Tech insights from relocating home and office

[Jamie]

LANGALIST — SPECIAL EDITION Tech insights from relocating home and office By Fred Langa We Langas are midway through a major relocation. Here are a fe
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doriel, WSDKS01, abbodi86, SueW, Elly, woody

[MikeFromMarkham]

Fred, I can sympathize with your situation having recently moved and downsized at the same time.

My internet/tv/home phone provider is Rogers (I’m in Ontario, Canada) and during this COVID-19 crisis, they’re not allowing their installers to enter customers’ homes, only assist remotely until this passes.

While I had no difficulty self-installing my new equipment, it is strictly a temporary setup for now. My gateway is currently at the other end of the house from my computers, but I’ve managed to get online by using telephone line adapters connected to the gateway and my primary desktop computer. It’s not as good as a dedicated direct ethernet connection but it’s actually quite usable. My laptops and Chromebooks can all take advantage of wireless gateway connections so no problems there.

Still, I’ll be happier when I can eventually relocate some equipment so I can re-establish my complete home network including the NAS device I use for primary back-up. Until then, I have several external drives that will serve that purpose, along with a couple of cloud options.

Good luck getting your home office up and running fully. And take care, stay safe and be well during these unusual and trying circumstances.

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WSDKS01

[WSDKS01]

I fully understand the frustrations of moving offices and installing tech. For the last twenty years I have acted as sole support technical for my health care professional spouse who requires reliable internet, fax and print services on a network. This has allowed me lots of fun experiences to explore tech (as well as having my spouse pay for something new which might improve things!).

My experience with powerline networking  has been the complete opposite to yours.

Five years ago we moved from a house with wired Ethernet into a house built in the 1950’s and with 100 amp electrical service. Some, but not all of the wiring was new, with three prong grounded outlets. The rest were as installed over 60 years ago. My spouse’s office was set up in a bedroom at the far end of the house from the telco DSL modem, a distance of about 60 feet. It had two prong outlets, original to the house. The main service panel was upgraded after we moved in. All powerline networking went through the main panel. That was critical, I believe.

Briefly, nothing worked to connect the computer and printer reliably.

Hard wired Ethernet was not possible. I tried WiFi repeaters with little success.

Powerline networking was an even more spectacular failure in terms of reliability and speed. I got really tired of hearing on an almost daily basis, “Internet’s down again!” or “My stuff won’t print!” yelled down the stair to my basement office.

The fax machine had a direct copper line connection so it was completely reliable.

I believe the original wiring and the powerline connected through the service panel made the installation a failure. I could get a reasonable connection if the powerline adapters were on the same circuit breaker, but not if they went through the service panel to another breaker and house circuit.

About a year ago I decided to try the Plume pods offered by my telco (Bell Canada). Simple setup. Instant success. Domestic tranquility has returned. I never hear anything about the internet being down or the printer not working. Wifi repeaters and powerline networking are no longer options. They are technology, given my experience, I won’t recommend. Plume pods? Absolutely. They just work.

• This reply was modified 2 days, 14 hours ago by WSDKS01.

[doriel]

thank you for your insight.

I could get a reasonable connection if the powerline adapters were on the same circuit breaker

Exactly that caused your unreliability. Circuit breaker means “STOP” for netowrking over power cables.
I tried to tell people in few topics here so I will point it out here too 🙂 If there is circuit breaker between two AC plugs, it does not work very well. Also oscilations of current flow can ruin your effort.
Now I am interested in “Mesh” systems, which seems very intereting and next week I am going to do my first installation of Mesh system. It should be simply More APs of the same SSID.

Dell Latitude E6530, Intel Core i5 @ 2.6 GHz, 4GB RAM, W10 1809 Enterprise

HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29

[mn–]

doriel wrote:

Exactly that caused your unreliability. Circuit breaker means “STOP” for netowrking over power cables.
I tried to tell people in few topics here so I will point it out here too 🙂 If there is circuit breaker between two AC plugs, it does not work very well. Also oscilations of current flow can ruin your effort.

Actually it can work, depending. It does work for me. But, I’m using the MIMO version of the powerline networking that also uses the ground, and not the cheapest such adapters either.

Not the fastest or most reliable thing ever, especially between two different phases – my house is on the standard European 400/230 V three-phase feed, with some of the single-phase loads on each and large appliances getting direct 3-phase… but at least it’s more reliable than my consumer-grade home VDSL.

[doriel]

Yes it can, but I had several outages a day. I was not happy with my gaming neither online TV experience, I abandoned that solution. I live in Europe (CZ) too and there are safety regulations, that requires to have separated circuits for kitchen, bathrooms, and other rooms.

I live in 5 room appartment and I have 4 circuits (kitchen, bathroom, hallways and other rooms). Appartment is 20 years old, wires are copper. Current distribution is few years old.
Middle current value is ~230V.
Each phase has its own fuse.
Walls are made of concrete and steel.

For me, so far the most reliable solution was connecting with classic RJ45 cables. Modern way to build houses is have “goose necks” installed. Its a pipe installed in the wall though which you pull cables. Then you connect your PC, TV, NAS and other devices via ethernet cables.

If someone wants reliable WiFi signal across the big multi-floor house, he should buy more APs and use controller for his WiFi environment (or maybe one very strong AP with “all-directional antena” and place it somwhere under the roof).

Dell Latitude E6530, Intel Core i5 @ 2.6 GHz, 4GB RAM, W10 1809 Enterprise

HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29

[mn–]

doriel wrote:

For me, so far the most reliable solution was connecting with classic RJ45 cables. Modern way to build houses is

… Yes, that is the most reliable way. Just, in some buildings it can get disproportionately expensive.

My house isn’t modern. Everything is very mixed construction, and WiFi doesn’t penetrate walls or floors much… actually neither do any normal drills.

doriel wrote:

If someone wants reliable WiFi signal across the big multi-floor house, he should buy more APs and use controller for his WiFi environment (or maybe one very strong AP with “all-directional antena” and place it somwhere under the roof).

Multiple APs and a controller, connected via cables.

Mesh is possible in some buildings, depending on construction (simple drywall and the like). Also have to choose the parts correctly.

WiFi gets blocked by all kinds of things most people wouldn’t expect. Like old bricks made of a clay with an above-average metal content… and humidity, heh. Hide a WiFi AP behind a houseplant and lose signal for a while every time you water the plant, seen that too.

And some of the WiFi equipment sold to consumers just isn’t reliable enough for much anything. BTDT, fixed it with a simple mechanical timer that cuts power to that thing at specific intervals… really now, a WiFi AP that needs to be rebooted daily, multiple times… and not just a single bad one either, that affected more than one model from that brand.

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doriel

[doriel]

At my friends house, he was complaining, that he has bad signal when he wants to watch his television during the evening meal. It turned out, that he had his router close to microwave and when he heated up his meal in microwave his devices lost the signal.

Its maybe little bit about people being too much comfortable these days. How many people on the planet have clean water, enough food, accessible healthcare and intenet whenever he wants?

Critical systems should be always connected with cable and some “blind spaces” across the house are not the problem. By my experience its more about kids complaining maybe 🙂

Dell Latitude E6530, Intel Core i5 @ 2.6 GHz, 4GB RAM, W10 1809 Enterprise

HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29

[Author]

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