial video on their youtube page but I don't actually have a second wall jack leaving my room.

The way it's set up is Coax in from outside junction box > Coax Splitter In > Coax Splitter Out > Cable Modem > Ethernet to Router

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B08PMRCQV1/?tag=smallncom-20

I bought a couple of these splitters and I replaced my existing ones around my house.
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07RB61LR9/?tag=smallncom-20

Is it possible for me to set up a connection?

Apologies if I created the thread wrong or confusing. I can take additional pictures of my set up.

Just trying to get one Moca connection set up from the Upstairs computer room to the basement.

[Assistant]
CaptainSTX said:
Start off simple and get the MOCA setup working in a test setup. Test in the room where your router is. This is where one of the MOCA adapters is going to have to be.

TEST

1. Connect adapter 1 to a LAN port on your router.
2. Take a piece of coaxial cable and connect between adapter 1 and adapter 2.
3. Connect your upstairs PC to MOCA adapter 2 using an Ethernet cable.
4. Power up both MOCA adapters and confirm that the coaxial cable is working as a LAN cable. Indicator lights on adapters will give you a clue but try connecting to web sites and run a few speed tests. If everything checks out then you are ready to go into production mode and if you experience problems in the production mode you will need to trouble shoot you coaxial network but at least you know the adapters are working.

PRODUCTION (Before starting locate any splitters in your home and verify and/or replace them with splitters that will pass in excess 1 Ghz. Normal CATV splitters installed by a MSO may be limited to 900 Mhz.)

1. Upstairs connect both your cable modem and adapter 1. Use a splitter if necessary. Plug the LAN port on the adapter into a LAN port on your router. Plug your PC back into the router.

2. Now go to any coaxial cable outlet in your home and connect adapter 2 to it and then check for LAN connectivity by plugging a PC into its LAN port. Use a splitter if necessary to connect both adapter 2 and a TV.

3. For any coaxial terminations that aren't used install terminators to reduce signal leakage.

4. Inside your demarc point which is usually outside the house install a MOCA filter before the splitter feeding your upstairs and downstairs service points on the line side/incoming side of the splitter.
Click to expand...

I tried the test section of this post and the MOCA connection works great between each other but when I take the second adapter to any other room in my house with an active Coax connection nothing happens. Could it be possible none of these connections are connected together at the cable junction box?

afterburn999 said:
Could it be possible none of these connections are connected together at the cable junction box?
Exceedingly possible. If you only have Internet service, it's possible that the current modem connection is the only line connected.

A quick test, if/when you can afford to lose Internet connectivity, would be to try connecting your cable modem (just the modem) in the other locations, and see if it is able to sync w/ the provider.

Or, just head outside and check inside the box (and post a good wide-angle pic of what you find). You'd need to get inside there, anyway, to confirm a "PoE" MoCA filter is installed -- and to get one installed, if not.

afterburn999 said:
I bought a couple of these splitters and I replaced my existing ones around my house.
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07RB61LR9/?tag=smallncom-20
It might be worthwhile drawing/posting a rough sketch of your coax plant, illustrating how the rooms and devices are connected, and where you have splitters (or other components). The above splitters aren't what is typically recommended for a MoCA setup (check the Holland GHS-PRO-M series, Verizon's MoCA 2.0 splitters), but I'm especially curious as to how a couple 6-way splitters would be needed.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Moca setup help

Doing some upgrading on my inlaws home network - previously they were just using the standard router and the wifi was struggling to get to the furthest room upstairs which they use like a lounge/tv room. Tried power plugs but the results weren't great so I installed a deco mesh network which is pretty good but still suffers a bit of a loss in the tv room - so I decided to look at a moca setup along with the mesh combined with a switch so that both wifi and ethernet would be decent up there and could use ethernet for the fire tv while laptops and phones etc could still run off the wifi.

I am using a Deco Mesh setup.

I bought 2 Motorola Bonded 2.0 adapters -https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078HMDDVS/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

When I checked their coax set up in the basement there was an 8-way amp on it which I discovered wasn't Moca compliant so I ordered this 9 port one https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07TN963JJ/?tag=snbforums-20

I set everything up but am not getting a Moca signal in the upstairs room and the 3 lights arent showing on the moca adapter downstairs (they do on the upstairs one) but I connected my ps5 to it to test and no luck.

The path is as follows:

incoming coax - amp - moca adapter - modem - mesh puck - moca adapter ethernet port > wall point upstairs - moca adapter 2 - tv box and ethernet port to ps5 to test connection.

The incoming line to the house in the basement goes into the amp - the various outputs I have then coming out of the amp, using output 2 as recommended in their video as the line going to the modem/router and the rest then going to the various points around the house. They included a power inserter with the moca compliant amp but not sure if that's necessary? Initially using the power inserter and the coax hooked up I wasnt getting any internet at the mesh network at all, then I watched their video about using output 2 as the best one for going to the router/modem so I changed that and also removed the power inserter to test that and this time I had internet via the mesh so I left it like that.

At the router then I have the coax going into the moca adapter - out of it and into the modem which is set to bridge mode and connect to the main deco on the mesh. The mesh is working so the signal seems to at least be going through the adapter ok - on the other ethernet port on the deco puck I have it running back into the moca adapter to pass the signal back to it - I then have the other moca adapter upstairs with the coax from the wall going through it to the set top box and the ethernet port connected to my ps5. On this moca adapter I get 3 green lights but on the one down by the modem I am only getting 2 - the third one showing a link does not light or blink.

As its not my own house I am not familiar with everything but as best I can see I have everything setup properly and the way it should be - the power inserter I wasnt sure on but as I said it worked without it. Its possible there is a splitter upstairs in the attic which is along the line somewhere before the upstairs room - I am going to investigate that tomorrow but outside of that I am stumped at why its not working?

I had assumed rightly or wrongly that once I was using a moca amp that the signal would get though fine (it has its own POE filter internally) and once I linked everything up it would connect between the two adapters but no joy.

Any ideas or advice appreciated - I can draw up the layout if needed but its pretty standard I think. I am assuming there is no other splitters outside the line coming in to the basement, and my father in law says he thinks the only place there is a splitter is in the attic to send the line to one or two of the rooms upstairs, I'm aware the splitter may be the issue and could be too low frequency and will check that tomorrow but maybe spots some issue in the setup or a familiar issue that crops up - ISP is TW/Spectrum if that makes any difference.

[Assistant]
First - directly plug a single coax cable between the two motorolas (coax in port on each) to make sure they will sync.

Normally, a setup would have a two way splitter with one leg to the ISP modem and one to the moca adapter. The setup would not use the "pass through" filter on the moca adapter. . Try connecting the moca modem to one of the "out" ports and leaving the ISP modem on out port2.

you may well have to power the amp ( right hand side lower port in the corner) to achieve the zero loss through the splitter. moca modems generally have adequate power budget, but such a large number of ports may result in at least 7dB of loss if not more between ports. that plus the line losses to the end points may be an issue. The fact that the other existing equipment is working, suggests that signal loss is not the issue however. the moca modem might be providing power to the pass through port, but i don't know the motorola design.

Thanks for the reply - yeah i plan to do a test between the two adapters later to check that.

You mention a normal setup would use a splitter and not the pass through - as the router/modem is in bridge mode I need to pass through the deco for an ip etc as it seems there will be ip issues if I use the dhcp from the router to feed the deco. I have a switch I can use to divert things but again id still need the router/modem in bridge mode so the idea would be feeding the signal from the router to the deco the way it currently is (wifi works) and then feed the out from it to a switch and from it feed the moca adapter and they need another port for a pc or anything its available at the switch.

Edit: I had said moca above when I meant I need to run the ethernet through the deco for an IP etc. When you said splitter though I now see you meant splitting the incoming coax going to the moca and diverting it to the router instead of going through the adapter. But that creates a similar issue in that the location of the amp to the router means I can split it at the amp but its not near the router to then run the ethernet back into the moca adapter...i could put a splitter at the router which would be splitting the coax coming from out 2 on the amp at the point it reaches the router and divert one end to the moca and the other to the router and then link the ethernet from the deco back into the moca - would not using the pass through on the moca make that much difference, isn't that whats it intended to do? I have read elsewhere that
MoCA adapters use an internal diplexer to filter/direct signals, so the signal passed to the modem will be slightly stronger than if a splitter were used - along with isolating the modem from MoCA signals, and vice versa. The Motorola MM1000 I am using being the example.

LikeReply

Edited my last post as I misread what you wrote the first time when I replied.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Is it TP-Link or GoCoax?

Who is making my life miserable, I'm getting a constant intermittent time outs ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT then most of the time after another try or few seconds the page renders. This happens on both wifi and ethernet, last night the TV wifi connection kept dropping, I've tried different channels and various combinations of 2.4 and 5G usage. I've approached both Gocoax support with little help, stating it seems that it's not likely the moca adaptor, so I went to TP-link and they are slow to help. Router lights stay green. I know it has to be one of these as I have another desktop connected directly to cable modem with no connectivity issues. Any guidance in which to pursue would be greatly appreciated?

Equipment:
GoCoax 2.5 - only one pairing setup
Tp-link Archer A7
POE in place before main splitter

GoCoax suggested using a splitter to modem and gocoax adapt, then connect ethernet to router.

[Assistant]
Are the sync lights stable on the gocoax modem ?
is any of the coax shared with the ISP coax modem ? is it DocCis 3.1 or 3.0 ?

We need 1) network layout map showing all devices and connections, 2) brand and model # of the splitter(s) - are they moca2.0 rated and certified if the coax path for GoCoax devices is part of the network ?

look at the diagnostic page in the gocoax modem
use iperf to run bandwidth tests between end points on local lan.

Deleted last post by mistake was trying to upload new diagram with white background so you could read it.
Anyways, as I was saying, the equipment is relatively new, splitters are holland moca compliant. Something strange did happen this evening when we couldn't connect over wifi to watch soccer on Peacock my son decided to unplug the gocoax adapter and all of a sudden TV connected and no latency in loading content, previously TV lagged to load content or didn't connect, which then makes me think about what has been happening over ethernet, the latency is like that but on PC the browser just times outs, of course I can't connect over ethernet now to test this as it depends on moca.

I will work on the diagnotics from cable modem next.

When your son "unplugged the GoCoax " modem did he just pull the power or disconnect the coax or disconnect the ethernet cable to the GoCoax modem ?

The Arris is DOCCIS 3.0 according to the user manual . Go into the configuration and post an image of the Gateway Network Connection Status. It will show the frequencies used by Comcast to the modem.

You may have to change the settings in the GoCOAX modems to use extended D High band to avoid conflict if Comcast is using one of the MOCA2.5 bands..

With the GoCoax modems powered up and synced, go to the config/status/diag pages and post screen shots of the link rate and other parameters.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: MoCA PHY Rates question

I have been playing around with my newly setup MOCA network and have a question regarding the PHY rates chart from one of the GoCoax adapters. See attachment showing my network. When I look at the PHY Rates between Network 1 GoCoax adapters going from the TP Link router to the netgear R8000P router I see 689 and 701 in the green shaded area and 3500+ in the white squares. When I look at the PHY chart for the network 2 GoCoax adapters running from the TP Link router to the Belkin Router the PHY rates are all around 214 -249 in the lite green shaded areas and 3500+ from/to the bright green squares.

My question is why are the lite green shaded areas associated to the bright green squares associated to network 2 so much less than the lite green shaded areas for network 1? Should they be?

[Assistant]
looks as expected to me. The gocoax modems in both network are talking to each other at about 3400 which is full speed for moca2.5.
The other devices in network 2 look like they may support moca1.0 or 1.1.

if you want to test actual transfer speeds, use iperf and two computers on the network. Do some searching in this forum to get the command line to use with parallel streams. Otherwise, the transfer rate will look abysmal. MOCA was set up to allow multiple devices to communicate in parallel across the coax. When you just do a file or directory copy across the moca network, it will look slow. If you have multiple devices doing that at the same time, then you will see the total throughput.

Thank you for the response, I was focused GCD values where network 1 GCD values 689 and 701 for GoCoax adapters and on network 2 the values are 223 and 214 for the 2 GoCoax adapters. It is my understanding the GCD values are the actual bit rate while PHY values are what it could be. I’m a newbie and not fully understanding what the data in the tables are telling.

I have Verizon with 200/200 service, I do see a difference in speeds between network 1 and network 2. What I mean by this is if I connect wirelessly to belkin router 5G band (Network 2) and run a online speed test shows about 90-100 Mbps download and 70-80 Mbps upload. When I connect to netgear router wirelessly also 5G band (Network 1) and run a online speed test shows 230-260 download and 170-180 upload.

I know online speed tests are not accurate but the difference between network 1 and 2 are substantially different. Not sure if I should focus on coax cabling on network 2, replace old belkin router in AP mode or if issue is with network 2 being inline with ONT and STBs that are all MOCA 1.1 and may be limiting the speed on network 2.

update: solved issue with speed on network 2, I replaced the Belkin AC1200 router on network 2 with a RAX10 AX1800 router and speeds on network 2 significantly faster. GoCoax adapters running great


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: MoCA and TiVo

My network uses two Actiontec ECB6200 MoCA adapters - one to create the MoCA network and a second on the floor below. Other MoCA devices include a TiVo BOLT, TiVo Roamio and three TiVo Minis (v2). My Internet service is 1Gbs and typically tests at 850-950Mbs via a PC downstream of my modem, router and a network switch.

At present I am getting a max of 180MBs for devices wired to the MoCA adapters (via simple 1Gb network switches). For devices connected by WiFi, bypassing the MoCA, I get up to 500Mbs, limited only by each device's WiFi version.

Why is my MoCA network limited to 180MBs? I know that the ECB6200s are MoCA 2.0 Bonded, so I expect much more throughput. Are the TiVOs slowing down my MoCA network?

Thanks for any suggestions.

[Assistant]
Did you mean 180 MBytes/s or 180 Mbits/s ?
How are you measuring bandwidth across the lan ?
Try this experiment - connect the two moca modems with a short piece of coax, connect a pc to the 2nd moca modem, leave the other moca modem connected to the lan. Do you get the same bandwidth as before ?
Have you accessed the diagnostics page in the moca modem to see what the sync rate is between the two moca modems ? And what frequency bands are being used while the modems are operating with the Tivo devices ?

Is the cable plant RG6 or RG59 ?
Are there any splitters in the coax plant ?
What is the labeled frequency range of the splitter ?

JWadle said:
Why is my MoCA network limited to 180MBs? I know that the ECB6200s are MoCA 2.0 Bonded, so I expect much more throughput. Are the TiVOs slowing down my MoCA network?
Easy enough to test the theory. Power everything down ... modem, router, network switches, MoCA adapters, TiVo boxes ... and keep everything down for a minute or three, then power each device up one-at-a-time, in the order above, allowing each to fully boot and confirm operation before proceeding to the next ... EXCEPT leave the TiVo boxes all powered down.

Then test your MoCA network's speed with the TiVo boxes remaining powered down.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Complicated home wiring, unusable HomePlug network

I need to get a reliable, high speed connection from my cable modem (in the house) to my home studio (in the detached garage). I purchased a NetGear HomePlug LAN extender. The distance form the house to the garage is maybe 100 or 150 feet; the HomePlug system is supposed to deliver gigabit speeds at 300 yards, but I get a marginal connection at best, often no connection, between the two ends.

Most of the house (including the head end of the HomePlug setup) is on a standby generator with an automatic transfer switch. The garage is not on the transfer switch; there is a 100 amp circuit off the main electrical panel in the house, which goes to the electrical in the garage. Both ends of the HomePlug system are plugged directly into the wall. There are no AFCI breakers involved, as far as I can tell. So the path from the house to the garage goes something like this:

device - wall outlet - generator panel - transfer switch - house panel - garage panel - wall outlet - device.

The documentation that came with the HomePlug equipment suggested trying different outlets at both ends to find the best connection. I've done that, at both ends, and I always get the same result: sometimes a very slow connection, sometimes no connection at all. I'm at a loss as to how to troubleshoot this setup. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

P. S. If HomePlug isn't going to work, what other options do I have? Is there an affordable fiber solution? Thinwire? UTP? Infrared? I could conceivably bury a cable, and I do have available windows with line of sight between the house and garage.

[Assistant]
Having a generator with a simple transfer switch I don't think you having one should make any difference as connection are all made through mechanical make or break switches.

Now if you have load shedding modules installed to drop certain high power circuits I suppose it is possible that they could introduce some noise/interference that might be causing your problem.

What I would be checking is the polarity correct and the same at both ends of the run to the garage i.e are the outlets in the garage wired correctly, what voltage are you seeing in the garage and finally if you are comfortable working your main main panel disconnect the wires from the 100 amp breaker and check the resistance of each of the individual wires going to the garage.

If you can't get the powerline working then a wireless bridge between the main house and the garage is an option if you don't want to run an Ethernet cable which for just 100' feet isn't that hard unless you have driveways and sidewalks in your way.

If burying a cable is a possibility, and you do this properly too (i.e. to 'code'), do it.

You can dig the trench yourself, get neighborhood kids to help, etc., to keep the costs down. But you will be much further ahead (and (possibly) even save money too vs. other options that will also be prone to interference on their own).

Return the PLA and start digging.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Crazy Download Speed Variances

Not sure if this belongs in this section, so apologies in advance.

I've been trying to improve download performance on my PC. I have three options for connection: a) Wireless to an AP located about 35 feet away and through one wall b) Wireless to an AP located about 17 feet away, also through one wall and b) via ethernet. Both the AP's and the ethernet connection are supplied via Trendnet Powerline adapters. In terms of distance from the Gateway, AP A is furthest, AP B is closest and the Ethernet connection to the PC is just slightly further than AP B.

Here are my speed test results: AP A, 50 MBps; AP B 5 MBps and Ethernet, 5 MBps. The best connection by far is with the AP furthest from the PC and furthest from the Gateway. This seems wildly counterintuitive.

The APs are identically configured Almond devices (one is set to channel 7; the other to channel 5). How would I further test these configurations, what settings on the modem should I look at, etc. The very low performance seems odd since it is working gangbusters on AP A, but terribly when direct connected to the PC

[Assistant]
Welcome, @Curmudgeon10! This does make sense!

The PLA connected to the router's LAN port is closest to the PLA closest to the furthest AP. Best signal possible.

Anything further is bound to be worse. And it is.

I would suggest the following setup for you instead.

Turn one of those AP's into a Media Bridge and have it sit as close to the main router as possible while being connected to the computer in question via Ethernet cable. If I'm not mistaken, you should be hitting very close to your maximum ISP speeds like this and have less Wi-Fi RF pollution by having one less AP connected and broadcasting too.

Ideally, you would take out of use all the AP's you're using now too.

Thanks for the reply! I need some clarification.

To facilitate discussion, I am enclosing a drawing.
This drawing clears up one misstatement in my original post: Wifi signal B must travel through not one, but two walls to reach the PC. Unfortunately, relocating any of these boxes, including the PC is not practical. The Gateway is situated in a room adjacent to the cable entry into the house, and where the cable signal is strongest. (Most important factor: wife has begrudgingly issued her approval for the presence of those ugly boxes in the living area at that spot only) The PC is located in my office. WAP "A" was established just recently to cure a problem I had with low signal strength at our Ring Video Doorbell (it works great now). WAP B was established to provide WiFi to a separate building located about 50 yards away. Also works great.

So I'm still a bit mystified why I can show 50 MBps download when the PC is linked to "B," but only 5 MBps when its linked to either "A" or via direct connect Ethernet through the PLA at "C." Can one electrical outlet neck down throughput but another might not? I do have access to another, separate outlet at "C" which I can try with the PLA.

Thanks for the diagram. Much simpler to follow.

Yes, the specific connections and paths the electrical wiring follows can show those kinds of differences or more. Everything makes a difference.

I would guess that the main Asus router and the 'B' AP are on one breaker circuit and (?) even one electrical run. That would explain why it has a good connection back to the main router.

The 'A' and 'C' connections must be trying to flow through multiple breaker circuits or badly connected electrical runs.

Have you tried putting them all on the same Control Channel to see if their performance improves, overall? Try testing with Channels 1, 6, or 11 (only), and see what results are achieved. Depending on what the main router is set to, they're all interfering with each other (and maybe your neighbor's AP's) too.

Curious what your ISP paid for speeds are? What model is the Asus router?

What speeds do you get from a wired connection (or via the router's GUI, if you're running current or Beta stock Asus or RMerlin firmware) when connected directly on your main router?


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Coax to Ethernet adapters - running into probs adding the 3rd, splitter?

I have VDSL through CenturyLink - I use an Actiontec c3000z. I have a 4 level home and relocated my modem/router to the top floor since I work from home and Wifi wasn't cutting it. That left a wifi dead spot in my basement where my sons room is. I bought a pair of coax/ethernet adapters and a Netgear Nighthawk wireless router for his room so he'd have both hardwired and wifi connections. Worked perfectly, my coax is all home run and at that point I was just using a barrel connector to connect the 2 rooms. (junction in the garage)
We also have a Ps4 in the ground floor living room and after Christmas I bought another adapter to have a wired ethernet connection there. I installed the adapter at the PS4 and swapped out the barrel connector in the garage with a 5-2400 MHz 2 way splitter and it worked perfectly. Except my son came upstairs claiming he'd lost internet. I disconnected the coax from the ps4 side of the splitter in the garage and the basement internet began working again.
Here's my question: Is being able to have internet connectivity at EITHER the PS4 OR the basement router (not both at the same time) because they are both connected to the same LAN port in my c3000z, or because of my splitter.
I saw a similar post addressing this, but I'm having a brain block on what the solution was after reading it over and over here: third-moca-adapter-wont-connect.62453
I drew it out so hopefully someone can see where I've gone wrong. Eager for the "DUH" moment because I'm sure its simple.

[Assistant]
It looks like it should work.

A couple of things to check. Using some short runs of COAX set up a LAB type setup and see if you can get it to work using your splitter and MOCA adapters.

If that doesn't work look at the setting for your MOCA adapters and confirm you are setup for multi point network. I have used MOCA but never multi point so I can't tell you what settings if any to look at.

sobelsaint said:
One thing I also had to change was the 3 way splitter and use a 3 way splitter/combiner. This may help someone in the future running into issues.
He might have just lucked out with the ones he bought.
They might or might not be transformer coupled.

A good place to start might be to go back to that thread and ask him where he bought the splitter/combiners he's using.

KsWoodsMan said:
He might have just lucked out with the ones he bought.
They might or might not be transformer coupled.

A good place to start might be to go back to that thread and ask him where he bought the splitter/combiners he's using.
Will do - follow up question, and maybe this is my mechanical brain missing something, but how would switching to that type of splitter affect flow in this case. I don't need the PS4 MOCA to talk to the Basement MOCA, they just both need to talk to my main AP MOCA right? the benefit of using what I assume he pictured is to make the ethernet signal omnidirectional vs. just back and forth to the main connection upstairs?
Just trying to avoid all the store runs if unnecessary


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Third Moca adapter wont connect.

I currently have a Alcatel fiber modem which connects to a moca adapter. I had one other moca adapter setup upstairs which connected to my Netgear wifi router and things worked great. I'm trying to connect another moca adapter and I can't get all 3 to connect to the internet. I have all 3 coax lines connected correctly and the lights are all correct but only 2 will pair with internet connection at a time. I've tried every combination with my coax splitter and have reset everything multiple times. Is there something that I am missing? I currently have cox fiber and the moca adapters are 2 Motorola versions and one Verizon labeled ecb5240. I've tried both Motorola and actiontec software flashed to the mocha devices. I've also switched the moca adapters around to different locations. Is there something possibly that cox is doing? Thank you in advance for any help.

[Assistant]
Do any two work on the same coax ? or does the third not work when added not matter where it is added ?

Or do only the two Motorolas work together and the Verizon not work with the motorola ?

If the issue does not follow a specific moca modem does it only occur at one location or is it only when the third is connected on a specific coax segment ?

Did you get the security key set the same on all three ?

I can get any two working in any combination so I know they all work and coax lines are connected. I'll double check security but I believe they are all set to off so I'm guessing the key doesn't matter? They are all on the same frequency as well. Only thing I can think of at this point is the splitter I'm using is the issue. Since I'm using direct fiber line there is no coax going outside of the house. The splitter is moca2 compliant but maybe I need a different type. I'm going to try one of those that directly connect the copper lines bypassing a circuit board tomorrow.

A moca2 filter at the head end can help as well. Make sure all unused ports on splitters are are capped with 75 ohm terminators and unused cables also.

If it is moca2 compatible, all ports should be passing signal unless the circuit board is defective. If the three modems together are showing green sync lights, then i doubt they or the cable plant are the issue.

Is the issue only getting out to the internet ? internal between devices works fine with 3 moca modems connected ? have you tried to at least ping across all of the internal paths ?
What device is providing DHCP ?

a sketch of the wire paths and connectinos, coax and ethernet, starting with the Alcatel fiber modem, would help diagnose the issue.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Need some advice on the best layout for Moca setup (with possible Ethernet link later)

Our house was built in 2008, and has both coax and telephone cabling installed. I believe the phone cabling is actually CAT-5 cabling.
We do not use wired phones anymore, and neither do we watch cable TV. We only use the coax to feed our cable modem.

I installed Google Wifi pucks around the house, and while they work a lot better than the previous wifi routers we used, since our connection was upgraded to 1Gb/s there's a need to get this higher speed spread around the house.

The current situation in our house is:
1 - cable coming in from outside
2 - this cable is directly connected to one of outlets, where we have our cable modem (not router) connected, which feeds the Google Wifi router
3- there is a splitter visible on the photo as well, but not currently in use.
4 - then there are six cables running to the various rooms which are not currently connected

Not all rooms are served by coax. Some of the rooms not served by coax do have a phone line.
My initial plan is to get MOCA connections to all rooms served by coax. In future perhaps wire up other rooms by re-purposing the CAT-5 cabling (not sure this is even possible)

What would be the best way to get MOCA spread around the house? I am unclear on whether I should split signal from ISP, then into MOCA splitter, or some other configuration.
Also, but less important right now: what would be a good way to at least prepare for a possible future upgrade where I also use the former phone cabling?

Thanks for your help.

[Assistant]
Reverse said:
Also, but less important right now: what would be a good way to at least prepare for a possible future upgrade where I also use the former phone cabling?
First thought... You may be overestimating the difficulty and underestimating the cost savings of tackling the Cat5e lines ASAP.

That said... How many rooms, where you will want wired network connectivity, have a coax port but no nearby phone jack? (If greater than 1, then you'd need to get MoCA working, regardless.)

On the Cat5e front ...

1) I count 7 Cat5e lines in the junction box (right?), though 1 of which may be an incoming line from outside. So, you should have 6 or 7 phone outlets in the house to locate and identify as being worth converting to a network jack or left as a potential phone line.

2) Are the phone jacks RJ11 or RJ45? If RJ45, pull the faceplate and inspect whether the jack can be easily rewired for an Ethernet connection (w/ T568A/B color labeling).

3) Get a recommendation for a RJ45 patch panel for the central junction box, and wire it to match the standard used at the faceplate outlets (T568A or B). Something like the following:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078FLT5S3/?tag=snbforums-20
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000EHW88Q/?tag=snbforums-20
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000U3DXM4/?tag=snbforums-20
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000HZES42/?tag=snbforums-20
4) Helpful tools for basic line identification and testing:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000GL7GJG/?tag=snbforums-20
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M63EMBQ/?tag=snbforums-20

On the MoCA front... Re:
Reverse said:
The current situation in our house is:
1 - cable coming in from outside
2 - this cable is directly connected to one of outlets, where we have our cable modem (not router) connected, which feeds the Google Wifi router
1) What is the brand & model # of your modem? (needed to check MoCA compatibility)

2) Is there only one coax outlet in the room where the modem & main Google Wi-Fi router are currently located? (2 coax lines would allow isolation of the DOCSIS [cable Internet] and MoCA signals, which can be beneficial as providers migrate to DOCSIS 3.1, or DOCSIS 3.1 hardware is introduced)

3) Could the modem and main Google Wi-Fi router be located at the central junction panel? (ditto #2, isolation of Internet/DOCSIS signal from MoCA is a plus, if possible)

4) What speeds are you paying for from your provider, and what LAN speeds are you looking to enable via MoCA?


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: 2nd Office in Same Building -- Best Practice?

I set up a new office for our company. We're small but growing. Our boss just acquired another office to accommodate our growth and he's asked me to help set up the network in that office.

I am, by trade, a software engineer but I enjoyed the challenge of setting up the initial office (after a TON of research). We have a Fortigate with a Fortiswitch and a FortiAP in the main office. When we set up the first office, we added network wall jacks to every office and use them to connect to our POE VOIP phones.

Aside from a few hiccups, things have been working well for the past 3 years.

So the new office:
In the same building, on the same floor but not adjacent -- about 200 feet away with the wall jacks already in place. The building manager said he'd be happy to run a cable from our existing office to the new one, if necessary.

So, my plan is to have plenum cable run to the new office and get another Fortiswitch, hooked to the cable from our first Fortiswitch and distribute the network from there -- adding another FortiAP as well.

Does this sound reasonable or should we get another drop from our cable company?

All comments or suggestions are very welcome!!

[Assistant]
KCL said:
Does this sound reasonable or should we get another drop from our cable company?

Why pay extra monthly ISP fees, purchase extra gateways and deal with VPN connections over Internet when you have an option to run a simple cable between the two offices? Just add the needed switch and access points to the new office, plan some network segmentation if needed and you're good to go. Purchase same vendor equipment for compatibility and easier management, this is a good plan.

Run the cable. Pull two at same time and have the ability for LAG or redundancy or quick replacement.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: I Who Know Nothing Seek Network Help Please.

Greetings. This is about a NAS but I think it is more of a LAN specific problem. Trouble is, unless something just works or I have detailed instructions, I haven’t the first clue…
I have an Asustor 7004T NAS. It was all working fine. Then I moved house, got a new ISP (Starlink, with Gen3 modem, in case that’s relevant) and plugged my NAS into the modem. It took unusually long to boot but once it did, I was able to see all the content using Windows Explorer on the same laptop that I used in the old house.
However, I can’t access the AMD (OS) & admin of the NAS. I can’t get into it via Web GUI, the proprietary Asustor App reports it can see the NAS but can’t access it (the IP address is shown as the old one as in my old house) and it reports the NAS has a “different subnet”.
Also, the Starlink App shows the NAS in its device list with a different IP address to the one it had before but it isn’t accessible no matter what various IPs I try.
Back in the old house, I did change the default access ports but I know those numbers & it doesn’t help.
Starlink reports the IP is 192.xxx.x.254. Starlink’s subnet is shown in the App as 192.xxx.x.1/24 (which to my amateur eye is outside of the range of the NAS’s IP ending 254) and it says “[This is an] advanced feature that changes the IP addresses assigned to your devices. Most users [that’s me!] should use the default.” Hence, I’m not just altering the subnet rashly to see what happens!
Could the IP address for the NAS in the old house be “static”? which I somehow set myself (or it just did it itself) but then why would Starlink give it another, different one and one outside of its own subnet range? That makes no sense.
So, I hope I’ve described everything properly; does anyone know what’s amiss & how to fix it please?

[Assistant]
Saltrams said:
Starlink reports the IP is 192.xxx.x.254. Starlink’s subnet is shown in the App as 192.xxx.x.1/24
If these are 192.168.x.x, there is no need to hide them here in the post. /24 is OK as long as the first 3 parts of the IPs match.

Oh, OK thanks. I thought it best to put x as I didn’t know if it was important.
I’d be pleased to know why /24 is OK when .254 is outside that number, just for the learning value. However, it means that the subnet isn’t the problem so now I have no clue as to what could be wrong

192.168.1.1/24 belongs to the subnet with the range 192.168.1.0 - 192.168.1.255. Look up “CIDR calculator” online and it might do a better job explaining it than me.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Thinking about going Prosumer

House is 2-story, 3500 sq ft. Currently have main router GT-AX6000 with another GT-AX6000 in MoCA wired backhaul (2.5GbE) AiMesh mode. It's running good but the more I read about networking (total novice) the more I'm convinced to go to Pfsense/Opnsense with enterprise wifi AP. I have been thinking about the HUNSN mini PC and can't decide on enterprise WiFi AP. Unifi 7 Pro, Zyxel NWA220AX-6E, Grandstream GWN7665, Omada EAP670, Ruckus (used R750). Am I on the right track or is this overkill? Is Consumer (ASUS) good enough? Thanks

[Assistant]
Nobody can answer this question because you haven't said what is wrong with your current setup or what you hope to achieve by changing things.

It's my understanding that the firewall in Pfsense/OPNSense is much better than consumer (intrusion detection, intrusion prevention?). And the hardware in something like the HUNSN (CPU/RAM) is superior to consumer routers (and I might even be able to attach a NAS to it?). Also, my current WiFi only generates about 2 bars out of 4 (rssi) @ 160mhz. Want the best WiFi network without getting into a whole home lab and consuming my whole life (which I see people do).

If you want better WIFI drop back to 80 MHz on the 5 GHz and 20 MHz on the 2.4 GHz. You will get a stronger signal and fewer connection issues.

If you have not had any security issues with the Asus routers you do not need to spend more money on something that may be .01% better. Most security issues are the result of bad browsing habits or responding to scams. A good filtering DNS resolver such as Quad9 or Control D will help. You will also spend less time managing your Asus routers. They will pretty much care for themselves with auto upgrades enabled


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: seeking advice - simple hardware setup for fiber run between buildings

Good afternoon all! Hoping I can get some advice on hardware for what I think should be a simple fiber run:

Current setup is fiber running into an ASUS router in primary building. Looking to put in a 50-75' fiber run to a router running as an AP in a separate building (blue lines), which will be connected to a 3rd outbuilding via unifi nanostations. Fiber will be run underground in conduit. Current speeds are 100/100, and I'm not planning on increasing past 1gb in the future (I'm sure I could cry someday about my poor planning) , and at the moment just want to extend the 100/100 from primary to the 2 outbuildings: (all routers / APs are Asus AC86u, might upgrade to AX86u as I've been very happy with the ACs)

Please forgive the crude mspaint drawing =)

I believe I need:
2x fiber media converters (2x TP-Link MC220Ls or similar)
2x SFP modules
fiber
Hoping I can get suggestions for reliable equipment that won't break the bank. I don't know much about multi-mode vs single. If there is something terribly wrong with the planned setup I'm open to advice as well.
Thank you!

[Assistant]
If you are just going 75 FT max CAT 5e should be good enough and less expensive than fiber. Would use the existing hardware, too. Make sure you have an extra nylon pull cord in the conduit. Then you can replace the UTP with fiber in the future or replace the UTP if it should go bad.

bbunge said:
If you are just going 75 FT max CAT 5e should be good enough and less expensive than fiber. Would use the existing hardware, too. Make sure you have an extra nylon pull cord in the conduit. Then you can replace the UTP with fiber in the future or replace the UTP if it should go bad.
Super sound advice - truly my only reason for wanting to go with fiber is precautionary related to lightning strikes.

I'm actually in a fairly low strike area, I just don't want to deal with the possibility of having to replace a bunch of equipment on the off-chance there is one.

If the two buildings on are separate ground rods, then fiber or point to point APs are the way to go. Ground loops between the two grounding rods will not be a good thing irrespective of lightning.

Regarding lightning, certainly use fiber or point to point, however, if there is a hit anywhere in the immediate area, the voltage level of "ground" will be elevated and may overcome any protection you have in place, including the zener diodes typically used in electronic equipment to prevent reverse current from ground when the ground voltage is elevated. And actually, you don't need a strike. Just the cloud passing over can induce opposing potential in the earth. That is what the diodes help with. Surge arrestors and filtering, usually in a UPS or a plug bar with protection will help with that.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: How much IPv6 usage are you seeing?

Posting it here to avoid derailing the other thread - if you are curious at how much IPv6 traffic you get while browsing the Internet, look at the Chrome IPvFoo addon. For instance when accessing snbforums, this is what I get here:

The list is truncated because it's too long, but the missing portion below is a fairly similar ratio of IPv4 vs IPv6.

Interesting to see so many ad providers still being IPv4-only.

[Assistant]
Last time I checked using the same IPvFoo addon very few sites were using IPv6 only. Mostly Google and Facebook related.

Not yet a good approximation since I restarted the firewall recently, but I think over time this will give a good proxy for the ratio of new IPv4 versus IPv6 connections leaving my LAN.
Code:
# iptables -nvL FORWARD | grep pkts; iptables -nvL FORWARD | grep ACCEPT | tail -1; ip6tables -nvL FORWARD | grep ACCEPT | tail -1;
 pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
  527  155K ACCEPT     all  --  br0    *       0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0
  806  503K ACCEPT     all      br0    eth0    ::/0                 ::/0

dave14305 said:
Not yet a good approximation since I restarted the firewall recently, but I think over time this will give a good proxy for the ratio of new IPv4 versus IPv6 connections leaving my LAN.
Code:
# iptables -nvL FORWARD | grep pkts; iptables -nvL FORWARD | grep ACCEPT | tail -1; ip6tables -nvL FORWARD | grep ACCEPT | tail -1;
 pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
  527  155K ACCEPT     all  --  br0    *       0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0
  806  503K ACCEPT     all      br0    eth0    ::/0                 ::/0
Click to expand...
Interesting result on dual stack, even by my standards.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Are you using IPv6?

Just curious. How are you using IPv6 in your home network?

[Assistant]
Nothing at all, but I'm in privileged position with public IPv4 IPs available for all ISP lines. In this case I don't need to apply solutions for non-existing problems and have no need to secure dual-stack networks. Two of my ISP lines don't even support IPv6 in 2025.

My ISP, Brightspeed, only offers 6RD. So why add a problem.

Using it for everything for at least 20 years now. Been a long time since I had any issues with it.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: How to put a linux device between WAN port of router and the external firbre eth interface for network analysis

Hi

I would like to do some analysis of the traffic coming out of my router and thought I could do this by connecting a device (probably a RPi) to the WAN port of my router where I could route it on to the network and then do whatever analysis I want on the RPi.
Does anyone know if this is possible and if so how I would configure the routing such that traffic is forwarded from the interface connected to the wan to the interface connected to the network ?
I assume I'd have to use some form of bridging configuration to do this, but am not sure.

[Assistant]
Use a switch that allows cloning the packets to a different port. Then hang your monitoring device off that port. Probably an x86 based box

Well you don't have to do anything special. The router just has to have the capability.
To use something like wireshark, you would set up a remote tcp dump connection.

But the router has to have ssh access as well as the tcpdump command. So it depends on the router you have.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Aerial Fiber

I thought fiber was all under ground, is aerial fiber any more reliable than cable?
Dobson is installing fiber in my town now, dunno if its any better than Optimum cable that I have now

[Assistant]
Fiber can be hung on utility poles (in some places fiber is a mixture of above and below ground). I would think fiber is generally more reliable than cable, but both are susceptible to the same physical disruptions.

The networking characteristics of each technology may be a better way to decide. Fiber usually has symmetric speeds, more consistency throughout the day, and has lower latency.

I had Optimum for about a year now, speeds are fine but I haven't went two weeks without a outage...

Justinh said:
Fiber can be hung on utility poles (in some places fiber is a mixture of above and below ground). I would think fiber is generally more reliable than cable, but both are susceptible to the same physical disruptions.

The networking characteristics of each technology may be a better way to decide. Fiber usually has symmetric speeds, more consistency throughout the day, and has lower latency.
Click to expand...
Lots of fiber is aerial. When you are driving down the road it is easy to spot aerial fiber. Just look for what people call "snowshoes" which are the spools you see along fiber aerial plant where they coil up the extra cable that allows them to drop the plant to ground level so in case repairs are needed so the fiber can be spliced.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Modem Advice

My modem, sb 6183 is starting to die, after 5 years. Having to reboot it several times.
I like Arris, and was wondering if S33 is a good choice.
Xfinity 1gb service, ASUS Ax68U Wifi router.
2 story house, 2600 sq foot, 5 tvs, 2 laptop

[Assistant]
Steve40th said:
My modem, sb 6183 is starting to die, after 5 years. Having to reboot it several times.
I like Arris, and was wondering if S33 is a good choice.
Xfinity 1gb service, ASUS Ax68U Wifi router.
2 story house, 2600 sq foot, 5 tvs, 2 laptop

S33 should be fine...

Alt choice would be the SB8200 from Arris


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Solved Question on Frontier fiber installation

I plan on getting Frontier fiber installed soon and was wondering if my assumptions on how they run fiber etc. is correct.
How I would assume it can be installed is that they could run fiber into my basement to the ONT then Ethernet is run across base up through floor (hole in place) up to the router.
I ask since my neighbor has their EDP and ONT sandwiched on the wall of the house, I'm hoping they can be separated.
Hope I explained it correctly as I'm not a network expert.

[Assistant]
Try working with your installer. Tell him what you want. Or try to work with them ahead of time. My ATT ONT is located inside my house. Fiber terminates there. ATT modem located in a wiring closet. Connection from ONT to ATT router is via ethernet to MOCA modems over coax to ethernet to router.

degrub said:
Try working with your installer. Tell him what you want. Or try to work with them ahead of time. My ATT ONT is located inside my house. Fiber terminates there. ATT modem located in a wiring closet. Connection from ONT to ATT router is via ethernet to MOCA modems over coax to ethernet to router.
Thanks I figured it shouldn't be an issue but figured I'd check first.

I just experienced this same thing. The installer put the ONT inside the house above the electric box. He then connected one of the pre-wired ethernet cable that runs from there to my living room wall jack. He did install the Brightspeed router in the living room but I have since taken that out of service to install my Asus router. Works perfectly.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: US Xfinity Internet users check your upload speeds

I accidentally discovered today that Xfinity (US ISP) increased my upload bandwidth from the measly 20 Mbit to a less measly 35 Mbit (almost 42 Mbit with 20% over-provisioning). As a QoS user with upload artificially limited, I wouldn’t have noticed this for a long time.

It’s likely a regional, rolling upgrade process, so not all users or plans may be included yet. But heads up just in case!

Found press release:
https://corporate.comcast.com/press/releases/comcast-upgrades-speeds-million-xfinity-internet-customers-no-additional-cost

[Assistant] Yep happened March 6th. Emails were sent to customers that are included in the upload upgrades.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: How many connection attempts are you getting on your home router while all ports are closed?

Hi,

I'm getting 8 connection attempts per minute around the clock, or about 11500 per day.
Is this normal? It seems a lot to me.
What about you?

[Assistant]
There is no "normal" number. Just common Internet background noise. The built-in firewall takes care of it.

Bozdw said:
Hi,

I'm getting 8 connection attempts per minute around the clock, or about 11500 per day.
Is this normal? It seems a lot to me.
What about you?
Well I would do a port scan to see if anything open, if everything is closed, then don't worry about it. I check ports 21, 22, 23, 25, 53, 80, 110, 115, 135, 139, 143, 194, 443, 445, 514, 1433, 3306, 3389, 5632, 5900, 7000, 9000, 25565 with https://dnschecker.org/port-scanner.php

If your connection is dhcp, someone else may have a compromised system on the isp that you are using so when you get that particular outside ip that hackers knows the number, they end up bashing against the firewall.

Bozdw said:
Hi,

I'm getting 8 connection attempts per minute around the clock, or about 11500 per day.
Is this normal? It seems a lot to me.
What about you?
Between 6 and 10 per second.
As @Tech9 said, it's just noise.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Thoughts on LAN setup

Afternoon all Longtime listener, first time caller

I have my lan of course, which I basically set up years ago, but I was contemplating it recently, and I thought I'd check in with you all and see what you think about it So here's what I have

Fios in (1G) --->oPnsense device (old dual core celeron @2ghz) ----> 8 pt sw (10/100/1000)---->
1 In From Sw (1000)
2 rand pc (1000)
1 voip (10)
1 printer (10)
1 eero (tx) (1000) ------------>
1 eero extender (wifi)
4 vod/phone/etc (all wifi)
1 Uplink to next sw (1000) (8 port 2.5g)-------->
1 link in (1000)
1 pc (2.5) (File/etc Server)
1 Asus ac86u (ax) 2.5/5ghz ------>
multiple mixed wifi devices/standards (mostly n - few g)
main laptop (5ghz ax)

Is there a more efficient way to wire things? Looking into aggregation support on the rt-ax unit.. not sure if I need to relieve congestion?

Most important performance is server to internet and laptop. file server has multiple built in (unused) wifi adapters. Possibly/maybe set those up somehow (linux) as an ap and connect main laptop to it? using alternate subnet to route correctly?
I have other optimizing questions but i'll space things out

Thanks!

[Assistant]
First thing I would do is link the switches directly to the router.

For the linux AP idea, I've done it for years before AX came around and it worked just fine for a few years instead of using junk plastic routers. It's not hard to do but, you'll be limited to sub 1gbps until the devs unlock BE to be configured without having to hack the modules to enable it. Qualcomm based cards work best for AP use.

enesha said:
multiple mixed wifi devices/standards (mostly n - few g)
This is where using hostapd with the wifi cards will clean up your primary AX broadcast by being able to shut off the 2.4/g/n bands.

If you want really good coverage look at an AP only device like Zyxel WBE660S or Engenius EAP783. $500 will get you a 10ge uplink and 4x4x4 radios. For the NIC you can pick up a X550-T2 for $60 on ebay or you could do a single port for a bit less but, it's always nice to have a backup port.

enesha said:
Is there a more efficient way to wire things? Looking into aggregation support on the rt-ax unit.. not sure if I need to relieve congestion?
Likely not an issue due to port speed. If you get the AP's you can collapse things a bit and remove it and the eero boxes as well.

If you want to stick with more of a cheaper solution then NCM865 is the wifi adapter that has BE on it and on sale can be snagged for $35/ea.

Tech Junky said:
First thing I would do is link the switches directly to the router.
Hrm... I think I maybe need to clarify, the opnsense is actually a micropc that used to do outdoor signs. Celeron dual core - 2ghz 16g ram 256g hd. Only 2x 1g Ethernet. So can only hook the one switch to the router. Additionally I don't just have a bunch of stuff in a room. The router and 8 pt switch are in one room and the 5pt 2.5 switch with laptop server Asus rt. Not using router ethernet currently
Tech Junky said:
For the linux AP idea, I've done it for years before AX came around and it worked just fine for a few years instead of using junk plastic routers. It's not hard to do but, you'll be limited to sub 1gbps until the devs unlock BE to be configured without having to hack the modules to enable it. Qualcomm based cards work best for AP use.
This is on the Linux machine for sure. I know at least the one card supports ac. I think that there is a third wireless interface of some kind, not sure this second, not home.
Tech Junky said:
This is where using hostapd with the wifi cards will clean up your primary AX broadcast by being able to shut off the 2.4/g/n bands.
Hostapd?
Tech Junky said:
Likely not an issue due to port speed. If you get the AP's you can collapse things a bit and remove it and the eero boxes as well.
Can't remove the eero. It is on another side of the house from the 8pt sw. The Asus does the wifi for us currently and don't need to extend that. I am using the eero as the cheapest hackeyest solution avail to me at the time to extend the wifi to next door. I could get a mesh from Asus and try that to simplify one bit. Just used eero since it was a rush job and no Asus mesh were available locally
Tech Junky said:
If you want to stick with more of a cheaper solution then NCM865 is the wifi adapter that has BE on it and on sale can be snagged for $35/ea.
Be would be nice heh

Thanks

Ok.....

So, this could go in a couple of directions.

Move the EERO or Asus to the *sense box for more ports to put the switches closer to the egress or ideally swap out the *sense box into a bigger case to support a better NIC or swap the entire thing out for something a bit more flexible for under $200.

If you could put the box and an AP in a more central location you should be able to get decent coverage from an AP from above and then deploy the mini ap's for outlier devices. Or swap in some smaller cheaper APs under $100/ea. Think central AP and put smaller ones in 2 opposing corners.

hostapd is the module for *nix to enable AP mode on the wifi cards.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: CAT6, CAT6A cable recommendation

Hi everyone!

I need 30 meters of CAT6 or CAT6A cable. I would run the cable through a conduit in the wall from the modem to the router. Is there a specific brand that you would recommend? Or perhaps a specific product?

I live in Europe, Hungary. EU orders are fine!

Thank you!

[Assistant]
Get CAT6A. Monoprice cables are pretty good and not expensive. They ship worldwide

Leave a pull chord in the conduit when you pull the cable through.
Some people would suggest pulling 2 cables instead of 1 as the cost of cable is cheap, but you might have to increase the conduit diameter.

Don't buy from no-name companies on Amazon. Purchase from a reputable network cabling company (then "brand" doesn't really matter).

kisseri93 said:
I need 30 meters of CAT6 or CAT6A cable.
Are you going to cut the cable to the exact length and terminate it yourself, or are you looking for a pre-made 30m patch cable? Many of the quality pre-made Cat6 cables only go up to 20m, so 30m might be a special order.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: PPPOE WAN not working on OPNsense but works on router

Hi there,

I have a ESXi host with OPNsense installed serving as my router connected to an Asus RT-AC88U in AP mode.
The issue I'm having is I can connect to my GPON/ONT with WAN set in DHCP mode fine but it provisions a CG-NAT'd IP.
When I switch to PPPOE and use my PPPOE credentials that work on my Asus router (not ISP provided router) it connects fine.
But when I do the same on OPNsense I just get "connecting..." from the logs.
Strange thing is, I had OPNsense running in this exact scenario for 2 years prior, just about 4 months ago I decided to switch back to my regular router and decomission my ESXi host, I've now redeployed everything but seem to be stuck here.
Has anyone else dealt with this issue?
ISP is saying PPPOE connectivity is being rejected from their end but like I said I've gotten this to work before and it does work on my regular Asus router.

[Assistant]
Looking around on the Internet, I see others that had expirienced that bug. There is even a bug report raised at its github. So if you have that older version of OPNsense, you need to use that instead of the two newer versions that have the VM bugs with the kernel. But to be fair, this software wasn't really designed to run inside a VM environment and there will be a small deterioration of performance with PPPoe connections.

CntrlAltDel said:
ISP is saying PPPOE connectivity is being rejected from their end but like I said I've gotten this to work before and it does work on my regular Asus router.

Authentication?

I would start looking at the OpnSense system logs and see what's happening there...

Its the setting choices in the OS and kernel code, what I see on my scratchpad computer I installed it on to look at the code.

the module MSIX has bad IRQ timing statements. Which is just one of several of the issues I see, however, I don't have time today to further go into detail of the other things I see. Use Legacy settings (MSI)

Bios:
Disable all c-states.
Disable all onboard Audio
Disable CPU scaling

inside OPNsense
No MAC spoofing,No promiscuous,
set
Code:
hw.pci.enable_msix: 0
hw.pci.enable_msi: 1


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Intel Ethernet Controller I226-V

Intel Ethernet Controller I226-V Gaming settings

What is the best settings here for me to experience the best "gaming experience" there is so much conflicting information online that im totally lost.

[Assistant]
The latency between your wired PC and the router is under 1ms. Use the default, nothing to optimize there.

There are no "gaming settings". Just use the defaults.

Tech9 said:
The latency between your wired PC and the router is under 1ms. Use the default, nothing to optimize there.
Thanks for the reply. So disabled offloading etc isn’t going to benefit me at all?


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: LAN connection for messaging

I annually travel to a remote location to provide medical care with a secular group of about 20 people. The internet connection is poor there, as is the Wifi network. It would make things so much easier if we could text each other.

Is there an application that allows people on the same LAN to text each other without internet? How could I setup an independent LAN?

[Assistant]
user5211 said:
Is there an application that allows people on the same LAN to text each other without internet? How could I setup an independent LAN?
Although the article is a bit old, check out these...

7 Best Offline Messaging Apps that Run without Internet
7 best offline messaging apps that run without internet using Bluetooth and WiFi peer-to-peer mesh network to send text, image, and audio messages.
beebom.com

Can't help with LAN only messaging app, but...

user5211 said:
I annually travel to a remote location to provide medical care with a secular group of about 20 people.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Tutorial Distributel (Bell) PPPoE passthrough/bridge without SFP, using Nokia ONT

Big news... Bell acquired Distributel... and likely due to the CRTC ruling, is allowing Distributel to use Bell fiber lines FTTH. Very good prices ($55/month for 1Gbit) on promotion for 2 years, get that black Friday discount, at least here in Ontario, Canada!

Not much documentation on the Nokia XS-010X-Q fibre ONT (GPON/XGS-PON), but the included Deco X50 AX3000 mesh Wifi AP pod is garbage requiring an Android app to manage _and_ a TPLink account / TP-Link ID assigned to device... Yuck! Put it back in the box, you don't need the TP-Link.

Distributel has basic setup instructions with pictures of the hardware they give you:

The hot details you need to know:
- Distributel uses VLAN 40 for PPPoE login... whereas Bell used VLAN 35.
- Nokia ONT acts like SFP + Media Converter did to bypass the Bell Home Hub 3000 (HH3000), it performs no routing.

That means you can directly connect an Ethernet cable to the Nokia ONT to your router WAN port. Login with PPPoE credentials, using your router of choice (eg: PfSense, ASUS).
xxx@yourhomeinternet.net : password, obtained from https://ecare.distributel.ca/ -> Account Information -> Service Overview

Setup your smart switch (eg: MikroTik CSS326 or ESXi vSwitch virtualization) to Tag/Untag Vlan40.

or

Most importantly, Distributel also fixed some routing issues outside of Toronto datacenter, where Bell traffic is routed poorly, leading to bad upload speeds and latency spikes. Traceroute confirms a different path through Distributel routers, instead of Bell core switch, to get to work/friend/family houses around Ontario.

How did I find out? I used man-in-the-middle between the ONT and the Deco AP via SwOS mirror port, tcpdump and host learning

No double NAT. Easy port forwarding. Speedtest results are great:

[Assistant]
Any ideas how to get this to work on Asus AX-11000 Pro? I don't seem to have the VLAN tab (supposedly there is a beta firmware that has VLAN configuration). I just moved from Bell (HH4000) where I was doing PPPoE, to Distributel but PPPoE doesnt seem to be grabbing anything, likely due to the VLAN tagging you mentioned.

Try installing Merlin, it will allow Vlans either through GUI or find a script tutorial via ssh

KevinPPOE said:
Try installing Merlin, it will allow clans either through GUI or find a script tutorial
Thanks for the heads up.

I should have mentioned in my first reply, I was already on the latest merlin but there was no VLAN support there (I think he only covers RC firmwares, not betas). Suffice to say, I installed the latest beta, where VLAN features are included (v9.0.0.6_102_4856) and the WAN tab now had a 802.1Q section where I could set the VLAN membership for the WAN port.

Put in 40, applied and automatically got the IP.

Thanks for the info! Will still look into clans and scripting for my own curiousity.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Advices about custom dns in a home lan

Hello.

What I have now : an all-in-one isp modem-router, a windows 11 pc, a linux machine with proxmox and some vms.
And also other devices (printer, phone tablet, pc, ...)

The first thing I want to change, put the modem in bridge mode and add a better router like an asus bq16.

Now I want to use names for my devices and not ip addresses.

So I have a vm with bind9 and I configured a zone .local (ha.local, printer.local, pc1.local, ...)
And a forwarder to isp dns for all other names.

If I change my windows ipv4 and ipv6 dns settings, it is working fine. I can access ha.home and all external names.
If I want to put those dns settings in the dhcp server of the router, there is a first problem, it is possible for ipv4 but not for ipv6.

So my first question : is it possible on the asus bq16 ?

Second problem, if my vm is not up, I have not internet access on all my devices.

Looking on internet I saw a nice solution : adding a firewall between the modem and the router.
With sophos there is a request dns route functionality that tell if the name is *.local go to local dns otherwise to go isp dns.
But .... it is too much expensive.
Same kind of functionality with fortinet fortigate, but not sure it its present on the cheapest models.
Last solution, pfsense. But which harware ? Does a cheap Protectli Vault – 2 have network performance impact ?

Any ideas, suggestions, ....

Thanks.

[Assistant]
I use dnsmasq on my Linux server and /etc/hosts file with domain names <-> IP address mappings for local resolution (I use .lan instead of .local as the latter is reserved for Multicast DNS like Avahi). dnsmasq forwards all requests to the upstream server which is configured on my router (I use NextDNS on router) and resolves local domains from /etc/hosts. To make all my devices prefer dnsmasq as DNS server, I added its listening IP to the DHCP server of the router to hand out DNS servers to clients when they request IPs from it. As a bonus, I also added my own time server as additional.

I only use IPv4 on my local network since it has a few benefits over IPv6 and the latters is really not needed in small or home networks. I can't help with the ASUS router but I'm unsure why you want local IPv6 resolution?

Same as @microchip : there's no need to run IPv6 DNS yourself. As for the reliability point, the standard solution is to have two DNS servers and never reboot both of them at the same time.

tweety said:
Hello.

Any ideas, suggestions, ....

Thanks.
Well there are a few ways to implement a DNS sever, but the norm is to install it on something that runs all the time, like a NAS box or a switch or router. Before I switched my network to ipfire (which has a name server in it) I used a 5 port Ubiquity Edge Router and installed bind9 and dnsutils from its Debain package manager. I would recommend getting a raspberry pi 3 or above, and install bind9 + dnsutils on it and run that as your LAN DNS.

Btw, I like your choice of the Asus router. Which next year, I will be looking for a wifi to connect to my 10Gb network.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Solved Help with Unusual WiFi Connection Issue

I recently bought a USB WiFi/BT dongle for a W11 rig as a quick and cheap backup connection. After messing around with it for a couple of days, I found a weird bug wherein it would prefer to connect to my primary router and not any of my APs that have better signal strength.

After some tinkering with different settings, I found out that it would only switch to the better signal AP if I switched my primary router to WPA2 authentication. It's decidedly prioritizing WPA3 to connect to over better signal strength with WPA2 APs.

My questions are, is there a way to prioritize better signal strength over authentication protocol? What determines connection prioritization? I'd really prefer to keep WPA3 when possible within the network.

Relevant Details:
8851BU based USB dongle
W11
RT-AX55 router
RT-AC68U APs

If I mis-posted this in the wrong topic, apologies. Advice on the right place would be appreciated.
Also, if there are other relevant details I missed, just ask.

[Assistant]
Giving some preference to WPA3 doesn't sound like a bad idea to me. If the client were allowing that preference to make it choose a really bad signal, that wouldn't be great; but you have not offered any evidence about how bad the choice is. What actual signal strength are you seeing from the different APs where the laptop is located? (You need to measure that with a client-side tool like a wifi scanner app; don't trust what the APs think.) What connection speed do you get from each one?

Tools you have available to bend it to your will include adjusting the Tx power of the various APs, or setting up a WPA3-capable SSID for the laptop to connect to. I'm just wondering if you really have a problem to solve.

Cyntil8ing said:
I'd really prefer to keep WPA3 when possible within the network.

This doesn't make much sense because mixed WPA2/WPA3 network is not more secure than WPA2 only. Your APs don't support WPA3 anyway.

tgl said:
Giving some preference to WPA3 doesn't sound like a bad idea to me. If the client were allowing that preference to make it choose a really bad signal, that wouldn't be great; but you have not offered any evidence about how bad the choice is. What actual signal strength are you seeing from the different APs where the laptop is located? (You need to measure that with a client-side tool like a wifi scanner app; don't trust what the APs think.) What connection speed do you get from each one?

Tools you have available to bend it to your will include adjusting the Tx power of the various APs, or setting up a WPA3-capable SSID for the laptop to connect to. I'm just wondering if you really have a problem to solve.
Click to expand...

Yeah, WPA3 is preferable but, it's a significantly weaker signal that would have sporadic speeds (~10 mbps average with crazy spikes in both latency, ping, and speed) vs closer WPA2 AP (~290 mbps stable). On a side note, the dongle is used for a desktop during the rare cases that my fiber connect goes down and I switch to my mobile data plan.

Here are the readings of the primary router and the APs. The highlighted ones (blue) below are the ones that I use. The 1st one with the "AX PHY Type" is the primary router, the ones below it are the APs.
There's no Tx power adjustment on the stock AsusWRT as far as I know on the AX55. Not that it matters because the second the WPA3 is activated on the primary router, it's like the dongle is tethered to the primary router so long as the signal is detectable no matter how weak it is or how strong the APs signals are. The only time everything works-as-intended is when I drop the WPA3 to WPA2.

As for having a problem, I guess I'm just trying to solve for WPA3 as an option because it's more secure and hopefully learn how W11 determines WiFi prioritization. It could also be by design by the Realtek drivers.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: TP-Link deco XE75 pro - a success story :)

Hi, i haven't been overly active here but i have followed this forum now and then (because i've used the Asus AC68u router for quite some time with Merlin firmware most of the time. As i'm living in a 3-story building (with teenage kids who likes the occational online game play) of course i have suffered from the ping issue (and coverage). My solution was to buy 3 pieces of the TPLink deco 75 pro and setup a mesh network (bottom floor hard-wired to one unit, then 2nd and 3rd floor using back-haul using the 6Ghz band where most if not all of the devices connected uses the 5Ghz band). This has actually worked extremely well for everybody.

I'm currently on a 600/50Mbit plan and for most of my wireless machines (almost all of them uses Intel AX210 or derivatives) i can achieve 633/54Mbit when using Ookla speed test and this is good enough for me (and i realize that everyones mileage may vary).

If i can bring any concrete substance to my story above, it would be the design of the units. The TP-links melts in into every context quite nicely (matte wite and discrete) but the Asus units i looked at at the same time, they really remind you of some death star 1 ships in all fairness (not for every home imho ).

[Assistant]
A link to the product page would be nice:

AXE5400 Tri-Band Mesh Wi-Fi 6E System
www.tp-link.com

Current price on Amazon US - $290 for 3-pack.

Certainly

AXE5400 Tri-Band Mesh Wi-Fi 6E System
The AXE5400 WiFi 6E Mesh WiFi System boosts your WiFi range and delivers ultra-fast WiFi speeds of up to 5400 Mbps.
www.tp-link.com


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Modem

Hello. We have centurylink DSL 10 MB plan. Our modem is old. Looking for new one with parental controls: wifi off at certain time, web activity log, etc. want to get one that is 1-2 years old to save money. Could anyone please offer a suggestion? Thank you.

[Assistant]
You need a Router behind your existing Modem. Something has to do the DSL connection, leave the ISP device in place. Check CenturyLink forums how to use bridge mode on your ISP device (use it as Modem only). Then something like RT-AX58U from Asus will do what you need. For reliable parental controls you need more than what's offered in options though. Many modern clients may go around router's blocking features. More on this here:

Does the Synology RT6600AX block a particular adult site?
Thinking about buying a Synology RT6600AX but was wondering something. On my ASUS AX86U (with web/content filtering enabled and the adult category blocked) ..... and when using 3rd party programs.... I'm shocked/surprised that the 'adult' category doesn't block some sites that are obviously...
www.snbforums.com

Tech9 said:
You need a Router behind your existing Modem. Something has to do the DSL connection, leave the ISP device in place. Check CenturyLink forums how to use bridge mode on your ISP device (use it as Modem only). Then something like RT-AX58U from Asus will do what you need. For reliable parental controls you need more than what's offered in options though. Many modern clients may go around router's blocking features. More on this here:

Click to expand...
Just to echo @Tech9, I was on Centurylink DSL with their modem in bridge mode with an Asus router. In fact I started with a RT-N66U then a RT-AC66U B1 both of which worked very well. Then I moved and got Centurylink FIOS. A modern Asus AX router would work well for you.

You may want to check with Centurylink as much of their DSL system may be upgrade able to 20 MB download with no or little additional cost.

Tech9 said:
You need a Router behind your existing Modem. Something has to do the DSL connection, leave the ISP device in place. Check CenturyLink forums how to use bridge mode on your ISP device (use it as Modem only). Then something like RT-AX58U from Asus will do what you need. For reliable parental controls you need more than what's offered in options though. Many modern clients may go around router's blocking features. More on this here:

Click to expand...
Thanks very much for responding. I think I "mis spoke" in that I have a router now and need a newer one. This one I have now allows me to do the stuff I want to do but not very good. I can't really see what websites are visited by my kids and the on and off of the wifi is not very good. I included a picture of my current router just for the heck of it. We live on 2.5 acres 325 feet by 325 feet and I also wish I could extend wifi to run cameras at the far end of the property. If you have a suggestion about that I sure would appreciate it. As I have gotten older I find technology more elusive. I need to try to keep up better. Thank you again. Have a nice day.


[System] You are a professional Wi-Fi router support assistant; I will provide forum posts as background material, and you should learn from them while remaining aware that forum content may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect — when uncertain, explicitly note that you are uncertain and refer the user to official documentation or other authoritative sources for verification.

[User]
Title: Remote access to UK content

I frequently travel outside of UK and struggle to reliably access UK entertainment content like the BBC even with a good VPN. Years ago I saw a solution based on a SBC with an ethernet and WIFI interface on a UK home LAN with a UK ISP. Non UK requests for content were received on one interface and passed to the other interface which was not blocked, replies were handled in the reverse direction. I cannot locate the original document now but here are the few things I remember; remote access was configured by a port forwarding on the router; routing and NAT tables were configured to handle the requests and replies and masquerade option was used. Sorry my information is very limited.
Can anyone point me in the right direction to realise such a solution or related informations for me to develop my own solution.
Admins if I have posted in the wrong forum please my post to the correct forum.

[Assistant]
You just need a device on your home network that runs a VPN server. That could be a standalone device like a Raspberry Pi, or it could be your internet router as many of them have that ability.

Another alternative would be to get yourself a cheap VPS from someone like OVH (yes, they have UK servers with UK IPs) and set up a simple vpn on that. Plus point on that is 24hr availability where we know home routers can crash.

Amazon Firestick 4K Max, when bought in UK, comes with all those UK programs and has apps for many others.
Install your VPN also on that Firestick and watch it anywhere on a TV with HDMI-port.
PS: don't forget your remote and don't leave it behind in your (hotel)room.