I have cable internet, currently run through my rented cable modem and an Apple Airport Express wireless router. When we try to do multiple data-intensive things on this network, both get worse (higher ping in games, say, and/or lower quality on Netflix). I’m trying to diagnose the bottleneck and fix it. How?
Bonus question: if the bottleneck is the wireless router, what’s the best way to make a hybrid network with wireless and wired? Is it better to use a new router that has LAN ports and wireless capability, or a new modem that has wireless built in along with LAN ports, or something else entirely, or does it not really matter?
Any wired connection will be far faster than wireless. So if you have one system five feet from the AP, go to a wired link instead.
The bottleneck is likely your wireless router. Even cheap cable modems have enough throughput for multiple users. However, you might look into replacing your rental with your own, owned, high-quality modem (see other current threads). That can give you higher connection speeds and eliminate some fallback slowdowns provider-provided modems are prone to.
Wire everything you can directly. Another point: wifi degrades fairly quickly when multiple devices dog pile the same wifi router, as a result of the way the radio shares bandwidth.
With the wired approach, plan for the future with your network devices and make sure they all support gigabit Ethernet. For example, at some point you will probably want to buy a switch, to split one Ethernet cable into multiple. Make sure that whatever you get supports gigabit Ethernet, like this one.
The reason is that as soon as you start moving files back and forth (e.g. to a NAS file server or a Plex server) you will find an amazing difference in speed. Before I had gigabit gear a movie file might copy over the wire at 4mb/sec. Now, if I copy a movie to my Drobo it goes at 80-100mb/sec. In other words, a two-gig file takes less than half a minute to copy. Fortunately, this is nothing new, so the gear is pretty cheap.
It is not critical that your cablemodem and router support gigabit speeds, since your Internet connection is always going to be much slower than that, but having gigabit network connections between your home devices will speed things up greatly.
On your first point I can testify that this matches my observations: my iMac has wired and wifi configured, and when I was using 100Mbps I was getting around 5-10megs/sec real life data flow whether I used wifi or Ethernet. Once I switched to gigabit the wired speed bumped up to the ~100megs/sec I mentioned above.
Wiring doesn’t have to be a nightmare.
If you are able to get a single Cat5e+ cable between distant parts of the house then you can use switches at each end to expand the number of ports. That is what I did. I purchased some plenum-rated Cat6 cable and ran it up through a duct, connecting the second floor with the basement.
It’s not nearly as difficult as running electrical wiring through the house.
Sounds like our tiger friend in the OP is trying to figure out if the limitation is the connection to his cable internet provider, or is congestion within his house.
How much bandwidth are you paying your cable internet provider for? Until very recently, I had a 3 Mb/s connection, and if two people were trying to watch Netflix or similar, you’d see some degradation. Not a lot, but some. The network within my house was not congested at all, it was the pipe connecting my house and the ISP.
Don’t concern yourself with using wired connections or going with gigabit ethernet connections, until you determine whether it’s simply the bandwidth of your ISP that’s the limit. I suspect that’s it.
There are two issues to consider here: the bandwidth of your wireless connection and the sharing of your cable internet.
Your wireless connection is shared between all devices and attenuates rather quickly. To rule it out you should experiment with using a wired connection instead.
However, for me the prime culprit is more likely your cable connection. And what you should do is implement Quality of Service, which in your case means determining the minimum and the maximum bandwidth each activity can take. For instance you might say that with Netflix you want a minimum of 25% and a maximum of 50%.
Any thoughts on the bonus question? The best way to wire in one of the PCs while still having a wireless network?
We pay for “maximum of 12Mb/s” whatever that means. Speedtest.net gives me 20Mb/s on my wireless connection. Not sure if the speedtest result is wrong, or the cable provider has some odd definitions.
Depends on your setup. I have Cat5 running in the wall from the utility room into every room in the house. It is not in a conduit, so rewiring would mean ripping out a lot of drywall and repainting the entire house.
Not neccisarily - alot will depend upon how your original wires are run as well as access to key points - If there is no blockages, you should be able to fish new wire thru the existing ‘runs’, using the existing cable as a guide (or even use it to pull the new wire).
Worst case - there may be a few small holes to patch to gain needed access - but certainly, no requirement to rip out all the drywall or re-paint it all.
Most consumer-grade routers these days consist of a NAT firewall + a network switch + a wireless access point, all built in to one device. If you plug your PC into one of the LAN ports of your router, your job is done: the devices on the wireless network will see the PC and vice versa.
A more complex option would be to take a wire from a LAN port on the router and run it to a gigabit switch like I linked to above, and then plug a wireless access point to that switch (it could be an old wifi router you don’t use for routing anymore). You could repeat this configuration multiple times, adding wireless access points all over your home if you are in a palatial residence. The key to having them all visible to each other is to have the single gateway router serve as your DHPC server and NAT firewall, while setting any other wifi router attached to your network to be in bridge mode (turning off the issuing of IP addresses and the firewall).
I have this configuration in my home, with three different wireless access points running, hooked together by two gigabit switches and some other stuff. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but with six people in my house we have a few dozen devices attached to our network (PCs, iMac, iPads, iPods, iPhones, Drobo, game consoles, the thermostat in the hall, printers, and so on.)
So, a WLAN AP is a hub. You do not have a dedicated connection to the AP, you are sharing it with everyone else, no matter what 802.11-variant you are using. So, this is the root cause for any latency issues impacting your gaming and streaming. Typically, streaming by default is the highest in terms of QoS as it is most noticeably impacted.
As your OP, you have a cable modem and then the WLAN AP. I’d buy a switch, have the computer that you use your gaming for connected to that, as well as the Airport Express for your WLAN AP use.
Hrmm… is this the same throughout the day? Or, only at certain periods of the day? I’d also suggest to benchmark your internet connection periodically throughout the day over time to determine when your provider is becoming congested. Since, you are sharing the “bulk” aspect of your connection within everyone else that is connected to the same leg of the network from the provider.
Normally true, unless you have “Wireless Isolation” or “AP Isolation” (term depends on vendor) turned on in the router settings, in which case LAN clients won’t see wireless clients.
If you don’t want to run ethernet cable in your house, there are other options.
If you have existing coaxial cable wiring in your house, you can get some MoCa routers and run your local network over that. I got some from a company named ActionTec and I’ve used them in my house and in a friend’s house. They work very well, and installation is as simple as “plug into cable, plug in ethernet, wait for light to go green” on both ends. Unless the light doesn’t go green. Then you’re boned.
If you don’t have coax cable, ActionTec also makes ethernet over electrical wiring adapters. I have some old ones, and they worked very well for a while, until all of a sudden the connection got quite slow (< 5Mb/s), and I couldn’t tell why. But many people use them successfully.
It works just fine as long as the runs aren’t too long (I’d estimate the threshold at ~100 ft).
Obviously for new runs there’s little reason not to use Cat6 or 6a, if you’re already wired with Cat5 there’s little reason to rewire unless it’s proven insufficient in tests. Or you want 10GBASE-T.
A modem with wireless built in is a Modem and a Router in one box. One box is better than two boxes, and cheaper.
But for cheaper, you typically get WiFi that is not cutting-edge, doesn’t do peer-peer networking as fast (downloading pirated movies), isn’t as good at VOIP, etc.
Also, you might want two boxes: you might have your modem downstairs, and want WiFi upstairs, or down in the den.
So, single box ok for normal people: two boxes better if you have an identified need, or just want more toys.
I don’t see where. I made a very conscious effort to not use Mb and MB incorrectly in my post:
The 100baseT wired connection provided 100Mbits/sec in theory, and it seemed to give me about 5-10 MBytes/sec of real data transfer when I copied 1-2GB files and timed the transfer.
The gigabit wired connection, under the same conditions, gave around 80-100 MBytes/sec of real data transfer for a 1-2GB file. In other words, the file transferred in around 20 seconds. I’m happy with this setup.