- Nov 5, 2018
- 2,516
- 2,093
For this thread's purposes 99% of the home installs our members have an (mostly) ISP supplied modem or fiber NID. For all intents and purposes the demarcation is a single Ethernet cable that supplied allavailable bandwidth and has the public facing IP assigned to it. We really don't (or at least shouldn't) have any control of anything upstream of that circuit. This thread deals with all the settings and tweaks past that point.
With the advent of Gagabit and beynd residential service as well as the new WiFi 6 protocols, setups that were more than adequate just a couple of years ago could probably stand a few tweaks and possibly some hardware upgrade to take advantage of these new circuits.
I can share some of my experiences, perhaps our members can enlighten us too.
As soon as I moved into my current house I kicked Xfinity to the curb. We could start a debate, I have had 3 residences that I have had FIOS installed and never had a single problem or had to deal with saturated local hubs with higher latencies and slower speeds.
3 years ago I had a 500meg FIOS line installed, it was fine and suited my needs. Most of the use here was wireless initially so no big deal. My GF had a business supplied Comcast circuit w/static IP. She is in the health care industry so it was part of the US HIPPA compliance. I never have touched that circuit.
So here's the evolution of my residential setup. I think it's pretty darn good but probably could be better. So first upgrade with moving to a Gigabit circuit was a new wireless router. I was replacing a Netgear Wireless router that has since found a new home. With all the changes to frequencies, security and etc. on the wireless side I decided on a TP-Link AX 3000. It was cheap, fairly reliable and I won't mind upgrading at a later date. I was really surprised given this is a low-cost router the support the manufacturer provides.
So first I needed to addess the wireless side of my network. All my GF systems (I gave her
) were WiFi 5. I maintain both a Google Home smart network and an Amazon Alexa smart netowork. Alexa does most of the heavy lifting, it's more Apple friendly. My GF is almost exclusively an Apple gal unless she needs to do some serious computing and she has a killer Wintel laptop for that. I gave her an Andriod tablet for reading newspapers and I keep someAndroid stuff as well as my phones are all Android. I had an iPhone but wasn't my cup of tea.
So you can see I have a variety of O/S and hardware, all wireless. The TP-Link is mounted in the middle of our 2 story Condo and has a strong wireless signal throughout.
So my Intel laptops all were missing WiFi 6 connectivity. Most Intel laptops can have their current WiFi module can be swapped out with an Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX210 160MHz. I bought mine at Amazon. It was the real deal, had a FRU number on it which means it was branded as a Lenovo OEM part, it still was a generic part that accepted the Intel provided driver although Windows update will take care of it too. WiFi side of things taken care of.
I was just starting to build out my wired side of my network. I started with a Linksys generic 100/1000 8 port switch. I used Cat 6 cable that came from my last job. Switches are really overlooked in residential layouts if you are looking for maximum performance. I am lucky that I used to have access to as much used Cisco networking equipment I could ever use. I started with an SG300-10 port. as needs grew I ultimately upgraded to a SG350X-24P which has more capacity that I could ever use.
Wired hardware currently in the basement are my WD PR4100 NAS, two of my little Dell i7 micro systems and a spare for my work lab. I have outlets in the dining room for working at home, 3 in the living room: 1 for a i7 Lenovo M93 micro, one for my Alexa firecube, and one for my side of the couch.
Upstairs, one in the bedroom with my trusty old HP 1320nw Laserjet, one in the guest bedroom for the TV/Firestick. Surprisingly nothing in the main bedroom. My ex got me in the habit of no TV in the main bedroom, it's a good idea.
Now for the configurations: I let the TP-Link handle router duties including LAN DHCP server and wireless connection. None of my wireless connections are speed dependant. The wired side does all the heavy lifting. I am not sure this is an optimised setup but currently works pretty well.
The TP-link has been pretty much left on default settings other than specifying DNS servers and I have deviated from the default LAN address of 192.168.1.1/24, part of this was mandated for admin of VOIP nardware I was working on from home. FYI I haven't yet but 172.16.1.1/24 VLAN 1 is a good LAN configuration, it usually won't interfere with anything connected to your network.
Currently my router is configured with Cloudflair's DNS 1.1.1.1 1.0.0.1, I don't do Google unless I have to or give up features of performance. Anything other hardware DNS settings are configured with the TP-Link routers gateway address for speed.
MTU is set for TCP-IP of 1500, you mess with jumbo frames you are asking for problems. Which brings to mind, I am assuming our members have at least a basic knowledge of how computers/hardware communicate, if you don't I will find a link somewhere and post it.
End part 1. My GF is getting a little antsy.
With the advent of Gagabit and beynd residential service as well as the new WiFi 6 protocols, setups that were more than adequate just a couple of years ago could probably stand a few tweaks and possibly some hardware upgrade to take advantage of these new circuits.
I can share some of my experiences, perhaps our members can enlighten us too.
As soon as I moved into my current house I kicked Xfinity to the curb. We could start a debate, I have had 3 residences that I have had FIOS installed and never had a single problem or had to deal with saturated local hubs with higher latencies and slower speeds.
3 years ago I had a 500meg FIOS line installed, it was fine and suited my needs. Most of the use here was wireless initially so no big deal. My GF had a business supplied Comcast circuit w/static IP. She is in the health care industry so it was part of the US HIPPA compliance. I never have touched that circuit.
So here's the evolution of my residential setup. I think it's pretty darn good but probably could be better. So first upgrade with moving to a Gigabit circuit was a new wireless router. I was replacing a Netgear Wireless router that has since found a new home. With all the changes to frequencies, security and etc. on the wireless side I decided on a TP-Link AX 3000. It was cheap, fairly reliable and I won't mind upgrading at a later date. I was really surprised given this is a low-cost router the support the manufacturer provides.
So first I needed to addess the wireless side of my network. All my GF systems (I gave her
) were WiFi 5. I maintain both a Google Home smart network and an Amazon Alexa smart netowork. Alexa does most of the heavy lifting, it's more Apple friendly. My GF is almost exclusively an Apple gal unless she needs to do some serious computing and she has a killer Wintel laptop for that. I gave her an Andriod tablet for reading newspapers and I keep someAndroid stuff as well as my phones are all Android. I had an iPhone but wasn't my cup of tea.So you can see I have a variety of O/S and hardware, all wireless. The TP-Link is mounted in the middle of our 2 story Condo and has a strong wireless signal throughout.
So my Intel laptops all were missing WiFi 6 connectivity. Most Intel laptops can have their current WiFi module can be swapped out with an Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX210 160MHz. I bought mine at Amazon. It was the real deal, had a FRU number on it which means it was branded as a Lenovo OEM part, it still was a generic part that accepted the Intel provided driver although Windows update will take care of it too. WiFi side of things taken care of.
I was just starting to build out my wired side of my network. I started with a Linksys generic 100/1000 8 port switch. I used Cat 6 cable that came from my last job. Switches are really overlooked in residential layouts if you are looking for maximum performance. I am lucky that I used to have access to as much used Cisco networking equipment I could ever use. I started with an SG300-10 port. as needs grew I ultimately upgraded to a SG350X-24P which has more capacity that I could ever use.
Wired hardware currently in the basement are my WD PR4100 NAS, two of my little Dell i7 micro systems and a spare for my work lab. I have outlets in the dining room for working at home, 3 in the living room: 1 for a i7 Lenovo M93 micro, one for my Alexa firecube, and one for my side of the couch.
Upstairs, one in the bedroom with my trusty old HP 1320nw Laserjet, one in the guest bedroom for the TV/Firestick. Surprisingly nothing in the main bedroom. My ex got me in the habit of no TV in the main bedroom, it's a good idea.
Now for the configurations: I let the TP-Link handle router duties including LAN DHCP server and wireless connection. None of my wireless connections are speed dependant. The wired side does all the heavy lifting. I am not sure this is an optimised setup but currently works pretty well.
The TP-link has been pretty much left on default settings other than specifying DNS servers and I have deviated from the default LAN address of 192.168.1.1/24, part of this was mandated for admin of VOIP nardware I was working on from home. FYI I haven't yet but 172.16.1.1/24 VLAN 1 is a good LAN configuration, it usually won't interfere with anything connected to your network.
Currently my router is configured with Cloudflair's DNS 1.1.1.1 1.0.0.1, I don't do Google unless I have to or give up features of performance. Anything other hardware DNS settings are configured with the TP-Link routers gateway address for speed.
MTU is set for TCP-IP of 1500, you mess with jumbo frames you are asking for problems. Which brings to mind, I am assuming our members have at least a basic knowledge of how computers/hardware communicate, if you don't I will find a link somewhere and post it.
End part 1. My GF is getting a little antsy.
