Wi-Fi Questions

Discussion in 'The Thunderdome' started by Indy, Apr 10, 2019.

  1. IP

    IP Super Moderator

    Game set match, even.
     
    CardinalVol likes this.
  2. Indy

    Indy Pronoun Analyst

    In the words of the great T-Pain, "All I do is win, win, win, no matter what."
     
  3. Indy

    Indy Pronoun Analyst

    If I'm paying for "up to" 1,200 mbps down, but I'm only getting 267 mbps down for devices connected via wifi, would I continue to get that 267 mbps down if I downgraded to a plan that is "up to" 400 mbps? Or would that 267 mbps speed drop further despite still being under the 400 mbps max?
     
  4. IP

    IP Super Moderator

    You would be a lesser priority so in periods of high use, you'll get less than higher tier customers. The "up to" is corporate oligopoly for "[uck fay] you, pay me."
     
  5. Indy

    Indy Pronoun Analyst

    Makes sense while also not making sense. I guess a better way to say it would be "I understand what you mean, and you're probably right about how it works, but it doesn't make much sense."

    The idea that my speed is 267, but if I downgrade to 400, it will drop even lower is kind of funny.

    It's crazy how inept both Verizon and Xfinity are.

    Xfinity guy is like "Let me check what we can do for you. Okay, we can drop you to 400 mbps with no contract or term commitment, but it will raise your price to $118/month." Why even provide me an option that cuts my speed by 66% and costs $13 more per month? Just tell me there's nothing that can be done.

    Meanwhile, Verizon can't tell me why my cellular service is giving me 13 mbps down. I've been given 3 very different speeds for what I can expect from the 5G home internet, and the chat keeps disconnecting.

    What a grand experience.
     
  6. IP

    IP Super Moderator

    Think of it as a series of tunes.

    But seriously, think of it as getting some fraction of the bandwidth, up to x if it were available but x is never available because they promised up to x more times than the total capacity divided by x for your area.

    Ideally you want to live in a low density area on or near a major backbone. That does not describe baltimore.
     
  7. warhammer

    warhammer Chieftain

    We are currently using T-Mobile home internet service. Despite their claims, we definitely do not have 5G coverage here. It's still better than our other two options which are Hughes Net and the local telephone company which offers 12 Mbps down at our location for double the price we are paying right now.
     
  8. Indy

    Indy Pronoun Analyst

    What "up to" speeds do they suggest you should get, and what do you get?
     
  9. warhammer

    warhammer Chieftain

    We get about 30 down and less than 10 up. I can't remember what is advertised, but it's a good deal more that this.
     
  10. IP

    IP Super Moderator

    There is a reason it isn't marketed as "at least." You would never have too fast
     
  11. The Dooz

    The Dooz Super Moderator

    Doesn’t it only account for your wired connection too?

    I’d get 300 if in was connected to my router with a wire but I usually get about 200 or so on wireless, which is still plenty and it’s fiber.

    Fortunately we have about 4 different ISPs in our area with both KUB and LCUB fiber on the way too.
     
  12. Indy

    Indy Pronoun Analyst

    We are moving on to the next chapter of the Indy Wi-Fi battle.

    My 1,200 mbps down from Xfinity is too [uck fay]ing expensive at $106 a month and doesn't get the wifi signal I pay for (300 mbps right next to it). Plus [uck fay] Xfinity. Worst company on earth. So I'm doing everything I can to switch (as they unflap their shirt flaps and begin massaging their nipples).

    Verizon doesn't do Fios here, but they have this 5G option that I can try for free for a month. I have a couple towers nearby, so I got it set up yesterday. It's a receiver in the window that collects the signal from the tower, and then a router that the receiver is connected to.

    I've got my personal PC hooked up directly to the router, and it's getting 1100-1200 down. My phone speed test is doing 700+ in the same room. So the connection/speed is excellent.

    The problem is that it won't cover my whole house. Imagine my house as a 3-floor rectangle that you're looking at in landscape view (short sides on the left and right, long sides on the top and bottom). The front of the house is on the right, back of the house is on the left. My set up is in my office, on the second floor, front of the house. The signal drops to 200-300 mbps directly below my office, in the living room. My wife gets a terrible connection in her office (2nd floor, back of the house). Our bedroom (3rd floor, back of the house) gets about 30 mbps, and we get literally no connection in the kitchen (1st floor, back of the house).

    So, here are my questions:

    • How do the ports in my house work? I have an ethernet port on one wall in my office, and a coax port on the other wall. Could I hook my router into one of these ports to send internet signal through my house? In other words, if I plug the coax cable into my router and the wall, could my wife then hook into an ethernet port in her office for a better speed? If it wouldn't work with the coax port, would it work if I plug the router into the ethernet port?
      • If any of the above would work, does the fact that I still have Xfinity hooked up, which is delivered via coax on the first floor, affect any of these setups?
    • I'm guessing that if I want the wifi signal to reach the back side of the house, I will need to do the mesh/extender thing, yeah? I was thinking about just taking my google wifi's (old generation hockey puck things) that I've got hooked up with Xfinity and move them over to the Verizon set up. But then I'd need to change settings with my Verizon router, right? Put it in bridge mode or something?

    • Is it worth upgrading to the latest generation Google Nest things? They look expensive af, but they get the 6 GHz band, which my router/receiver combo can do.
    I might have more questions later, but that's where I am currently.
     
    Last edited: Dec 8, 2023
  13. IP

    IP Super Moderator

    By coincidence I moved into areas with Verizon Fios, and have not thought about how big of a piece of shit Comcast is since until reading your post. They are that bad. They are dishonest and in a healthy society they'd be made to compensate the customers they fail to serve as billed.

    I can't answer your question. Congrats on the big house though!
     
  14. Indy

    Indy Pronoun Analyst

    We loved Fios for the brief time we had it at our apartment before buying the house. If it was offered here, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. I'm going above and beyond to make this 5G shit work just so I can tell Comcast to [uck fay] themselves.

    According to the wife, the house is way too narrow. Where have I heard that before?
     
  15. Indy

    Indy Pronoun Analyst

    Also, quick aside:

    When I told Comcast I was giving Verizon 5G a try, they said they'd offer me a promotional price of $73.90 to stick with them. They sent me the contract... it said $100.90... and after the third time of asking about it, the lady put me on hold, and someone new eventually picked up with no knowledge of the previous discussion. The $73.90 price was no longer available, the previous rep included no notes of it, and they had no interest in reviewing the recording. [uck fay] them.

    Verizon can be bad too, but it's more just incompetence than malice. They've offered me their Verizon wifi extenders about 20 different times, sometimes for free, sometimes saying they'd need to charge me, and every time they say it's in stock, just to eventually find out that it's not actually in stock. And all of this is usually in response to a simple question, such as whether my router can support the 6GHz band. I was talking to the tech who came out yesterday to set up the receiver, and he was just like "Yeah, none of those chat people ever seem to know what the [uck fay] is going on."
     
  16. IP

    IP Super Moderator

    Pretty sure the 73.90 and then 100.90 is what used to be known as a "bait and switch." But we no longer hold companies accountable.
     
  17. lumberjack4

    lumberjack4 Chieftain

    Short answer, we don't have enough information to tell you definitively one way or the other. Fiber internet is generally fiber to the outside wall of the house where it is then converted to CAT5/6/6e via a "transformer" box (mine is in my attic). Fiber doesn't run over coax but fiber optic cable, which is not installed throughout a house. From the "transformer" box they run an ethernet line to wherever you want the router to sit, so from it's perspective you're just plugging a ethernet cable into the WAN port. If you have other ethernet ports across the house, odds are all they eventually run to the same place and terminate together. Assuming that is true you, can install a switch there and plug all the ports up and get what you're looking for. However to get the internet to them you would need 2 ethernet wall ports where the router is (one bringing the fiber in and one taking it back out to the other router. You generally can't plug a personal router directly into the transformer box because it has to run first through the OEM router to handshake and authenticate with the ISP to access their network to get to the internet (this is at least true for AT&T Fiber and Google Fiber).
    Since fiber doesn't go over coax this wouldn't be an issue. If for some reason you want to use both, each source would need to broadcast over separate wifi networks, but machines on separate networks can't see each other because they would be on separate networks.
    Yeah you would either need an extender or mesh network. I personally do not like the Google Ones, they have a very dumbed down interface which is nice on the one hand if you're not tech savvy, but the moment something [uck fay]s up (and it will) most everything is hidden from you and troubleshooting isn't really possible, other than turning it off and on again hoping a reboot fixed the issue. I use the NetGear Orbi, on the occasion something gets weird I can actually log into the device and review and change settings. With the Nest device the only way to access anything is through the Google Home app.
     
  18. Indy

    Indy Pronoun Analyst

    It's possible that I'm missing something here, as I'm the network noob and you seem to know a lot about this stuff. But I think you may be misunderstanding what I'm asking about (you said Fiber a lot, and I don't have fiber).

    The new internet I'm trying is 5G. It's not entering my home through any cables or connections. I've got a receiver in my window that's getting a signal from a tower. That receiver is then connected to a router (I think that is the technical term for it? Maybe I'm mistaken? Both devices are from Verizon). Neither of these devices are connected to my home walls for anything other than power. So my understanding is that the signal goes from the tower to my receiver (through the air), then from my receiver to the router (through ethernet connection), then from my router out to the house (through the air) in the form of a wifi signal.

    So the router is currently only connected to the receiver and power. And the receiver is only connected to power and the router. Nothing coming from the walls or going to the walls.

    So then we get to the question, which is about the walls and my house. They don't have any internet running through them currently (actually, they do - my Xfinity is still connected. But in the scenario I hope to end up in, that will be gone, and I'll just have this Verizon 5G), because nothing is being delivered to the outside of the house, like you mentioned. I was trying to figure out if I could plug the router, that is pushing out wifi (from the 5G receiver), into an ethernet port, to push internet to the ethernet ports throughout the house. So then my wife could plug her work laptop into the ethernet port in her office, solving the issue with her getting wifi. And I could plug my xbox in the living room into a separate ethernet port to get a good connection there too.

    Does that help clarify, or did I misunderstand something?

    Preferred end state is to use just the Verizon 5G. I'm just trying to figure out if still having the Xfinity hooked up will cause problems with testing the Verizon.

    I'm tech savvy, but not when it comes to this stuff. Maybe I'll look the Orbi. The only reason I thought about google first is because we have it now and it's what I know without doing additional research.

    Feel free to call me an idiot and correct me anywhere I'm missing things.
     
  19. Indy

    Indy Pronoun Analyst

    I'm pretty sure the first lady was just a [uck fay]ing idiot, didn't understand what she was looking at, and then finally saw the issue and got outta dodge.
     
  20. lumberjack4

    lumberjack4 Chieftain

    Ah I thought I read Verizon FIOS, disregard all the fiber talk. If its a 5G receiver at the window then it just depends how the ethernet lines are wired in your house.

    What do you mean Xfinity is running thorough the walls? Is it coax to modem/router to an ethernet port in your wall? Or are you just talking about the coax?

    If you already have the Google Nests, no real need to go out and get something else unless/until you're ready to throw the things out the window.
     

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