WiFi Upgrade For Dummies

On Facebook, several of my friends have been complaining about home internet speed.  Most people point to the service provider, but the issue could be your own equipment.  This article outlines a hardware replacement I completed last year.  At the end, I include troubleshooting steps and tips on dealing with your carrier.

Background

For about 10 years, my job was running the global network for a Fortune 500 company.  I know a thing or two about networks.  Evidently, my home network was neglected during this time, because both of my children logged daily complaints about slow and poor connectivity.  They eventually escalated the incident ticket to a priority 1.

Cost: About $240
Time to Install: About 1 hour

Home networks have 3 main components:

• Service: The the company you pay for broadband.  The carrier physically connects your house to the internet with either coax, phone line, or fiber optic cable.
• Modem:  Changes the physical media (coax, fiber, phone line) of the service to something you can plug into a router (ex: ethernet/CAT5/CAT6).
• Router:  Provides wifi to your house and routes traffic from your home network to the internet.  Typically has a few physical ports to connect devices to the network via ethernet cable.

Our home network should not have been bad.  Connectivity is via Spectrum cable, and download speeds would hit 80 Mbps on every test through Megapath.  (note: I will interchange the terms "megs" and "Mbps" in this write-up; they mean the same thing.)  That's not blazing fast, but also not bad.  The old Netgear N600 router had pretty good coverage, several 100 meg ports, and 300 megs of wifi capacity.  The cablemodem was a Motorola SB6121, and the specs said that top speed is 172 Mbps.

For reference, Megapath's speed test site is at this link:
https://www.megapath.com/speedtestplus/

On paper, everything looked fine.  Speed was fine, and we weren't even getting close to maxing out the numbers.

In reality, things were not fine.  Streaming TV shows frequently would turn fuzzy, and the children complained about download speeds almost daily.  Our poor laptop in the kitchen was so slow, I thought something was wrong with it.

What to do?

When faced with situations like this, I typically turn to Google's search engine with a tall glass of Maker's Mark.  This problem took more than one glass.

First thing to check was my download rate from Spectrum Cable.  After looking at the bill and the web site (this took longer than it should have), I figured out that we were paying for 200 Mbps download speed.  Hmmm...  84 is less than 200.  Where is the bottleneck?

The answer was simple.  The gear was the problem.  Max speed on my cablemodem was lower than the speed from Spectrum, and the big bottleneck was the 100 Mbps port on the router.

Let's Buy A CableModem

The unit of measure for a cablemodem is the number of channels.  My old modem had 4 upload and 4 download channels.  More channels = more speed.  Fortunately, buying a cablemodem doesn't require much research.  Very fast units only cost about $85.

I settled on the Arris SB 6190 with 32 download channels and 8 upload channels.  Max speed is 1.4 Gigabits per second.  The Amazon link is here.

Which router to buy with way too many choices?

I've had good luck with Netgear routers since the early days.  They just work all the time with very few problems.  My main criteria for the purchase was:

• Good range
• Reasonable price
• Compatible with Circle Home  (list at this link)
• Gigabit LAN ports (to fix the 100 Mbps limitation from the modem)

My second glass of bourbon may have started during this part.  I looked at no less than 20 devices and read multiple reviews.  After much pondering, the Netgear Nighthawk X6 AC3000 R7900 was the clear winner.  (yes, that's a bunch of numbers and letters)  Link is here.

The refurb version is about $140.  Range is excellent with 6 antennas.  Compatible with Circle Home.  Gigabit LAN ports.  Yep, everything checks off the list.

Time For Installation

I recommend installing one component at a time.  That way, you know immediately if the part works or not.





Installing a Cablemodem:

• Unplug the old modem and all the cables
• Hook up the coax cable to the new modem
• Plug the network cable into the ethernet port of the modem (use the new cable!!!)
• Unplug the old cable from the old router
• Plug the new cable into the uplink port of the old router (usually a yellow port)
• Plug the cablemodem into power
• Call your cable provider.  Tell them you just installed a new cablemodem and they need to change the hardware address on their side.  The hardware address should be on a sticker on the cablemodem.  
• Test your internet (Megapath Speed Test).  Troubleshoot with the cable provider if it doesn't work.

No problem.  This took me about 15 minutes including the phone call to Spectrum.

Installing the New Router

• Unplug the old router and all the cables.
• Plug in the ethernet cable that goes to the cablemodem.  Usually the uplink port on the router is colored yellow.
• Plug in any ethernet cables that go to a wired device.
• My network has a switch to give me more LAN ports.  I used the new ethernet cable that came with the router to run from the new router to the switch.
• Plug the router into power.
• Config.

Configuring the New Router

• Connect a computer to a LAN port on the new router (via ethernet cable).
• Open a browser and browse to 192.168.1.1
• Note that different routers will have different steps to follow.  This list is somewhat generic and not necessarily step by step instructions.
• Update the router firmware.
• Set the admin password to something other than the default.  Use a strong password that has uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and special characters (like #@!).  Write this password down in case you forget.
• Name the wireless SSID's.  This Netgear router has one 2.5 Ghz radio and two 5 Ghz radios.  The name of my 2.5 Ghz radio is Bdiddy and the 5 Ghz radio's are Bdiddy5G and Bdiddy5G-2
• Set the passwords for the SSID's.  I set all mine to the same.  Write these down in case you forget.
• The only other setting I changed was turning on Dynamic QOS and auto-updating the database.  QOS allows the router to categorize traffic.  An example of this would be giving more priority to TV shows than large game downloads.  QOS allows people to share the network without negatively impacting each other.
• Reconfigure all the wireless devices in your home to use the new 5Ghz SSID (if the device support it).  I'll talk about this in more detail below.

Why Use the 5Ghz Radio?

In the ancient times (a few years ago), 5 Ghz radios were weak.  The signal wouldn't penetrate walls or floors very well.  The new radios go much farther.  5 Ghz radios also have more channels, so your WiFi doesn't collide with close neighbors.  If you are using 2.5 Ghz in your house and having WiFi issues, then your neighbor's WiFi signal is most likely the cause.

The new 5 Ghz radio's are also much faster than the 2.5's.  

When to use the 2.5 radio?

I've got 2 devices in the house that only have 2.5 Ghz radios.  One is an older Ring doorbell.  The other is an ancient smart TV.  If you want better performance from an old smart TV, buy a Roku for about $50.  Ring has an upgraded doorbell with a 5 Ghz radio, but it's way to expensive to replace.  I use a network extender to boost the signal to the Ring doorbell.

Results?

Holy moly.  Performance with the new gear is almost too good to believe. 

• TV's never get fuzzy while watching YouTube TV, Netflix, or Amazon.  Never, ever.
• Download speed is regularly 230+ Mbps (about 3X improvement)
• WiFi speeds frequently hit 135 Mbps
• Coverage and signal strength for the entire house are much improved.  Devices no longer lose connection to the WiFi
• Games and app downloads are screaming fast
• The bonus room above the garage actually has a usable signal.  That room is far away from the router.  The old speed was like a dialup connection.  Now, those devices are getting about 25 Mbps

Was the upgrade worth it?  Definitely.  The upgrade was so much better, my mom also wanted one.

BONUS Section - Troubleshooting Tips

If you're not sold on buying new gear, what can you check out before spending money?

First thing would be the speed test.  Compare the test to the speed that is advertised from the service provider.  Run the test from a PC that is wired to the back of the router.  Fast on the wire and slow on wireless points to a router problem.

Next, look at the cablemodem.  Arris has a web console to look at logs.  Open a browser window to 192.168.100.1.  The status screen will show signal strength to the provider.  The event log keeps track of service issues.  It's normal to see a few issues in here.  If the log has events every day or hundreds of events, call your service provider.

The final straw is calling your internet provider and scheduling a dispatch to your house.  The person on the phone will probably want you to jump through a bunch of hoops, try to solve the issue remotely, and say that nothing is wrong.  Be adamant that you want a dispatch.  Spectrum has a policy to dispatch upon request, no matter what.  When a technician comes out, they will test signal strength into your home, and also test from outside your house to the provider.

I recently had a service issue (about 4 months after the hardware replacement project).  When the technician came out, he replaced the cable that goes through my yard to the house and put new ends on the coax cable that goes into my house.  He also saw an upstream issue that was repaired the next day.

Good luck!!!

Should I Participate in the Coronavirus Scare or Not?

I found an interesting article on Coronavirus this week that sparked a few thoughts that are worth sharing.  My blogging has been on vacation for a few years, so this is a first attempt at restarting an old hobby.

The link to the article is here.

If you don't want to take the time to read the article, here is a quick summary:

• The virus spreads exponentially.  
• Death rates are higher than flu.
• South Korea still remembers SARS, and the leadership is taking extreme measures.  You may think that the government in South Korea could be killing ants with baseball bats, but they are succeeding where Italy is failing.

What is exponential growth anyway?  Well, that could mean that two people are sick today, 4 tomorrow, 8 the next day, 16 the next, etc.  That doesn't seem bad until day 20 where the number is 1,048,576.  One of my friends explained the situation this way.  Imagine sitting in a football stadium where one drop of water drips into the stadium every second.  The next second, the amount of water exponentially increases.  You'll sit there for a long time thinking nothing is wrong until the stadium is 1/4 full.  Then, 2 seconds later, you're underwater.

Moral of the story:  everything seems fine until it's too late.

Part of my IT training is in risk analysis and mitigation.  I was also a Boy Scout.  What is going to happen in the next few weeks?  Yogi Berra had some good advise.  “It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

OK, so I might have your attention now.  What are some things to do right now?  Well, you have to look at 2 things:  impact and probability.

Let's start with the most probable outcome.  Supply chain disruption.

Supply Chain Disruption  Risk: Medium  Impact: Extremely High

People get sick enough to disrupt the supply chain.  I don't care what anyone says.  If people are panicking and not going to work, the trucks are not delivering to Walmart and cashiers are sitting at home.

That one is easy to mitigate.  Buy food.  Buy a month's worth of food.  Maybe more.  Go to the grocery right now and don't wait.  If you're looking at risk vs. reward, buying food is easy.  If things go bad, you won't be hungry.  If nothing happens, that food will get eaten eventually with no financial loss.  Simple... my family has already done this.

Power Disruption   Risk: Low  Impact: High

How many people are prepared for a power outage?  Not many.  We've not lost power in my neighborhood for a significant amount of time...  ever.  People on this side of Lexington have something called recency bias.  Recency bias says that we've not lost power in the past couple of years, so that just won't ever happen.  Recency bias is bad for us.  

How to mitigate a power outage?  Well, that's easy and hard, so let me explain.  First, do you have a propane grill?  The answer is probably yes.  The simple solution is to head to Lowe's and pick up a couple of propane tanks.  The U-haul store will top off the tanks that you have.  I've got several propane tanks, and they are all full.  

If power is lost for longer than 24 hours, you need to start worrying about refrigeration.  It doesn't do any good to have a month's supply of meat if your freezer is offline.  Several years ago, I bought a 20 amp generator at a yard sale for $125.   If that gen is only used to keep my refrigerator and freezer cold, 15 gallons of gas (treated with Sta-bil) will last for a very long time.   What if nothing happens?  That gas goes in our minivan.  Those extra 2 gas cans will either go on Facebook Marketplace or in my storage shed.  Cost is minimal, so no big deal.

One more thing.  Batteries and LED lights are also a good idea when it gets dark at 8 pm.  Batteries will eventually get used, too.

Water Disruption  Risk:  Very Low  Impact: Extremely High

This one is very bad, but not so hard to mitigate.  Human beings need .75 gallons of water per day to function.  My family of 4 needs about 20 gallons of water to make it for a week.  Lowe's sells 5 gallon water bottles for about $7 each, so $28 buys me a week of water.   If you drink soda in 2 liter bottles, those can be refilled for almost no cost.  So yes, I have extra water at my house.  If nothing happens, that we'll drink that water anyway.  This one is cost neutral.  Easy peasy.

What happens if you can't flush a toilet?  The answer is that people get sick very quickly without sanitary conditions.  How to mitigate?  Easy, but not inexpensive.  For about $100, you can get a 60 gallon rain barrel.  Pour some water in the toilet, and FLUSH.  That works as long as the sewer is working.  Likelihood is low on this one.  I'm pondering a rain barrel.

Total Anarchy  Risk: Ridiculously Low  Impact: Extremely High

The odds of total anarchy is almost zero, but the impact is extremely high.  What do you do?

First, cash (and gold) is king.  What is the impact of withdrawing a couple thousand dollars from your savings account?  If cash is needed and credit cards are worthless, you'll be the happiest person in the world.  If nothing happens, just put the cash back in the bank.  Cost is neutral.

What else?  One of my favorite stock analysts says that the important items to have in a 4th turning are shotgun shells, pit bulls, and a bunch of dog food.  Oddly enough, Sportsman's Warehouse has an ad today.  You can buy a Mossberg 12 gauge for $369.99 and 10 shells for $3.99.  Total waste of money until it's not.

Conclusion

For a few hundred dollars, many of the issues related to Coronavirus can be mitigated.  If nothing happens, most of that money will come back to you.  The safest course is to act before the crowd.  When the stadium is 1/4 full, it's too late.  Maybe nothing happens.  Who knows?