I share an apartment with 3 other friends. We've been here for a couple months now and I'm still trying to figure out the best way to set up our home network. Sorry for the long post, it kind of just kept going.
This is the router that I purchased before moving in. I know it's not high end, but it was reviewed well and seemed like a solid choice. It seems to work fine as I think all of our issues stem from the way the internet in the apartment is wired/configured.
http://www.tp-link.com/en/products/details/cat-9_TL-WDR3500.html
Our Internet package is provided by WOW and is a default package that comes with our rent for the apartment. Speed seems to test at 25 down and 5 up on Ethernet. I have had no interaction with them and every apartment in the complex has them as their ISP since it's bundled with our rent cost. The apartment complex office said "just plug in a router" to get WiFi, so they're probably not much help for the problems I'm having. If I need to, I can contact WOW for support, but I'd prefer not to do that unless needed. The service out of the wall is actually pretty good, but I haven't heard good things about their customer service.
There are 4 bedrooms, and each has an outlet with a CAT5 port and I assume a phone line port (too old for me
). Plugging an Ethernet cable into the CAT5 gets us Internet in each room. Each room has a separate public IP address, but appears to share our bandwidth of 25 down/5 up. There's no way to see each other on the network from what I can tell as it just identifies it as a "Network" with an internet connection. There is also a 5th CAT5 plug in the living room that provides Internet as well. I currently have the router hooked up out there with just one plug from the wall and the power. There is no modem in the apartment, which seems to complicate things.
3 of the 4 rooms have desktops that are always wired in while the 4th room has a laptop that gets plugged in when needed. Our WiFi signal is pretty weak it seems and doesn't seem to cover the apartment very well. WiFi is used by 4 laptops (rarely all in use) 4 smartphones, and a few consoles. It's only ever really utilized by one laptop or the Xbox very much and works well enough for that.
Known Quirks/Problems
- Having the 5GHz band enabled on the router makes the 2.4GHz band simply not load anything, but still appear as a functioning connection otherwise. Speedtests will seep by a few tenths of a MB. Restarts of the router sometimes will fix this temporarily, but might also cause the next issue.
- DNS Probe Not Finished is a common error that would be found on both the WiFi (multiple devices at once), and/or one or more of the wired connections. Acting as if it couldn't handle having that many connections all at once. This was only really a problem when the 5GHz band was on. I've had it off for most of our stay and it seems to alleviate most issues. Random drops of one port or the entire WiFi network still happen, but rarely. I wonder if moving the router to a bedroom and cloning the IP would alleviate this. I don't know really even what that means, but have read a little on that helping with stuff like this.
- Through the wired connections, there doesn't seem to be anything controlling bandwidth. 2 of my roommates play LoL religiously and it seems that any download on another wired connection will completely lag them out of the game and essentially make their internet useless. If I run a speedtest, it "gives" me all of our internet speed, and the other computers are horrendously slow at loading anything until it's done. We're all PC gamers, so this is a big annoyance. I have noticed though that if I'm just streaming Netflix or downloading something that is throttled below our usual max speed, it doesn't affect them noticeably. If the only bottleneck is our internet speed, it will give all of our 25mbps speed to a download though, and ruin the rest of the network rather than throttle me slightly to keep the rest afloat.
- WiFi coverage is pretty terrible. Probably has mostly to do with placement/interference. The back two rooms have pretty unusable WiFi signal and the front two are spotty. Given how small the place is, that's pretty bad.
- My printer, Canon MG6220, doesn't seem to want to connect with my router. It worked fine on different networks. Probably a result of funky configuration.
Ideal Goal
- WiFi coverage for the 4 bedrooms and living room.
- Better bandwidth allocation on wired networks, if even possible. This is really an annoyance, but very well might not be possible.
- 5GHz band back on and functioning. This isn't a huge priority, but would be nice as our smartphones could make use of it
- Wireless printing would be a perk, but not imperative. I'd imagine fixing the network setup would solve this too.
In all honesty, I should probably just call the ISP and see how they have this stuff set up, but I kind of want to figure it out and learn for myself. I'm sorta lost when it comes to networking beyond "turn it off and on again". Thanks for any help.
I attached a layout of the floorplan, if it matters. The router currently sits on the kitchen table. It's not great placement, but the port out there is under the table. I have a long Ethernet cable I could get creative with if needed. Even the WiFi in rooms closer to the living room isn't great.
This is the router that I purchased before moving in. I know it's not high end, but it was reviewed well and seemed like a solid choice. It seems to work fine as I think all of our issues stem from the way the internet in the apartment is wired/configured.
http://www.tp-link.com/en/products/details/cat-9_TL-WDR3500.html
Our Internet package is provided by WOW and is a default package that comes with our rent for the apartment. Speed seems to test at 25 down and 5 up on Ethernet. I have had no interaction with them and every apartment in the complex has them as their ISP since it's bundled with our rent cost. The apartment complex office said "just plug in a router" to get WiFi, so they're probably not much help for the problems I'm having. If I need to, I can contact WOW for support, but I'd prefer not to do that unless needed. The service out of the wall is actually pretty good, but I haven't heard good things about their customer service.
There are 4 bedrooms, and each has an outlet with a CAT5 port and I assume a phone line port (too old for me
). Plugging an Ethernet cable into the CAT5 gets us Internet in each room. Each room has a separate public IP address, but appears to share our bandwidth of 25 down/5 up. There's no way to see each other on the network from what I can tell as it just identifies it as a "Network" with an internet connection. There is also a 5th CAT5 plug in the living room that provides Internet as well. I currently have the router hooked up out there with just one plug from the wall and the power. There is no modem in the apartment, which seems to complicate things.3 of the 4 rooms have desktops that are always wired in while the 4th room has a laptop that gets plugged in when needed. Our WiFi signal is pretty weak it seems and doesn't seem to cover the apartment very well. WiFi is used by 4 laptops (rarely all in use) 4 smartphones, and a few consoles. It's only ever really utilized by one laptop or the Xbox very much and works well enough for that.
Known Quirks/Problems
- Having the 5GHz band enabled on the router makes the 2.4GHz band simply not load anything, but still appear as a functioning connection otherwise. Speedtests will seep by a few tenths of a MB. Restarts of the router sometimes will fix this temporarily, but might also cause the next issue.
- DNS Probe Not Finished is a common error that would be found on both the WiFi (multiple devices at once), and/or one or more of the wired connections. Acting as if it couldn't handle having that many connections all at once. This was only really a problem when the 5GHz band was on. I've had it off for most of our stay and it seems to alleviate most issues. Random drops of one port or the entire WiFi network still happen, but rarely. I wonder if moving the router to a bedroom and cloning the IP would alleviate this. I don't know really even what that means, but have read a little on that helping with stuff like this.
- Through the wired connections, there doesn't seem to be anything controlling bandwidth. 2 of my roommates play LoL religiously and it seems that any download on another wired connection will completely lag them out of the game and essentially make their internet useless. If I run a speedtest, it "gives" me all of our internet speed, and the other computers are horrendously slow at loading anything until it's done. We're all PC gamers, so this is a big annoyance. I have noticed though that if I'm just streaming Netflix or downloading something that is throttled below our usual max speed, it doesn't affect them noticeably. If the only bottleneck is our internet speed, it will give all of our 25mbps speed to a download though, and ruin the rest of the network rather than throttle me slightly to keep the rest afloat.
- WiFi coverage is pretty terrible. Probably has mostly to do with placement/interference. The back two rooms have pretty unusable WiFi signal and the front two are spotty. Given how small the place is, that's pretty bad.
- My printer, Canon MG6220, doesn't seem to want to connect with my router. It worked fine on different networks. Probably a result of funky configuration.
Ideal Goal
- WiFi coverage for the 4 bedrooms and living room.
- Better bandwidth allocation on wired networks, if even possible. This is really an annoyance, but very well might not be possible.
- 5GHz band back on and functioning. This isn't a huge priority, but would be nice as our smartphones could make use of it
- Wireless printing would be a perk, but not imperative. I'd imagine fixing the network setup would solve this too.
In all honesty, I should probably just call the ISP and see how they have this stuff set up, but I kind of want to figure it out and learn for myself. I'm sorta lost when it comes to networking beyond "turn it off and on again". Thanks for any help.
I attached a layout of the floorplan, if it matters. The router currently sits on the kitchen table. It's not great placement, but the port out there is under the table. I have a long Ethernet cable I could get creative with if needed. Even the WiFi in rooms closer to the living room isn't great.
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