Options for Domestic Wired Networking / Broadband

prpr said:
I believe RouterStats Lite supports this device
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It does, and I use it from time to time, but as it means running a Windows PC 24/7 to log the line speed I don't have it running permanently. I have considered running something simple on a HDR – it only needs to extract some data from a web page repetitively, although it will need to pass a username and password to do that (wget?).
 
Now would seem to be a good time to run it up temporarily though, to see what, if anything, it reveals.
I thought we might have been down this path before, on reflection.
 
prpr said:
Now would seem to be a good time to run it up temporarily though, to see what, if anything, it reveals.
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i can't do that right now, I'm 100 miles away. In any case, no connection is no connection.

prpr said:
I thought we might have been down this path before, on reflection.
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Unreliable and intermittent yes, no service at all no.
 
Black Hole said:
In any case, no connection is no connection.
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It's not that simple. It could be frequencies on the wire, or LCP, or PPPoA, or something else. Interrogating your modem might tell you.

It seems like BT have just had a huge outage - I've picked up several, all on ADSL, all from 03:47 to 10:12 today. Even my phone via my VDSL was complaining about "no internet connection on wireless". Seems OK now, on investigation.
 
Well, that's interesting:

9B5D868B-C50C-4A38-B674-7B482B1E9A5E.jpeg

...but with the line unplugged:

6B849CA5-F34B-4A9A-A5C5-A008886A3C47.jpeg

(it recovers to the previous – after about a minute, give or take some noise margin – when I reconnect it)

I take it that means I have ADSL even if I don't have service, and proves the problem is at the exchange or something to do with their administration.
 
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Black Hole said:
I take it that means I have ADSL even if I don't have service
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Indeed. That rules out your line or the exchange equipment. It's something up a level or more. Is there a log page on either of these routers that tells you anything useful? Or any page that tells you what the WAN IP address or its peer is?
prpr said:
It seems like BT have just had a huge outage
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It was quite a large Plusnet problem, according to Downdetector.
 
prpr said:
Is there a log page on either of these routers that tells you anything useful?
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No

prpr said:
Or any page that tells you what the WAN IP address or its peer is?
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Yes, but that's a moot point now because it's working again. I don't know whether the information would have been available in the fault state.

I ran the gauntlet of getting in touch with BT again to explain that as I have voice and ADSL but not Internet it can't be a line fault, and the response was to not cancel the Openreach visit so they could check it all out. At that time, it was still dead with the BT Hub status LED orange. I was going to leave the BT Hub connected for the duration, but I happened to notice it blue short while later, so I swapped in the Netgear again and everything is now fine!

I presume they found the bit that needed resetting or rebooting their end, but now I have no idea whether the Openreach visit has been cancelled. I guess I'll have to go through the hoops of getting a callback AGAIN (or just leave them to it). Then there's the question of compensation for lack of service from lunchtime Thursday until now.
 
Black Hole said:
Then there's the question of compensation for lack of service from lunchtime Thursday until now.
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Hope you have better luck than I did when I had no landline for over a month. I'd had previous problems a few years before and they never coughed up. They didn't this time either. I now don't deal with BT or have any cabled services for that matter!
 
Ref the RE200 range extender...
Black Hole said:
However, I could exclude the HDRs from the extended network by using separate SSIDs.
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I think I might have to do that. I'm now finding AirPrint doesn't work unless I turn the RE200 off.

Any ideas why that might be?
 
I just did a bit of searching about this multi-network. This experience may shed some light:

My setup:

I originally also setup 2 WiFi routers (one is actually creating a downstream sub-network within another). Both have identical SSID+password (and same 2.4GHz frequency, for that matter), at upstairs and downstairs in my house, in hoping that they would be seen as same network, thus allowing my devices to freely roam from one to another, whenever they see fit (hopefully based on signal strength).

Such setup seemed to work in the way I expected, in a sense that all my phones, tablets and computers show only one available WiFi network, rather than two with same names. My devices can connect to that network, and work just fine.

But, in hindsight, my devices displaying only one SSID network might just mean they silently hide the other one with the same SSID; it does not necessarily mean these devices can roam between both. In everyday usage, you just won't know. A device might just be sticking with one WiFi network all the time.

How/when did I realize things weren't right? Recently I happened to disable my downstairs router, and then I found out a certain set of my devices became offline. In their network setting menu, there is still one seemingly same WiFi network as a "remembered network" meaning the device does have the password, but tapping the "Connect" button would always fail. Realizing what was happening, I can experimentally re-enable my downstairs router and disable the upstairs router, now my previously unable-to-connect devices can work, but the another set of devices would become offline.

The conclusion: Setting up 2 WiFi networks with same SSID+password is not the "poor man's mesh WiFi" that I hope it would be.

I wonder if this applies to commercial networks, as in hotels and offices, or do they have access points that do something intelligent to hand devices across like the mobile phone systems do.
 
MikeSh said:
I just did a bit of searching about this multi-network. This experience may shed some light:

My setup:

I originally also setup 2 WiFi routers (one is actually creating a downstream sub-network within another). Both have identical SSID+password (and same 2.4GHz frequency, for that matter), at upstairs and downstairs in my house, in hoping that they would be seen as same network, thus allowing my devices to freely roam from one to another, whenever they see fit (hopefully based on signal strength)....
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Are they on the exact same frequency, ie the same channel?
(I don't think they should be. You may get interference/crosstalk where the signals meet/overlap.)
I suppose it depends on how you link the two routers. This gives a good idea. https://www.waveform.com/pages/wifi-booster-repeater-extender-differences. If they're linked by ethernet or power line, you may get better results if they use different channels. Maybe it doesn't matter or an option if they're linked via WiFi.
 
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I think there is more to the network ID than the SSID. There is probably another ID for the specific device which is why the systems in the text I quoted didn't mix as expected. This may be deliberate as it will make it harder for spoofers in cafes or airports to acquire logins since any device already registered to the official net will ignore the spoofed one.
I'd imagine hotels, etc, share that additional ID among their APs, so devices can roam. (Have to be encrypted in some way so the spoofers can't just copy it.)

Probably completely wrong, but plausible in my mind :o_O:
 
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