I live and operate my business out in the middle of nowhere. I started with dial up internet in the beginning, and most recently was able to have a DSL connection with a blazing 8 MBPS download and .4 MBPS upload (don't forget the point in front of that 4).

Thanks to Biden spending all of my great-great grand children's money I now have a fiber optic connection offering hundreds of times the speed I've been used to.

This company provides a small modem connected to a tiny Plume router, along with a few other Plume pods which act as range extenders. I have no real issue with this as it's still a million times better than what I had, but the guy who was installing it all said that they were only OK at best. When I mentioned that I was willing to have the rewire the house he suggested I may want to shop for better equipment.

Since I know nothing about these things, and I know we have members here that do, I'm all ears.

Now that I have the speed I will eventually be connecting the surveillance system, alarms, etc through the fiber connection. Two younger kids who have made it this far with limited use of the internet, but will likely want to play video games or stream their own netflix. I have access to mount anything in the ceiling of any room, and can easily route wiring overhead, under the floors, or up/down into walls.

What would you suggest?

I like the Ubiquiti brand UniFi line.
I would call them enterprise-lite.
They can be managed by web gui that is hosted on their firewall appliance, stand-alone controller, or a software controller running on a machine you manage. I think cloud instances also exist, not sure if those are 1st or 3rd party. I run the software on an Ubuntu virtual machine.


Its what I have in my house. several PoE switches, and an access point.

quote:

Originally posted by a1abdj:
I live and operate my business out in the middle of nowhere. I started with dial up internet in the beginning, and most recently was able to have a DSL connection with a blazing 8 MBPS download and .4 MBPS upload (don't forget the point in front of that 4).

Thanks to Biden spending all of my great-great grand children's money I now have a fiber optic connection offering hundreds of times the speed I've been used to.

Same boat except my DSL was 1 mbps up. Local electric and gas co-op received big federal grant money and we got the Fiber hooked up this past Monday. Now my alarm systems and generators are connected.

For now, I’m using their router as seems to have all the option I could every want. The mobile app is really slick.

I’ll be using the same WAPs (wireless access point) I have in Florida, EnGenius EWS377AP being the latest version. The WAP has been great for 4 years. I know this because I haven’t had a single complaint from the three member Dad What’s Wrong with the Internet Team.

You said you can run the wire, so using a POE (power over Ethernet) switch allows you to run one wire to each device that requires power that you want connect to your network. This would be the WAPs and security cameras. You’ll probably want an NVR (networked video recorder) for the security cameras. The NVR will have a built in POE switch and you connect all your cameras to it. You connect one wire from the NVR to your main switch that’s connected to the router. The main switch will be what you connect your WAPs to as well. They make ones that have POE ports and unpowered ports. You’ll need one that has enough of each port.

You also probably want to run a wire to each fixed location like TVs. I’ve got a cheap, dumb 4 or 8 port switch at each TV location. The TV, gaming system, stereo, or whatever at each location is connect to the switch. This saves you from having to run a separate wire to each device at each location. It also means you main switch can be smaller and less expensive.

You have some options. You can run ethernet cable from your modem to an ethernet router, then run ethernet cable to each room or location where you want access. Desktop computers and some laptops will have ethernet ports. Ditto smart tvs, AppleTV and similar boxes. Tablets, phones, and a lot of laptops will not have ethernet ports, so you'll need wifi. You can have a single wifi base station, or you can have a mesh type of setup with multiple wifi stations.

The wifi base station probably connects via ethernet cable to your modem, and some wifi base units can have an ethernet out port. You can have a mixed system with both ethernet and wifi available.

Our previous home had Eero wifi units connected via ethernet to the base unit. Our current home does not have ethernet wiring, so the wifi units communicate to each other over wifi. The advantage of the first system is that the wifi units don't have to be within range of each other since they communicate via hard wired ethernet. We had one wifi set up in the garage which was too far away from the base station to communicate wirelessly. But our current system works great in a large home with 3 stations, and probably could do fine with only 2, all just wifi.

All that to say you can probably have a wifi mesh system without hard wiring your home with ethernet cable. But you can also have some ethernet too, which can provide privacy and also possibly better service for higher priority users (e.g. your business computer can be prioritized over your kids' video games).

We do have some external security cameras which are all connected via wifi. Our needs are not terribly sophisticated, so I am not concerned about wifi vs hardwired. Mostly I look to see what wildlife has been visiting. (The grandkids howled with laughter at the moose pooping right in front of the camera!)

I would start with a mesh wifi. We have and really like the TP-Link Deco system. So far I haven't needed to run any ethernet aside from the short line from modem to the base Deco unit.

Congratulations on leaving the DSL world behind. I did this a couple years ago and went from 5Mb/s to 1000Mb/s. You and yours will be delighted by the improvement (and your property value just went up, too! )

Suggestions below based on my experience.

1) Before spending anything, see how the stuff that is already installed works.

It may already do what you need.

2) If it isn't doing what you need, you will want to know what specifically needs improving in a replacement.

If it's not making you happy, research the specific model of the router and pods to find out their specs (what WiFi version, 802.11 mode, coverage, etc.) and that will help you know what specifically you would want to see improved in replacing them.

3) Moving around the stuff you have may improve things

Position, orientation, proximity of router/pods, etc. all matter. If issues of coverage arise, sometimes that can be addressed by moving stuff around rather than getting fancier stuff.

4) Speeds measured on devices also depend on the capabilities of the devices themselves as well as on what the network/WiFi is capable of.

Sometimes, slow speeds show up on fast networks because the phone/tablet/PC isn't capable of going that fast.

5) Cables also need upgrades

Once you get into fiber optic speeds, there are legacy cables that can't keep up. Those legacy Cat5 ethernet cables that were so much faster than your DSL for years, are now nowhere near fast enough for fiber speeds. Initially, after getting fiber my WiFi was far faster than my wired PC....until I checked and found out my PC was connected via Cat5. I went around and replaced everything with Cat 6/6a. Make sure anything connected by Ethernet is on a fast cable. Link to Ethernet cable discussion


TL: DR. Before going out and spending money just because of a throwaway line from an installer, dig in a bit.

quote:

Originally posted by trapper189:

I’ll be using the same WAPs (wireless access point) I have in Florida, EnGenius EWS377AP being the latest version. The WAP has been great for 4 years. I know this because I haven’t had a single complaint from the three member Dad What’s Wrong with the Internet Team.

I too have the EWS377AP which I bought after previous discussion on this forum. Rock solid.

quote:

using a POE (power over Ethernet) switch allows you to run one wire to each device that requires power that you want connect to your network. This would be the WAPs and security cameras.

Yes. High Resolution security camera need to be on wired Ethernet. High resolution cameras over wifi suck. They cut out all the time. Wired Ethernet solves this.

As for the best router, I can't suggest one at the moment. I went with the PFsense firewall and a managed switch, but that's likely more complex than you want. There was a Ubiquiti router that everyone liked, but I have no first hand experience with it.

(edited a few mistakes above)

quote:

1) Before spending anything, see how the stuff that is already installed works.

It works way better than what I had.

If I'm not mistaken they will want to charge me monthly for using their supplied router, whereas if I purchase my own I might be able to get something that works the same or better and I'll just own it outright.

One of the reasons this appeals to me is that I can keep their equipment in the garage, and they will never need access to anything I have inside. Due to the nature of my business I don't like having random service people seeing anything we have that runs anything security related.

quote:

specific model of the router and pods

Plume - 6E

quote:

POE (power over Ethernet) switch allows you to run one wire to each device that requires power that you want connect to your network. This would be the WAPs and security cameras. You’ll probably want an NVR (networked video recorder) for the security cameras.

I already have that aspect of it, but the internet was never capable of remote access, which I can now connect.

quote:

All that to say you can probably have a wifi mesh system without hard wiring your home with ethernet cable.

That's what their Plume router does and it seems to work fairly well, especially compared to what I've been used to.

First time I’ve had fiber and no idea how you get your own box. With cable and DSL you just buy your own modem and punch in the information for your ISP.

I don’t see a fiber optic “modem” for lack of a better term that I can just buy instead of the one supplied by my ISP. Is there just a fiber optic to Ethernet adapter or something?

^^^ It's called an Optical Network Terminal or ONT for short. They are normally supplied by the ISP who provided the fiber service.

Mine is very similar to this since it's the same brand:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/18575...6YaWHExoCOXEQAvD_BwE

Just plug in your favorite firewall / router to the Ethernet output and you are generally good to go.

Calix is the brand of all-in-one box my ISP supplied. The ONT must be built into that all-in-one box along with a router, WAP, 4-port switch, and some telephone stuff which I’m not going to be using.

Just a dumb question but wouldn’t rewiring everything from Cat 5 to Cat 6 be damn near impossible without tearing the house apart?

^^^How do you know he has Cat5 cabling? Even if he does, 1000BASE-T was designed for Cat5 in the first place. If good quality cable was used and the terminations were done well he shouldn’t have an issue especially if the cable is shorter than 328’ which is probably true for most houses. I think longest run in my house is 60’ because my switch is located in the middle of the house.

I’m an expert in Layer 1 or fiber, but not on Layer 3 (routing). My routing team at work was big on ASUS and their mesh system and that’s what I run. Dealing with carriers every work day of the year I can tell you their hardware is cheap shit 99% of the time. Telcos, the modems supplied are solid, but the WiFi sucks. On the Coax side, the MSO provided cable modem sucks. I have an ONT, and a modem supplied by my Telco. We set up the modem to be pass through and my ASUS router is the main “box”. They have an app where you can manage most things, easily, or you can use a browser and connect fully to it. ASUS has easy instructions to set it all up. The model I have is ASUS AX-6000. 4 years now, it’s been dead nuts reliable and it reaches parts of the house my previous one couldn’t.

quote:

Originally posted by smlsig:
Just a dumb question but wouldn’t rewiring everything from Cat 5 to Cat 6 be damn near impossible without tearing the house apart?

You can, just depends how much room you have in your walls. But yes it will be a PITA. The electricians I know will just do new runs for it however. Paying them to pull the old out and put in the new, they’ll charge 2X or 3X compared to just doing new Cat 6 drops.

My next home I’m putting conduit in the walls for electrical runs and another conduit for Ethernet with drops in every room. I don’t want to run a switch but will have to as it will be a high rib steel building. I’ll still have WiFi but only for the phone/tablet.

 
I hate all-in-one devices. They are generally designed to do their main function well, and the add-on functions are probably worse than you could achieve with a separate device for each function.
 
If I were lucky enough to have fiber, I would set it up exactly like I have my VDSL connection now. The VDSL termination device is a modem, with routing, dhcp, dns and wi-fi added on to make it all-in one. I neutered it, disabling everything but what it was designed to do, i.e., be a modem.
 
I cabled the VDSL modem to an 8 port gigabit switch, from which sprouts my network. The router is plugged into the switch, the two Engenius access points (wi-fi) are plugged into it as well. I have the router doing dns and dhcp. This leaves 4 ports (on an 8 port switch) free to feed other important things, like a camera, or cabling to different rooms. If you have more needs, you could use a 10, 12, or 16 port switch connected to the modem.
 
I try to cable everything I can, with just my laptop and phone using one of the wifi access points.

quote:

Originally posted by henryaz:
 
I hate all-in-one devices. They are generally designed to do their main function well, and the add-on functions are probably worse than you could achieve with a separate device for each function..

The ISP that I use (Spectrum) supplied an everything box. I told them I wanted MODEM only. They told me to put it in bridge mode, I insisted on a single-purpose MODEM only box.

quote:

Originally posted by a1abdj:

quote:

specific model of the router and pods

Plume - 6E

Forbes was fairly impressed with it - Forbes 12/31/22 - "Gear of the Year" Now, this was two years ago, when 6E was the latest and greatest WiFi and yes, there's now WiFi7 with higher speed limits, but the Plume website says these 6es support up to 2.5Gb.

I suspect you'll be more than happy with these from a performance perspective, assuming the installer got the number and location right so you have coverage where you need it.

From an economics perspective, own vs. rent analysis, to cost out a DIY replacement that you can own instead of rent, find out what specific modem models your ISP supports (they should give you a list) and then price those, and add a couple of high-end eero mesh devices - simple setup, great US-based support, and excellent coverage - I've been using those for years now. Then see what the economics of buy-vs-rent tells you after you've totaled up those costs.

This project is far from done, but here's where I'm at so far.

I purchased a TP-Link mesh system as my personally owned router that I will not have to rent from them. Our current plan is for 600 mbps (upgradeable to 1 gig), and as I sit a room away I'm getting 550 mbps down and 425 up on wifi. This router and its satellites are all sitting out on their own but can be wired together which will improve that speed.

In playing around with things, the Plume pods which plug into the wall act as wifi extenders on their own, even with my system from a different manufacturer.

Seeing I'm use to 8 down and .4 up, this is blazing fast to what I had. This house was never wired with cat cable, but I have easy access both above and below most rooms which would make running wire very easy. As time goes on I will likely run dedicated wire to each TV and the office. A few minor changes still need to be made inside the security closet and we will then have wired internet connectivity to the alarms and camera system as well.

sadly with only 0.4 up, it's going to be tough to get any high resolution security video out of there so you can see what's going on at your place remotely.

^^^ that’s what I had and why it was never connected. I’m at 600 (hardwired) now.