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Piobaire

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The biggest mistake I made was hiring a guy to setup my A/V system - he's never shared the password to my A/V receiver, so if I change the network I have to have him come out to set it up. It's getting close to EOL so I'll do the next one myself.

Have you looked to see if there's a way to reset to factory original? I have to admit, that's pretty genius on the part of the installer.
 

NakedYoga

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The biggest mistake I made was hiring a guy to setup my A/V system - he's never shared the password to my A/V receiver, so if I change the network I have to have him come out to set it up. It's getting close to EOL so I'll do the next one myself.

Reminds me of this:

 

jbarwick

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My wife thinks a diamond flowering trellis would look great on our house. Debating a few spots of where this may look good and the amount of work involved. What's everyone here think?

e0f25e84a7723ae2bf731d26def28c24.jpg
 

Piobaire

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That will draw flying bugs so don't put it near any seating area or doorway.
 

imatlas

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Have you looked to see if there's a way to reset to factory original? I have to admit, that's pretty genius on the part of the installer.

Indeed. I was quite happy to pay him to pull Ethernet through my “attic” (a crawlspace that’s about 36” tall) but clearly I should have insisted on getting the password and a tutorial.

Resetting to default would be a minor nightmare of reconfiguring everything which is why it’s waiting for the A/V receiver upgrade.
 

otc

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Indeed. I was quite happy to pay him to pull Ethernet through my “attic” (a crawlspace that’s about 36” tall) but clearly I should have insisted on getting the password and a tutorial.

Resetting to default would be a minor nightmare of reconfiguring everything which is why it’s waiting for the A/V receiver upgrade.

I want to know more about this setup that involves a password and is a nightmare to reconfigure---what kind of **** you running?
 

FlyingMonkey

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Shipping in general has been a mess recently, but from Home Depot especially. I did a good sized order, and it came from four different stores. Several items were cancelled, I got three of something I only ordered one of, they're still telling me something else is delayed when I've already gotten it. Another item was "out for delivery," then got re-routed to Oregon and eventually cancelled.

Well, speak of the devil, as they say... the tractor has arrived today. We have to make a special appointment to pick it up and pay them to hire their ramp so we can drive it onto the back of a pick-up. They are really milking this one. And don't even ask what it would have cost to have it delivered curbside...
 

imatlas

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I want to know more about this setup that involves a password and is a nightmare to reconfigure---what kind of **** you running?

A Roku, two TiVos, CD, BlueRay, and two TVs in two rooms with universal remotes running over HDMI Ethernet. Controlled by a Denon something or other. Now that I think about it it’s the remotes that are the problem, not the A/V receiver - there’s a ton of codes to get all of the controls to work. That’s the crux of it.
 

imatlas

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And yes there’s a **** ton of redundant stuff in there and I’d love to toss most of it and start over but that’s a massive investment.
 

otc

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Yeah, pro level remote setup is complicated, but also the thing that really differentiates systems.

Logitech Harmony remotes help get average joes moved in that direction, but aren't perfect.

I have a cheap remote that is programmable using a cable and software...and I have it set to mostly work in a way that my lady and I can understand....but I'm far too lazy to program it 100% (or invest in an even fancier remote). If I had hired someone, I would expect them to have all of the kinks ironed out.

edit: and speaking of being lazy, I get a DVR/cable subscription included in my building and they swapped out the box last year. We rarely watch any live content, so I haven't programmed that at all. If you want to watch normal TV, you have to pull out the xfinity remote because none of the buttons on the universal do anything anymore.
 

beargonefishing

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I watch almost entirely from my nvidia shield these days, and it's not compatible with my universal remote. I hate my **** wireless Frontier cable box.
 

UnFacconable

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Not a mesh, which is a description of a network with a wireless backhaul. If you’ve got multiple access points you need network management software To ensure proper handoff, which can be run by either a computer permanently connected or hardware for that. Replacing a hardwired network with a mesh one just to get seamless handoff would be taking a step back.
...
If you insist on getting one of hese mesh sets, make sure it supports the wired backhaul.

Based on what I have seen and experienced, this is the crux of it. I've been looking at switching to Ubiquiti if I can't fix my current network. We have multiple floors and lots of concrete and steel which makes our situation challenging. Right now we have our newest router setup as a router (eg connected to our WAN) and we have a primary 16 port smart switch which is wired throughout the home. On one of our other floors we have an older router (but still AC) wired as an access point (AP) and we have an extender on another floor wired as an AP as well. Everything is done through a wired backhaul.

So in principal, this could all work great, but what we've seen is that when we had everything set up as one SSID, we had a variety of issues - I suspect because we had devices holding onto the AP from a different area for too long and/or because we had multiple devices running lots of data through the same AP. The current solution was to increase roaming aggressiveness on my wife's windows laptop (which should help ensure her computer doesn't stick with a weak connection when there is a stronger one available) and to create unique SSIDs at each AP. Unfortunately, there's no way that I am aware of to increase roaming aggressiveness for phones, ipads and mac laptops, which is most of what I care about.

I looked at mesh, but many don't support wired backhaul and from talking to networking experts, since I already have everything wired, I'm better off with non-mesh APs. If I could solve the roaming aggressiveness, I could go back to one SSID and be perfectly happy again. Otherwise, I'm probably looking at either getting a Unifi dream machine, or perhaps one of their long-range access points. It does seem like Unifi has the best system if you are willing to get into the weeds.

PS the other thing I would note is that wireless networking is a bit of a black art. You can tweak power (reducing it will reduce the chances you are still locked into an AP you are too far from, and will reduce interference with your other APs) as well as antenna direction (if you have external movable ones).

Right now I'm on a zoom call and my mac is locked into a 2.4ghz signal from a different floor at 144mbps instead of the 5ghz signal 10 feet away which would give me 700-1300 mbps. FML.
 
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Piobaire

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This stuff all changes so fast too. I mean, I think I have three generations worth of Roku alone.
 

Lizard23

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Based on what I have seen and experienced, this is the crux of it. I've been looking at switching to Ubiquiti if I can't fix my current network. We have multiple floors and lots of concrete and steel which makes our situation challenging. Right now we have our newest router setup as a router (eg connected to our WAN) and we have a primary 16 port smart switch which is wired throughout the home. On one of our other floors we have an older router (but still AC) wired as an access point (AP) and we have an extender on another floor wired as an AP as well. Everything is done through a wired backhaul.

So in principal, this could all work great, but what we've seen is that when we had everything set up as one SSID, we had a variety of issues - I suspect because we had devices holding onto the AP from a different area for too long and/or because we had multiple devices running lots of data through the same AP. The current solution was to increase roaming aggressiveness on my wife's windows laptop (which should help ensure her computer doesn't stick with a weak connection when there is a stronger one available) and to create unique SSIDs at each AP. Unfortunately, there's no way that I am aware of to increase roaming aggressiveness for phones, ipads and mac laptops, which is most of what I care about.

I looked at mesh, but many don't support wired backhaul and from talking to networking experts, since I already have everything wired, I'm better off with non-mesh APs. If I could solve the roaming aggressiveness, I could go back to one SSID and be perfectly happy again. Otherwise, I'm probably looking at either getting a Unifi dream machine, or perhaps one of their long-range access points. It does seem like Unifi has the best system if you are willing to get into the weeds.

PS the other thing I would note is that wireless networking is a bit of a black art. You can tweak power (reducing it will reduce the chances you are still locked into an AP you are too far from, and will reduce interference with your other APs) as well as antenna direction (if you have external movable ones).

Right now I'm on a zoom call and my mac is locked into a 2.4ghz signal from a different floor at 144mbps instead of the 5ghz signal 10 feet away which would give me 700-1300 mbps. FML.

This is the precise sort of thing I am afraid of...

Right now, my airport expresses in bridge mode all, for lack of a better word, just work. I used the airport software to set them all up in bridge mode. They are all hard wired cat 6 that connects to my switch. My fios router plugs into that. One network name and password... i never lose signal except for one weird corner of my basement. This includes outside. As i move from one area of the house to the next the device just switches from one airport to the next. You never know it is happening. No fumbling with your device.
 

UnFacconable

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This is the precise sort of thing I am afraid of...

Right now, my airport expresses in bridge mode all, for lack of a better word, just work. I used the airport software to set them all up in bridge mode. They are all hard wired cat 6 that connects to my switch. My fios router plugs into that. One network name and password... i never lose signal except for one weird corner of my basement. This includes outside. As i move from one area of the house to the next the device just switches from one airport to the next. You never know it is happening. No fumbling with your device.
In my experience the worst thing you can do for a working network is to **** with it.

Our problems metastasized when we all began working/schooling from home. Suddenly our network had to cope with up to 4 simultaneous zoom/facetime/skype streams at once. Our cable upload speed was the first bottleneck that we had to address but in so doing I also started monkeying with the network to see if anything else could be done and that sent me down a rathole.

I'm going to give it a few more weeks to see if things settle in through some small tweaks (may end up having all 2.4GHz on one SSID and all 5G on another for example) and if I can't tweak my way to success I will go all in on a Ubiquiti solution (probably starting with Dream Machine and 2 APs, possibly replacing my switch with one of those fancy Ubiquiti POE switches). Even with Ubiquiti, however, there is still tweaking power etc to reduce interference and improve roaming. I feel like it's inexorable that I end up there because I'm a geek at heart and even if I no longer have a reason to code anything I can still dishonor my technical education by performing poorly as a home sysadmin.

EDIT: cleaned up spelling. I blame my butterfly Mac keyboard!
 
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