Boosting Wifi

[canalsiderenovation]

4 hours ago, Gav_P said:

How did you get on? 

 

Still in their boxes as our electrician needs to come back to sort ethernet cables and some sockets and I'm waiting for it to be done so I can do the comparison on both. Pretty much all progress has stopped due to positive Covid tests from a number of tradesmen linked to the builder and others self isolating.

 

 

[Adsibob]

On 05/01/2021 at 17:45, Gav_P said:

I’ve said it else where in another thread, but I can’t say enough positive things about getting a TP-link Deco mesh system. Full coverage all over the house and garden. Easy to set up from the app with a step by step guide. 
 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deco-M4-Seamless-Coverage-Replacement/dp/B07NH1J543/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=Mesh+Network&qid=1609868676&sr=8-3

This does look good, although appears a little slower than the Netgear Orbi system which gives a 3Gbps connection in the RBK50 model, versus the Deco M4's 1.16Gbps speed. Might not actually make a noticeable difference though, and this is significantly cheaper than the RBK50. I see Deco also does an M5. Did you consider other brands/models and if so why did you go with the Deco M4 over those?

[Gav_P]

On 27/01/2021 at 14:26, Adsibob said:

This does look good, although appears a little slower than the Netgear Orbi system which gives a 3Gbps connection in the RBK50 model, versus the Deco M4's 1.16Gbps speed. Might not actually make a noticeable difference though, and this is significantly cheaper than the RBK50. I see Deco also does an M5. Did you consider other brands/models and if so why did you go with the Deco M4 over those?

To be fair I wasn’t convinced that a mesh system would work, so the driving factor was price... just in case I was throwing the money away. I’ve only got 37mbps at best anyway, so that why I didn’t bother with the M5. 

[Adsibob]

On 16/01/2021 at 23:19, canalsiderenovation said:

 

Still in their boxes as our electrician needs to come back to sort ethernet cables and some sockets and I'm waiting for it to be done so I can do the comparison on both. Pretty much all progress has stopped due to positive Covid tests from a number of tradesmen linked to the builder and others self isolating.

 

 

Hello, what was the conclusion of your test? Which product did you keep and which did you send back?

[canalsiderenovation]

2 hours ago, Adsibob said:

Hello, what was the conclusion of your test? Which product did you keep and which did you send back?

 

We have the TP link, we found if far easier to set up and it works great and we have WiFi all through the house now. Even got my parents a whole set up for their home/business when the main router is some 400m away in a separate building as the signal was so poor in the house streaming was impossible. It's a full signal now.

 

If only we could get something similar for our mobile signal. It's fine if we have WiFi in the house as we can use wi-fi calling but if the power goes, no signal and outside the house no signal either. 

[AliG]

I have an update on my recent experience.

 

I recently switched back to Virgin from EE and increased my broadband speed.

 

I tried both 500MB and 1Gig.

 

I found that the WiFi devices in the house maxed out at between 500 and 600MB. I couldn't tell if that wass due to the maximum speed of the devices or of the Ubiquiti access points (theoretical maxims are in the 800s range), but it meant there was little practical benefit in the 1Gig product so I downgraded back to 500MB. Wired connections such as my Xbox did report an over 1Gig connection, but for example Xbox Game Pass will not download a game that quickly. Nor did it make any difference to how fast a Sky Q download occurred, presumably because of limits at their end.

 

Basically to pay for a greater than 500MB connection at the moment is probably more for bragging rights than anything else.

 

I also visited the USA where both my parents in law and sister in law had mesh systems installed. In my sister in law's system she was paying for 1Gig internet and getting speeds closer to 100MB. Resetting they system increased this to an over 500MB speed, but it was to unclear why over time the speed had deteriorated so much. I told her to downgrade her contract to 400MB as payments for faster speeds than this were pretty much wasted, she had been paying ore as her kids were complaining the system was slow when in fact it was a WiFi issue. (She is a widow and asked if I could look at various things around the house that weren't working properly whilst I was there). In my parents in law's place the mesh system was very prone to different speeds depending on where you were in the house, dropping from an incoming speed of 500MB to less than 100MB in some spots. I didn't have time to investigate, but I think it was clearly quite sensitive to placement of the units.

 

 

[SteamyTea]

I have jut looked at my phone data usage (I use the phone as a hotspot).

Since the 10th of the month, I have used 619 MB.

So around 60 MB a day.

 

Should I upgrade to 5G and pay an extra tenner for a faster service?

[Adsibob]

Very good deal on the Linksys velop mesh system at the moment which has tested really well, beating the Deco M9 in both download and upload speeds (though not sure i understand what their exact configuration was. Full article here: https://www.hardwarezone.com.sg/review-tp-link-deco-m9-plus-review-mesh-networking-system-smart-homes/performance-analysis-conclusion-8

 

 

Edited December 21, 2021 by Adsibob

[AliG]

3 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

I have jut looked at my phone data usage (I use the phone as a hotspot).

Since the 10th of the month, I have used 619 MB.

So around 60 MB a day.

 

Should I upgrade to 5G and pay an extra tenner for a faster service?

 

That would be considered a very low user.

 

Unless you feel the need for faster speeds I would not bother.

 

5g is only available in limited areas and on a limited number of phones. In general the signal is at a higher frequency so does not travel as well as the 4g signal. Where you are likely to benefit from 5g is actually crowded areas where their is insufficient 4g bandwidth. e.g in Kings Cross Station my phone use barely usable on Three 4g due to the network being overloaded. This extra capacity may be more useful to most people than faster speeds.

[SteamyTea]

12 minutes ago, AliG said:

Unless you feel the need for faster speeds I would not bother.

I was taking the piss a bit.

And dispell the fake news that @pocster put about that all I do us download porn.

 

More seriously, when I send large files (not video or pictures generally), I compress them. Does this happen automatically on the interwed?

I am sure if we all halved our transmission sizes, we would all be better off.

[AliG]

Just now, SteamyTea said:

I was taking the piss a bit.

I thought you might be, but decided I would just politely answer just in case.

 

I just checked our home broadband. We consistently use between 20 and 30GB a day!

[AliG]

8 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

More seriously, when I send large files (not video or pictures generally), I compress them. Does this happen automatically on the interwed?

I am sure if we all halved our transmission sizes, we would all be better off.

 

By far the largest user of internet data is video. This will normally be compressed into h.264 or h.265 format. This is then decoded by your computer or Sky box. If you watch video on your phone they will also send a lower quality stream due to the smaller screen and Netflix etc dynamically change the quality depending on your connection speed.

 

You can tell that a video file has been compressed as when you compress it, it comes out almost exactly the same size.

 

At home virtually everyone has unlimited data so there are no issues.

 

I did used to have to select lower bandwidth on Amazon/Netflix and iPlayer if I was watching it on the train as I would run out of mobile data.

 

 

[SteamyTea]

1 minute ago, AliG said:

consistently use between 20 and 30GB a day!

What on earth on?

You you constantly stream TV 24/7, on multiple devices.

Like energy usage, much can be done to reduce usage. 

There was a nice sketch in Green Wing where Martin sent a large file by email and  blocked up the system, causing some important records to be delayed, a man died, or not, we never found out.

[SteamyTea]

1 minute ago, AliG said:

 

You can tell that a video file has been compressed as when you compress it, it comes out almost exactly the same size.

Yes, used to teach my students that. Same with compressed images i.e .jpg 

 

Encrypting is different. Taught them to do that as well.

[AliG]

9 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

What on earth on?

Netflix suggest that 1 hour of HD is 3GD and 1hr of UHD is 7GB. We probably stream/download 5 or 6 hours/day in whatever the highest available resolution is. We barely ever watch live TV.

[joth]

16 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

More seriously, when I send large files (not video or pictures generally), I compress them. Does this happen automatically on the interwed?

 

Not consistently. TLS has support for compression (prior to encrypting the content) but it's actually dropped from TLS1.3 because of side channel attacks like CRIME and BREACH

HTTP GET has fairly wide compression support, but not POST.  HTTP2 adds dictionary header compression, but no major changes to the payload IIRC.

If you're talking traditional email the more important thing is compression at rest. SMTP is conceptually like 50 years old now and really doesn't have much idea about compression of encryption, or anything needing more than a 1MHz CPU.

All this is transport (session) layer only.  And MIME just leaves it to the application to solve (i.e., JPG or MPEG file formats)

 

Most of the size optimisations these days are proprietary in the various email providers. e.g. internally gmail could share storage for large attachments across users: if a common file is being sent by thousands of users, why bother to store thousands of copies? This is especially common for the business users.

 

[SteamyTea]

20 minutes ago, joth said:

if a common file is being sent by thousands of users, why bother to store thousands of copies? This is especially common for the business users.

Yes, we implemented that at 5he college 20 odd years ago. Also meant we could quickly stop illegal content being shared i.e games.