Upgraded Internet and WiFi !!!

[Larry Frank]

I have had the same WiFi for some time now and we have struggled with it in our house. The house is kind of long and spread out so getting WiFi everywhere is difficult. I had a NetGear R7000 router along with a couple NetGear extenders. I also had ATT DSL which was only about 20 mbps. This was fine a few years ago but with so much streaming and such no longer adequate.

Finally, my son came in for Christmas and he helped with some updates. We replaced the NetGear router with an ASUS ZEN WiFi AX Mini. It is a mesh system with a base and two other units. The change provided much better coverage all over my house. (Please, do not ask me what a mesh system is but it works great.) I could not have done this without my son who is very capable with this stuff. He works for a company where he is leading a group which develops computer games.

Next, I made the BIG move as I switched from ATT DSL to Xfinity Blast with 200 mbps. This was truly a large pain with many phone calls. I spent long time talking with someone that I could not understand and who did not understand. It was clear that when I asked a question, they repeated it back, looked it up in their book and then read the response. I finally found a better number and got things going. I required a new line pulled across the street and to the back of my house. I had the line pulled to the back of the house and then did the installation myself. I hate making up new Ethernet cables and plugs ins. Happily, I have all my cables in the house labeled.

Next, I switched my landline from ATT to Xfinity. This was also a confusing pain and little help from Xfinity. They initially give you some strange phone number and then you port over your old number. But I finally got it done and still have my old phone number.

Everything is working and the download speed is 10 times faster with upload 5-6 times faster. There is little difference in price. Everyone in the house is very happy.

449649

Two years ago, I started this process by changing my email address from a ATT based one to a Gmail account. It has taken a long time to get everything changed as the number of sites and places you have your email address are too many.

I was extremely upset with some of the Xfinity phone support with poor knowledge and heavy accents. However, the technician who came out to run the new cable was very nice. Some of the people I talked with were also nice but all of these were inside the US and genuinely seemed to care and want to help.

[Bruce Wrenn]

Congrats on new service. Unfortunately we are STUCK with AT&T's slowest speed of Uverse. A blazing 3 mbps, 5 times faster than our old DSL.

[Jim Becker]

That was a good move for you, Larry. 'Glad it worked out! I do understand the support challenges you had with Xfinity as I had to survive similar helping my daughter with her low-cost Internet service in her apartment this past year as there were some setup things that just were not working properly. (And I'm a network engineer) It took multiple folks nearly four hours to get the account working properly.

BTW, the mesh system was a good choice. Unlike using extenders which merely re-broadcast the already weak signal, a mesh system, when properly designed and installed is like having one big, distributed antenna. (very simply stated...it's a lot more than that) The better ones use a completely separate wireless network to communicate between the nodes so that "talking" to each other doesn't interfere with your use of the WiFi networks and frequencies for your computers, phones and other devices. Adding nodes to service areas that need better coverage doesn't screw up your WiFi networks, either. (even better performance can be had if the nodes are hard wired via Ethernet back to the primary node)

You also did a good thing moving away from ISP provided email.

[Larry Frank]

Since I have a hard wired system also, my nodes are hard wired back to the primary node. I would not have been able to do this on my own. It is really fast and my wife appreciates it.

It is amazing how technology has changed so much with the evolving of internet and Wi-Fi.

[Jim Matthews]

It is amazing how technology has changed so much with the evolving of internet and Wi-Fi.

Ten years ago, what was your internet usage like?

How excited were you the first time you got "free WiFi"?

[Curt Harms]

That was a good move for you, Larry. 'Glad it worked out! I do understand the support challenges you had with Xfinity as I had to survive similar helping my daughter with her low-cost Internet service in her apartment this past year as there were some setup things that just were not working properly. (And I'm a network engineer) It took multiple folks nearly four hours to get the account working properly.


We have a family member using the Xfinity low cost internet service. I guess it works, I have no been involved and have no volunteered. Most people would not know if things were working properly as long as they had a wifi connection of some description. Her apartment is very small which may help.

[roger wiegand]

I thought I'd died and gone to heaven when my network connection went from 300 baud to 1200.

[Ole Anderson]

I have had Comcast for 35 years. Customer service starts with a computer assuming it can fix all of your problems. Spend a few years with them and you think you finally have the system figured out and they change the system. During Covid they refuse to enter your home to fix their problems, unless you have Comcast Business. I have home security, blast internet and HD TV with the box you can talk to (fine feature by the way), about $170/month. Every once in a while you have to threaten to leave to get the best pricing. I stream a ton of YouTube (along with Netflix and Prime) on both my PC and my 65" TV screen.

[Jim Becker]

Since I have a hard wired system also, my nodes are hard wired back to the primary node. I would not have been able to do this on my own. It is really fast and my wife appreciates it.

It is amazing how technology has changed so much with the evolving of internet and Wi-Fi.

Three of my four nodes are hardwired, including the one in my shop building. Previously, we had a very, very difficult time with getting consistent wireless service in our house because of building materials, etc., and the mesh completely solved that. It's really important, too, because we don't get cellular service in the house, so WiFI calling is necessary. The signal from the mesh is broad enough that we have good service for most of our almost 4 acre property now.

[Jim Becker]

We have a family member using the Xfinity low cost internet service. I guess it works, I have no been involved and have no volunteered. Most people would not know if things were working properly as long as they had a wifi connection of some description. Her apartment is very small which may help.

The actual service is no different than anyone else gets...it's just subsidized to $10 a month for folks with a qualifying disability. I think maybe it's 15 meg service, but I don't know for sure. VZ has the same arrangement available and I would have preferred to use that (there's even an ONT in her apartment in D'town) but the cost is $20 a month. For someone with a very limited income, ten bucks is ten bucks. I'm glad this was available to her for a number of reasons I'll not go into here.

[Steve Demuth]

I clearly live in a different world. I have worked for years with 3Mbs down and 1Mbs up. That's recently improved to about 6Mbs down. Not sure what I'd do with more.

[Brian Elfert]

If you do a lot of HD streaming you'll find that 3Mbs down is pretty slow. Multiply that by multiple TVs and it is really an issue. Working remotely can also be an issue at that speed.

The biggest issue with Internet speed seems to be in families with teenage kids who are all using lots of bandwidth.

[John K Jordan]

...
It is amazing how technology has changed so much with the evolving of internet and Wi-Fi.

Shur'nuf. Back in the late '70s, early '80s I stayed on top of everything. Had a genuine Teletype connected to a 110 baud modem and a 6800 SWTPC kit/homebuilt hybrid computer. Hit the bulletin boards with that state-of-the-art setup. Experiencing the Adventure game at 110 baud was a lesson in patience. :)

When I need something these days I wait for my oldest son, almost 50, to come visit. These youngsters stay up with all this tech.

[Andrew Seemann]

If you do a lot of HD streaming you'll find that 3Mbs down is pretty slow. Multiply that by multiple TVs and it is really an issue. Working remotely can also be an issue at that speed.

The biggest issue with Internet speed seems to be in families with teenage kids who are all using lots of bandwidth.


Yep. My 3 kids and wife are all streaming addicts. Me not so much, but the wife and I now both work at home and the kids are doing remote school because of covid. Thank God 2 years ago I put in my own upgraded modem, router/firewall, wifi device, and 24 port switch and then ran a hard wired LAN for everything except i-devices, one Playstation, and a firestick.

We use just shy of 2 TB a month. Fortunately a main regional cable line goes down our street. so we get something like 300Mbs down and 30Mbs up, and never have performance degradation.

[Steve Demuth]

If you do a lot of HD streaming you'll find that 3Mbs down is pretty slow. Multiply that by multiple TVs and it is really an issue. Working remotely can also be an issue at that speed.

The biggest issue with Internet speed seems to be in families with teenage kids who are all using lots of bandwidth.

I have worked remotely at least 2 days/week on that particular broadband connection for ten years, and 100% remotely for the last 10 months. I support (in my job) over 15,000 remote users. Any of them who have 1Mbs per home worker are able to work remotely quite effectively. We have lots of remote worker issues, but they are not labelled bandwidth issues, they are almost uniformly either latency issues, or bandwidth consistency (QoS) issues.

But I get how having 4 people in a house who think they need constant HD video on demand could raise your bandwidth requirements ... that really is a different world than the one I live in.

[Brian Elfert]

Your IT department must have a done a pretty good job of setting things up if you can work remotely on 3 megabit. If you're using some sort of VDI it is a lot easier to make it work. I work in IT and we ran into issues with remote users having issues if they had really slow Internet at home. Some of them got cellular hotspots as they are faster.

[Jim Becker]

The largest issues for folks working remotely (work and school) at the present time focuses a lot on upload bandwidth as well as the latency you mention, Steve. Audio and video are particularly susceptible to latency and jitter issues. When you have multiple folks working simultaneously, that adds "extra fun" to the mix. I sure don't miss DSL and other lower bandwidth solutions for sure and am thankful that our service here is symmetrical because it's fiber based, especially since Professor Dr. SWMBO is teaching remotely and has been since last January, often at the same time our younger daughter is fully immersed in her university classes which have been virtual for the same time period. If I were not retired, I'd be adding to the mix, too, and given I was in the telecommunications industry selling (and using constantly) audio/video solutions which were fully IP based. (I worked virtual for almost 21 years, actually, but it was a lot easier in the last ten with all the nice tech to support it. And a fiber connection. :)

[Steve Demuth]

Your IT department must have a done a pretty good job of setting things up if you can work remotely on 3 megabit. If you're using some sort of VDI it is a lot easier to make it work. I work in IT and we ran into issues with remote users having issues if they had really slow Internet at home. Some of them got cellular hotspots as they are faster.

Since I'm the CTO, I'll take that comment about the IT department as a complement. ;-)

But again, nearly every time we've investigated, the problems our remote workers have are not due to bandwidth per se, but rather to latency and QoS. The latter though, can easily be bandwidth unavailability due to people trying to do dumb stuff. Multiple instances, e.g., of people who called for help because their video conferences had audio issues, despite having completely adequate bandwidth, only to discover that they had a 5Mbs downlink and were trying to watch movies on their second monitor while supposedly working. You don't have 3Mbs if you start with 5, but put a 10Mbs background load on it.

When we sent people home in March last year we actually spent more of our WAN team's time helping carriers in our local geographies debug their routing to raise QoS, than fixing our own issues. In a couple of cases, we had to add new BGP routes and WAN drops to enable them to get packets directly to our front door, rather than running them halfway across the continent before returning home. SE Minnesota to Dallas, back to SE Minnesota, in one case.

[Steve Demuth]

And a fiber connection. :)

Ironically, if I lived 10 miles south of my present location, I'd have rural fiber to my door, rather than wireless ethernet bouncing off a silo here, and a radio antenna there. Rural telephone cooperatives have built out great kit using their universal service subsidies; CenturyLink wishes fervently that we weren't in their service area and invests accordingly.

[Jim Becker]

Yea, there's some serious need for real infrastructure out there, especially since the world has changed and it's very likely that a notable percentage of folks currently working from home will continue to do so long term. That's a disadvantage for many more rural areas because the traditional carriers have not stepped up. And we can't buy the excuse that "5G" is coming and will be the "solution for everything" because in the rural areas, it's going to be low band which is barely faster than 4G and likely pretty expensive for the consumer for bandwidth, too.