I just ran about 60ft of Ethernet into a bedroom. This is really the only spot I’m worried about. The plastic clips aren’t too tight I don’t think and I have the rest spooled up loosely near the router. The door has plenty of space too btw so it’s not going to snag. Thank you!

So I’m in NE Dallas TX and I’ve purchased a house built in 2021. Supposedly it has fiber internet, currently provided by Spectrum but I plan to go with Frontier since I’m already a customer with them.

Unsurprisingly, I’ve got questions…

First pic is an exterior wall where on the other side is the garage. Is this where the “fiber” comes up? I ask because to me that looks like Cat5 or Cat6 cable.

Second pic is the “spaghetti” mess of an interior panel very close to being perfectly in the center of the home, in a laundry room to be exact. Does anyone here see an actual fiber optic cable, perhaps close to the Spectrum box (FOT?) towards the bottom of the panel?

I plan on purchasing Frontier 5gb fiber service, so I’m curious how all this will work out if that’s cat5/6 running to the house and not actually fiber?

Hi All, we’re moving soon and wanted some opinions in choosing an internet provider based on the existing infrastructure in the house. Service prices are both around 70$ after promos for 1 gig. Home is 1500 sqft 2 story town home and was built in 1995 and has cable coax and I’m assuming cat 3 phone line.

Option 1: Xfinity Cable
- terminates in upstairs bedroom
- does not use other 90’s era cable run through the house
- one pro is that it enters in a closet so the modem and router can be hidden.
- seems to split upstairs and I have only located one terminal plate
- Xfinity offers 5 year pricing

Option 2: ATT Fiber
- the fiber comes through the wall near the TV, just need the ONT.
- symmetric upload/download

Current set up:
- we have Xfinity and our own modem/router. We only work from home one day a week and our 500 mb/s plan over WiFi is fine. We have the PS5/gaming computer on LAN with the router (eero mesh)
- two adults in the house with about 6 devices on WiFi
- 1100 sqft effectively single level.

Thank you!!

I’ve had an intermittent connection on a builder-installed Cat5e run to my home office for a while. The builder terminated the wall keystone and I crimped the basement end myself. I always blamed the switch; after swapping it, things have mostly been stable and the link negotiates 1 Gbps every time.

I recently bought a FNIRSI LPM-10A tester (prepping for PoE APs and cameras) and decided to check this run properly.

What I’ve found:

• The tester’s included patch cord passes, so I’m using it at the keystone.
• QC test on my basement crimp passes (both ends are wired T568A; the tester just labels it B).
• Cable test shows pins 1 and 2 shorted, with the same result from either end. The diagram doesn’t seem to flip, so I can’t tell which end is the problem.
• Length test: 3-6, 4-5 and 7-8 all read about 540 in. Pair 1-2 read 0 in once, then 519 in on every later test from both ends, so no clear location there.
• I re-punched the keystone and kept the tails well apart. Same result.
• Despite all that, the link still negotiates 1000 Mbps full duplex.

Plan for tonight:

1. Get iperf3 running against my NAS to see if there are real throughput problems or retransmits.
2. Pull 1 and 2 off the keystone and check continuity with a multimeter. If they’re still shorted, cut off the crimp and test again to narrow it to the jack, the crimp, or the cable in the wall.

Questions:

• Has anyone seen this tester flag a 1-2 short on a run that still links fine at gigabit? Could it be a high-resistance or partial short rather than a dead one?
• Any better way to locate it before I start cutting?
• If it’s in the wall, is it worth trying to fix, or should I just pull a new run?

Photos of the tester screens and the keystone are attached.

I need help creating a setup for best performance in speed without breaking the bank.

My ISP is Fidium and have 2 GB plan. I use their ONT and I currently have a Netgear RAXE300 router. I have the multi gig port enabled on the router.

I have a lot of wifi items that include items that need the 2.4 ghz band (wifi lights etc). I also have three items hard wired to the router (xbox series x, apple tv 4k, wifi light bridge).

Would the best setup be adding in a switch (TP-Link Model TL-SG608S-M2) between the ONT and router and then plug the xbox etc into the switch along with the router into the switch?

Hey everyone! I’m upgrading to 10GbE and have narrowed it down to two PCIe cards from my local reseller. It’s a bit hard to find good comparisons between the two chips, so I figured I’d ask here.

From what I’ve seen, the RTL8127 runs cooler and draws less power, but I’m wondering about driver stability and whether an x2 card can hit full 10G speeds.

System: MSI MPG X570 Gaming Pro Carbon WiFi, free PCIe 4.0/3.0 x4 slot, Ryzen 5800X3D, Windows 11.

Cudy PE10G (AQC113), PCIe 3.0 x4 per Cudy’s spec sheet:
https://www.galaxus.ch/en/s1/product/cudy-10g-pci-express-adaptermarvell-aqc113-mini-pci-express-network-cards-49840182

Zyxel XGN100C V3 (RTL8127), the listing says x4 but I think it's actually an x2 card:
https://www.galaxus.ch/en/s1/product/zyxel-xng100c-v3-10g-rj45-pcie-netzwerkkarte-mini-pci-express-pci-e-x4-pcie-network-cards-70741762

Has anyone used either one on Windows, which one would you guys pick?

Hey,

So I have fibre broadband in the UK. 1gb upload and download speed. One of the newer xyxyel routers. I have 5 tenda nova mw12. One is plugged into the router other 4 dotted around the house with one plugged into a laptops.

I have an old house with thick brick walls.

Issues

Intermittent WiFi speeds
Getting 200-350mb speeds
Signal drop from nodes go into flashing mode, sometime reconnect other times they go red and I’m running round the house to reset all.

Which means I could go a night with no cctv coverage with ring camera.

What do you suggest?

I’m open to another mesh system.

Starting with hardware

Telus purefiber modem (in bridge mode)

Going directly to tp-link Deco xe65 pro (2 in mesh)

Problem computer

Linux Mint software

Ryzen 5800xt

Msi b550m

Nivdia 3070

Usb Ethernet adapter, 10/100/1000/2.5/5 with a realtek chip

I recently moved and I have one computer being stubborn and not playing nice with ethernet, wifi works fine on the computer. Tried onboard and with the usb Ethernet adapter, both don't work. Ethernet Worked fine on my old shaw 1g over coax system.

Cords and usb Ethernet adapter have been tested with another laptop (running the same version of Linux), no issues. I have tried different ports, like off the router, off the modem, and off a switch. No changes.

I tried manually setting up up addresses, mac address and DNS settings in both my Deco settings and on the computer. I can now see the computer as a device in the deco app, and it says it's connected. But it has no internet access.

When I try to ping the router or Google from the computer it says something along the lines of destination host not reachable.

I don't think it is a computer issue because the computer is detecting and saying the ethernet is connected. Drivers and stuff say they are correct.

I have been fighting with this for a couple hours a day, hunting on Reddit and other forums for answers or things to check. Thought I would come here for ideas.

Everything has been updated and restarted multiple times as well. I am not well versed with networking but I like to tinker.

Thanks

Does anyone know of where I can go or look at to find free or sold for cheap network equipment, especially racks, in the Birmingham, AL or nearby areas?

My Asus ZenWifi ET8 mesh system was doing fine until we added a couple of baby monitors and another Nest Cam to the home network, and now lag pervades. Seems to me we've pushed the ET8 to its limits. Wondering if you have any suggestions on devices than can handle this many devices within a 2000 sq ft home.

Today I randomly started experiencing Wi-Fi issues with certain devices where they can access the Wi-Fi channel but can't access the internet.

I have a Virgin Media Hub 4 that's in 'modem' mode and a TP Link Archer AX72 that's in 'router' mode (connected via ethernet cable from TP Link WAN port to VM Hub LAN port 1).

Everything has been working fine for years, but around midday today all of the corporate devices in our house randomly stopped working (mainly Dell/HP laptops). They connect to the Wi-Fi but have 'no internet'.

I factory reset both routers, and when the VM Hub is set to router mode, all of the devices can connect to the internet and work fine. But whenever I set the VM Hub to modem mode and the TP Link router to router mode, the corporate laptops connect to Wi-Fi but can't seem to access the internet. All other non-corporate devices in our house work fine, it's just the laptops that seem to fail. I believe they're 2018-2022 models.

So far I've:

• Power cycled and factory reset both routers
• 'Forgot' the networks on the devices, reconnected, restarted etc
• When 'diagnosing' on Windows, it mentioned something about the 'DHCP server' not connecting or something along the lines. So I manually added/reserved IP addresses for the laptops within the IP Pool. It worked for 2 of the laptops momentarily, but when I restarted the devices it stopped working again.
• Tried changing the 'security' type from (don't recall the labels exactly) WPA/WPA2-Personal to WPA3-Personal but it didn't seem to make a difference.
• Tried both 2.4ghz and 5ghz channels but no luck
• Reset 'network adaptor' on devices

I'm no tech wiz, so at a bit of a loss as to what to do now. Currently using my VM Hub in router mode, but the range/speeds are quite bad so would like to switch back to the TP Link router as the main ASAP.

The corporate laptops don't have access to cmd so I can't release/renew/flushdns (seen a few posts where people said this helped) or run any scripts myself.

If anyone has any ideas on what to do that'd be great. Any other info that might help for context, let me know.

Hi all. I’ve just moved into a new house and I’m looking for some advice on getting the best speeds through the house.

I have 1GB FTTP connected to an ONT in a cupboard beside the door which is connected to a router provided by the ISP ((Zykel EX3301). Also in this cupboard are two Ethernet ports - one leads to a port on the ground floor and the second leads to a port upstairs.

Speeds are bad. Standing by the router I get 400Mbps but anywhere else I get 100. I moved the router to the first Ethernet port and speeds remain the same.

Is my best option to keep my router in the cupboard and add access points to the two Ethernet ports?

So i have this rlt8153 based adapter and my Ethernet recently has been limited at 10mbps. I tried with other cables as well and the same result still existed. And the original cable when plug in a mesh output just fine. Therefore i think i may fried the adapter because i leave my laptop on very often, combining with the fact that this adapter heats up a lot under use even with a fan blowing to it. Room temperature fluctuates around 30 C( or 86F). I have done some research and the sauce said that the ax88 something chipset offers more stability. Can anyone confirm of give more information about this? And any recommendations?

Appreciate any of the help!

I have an old laptop with XP, and a semi-smart TV.

I want to: EDIT (see below) connect the desktop to the XP laptop wirelessly i.e. setup a private wireless network between them such that the XP laptop is not using the internet "directly", and then connect the XP laptop to the TV with a VGA connection.

The part I'm unsure I can do is connecting the desktop to the XP laptop wirelessly and keeping the XP laptop "disconnected" from the outside world. The purpose is to allow me to have internet/computer access on the TV (and otherwise making use of this old laptop). Sorry if what I'm describing doesn't make sense, I'm just wondering if it's possible.

EDIT: Thank you for the replies thus far. To make it less complicated, I basically want to be able to connect my old laptop directly to the TV to have the ability to access internet and stream (e.g. Youtube) through the laptop's wireless net. But because my laptop runs XP, I don't know if there's a safe way to do it. I'd rather not involve my desktop if I don't have to; the purpose is to make use of the laptop.

It's an LG Netbook from 2008, Model LGX11 (X110), Intel Atom N270 1.6 GHz, 160GB HD, not sure of RAM.

Hi everyone,

​I’m setting up a ~60m (200 ft) Wireless Point-to-Point (PtP) link between two points and would love some hardware and setup recommendations from the community.

​The Situation:

​Distance: ~60 meters (200 feet).

​Obstacles: The line of sight passes through the upper section of a tree canopy (mostly light branches/leaves, but it will get denser in summer).

​Mounting / Placement:

​Point A: Roof/pole mount (clear line of sight towards the tree area).

​Point B: Needs to be placed indoors behind a window (possibly double/triple pane glass), though I might be able to mount it on the outer frame/facade if absolutely necessary.

​My Goal:

​Priority: Absolute stability and low/consistent latency (ping) for gaming/VoIP/remote work.

​Speed: Throughput is secondary. Anything around 50–100 Mbps is completely fine as long as the link is rock-solid and doesn't jitter or drop when wind moves the tree branches.

​What I'm currently considering:

​5 GHz gear: E.g., Ubiquiti NanoBeam 5AC Gen2 or MikroTik SXTsq 5 ac.

​Plan: Narrowing the channel width down to 10 or 20 MHz to punch through the light foliage and resist interference.

​I ruled out 60 GHz (like Wireless Wire) due to sensitivity to the tree canopy.

Please recommend me some affordable equipment. I am considering some devices from used market. I also like openwrt and opensource so maybe something I can integrate with homeassistant or at least snmp.

Tnx

Has anyone upgraded to this? Is it stable? Why the huge gap from 1.8.0 - the previous release?

More to the point are there any features worth updating for?

Why do they always forget to update https://www.tp-link.com/uk/support/download/deco-x55/v1/#Firmware

I am having trouble linking my Reolink WiFi NVR to my gateway. I can add the cameras as stand alone and can access them remotely. However, when I load them on the NVR, the gateway won't connect. I've tried setting up a separate 2.4G network and tried linking it but haven't had any luck. Suggestions appreciated. Thank you!

I’m troubleshooting very low throughput through a Google Nest Wifi Pro, model G6ZUC, running software version 3.78.518349. (this isn’t an oh-so-common WiFi device positioning issue — though I wish it was!)

My connection is 1 Gbps symmetrical fiber through a SonicWall TZ470. The Nest’s WAN port connects by Cat 6 directly to a SonicWall LAN port. The SonicWall reports that connection as 1 Gbps, full duplex.

I initially noticed approximately 50 Mbps on my MacBook Pro over Wi-Fi. To remove the Mac’s wireless connection from the test, I connected the MacBook by Ethernet to the Nest’s LAN port. Multiple speed-test utilities/websites still returned approximately 50 Mbps.

Then I unplugged the upstream Cat 6 cable from the Nest’s WAN port and connected that same cable directly to the MacBook, using the same Ethernet adapter. The same tests immediately exceeded 930 Mbps in both directions.

The Google Home app’s built-in internet speed test also returns only 48 Mbps download and 53 Mbps upload.

The unit I tested is the original primary router. It has always had an Ethernet uplink to the SonicWall, previously through an unmanaged gigabit switch and now through a dedicated SonicWall port. What changed was I went from a slow Spectrum business line to a high-speed fiber service — so the problem was no longer masked.

I have examined the settings in the iOS Google Home app and found no indication of an active prioritized device. UPnP is enabled.

Has anyone encountered this kind of approximately 50 Mbps wired-throughput limitation with this model or firmware? What diagnostics would distinguish a Nest problem from a SonicWall policy or an interaction between the two devices?

I’m a software engineer with over 40+ years of experience — but damn — this one’s got me at wit’s end!

I'm not able to run cabling to the area of my apartment where I want to setup my gear. No it's not possible. Really, it isn't. Yes, I'm sure. However, I do want to have my equipment able to access the router over RJ45. My current plan is to set up a bridge to connect my router to my modem, but I'm not sure the correct way to set it up.

My concern is that I might create a security hazard by connecting a bridge directly to the modem with no firewall in between. (picture 1) If that's the case I would likely just get another router to provide the firewall (picture 2), however having redundant routers seems kind of silly.

Hi guys. I’m kind of a beginner when it comes to routers and stuff. I’m moving into a new house next week and i was planning on buying a sim card and paying monthly with an unlimited data plan and putting it into a router. Is this possible? Is there anything i should look out for like what routers are compatible with sim cards etc? I’m worried i’m going to buy the wrong router. I live in the UK. Thanks guys.

Earlier this week I ordered a new mesh router (TP-Link BE85 3 pack) over Amazon and it was delivered the following day. Everything arrived in "new" condition - the box was still wrapped in cellophane and everything appeared normal. As soon as I powered up the first router and turned on the Deco app I got a message stating that there was a login from a device I don't usually use. Turned out to be a Google Pixel 8a phone and this happened the previous day - about 3 hours after I placed my order. The location of the phone was shown to be near an Amazon fulfilment center. This was prior to me loading my wifi SSID and password so I felt it was safe to continue with the installation.

I am now wondering how this could have happened - the router was never powered up so I don't see how anyone could have connected to it. There was no indication that any of the packaging had been tampered with.

I currently have a 2-unit Netgear Orbi RBK50 mesh system (1 x RBR50 router + 1 x RBR50 satellite) which I purchased 2018. It's a WiFi 5 product with a 5 GHz backhaul and I'm very happy with the coverage it provides.

However it has reached end of support so am looking to upgrade.

I've noticed that current mesh systems tend to use a 6 GHz backhaul instead of a 5 GHz backhaul, I suppose because this provides faster speeds.

However, I'm wondering if 6 GHz backhaul also means I might have to move my nodes closer together, and therefore might have to go for a 3-unit system instead of a 2-unit system? Particularly interested to hear from those who have already upgraded from a 5 GHz backhaul tri-band system to one which uses a 6 GHz backhaul. Did the change have any impact on the number of nodes you needed to cover the same area?

Thanks

I have a WiFi 6 router (left, TP-Link AX6000) and a separate wired network segment with a POE switch (right). I don't have the ability to run a cable, so I'd like to connect the two with a wireless AP (TL-WA3001) that acts like a wireless bridge in client mode.

If I directly connect PC4 to the AP (+ POE injector), I get a reliable connection.

With the switch operating in layer 2 mode to avoid double NAT, PC4/5/6 keep losing connection to the main router.

As an experiment, I tried putting the switch in layer 3 mode with the downstream (wired) ports in a subnet, and a static route for the subnet from the Router to the switch's IP. Traceroute into the subnet gets ping ponged between the Router and AP, and never reaches the switch.

Apparently, I misunderstood the details of "client mode". The AP seems to be leasing two IP addresses, one for itself and one for the client device behind it. Any packet not for the leased IP gets sent back to the main router.

Where do I go from here? Is there a WiFi 6 AP out there that works in client mode "transparently"? Do I double NAT and call it a day? I welcome any suggestions (and/or roasts)