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As a european I find this totally ridiculous. 500 square meter house? That's enough for an apartment building with 10 units. Wifi won't be the only problems tha

As a european I find this totally ridiculous. 500 square meter house? That's enough for an apartment building with 10 units. Wifi won't be the only problems that are caused by such a waste of resources. How are those problems making your life better? Here DSL router/modems by AVM (Fritz!box) are really common and they do their job extraordinarily well for being consumer grade hardware. They also regularly get regular updates and offer most things you need as a consumer in one device. (No you don't need a special DHCP server device). There are also other decent consumer grade wifi routers like the now discontinued ones by Apple

madeofpalk 10y ago
> As a european I find this totally ridiculous. 500 square meter house? That's enough for an apartment building with 10 units. Surely some Europeans live in large houses, right? He's living in a freestanding house in a more regional part of Australia. Travel into the city in Australia and you'll find smaller dwellings, like my 56sqm apartment :)
- spiderfarmer 10y ago
  Still, Australian houses (on average) are 2 times the size of German houses: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/average-home-size-by-country/article27181802/ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/average-ho...
  - madeofpalk 10y ago
    You're right, now that I think about it 500sq is quite large. He does mention it's a three-story house (which is still quite large). That's a great source though I never knew that Australia has the largest average home size. It's interesting considering Australia very large and very sparsely populated (on average), yet most people live in cities.
    - Klathmon 10y ago
      It seems like it's no big deal depending on where you live. I could move a few hours away and get a 3-story 500sq meter house for about as much as it would cost me to own my condo where I do live. It's all about location, and in places like australia or america where there is space galore in some places, it's not unsurprising that people build bigger (especially when it doesn't really cost all that much more comparatively)
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
oxymoron 10y ago
As a European I've found that most ISP-provided residential gateways are crap, optimized mostly for convenient remote management by support staff. I used to switch them out for WRT54GL's, but these days I too prefer Ubiquiti gear. Even in a small apartment, it'll likely be the case that the best spot for your Access Point is somewhere entirely different than the most convenient spot for your router. In my case, I've got network cabling wired throughout my apartment which made it easy to put an Edgerouter lite in the wiring closet and an Unifi on the kitchen wall.
StavrosK 10y ago
Come on, 50sqm are barely enough for one person to live in. That said, yes, 70sqm is pretty okay, and 500 is just overkill. Our "fits a family of four comfortably" size is 200sqm, I can't imagine what one would do with more than doubling that. Cleaning would be a pain. Also, software-wise, my Tomato-based router does everything described in the post, and I haven't had a single problem yet. It cost $100 (but it doesn't have as extensive WiFi coverage as 5 APs, of course).
- eltoozero 10y ago
  Are you going to deploy/support Tomato for your customers/family? Insert DD-WRT/OpenWRT here and then give up and get a MikroTik since you can actually eat your own dog food.
  - lmns 10y ago
    LEDE / OpenWRT actually are quite nice if (and only if) your hardware is supported by free drivers. With proprietary drivers, of course, not so much. My TP-Links with OpenWRT (I know, I should upgrade to LEDE) are probably much more stable than any other networking gear I've ever owned. Everything is old 802.11n gear powered by ath9k. But if you aren't into flashing your own firmwares, MikroTik is fine too. I use a pair of SXT 5 lites and the uptime (yes, even wireless uptime!) is approaching 100d.
    - trome 10y ago
      I've got a pair of OG Nanostations going on 250 days uptime here, not the fastest, but in a rural area with no budget they still work decently.
    - JshWright 10y ago
      Why would you upgrade to LEDE before they have released anything?
      - lmns 10y ago
        They release snapshots which are already quite stable in my experience. OpenWRT is practically a dead project, so you shouldn't expect security updates anymore. The last openwrt-security-announce mail is from march.
dajohnson89 10y ago
Maybe he's building a spaceship, has a family of 10, throws big parties, or he just wants a big fucking house. Europeans have mansions. It's a continent famous for its castles! It just seems arrogant of you to criticize his decision to buy a large house without knowing anything about him. I live in a space not much larger than 2-3 walk in closets, and after a year of this shit, I wish I lived in a goddamn mcmansion. Europe iirc has in general really good internet speeds. In america anyways, it's sometimes about squeezing the most out of your shitty overpriced connection.
- Chris2048 10y ago
  > It's a continent famous for its castles! Because there are so few in the US, not because we all live in one... Also, few people live in those castles.
  - patrickk 10y ago
    Not to mention, the only reason those castles are still standing was because they were (almost) the only buildings of their era that were solidly constructed. 99% of the population lived in hovels that no longer exist today.
sheraz 10y ago
Seems like you are moralizing about a guy's house when the topic is simply wifi-reliability. Given who he is (the creator of https://haveibeenpwned.com/ https://haveibeenpwned.com/), I would just assume that he have over-provisioned his physical housing capacity in anticipation of a major event. :-) Seriously, put down the proletariat pitchfork and lets talk about the content. Maybe this is just his warm-up for putting wifi on his superyacht!!! edit: grammar
- legulere 10y ago
  There's certainly also a moral argument to be made (as you say that I'm moralizing), but I was more alluding to the introductory sentence: "I'm increasingly of the view that both my time and my sanity are worth more and more as the years progress". For me reducing the house size seems like a more effective way of restoring sanity and reducing time needed than installing professional grade equipment, which is kind of insane and time-consuming if you do it yourself for a home.
  - sheraz 10y ago
    I'm not sure how a big house makes anything a matter of morals.
    - legulere 10y ago
      A big house is more than what is sufficient and thus a waste of resources (space, heating/cooling, building materials, wifi routers, ...). Using up resources has negative outcomes (environmental impact, scarcity, bad work conditions like child work, ...) which are to be avoided. I guess that it's not that questionable that waste is bad, so the real question is what is sufficient or still allowable. For that I used European norms of house sizes, where 500 square meters is considered ridiculous.
      - sheraz 10y ago
        ...and here comes the environment argument. This is a very, very, slippery slope. By this rationale we should just shut down all datacenters, stop driving, stop eating meat, tell gamers to power off, and go back to hang-drying our hand-washed laundry (even in cold wet places like Sweden). At what point does it stop? It seems that you believe that you are different from this guy -- having achieved some moral superiority by virtue of "European-ness." But you are not. You are here on HN. You go to work. You take hot showers. You might even eat meat. You take holidays to Thailand or Dominican Republic or other poor countries as many "Europeans" are apt to do. Tell me, what is the social, environmental, political, and blah blah blah cost of that? Who cares? Enjoy yourself, and try not to kill anyone on your way into the grocery store.
jagermo 10y ago
I have a 150 sqm Apartment in Munich and it is very long. Like spanning alongside the house for nearly 45 meters. There is no way one FritzBox would be able to give me solid coverage from my kitchen (all the way to the west) to my bath (all the way to the east). Two Ubiquiti APs for about 150 Euros solve this problem, including Features like roaming and bandwidth steering. Yes, a FritzBox might be enough for most people but it is not the perfect solution for all problems. On a related note, I find your tone a little ondescending. Troy has big house, so what? There are people in Europe with bigger houses, too, you know? Also, dedicated wifi hardware like Ubiquiti APs or Netgear Orbis are way better when it comes to handling your wifi when there are 25+ other networks in your area.
edblarney 10y ago
This is ridiculous. The amount of 'space' taken up by residential dwellings is very small. Australia is massive and empty, and it always will be. If you want to live in bigger home, move to Canada, Texas or Australia where the geographic reality is very different. Or frankly - anywhere in East Germany outside of the city and you'll find yourself with equally ample, and cheap space.

madeofpalk 10y ago

> As a european I find this totally ridiculous. 500 square meter house? That's enough for an apartment building with 10 units. Surely some Europeans live in large houses, right? He's living in a freestanding house in a more regional part of Australia. Travel into the city in Australia and you'll find smaller dwellings, like my 56sqm apartment :)

spiderfarmer 10y ago
Still, Australian houses (on average) are 2 times the size of German houses: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/average-home-size-by-country/article27181802/ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/average-ho...
- madeofpalk 10y ago
  You're right, now that I think about it 500sq is quite large. He does mention it's a three-story house (which is still quite large). That's a great source though I never knew that Australia has the largest average home size. It's interesting considering Australia very large and very sparsely populated (on average), yet most people live in cities.
  - Klathmon 10y ago
    It seems like it's no big deal depending on where you live. I could move a few hours away and get a 3-story 500sq meter house for about as much as it would cost me to own my condo where I do live. It's all about location, and in places like australia or america where there is space galore in some places, it's not unsurprising that people build bigger (especially when it doesn't really cost all that much more comparatively)
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

oxymoron 10y ago

As a European I've found that most ISP-provided residential gateways are crap, optimized mostly for convenient remote management by support staff. I used to switch them out for WRT54GL's, but these days I too prefer Ubiquiti gear. Even in a small apartment, it'll likely be the case that the best spot for your Access Point is somewhere entirely different than the most convenient spot for your router. In my case, I've got network cabling wired throughout my apartment which made it easy to put an Edgerouter lite in the wiring closet and an Unifi on the kitchen wall.

StavrosK 10y ago

Come on, 50sqm are barely enough for one person to live in. That said, yes, 70sqm is pretty okay, and 500 is just overkill. Our "fits a family of four comfortably" size is 200sqm, I can't imagine what one would do with more than doubling that. Cleaning would be a pain. Also, software-wise, my Tomato-based router does everything described in the post, and I haven't had a single problem yet. It cost $100 (but it doesn't have as extensive WiFi coverage as 5 APs, of course).

eltoozero 10y ago
Are you going to deploy/support Tomato for your customers/family? Insert DD-WRT/OpenWRT here and then give up and get a MikroTik since you can actually eat your own dog food.
- lmns 10y ago
  LEDE / OpenWRT actually are quite nice if (and only if) your hardware is supported by free drivers. With proprietary drivers, of course, not so much. My TP-Links with OpenWRT (I know, I should upgrade to LEDE) are probably much more stable than any other networking gear I've ever owned. Everything is old 802.11n gear powered by ath9k. But if you aren't into flashing your own firmwares, MikroTik is fine too. I use a pair of SXT 5 lites and the uptime (yes, even wireless uptime!) is approaching 100d.
  - trome 10y ago
    I've got a pair of OG Nanostations going on 250 days uptime here, not the fastest, but in a rural area with no budget they still work decently.
  - JshWright 10y ago
    Why would you upgrade to LEDE before they have released anything?
    - lmns 10y ago
      They release snapshots which are already quite stable in my experience. OpenWRT is practically a dead project, so you shouldn't expect security updates anymore. The last openwrt-security-announce mail is from march.

dajohnson89 10y ago

Maybe he's building a spaceship, has a family of 10, throws big parties, or he just wants a big fucking house. Europeans have mansions. It's a continent famous for its castles! It just seems arrogant of you to criticize his decision to buy a large house without knowing anything about him. I live in a space not much larger than 2-3 walk in closets, and after a year of this shit, I wish I lived in a goddamn mcmansion. Europe iirc has in general really good internet speeds. In america anyways, it's sometimes about squeezing the most out of your shitty overpriced connection.

Chris2048 10y ago
> It's a continent famous for its castles! Because there are so few in the US, not because we all live in one... Also, few people live in those castles.
- patrickk 10y ago
  Not to mention, the only reason those castles are still standing was because they were (almost) the only buildings of their era that were solidly constructed. 99% of the population lived in hovels that no longer exist today.

sheraz 10y ago

Seems like you are moralizing about a guy's house when the topic is simply wifi-reliability. Given who he is (the creator of https://haveibeenpwned.com/ https://haveibeenpwned.com/), I would just assume that he have over-provisioned his physical housing capacity in anticipation of a major event. :-) Seriously, put down the proletariat pitchfork and lets talk about the content. Maybe this is just his warm-up for putting wifi on his superyacht!!! edit: grammar

legulere 10y ago
There's certainly also a moral argument to be made (as you say that I'm moralizing), but I was more alluding to the introductory sentence: "I'm increasingly of the view that both my time and my sanity are worth more and more as the years progress". For me reducing the house size seems like a more effective way of restoring sanity and reducing time needed than installing professional grade equipment, which is kind of insane and time-consuming if you do it yourself for a home.
- sheraz 10y ago
  I'm not sure how a big house makes anything a matter of morals.
  - legulere 10y ago
    A big house is more than what is sufficient and thus a waste of resources (space, heating/cooling, building materials, wifi routers, ...). Using up resources has negative outcomes (environmental impact, scarcity, bad work conditions like child work, ...) which are to be avoided. I guess that it's not that questionable that waste is bad, so the real question is what is sufficient or still allowable. For that I used European norms of house sizes, where 500 square meters is considered ridiculous.
    - sheraz 10y ago
      ...and here comes the environment argument. This is a very, very, slippery slope. By this rationale we should just shut down all datacenters, stop driving, stop eating meat, tell gamers to power off, and go back to hang-drying our hand-washed laundry (even in cold wet places like Sweden). At what point does it stop? It seems that you believe that you are different from this guy -- having achieved some moral superiority by virtue of "European-ness." But you are not. You are here on HN. You go to work. You take hot showers. You might even eat meat. You take holidays to Thailand or Dominican Republic or other poor countries as many "Europeans" are apt to do. Tell me, what is the social, environmental, political, and blah blah blah cost of that? Who cares? Enjoy yourself, and try not to kill anyone on your way into the grocery store.

jagermo 10y ago

I have a 150 sqm Apartment in Munich and it is very long. Like spanning alongside the house for nearly 45 meters. There is no way one FritzBox would be able to give me solid coverage from my kitchen (all the way to the west) to my bath (all the way to the east). Two Ubiquiti APs for about 150 Euros solve this problem, including Features like roaming and bandwidth steering. Yes, a FritzBox might be enough for most people but it is not the perfect solution for all problems. On a related note, I find your tone a little ondescending. Troy has big house, so what? There are people in Europe with bigger houses, too, you know? Also, dedicated wifi hardware like Ubiquiti APs or Netgear Orbis are way better when it comes to handling your wifi when there are 25+ other networks in your area.

edblarney 10y ago

This is ridiculous. The amount of 'space' taken up by residential dwellings is very small. Australia is massive and empty, and it always will be. If you want to live in bigger home, move to Canada, Texas or Australia where the geographic reality is very different. Or frankly - anywhere in East Germany outside of the city and you'll find yourself with equally ample, and cheap space.