Upgrading Home Network - Need Advice

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  • traveller

    The one with two L
    Nov 26, 2010
    18,270
    variable
    How do you like the Sonicwall? I’ve only used them probably over a decade ago in a work environment and wasn’t all that impressed. I’m running Peplink at my edge currently, which overall is a great product and for redundancy, but it really chaps my ass that they don’t have proper IPv6 support.

    Expensive subscriptions to keep the services past the first year. Cumbersome to set up. Other than that, they are great ;-)
    I wouldnt spend my own money on it, but some of this is work related. I would probably fiddle around with pfSense on some small x86 box if this was just to keep the russians out of my kids laptops.
     

    Traveler

    Lighten up Francis
    Jan 18, 2013
    8,227
    AA County
    The security posture of a company is set at the management level. It does not appear that they take it seriously.

    I could post more links, but the cheap gear is all like this. I encourage everyone to do their own web searches. Good, cheap, fast, pick any two.
     

    Traveler

    Lighten up Francis
    Jan 18, 2013
    8,227
    AA County
    Another opinion, that uses more words than I did:

    https://routersecurity.org/SecureRouters.php

    Ubiquiti

    NOTE: As of January 29, 2020, I no longer consider Ubiquiti devices secure. The company has gone over to the dark side, making it all but impossible to stop their routers from phoning home with data collected about your network. For more on their change of heart see You spoke, we didn't listen: Ubiquiti says UniFi routers will beam performance data back to mothership automatically. In addition, I have read that their firmware is not of the highest quality.
     

    euler357

    ,
    Industry Partner
    MDS Supporter
    Apr 6, 2011
    584
    Odenton, Marylandistan
    I wouldn't use the UniFi either but I do use an Edgerouter 4. I have FIOS with the Edgerouter connected to the ONT and other NAT/Firewall routers cascaded into two separate networks. EdgeOS is VERY configurable and the wizards most likely don't set up everything that you need. I'm able to get 900+Mbps up/down using this configuration.
     

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    euler357

    ,
    Industry Partner
    MDS Supporter
    Apr 6, 2011
    584
    Odenton, Marylandistan

    Arcamm

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    I was sick of dicking around with this stuff and that is what I pretty much did. A cisco PoE switch and 3 AP-Pros, one on each floor. I can peel paint off the walls with the amount of RF power available ;-)
    Keep in mind, the lower level Ubiquity APs don't use the IEEE standard PoE. They only work with a proprietary Ubiquity PoE switch. That's why I went with the Pros. IIRC $499 for the 3-pack. This has been rock solid.

    I'm 99% sure all of the new Unifi stuff is standard POE now. I have client running a Cloud key Plus off of an Aruba POE switch. I have 4 APs and only the oldest is proprietary. The rest are af or at.

    Nice thing about Unifi is you can run your APs and cameras from the same interface.
     

    euler357

    ,
    Industry Partner
    MDS Supporter
    Apr 6, 2011
    584
    Odenton, Marylandistan
    I'm generally against putting an AP on higher floors because the elevation also raises the noise / interference level from other nearby systems. I have a router in my basement which works really well in all of the house since it doesn't "see" signals from neighbors due to the poor RF propagation through ground. I also have one on the ground floor to get coverage into the yard / deck areas.

    It's about signal-to-noise ratio. I realized that if you have an AP 20 ft away in the basement vs one 20 ft away on the 2nd floor, the path loss is similar but the amount of noise/interference between the two is very different since the one on the 2nd floor has much less path loss to interfering neighbor systems. The return path is generally the limiting factor since mobile devices have more limited TX power and worse antennas than the AP.
     

    A_C

    Member
    Jan 12, 2017
    13
    I'm generally against putting an AP on higher floors because the elevation also raises the noise / interference level from other nearby systems. I have a router in my basement which works really well in all of the house since it doesn't "see" signals from neighbors due to the poor RF propagation through ground. I also have one on the ground floor to get coverage into the yard / deck areas.

    It's about signal-to-noise ratio. I realized that if you have an AP 20 ft away in the basement vs one 20 ft away on the 2nd floor, the path loss is similar but the amount of noise/interference between the two is very different since the one on the 2nd floor has much less path loss to interfering neighbor systems. The return path is generally the limiting factor since mobile devices have more limited TX power and worse antennas than the AP.

    Good point! This makes a lot of sense - I'm going to try experimenting with this for sure. I have lots of close by neighbors so this could be quite helpful for me. Thanks!
     

    Arcamm

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    I'm generally against putting an AP on higher floors because the elevation also raises the noise / interference level from other nearby systems. I have a router in my basement which works really well in all of the house since it doesn't "see" signals from neighbors due to the poor RF propagation through ground. I also have one on the ground floor to get coverage into the yard / deck areas.

    It's about signal-to-noise ratio. I realized that if you have an AP 20 ft away in the basement vs one 20 ft away on the 2nd floor, the path loss is similar but the amount of noise/interference between the two is very different since the one on the 2nd floor has much less path loss to interfering neighbor systems. The return path is generally the limiting factor since mobile devices have more limited TX power and worse antennas than the AP.

    So true. Most people don't realize how much stuff is flying through the air. My Unifi stuff monitors wifi signals around my system. In the last 8 hours, it's detected 29 different wifi sources. But I do live in downtown Mount Airy. Big city life....
     

    euler357

    ,
    Industry Partner
    MDS Supporter
    Apr 6, 2011
    584
    Odenton, Marylandistan
    I'm running a few of the Netgate units at work. They are nice too but you need at least the 3100 and preferably the 5100 (depending on the complexity of your FW rules) to get the full FIOS bandwidth. I've currently got minimal rules set up on my ER4 and it works great. If I had more complexity, it might not get the full throughput though.
     

    euler357

    ,
    Industry Partner
    MDS Supporter
    Apr 6, 2011
    584
    Odenton, Marylandistan
    I got tied of updating and supporting my own home built Linux servers and firewalls years ago. I've been using Synology NAS for a long time now and it just works without having to mess with it much. You can get a small 2 bay for <$200 + disks and it will even run pihole if that's what you want. If you want to learn then doing your own is a good project though
     

    Occam

    Not Even ONE Indictment
    MDS Supporter
    Feb 24, 2018
    20,239
    Montgomery County
    I got tied of updating and supporting my own home built Linux servers and firewalls years ago. I've been using Synology NAS for a long time now and it just works without having to mess with it much. You can get a small 2 bay for <$200 + disks and it will even run pihole if that's what you want. If you want to learn then doing your own is a good project though

    Though I happily brew things up for all sorts of uses, I’m up to ... let’s see ... maybe 10 Synology devices doing things in various roles. Gotta say, have been very useful. Mostly has NAS for VMs and backup dumping grounds, but there’s a solid ecosystem of productivity and networking/security apps.
     

    geda

    Active Member
    Dec 24, 2017
    550
    cowcounty
    Any recommendations on adding a small MiniPC to setup FreeNAS and PiHole. I was thinking about just dropping Linux on one these Atom Based Fanless Mini-PC's then sticking in a 2TB SSD for backup storage and media.

    Depending on your use case it might be cheaper to go with something that can fit a spinning hard drive. 1G ethernet is slower than pretty much any modern hard drive, so unless you are planning on doing IOPS heavy workload in it like a database i doubt that it is worth it.
     

    rob

    DINO Extraordinaire
    Oct 11, 2010
    3,099
    Augusta, GA
    I had some coverage issues in our new house. I upgraded to a netgear orbi triband mesh router. No coverage issues and throughput is excellent.

    Rob.

    Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk
     

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