Network upgrade

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I thought it was time to do some network upgrading. I moved into this house a couple of years ago and did the basics to get things up and running, i.e. quite a lot was on WiFi. Then I drilled a hole in a wall and connected our main living room to the network. This was really just to give the TV set top box the network access it needed.

Then Wifi started getting clogged up with all devices on the network, including the smart home stuff, plus the neighbours got more powerful WiFi routers so things started to slow down.

To remove some WiFi traffic I installed some powerline adapters - one for ‘teenager’ access and one into the main room where a lot of my ‘hobby’ equipment is installed. WiFi was better after that but I don’t really like powerline adapters because of the amount of radio interference they can cause so I’ve looked for ways to reduce their use.

Which brings me to today. I’ve done two things:

  1. Installed an ethernet cable under the carpets between the main house router and my ‘equipment room’. This allowed me to remove one of the powerline adapters and all of my equipment is connected back to the 350Mbps internet connection at 1Gbps. This means that the teenager link now has a dedicated powerline link onto the network. It’s pretty good…it sits are about 1Gbps across the mains which I think is pretty clever.

  2. Having extended the wired network, I was then able to bring an outdoor ethernet cable (UV proof and waterproof) out through two holes in walls, down the garden fence, through the top of the gazebo and into the greehouse. I’ve put a previously cherished router onto the end of the cable which gives me gigabit 5GHz WiFi in the garden plus (near the greenhouse) gigabit wired ethernet.

You might think (2) is odd, but in spring/autumn I work from the greenhouse (I’m typing this in there) when it’s not too cold and in the summer in the garden, so having a decent network out here is very useful. I can also think about moving some things around, e.g. my Ecowitt GW1100 could also sit in the greenhouse where it’s much closer to the sensors. I probably also need to investigate a dampproof box before next winter!

Does anyone else have weird home networks or is it just me?

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Double ethernet socket each side of wall between study (router) and living room, the rest is powerline. . . obsolete BT 500 kit :grinning:

Wi-fi from obsolete BT Hub 5 not bad, GW2000 in lounge and PurpleAir outside living room window. Powerline extender upstairs, if needed.

One of these days. . .

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I used to use powerline as we have an older house built around 1920 and the interior walls are concrete blocks, found the hard way when we moved in trying to put up pictures and shelves! Now I have had a BT Whole Home WiFi 3 disc mesh system for while now which works pretty well and as there are only two of use there’s not much to overload WiFi!

Stuart

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It’s not all WiFi now, but there are currently 84 static IP addresses assigned on the network so it’s a pretty busy environment. That’s the addresses defined in DHCP. I know there are some more that are static assignments that haven’t made it into DHCP yet (I found 2 today) and then there are the dynamic addresses I’ve not captured and turned into statics yet.

5

Bought one but never installed it. . .

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Its truly amazing the number of devices we all have. Its just my wife and I and we live in a National Forest miles from anywhere, but have 1GB fiber optic service. Wired ethernet down here in my basement, wifi for the main floor. But there are TVs, tablets, computers, phones, camera systems, the weather station stuff, GW1100, all my ham radio gear etc. For just my wife and i there are a total of 25 devices connected to the system.
Jim

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