Question Extender/repeater? What's best for me?

[schwim]

Hi there everyone!

I've got an issue that I just don't know how to move forward with. We have a large three story house that requires more than a single router. Also, we've got a ton of devices connecting to a single router, which I believe is problematic as well. I have a cat5 that makes it upstairs but for some reason whenever I install a second router up there, those connections drop routinely(2 to 5 times per minute for 5-10 seconds at a time). This problem has persisted through multiple routers at both the first floor and the second. I would have loved to use that cable because it would have been the best solution but I just can't figure out the routine drops that have persisted through numerous routers/ISPs so I've got to move on to a solution.

That issue has me looking at a repeater/mesh extender for upstairs. We all game so latency and stable connection are of paramount importance for us. This is the latest router to be purchased(TP-Link AC1750) and will be installing it on the first floor as the primary router. I looked up on the TP-Link website and WiFi Extender(TP-Link AC1750 WiFi Extender) It states that it works well for gaming but know that advertising claims are a little hopeful.

Could someone tell me what would be best to install upstairs for our situation? Should I buy another of the same router and put it in a repeater mode or would that extender be the device to install? Do I need something completely different?

Thanks for your time!

 

[schwim]

Shouldn't it show up here? I only seem to have the onboard as lan, which the laptop is currently connected to and the wan. I don't see any other device listed:

Perhaps the card is doa?

 

[gggplaya]

Yes, you should have 3 items listed there. ETH0, ETH1, and ETH2. One of them is your mainboard the others are the cards.

I would try reseating the card, if that doesn't work. Try the oddball card they gave you.

 

[schwim]

Yes, you should have 3 items listed there. ETH0, ETH1, and ETH2. One of them is your mainboard the others are the cards.

I would try reseating the card, if that doesn't work. Try the oddball card they gave you.

Reseating the card seems to have done the trick. I'm now using lan on eth2. I installed the package you stated on page one for QoS but have a question:

Which queue setup script should I use? Is there any other change I need to make here other than discipline and setup script?

 

[gggplaya]

I’m using layer cake, its more cpu intensive but does a better job prioritizing based on traffic type.

 

[schwim]

I’m using layer cake, its more cpu intensive but does a better job prioritizing based on traffic type.

Is an i5-3570 @ 3.40GHz up to the task?

Also, can I ask why adding a switch between the laptop and the router solved the issue I was experiencing?

 

[gggplaya]

Oh yea, should be fine for your internet. It's borderline enough power if you ever upgrade to 1000mbps internet. But for your current internet, it's plenty of power. Those lower versions of cake are more for ARM based routers because people flash their normal routers with OpenWRT as well. But with an x86 processor, you should have plenty of power. Just run some speedtests after you get everything set up. If you aren't getting your full bandwidth, you can drop the cake algorithm down to a simpler one.

Normally for connection 2 PC's together you need a crossover cable and not a regular straight ethernet cable because the RX and TX are not crossed, so you have RX connected to RX and TX connected to TX on the other side. A crossover cable crosses rx and tx on each end. A network switch alleviates the need for crossover cable because it can switch internally.

 

[schwim]

Hi there folks!

I'm a few days in on the test of using wrt and a Netgear Nighthawk wifi router set as access point and so far, everything has been going great. I have one question that I've been unable to answer with the help of Google.

I'm assuming that when a router's documentation or advertising states "25 concurrent users or connections", that's not a hard limit as I've run more on these wifi routers. Instead, it seems to be a soft limit due to processor or memory limitations. My question is this:

If I'm using the wifi router as an access point, can it handle much more in the way of connections or does it still struggle with more connections even though it's no longer handling the duties of a router? I'm not sure which part of the process is the taxing part, the connecting and passthrough of users or the handling of assigning IPs, routing, etc.

Sorry if this question is a bit muddled. I can try to clarify further if needed.

Thanks for all your help and time thus far!

 

[bill001g]

The number of users is more traffic related than raw number of users. You have to consider both the bandwidth the user is using and the number of session each user has open. For example a torrent user will abuse both the bandwidth and number of open session even though the traffic per session will be low.

There are 2 main places you run into problems/limits. The first is what I think most this thread is on and using a PC instead of a router. The cpu on the router needs to do most the heavy lifting when it comes to NAT and keeping track of user sessions.

The second one which I think you are asking about now is all the wifi traffic. The wifi traffic is almost completely done by the radio chips. These are actually a small cpu. I assume there is some limit on bandwidth because of the overhead of the encryption. It also to a point has to keep track of all the users connected. I suspect the fairly low session limits on wifi is not so much the device itself but a fundamental issues with wifi. Wifi is half duplex and the end device themselves need to determine when it is safe to transmit. The more device you add the more chance you get that a device does not detect another device and transmits over the top destroying both signals. Since it then does data retransmission this will quickly cascade since both device retranmit possible stomping on a third or even more users. I am igorning the interference from your neighbors wifi which will also affect the number of users because it reduces the total amount of clean traffic you can send.

25 users who are actually active on a wifi radio is going to be a lot.

There really is nothing you can do about wifi anyway. The firmware that runs in the radio chips is not available and the fcc over the years has restricted more and more the small things you could change.

Wifi6 was suppose to solve a lot of these issues since it has some new methods to solve the overlapping of radio and trying to control users transmissions. The small amount of testing reviews you see not someone trying to get you to buy wifi6 say it is not much better. Not sure wifi6 is so new it could be bugs or maybe incompatibilities between manufactures.

 

[schwim]

Thanks very much for the help, Bill! It makes more sense to me now. I have another question now though:

There really is nothing you can do about wifi anyway.

If I were to plug another wifi access point into the first one, using the first ap for the first floor connections and the second ap for the second floor, would that resolve some issues introduced with 25 devices connected concurrently? I do understand, thanks to your explanation that there's much more to take into account with this situation so I'm not asking if it will fix everything, I'm just wondering if having half of the connections being passed through the first ap via a wired connection from the second ap would be a better setup than passing everything in the house through a single ap's wireless connection.

 

[gggplaya]

I personally would connect the second access point upstairs just to have better signal. You'll get much better bandwidth with a stronger signal being closer to the access point. The added benefit is each access point will operate on different channels, so you'll lower wifi congestion in the house.

 

[bill001g]

The recommended method for AP is to actually reduce the transmit power so they overlap less. This also makes it more likely the device connects to the proper AP, sometime end device are really stupid. In a perfect world where there was no interference between the AP you would in effect double the number of devices that could connect wifi.

The problem is you can only set the power so low and still have things be usable. So this mean the 2 AP will interfere with each other. You can if you work at it put them on different channels. This is a somewhat outdated concept though. To get the high speed they use 40 or 80mhz of bandwidth. The channels on 2.4g only represent 5mhz on 20mhz on 5g. That means on 2.4 it used 8 of the channels and there are only 11. It means you must reduce the speed to 20mhz to fit 2 AP into the bandwidth without overlapping. This is where you see the old 1,6,11 recommendation from. On 5g it is a little better there are 2 blocks that are 80mhz. One on the bottom of the range and one on the top. wifi6 and routers with 2 5g radios attempt to use both blocks.

 

[schwim]

Hi there guys,

Since there seems to be a difference in informed opinions concerning adding a second AP, for now, I'll stick with the cheaper option of running with just the one. So far, it's been a great experience with nobody complaining of any issues. All things considered, it's been a great process, I can't thank you guys enough for walking me through all the steps!

 

[gggplaya]

Has the discord robotting voice gone away?

 

[schwim]

Has the discord robotting voice gone away?

It has. Also, when I was setting up the router, I was doing it upstairs so I was using the suspect cat5e cable and it worked great so the network cable seems a-ok as well. If I decide to put another AP upstairs, I should be able to use that cable without issue.

One thing I wonder is if having one person with a poor connection to the wireless router could have been making an issue for everyone. What I mean is with all the connections on the router, if one poor connection could create a situation where the router had to work too hard to keep sending data to that poor connection and was causing a poor experience for all the other connections.

So far, it's been great. Gaming and discord has been great and the few video chats that have been made have gone off without an issue.

 

[gggplaya]

That's great, I can't really begin to speculate what was wrong with the wifi though.

I can tell you that if the upload bandwidth was being saturated, without good QOS, everyone will have a bad internet experience.