5 ms·

My house is over 100 years old with fairly thick walls, knob and tube wiring, and a lot of neighboring 2.4Ghz access points. I ended up going under the house an

My house is over 100 years old with fairly thick walls, knob and tube wiring, and a lot of neighboring 2.4Ghz access points. I ended up going under the house and running cat6, which was no small feat considering how tight the crawlspace is. Of course, the cat6 cable I used subsequently got recalled, and so the manufacturer had to pay for a contractor to rerun it. They said that it was the type of job they wouldn't have even quoted for any price originally because it was so gnarly. I have 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz from two APs on either end of the house. I turned off support for pre-n speeds on the 2.4Ghz to hopefully save some bandwidth on the beacon frames. I have Ethernet over Power to my garage, where I have a third AP for our inlaw unit. The Ethernet over Power seems to be pretty good, but I had to find the right brand of equipment for it to not be flaky. WiFi still sucks, but my desktop and TV are hardwired, and it's good enough for mobile devices. I can go for about a week without losing my work VPN connection, through wifi through Ethernet over Power to PDSL.

vvanders 6y ago
If you care about interference ethernet over power is awful. It basically turns all of your electrical wires into a giant antenna and broadcasts that as broadband noise over multiple miles. The only reason the things aren't outright banned is the frequencies tend to be sub 100mhz so it only has a significant impact on HF. Still, nasty things and many have been found over the legal noise limits. If you can I recommend point to point 2.4ghz wifi links. Since wifi is regulated by ERP they have a high gain antenna that usually punches through things better than an omni AP. I've done them through multiple walls from 300-400ft away.
- sgtnoodle 6y ago
  That certainly sounds reasonable. I've poked around with an SDR though, and the only egregiously noisy thing I've seen is the one 100Mbps Ethernet link from the DSL modem to the router. Before I ran cat6, I indeed used WDS wifi. It wasn't reliable, though, and the particular hardware I had suffered from a bottleneck somewhere that seemed to limit throughout to 6Mbps or so. I could have spent another $500 on less crappy equipment and maybe made it work, but moving to wires everywhere I could was highly effective.
- eythian 6y ago
  Several years ago I did some experimenting: https://imgur.com/gallery/0zv5m https://imgur.com/gallery/0zv5m This is the using a hackrf and I'm sending a file vs. not sending a file locally (i.e. to roughly max out the throughput) using powerline ethernet

vvanders 6y ago

If you care about interference ethernet over power is awful. It basically turns all of your electrical wires into a giant antenna and broadcasts that as broadband noise over multiple miles. The only reason the things aren't outright banned is the frequencies tend to be sub 100mhz so it only has a significant impact on HF. Still, nasty things and many have been found over the legal noise limits. If you can I recommend point to point 2.4ghz wifi links. Since wifi is regulated by ERP they have a high gain antenna that usually punches through things better than an omni AP. I've done them through multiple walls from 300-400ft away.

sgtnoodle 6y ago
That certainly sounds reasonable. I've poked around with an SDR though, and the only egregiously noisy thing I've seen is the one 100Mbps Ethernet link from the DSL modem to the router. Before I ran cat6, I indeed used WDS wifi. It wasn't reliable, though, and the particular hardware I had suffered from a bottleneck somewhere that seemed to limit throughout to 6Mbps or so. I could have spent another $500 on less crappy equipment and maybe made it work, but moving to wires everywhere I could was highly effective.
eythian 6y ago
Several years ago I did some experimenting: https://imgur.com/gallery/0zv5m https://imgur.com/gallery/0zv5m This is the using a hackrf and I'm sending a file vs. not sending a file locally (i.e. to roughly max out the throughput) using powerline ethernet