Is there any room for improvement here?

B

bobbylx

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 20, 2007
Messages
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Hello all, I just wanted to get some opinions on my current setup and see if anyone can recommend some improvements. I've fallen a bit behind so I'm sure there areas to improve.

So here's the setup. I've got 100mb broadband coming into the house through a netgear modem. That's attached to a TPLink N750 running DDWRT and a TPlink 300mb range extender. My gaming/media server PC (details in sig) has a wired connection and is running Plex Media server. I then have 4 Roku's with the plex app, and other random apps (netflix, hulu, sling) on wireless. I also have a few Android devices (phones and tablets), a couple chromebooks, a laptop, xbox360 all connected to the wireless also.

On the router, I've used a guide online to setup QoS for the Roku's and media server, laptops and phones get the leftovers. All devices connect to the same SSID, and I added a guest network for visitors.

Everything works fairly well, but I find that about once a day I have to reboot the router, modem, and range extender because my roku's start getting choppy. Once rebooted it's fine again. I am thinking about using some leftover parts to build a dedicated media server PC instead of using my gaming computer.

I'm just wondering if it is worth it even to build a media server? And also, could anyone recommed anything I should do to my network to possibly improve performance. I've noticed that sometimes when playing a show on my Roku, I get a lot of stuttering at 1080, so I have to lower the quality.

Like I said, I've fallen behind so I'm sure there's room for improvement.
 
I have a somewhat similar setup a PC with Plex, Roku's and other wireless devices.

My house is only around 1500sq/ft single story but the routers wireless sucks. I have tried multiple extenders and none of them worked that great. Consumer WiFi products suck. I ended up going with a Ubiquiti UnifFi AP instead and it has been great but doesn't cover all the way in my back yard or garage. The up-time on my AP is well over 6 months, it would have been a year or more if we didn't have a power outage.

I have some new stuff on the way to revamp my setup. Ubiquiti stuff is not as cheap as the consumer stuff but in my experience they work well.

2x UniFi AP AC Lite ($79/ea)
1x UniFi Security Gateway ($115)

The UniFi Security Gateway is not as advanced in the GUI as a lot of the other routers but you can do stuff through the CLI and they have a road-map to add missing features. All I really need is port forwarding for Plex and other services. I wanted it for the central management and reporting in the UniFi controller.
 
I do like the idea of those Unifi AP's. Right now, I typically don't have an issue with signal strength. I guess I should have added, I do have a couple of my old wireless routers, and a couple mini switches too.

I was thinking of potentially putting a switch between my cable modem and my TPlink router. Then, setting up one of my old routers to handle the cell phone/tablet/laptop traffic and using my TPlink router for roku's and my Plex media server. I don't use my devices or laptops at all for plex or anything else that would require them be on the same subnet as the server and roku. Would this be of any benefit? My thinking is that I'm only going to keep adding devices, and since we rely 100% on the internet/intranet for TV watching (no cable at all) I want my network to be as stable as possible. I was also thinking about not broadcasting the SSID for the roku/server.

So am I over thinking this? Recommendations?
 
Get the aps. You will save a lot of headache. WiFi extenders are evil. I have one ac lite covering my 1400 sqft 2 story condo. It's rock solid. POE is great for placement and remote management is really good.
 
TType85 said:
...Consumer WiFi products suck. I ended up going with a Ubiquiti UnifFi AP instead and it has been great but doesn't cover all the way in my back yard or garage. The up-time on my AP is well over 6 months, it would have been a year or more if we didn't have a power outage.

I have some new stuff on the way to revamp my setup. Ubiquiti stuff is not as cheap as the consumer stuff but in my experience they work well.

2x UniFi AP AC Lite ($79/ea)
1x UniFi Security Gateway ($115)

The UniFi Security Gateway is not as advanced in the GUI as a lot of the other routers but you can do stuff through the CLI and they have a road-map to add missing features. All I really need is port forwarding for Plex and other services. I wanted it for the central management and reporting in the UniFi controller.
Click to expand...

+1 for the Ubiquiti access points. Absolutely 0 problems with my wifi after upgrading to the AP AC LR model. My only gripe about them is that they don't have a web GUI for configuration and that you need to use either a PC with the UniFi software on it (I have mine running on an old Raspberry PI), or you can use an app for iOS devices to set them and and do basic configuration. Not sure if there is an Android app for it.

I've been using pfSense for a while now. Had it running on an old P4 based PC for a while and finally switch to something more power efficient. I bought a PC Engines APU2C4, only consumes about 6W.
 
I just finished switching out my home network for ubiquiti products to improve reliability. Currently I have everything powered from a ups, with the usg behind the modem, a trendnet 8 port (4 poe) switch with an ac lite in the house and a outdoor+ in the garage all controlled by the cloud key. Everything is rock solid stable now and range from the outdoor+ actually covers out 2 acre property and then some.

I have a few complaints, none that are serious.

1: I didn't expect to buy the poe switch, so I didn't see a problem with the ac lite model not supporting standard poe.
2: I didn't do enough research to realize the zero handoff feature isn't supported on the outdoor+ :(
3: Price lol

But other than those, I have been extremely happy with the results
 
I don't have a PoE switch, so I have to use the included PoE injector.
 
You don't need zero handoff. Seriously, I hate that they even have it because people think they need it when all they want is roaming.

Your clients will roam fine without it. Zero hand off is really only for some very specific situations and causes more issues than it is worth in most others.
 
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