Flat networking options.

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leaplae

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#185279 17-Nov-2015 07:27

Hi Guys,

At the end of the month I am moving into a flat with 6 young male adults, and we have decided to go with 200/20 UFB plan.

Currently I have a Ubiquiti Edge router lite, a gigabit smart switch, a Peplink AC Mini access point.

I am planning on using the Ubiquiti as the primary router, and have the ISP supplied router as a access point - one upstairs and one downstairs to hopefully spread the load and provide better coverage.

A few questions:

1) Which ISP should I go with, and which has the best router offering for what I am trying to do.

2) Can said router still use its phone function if it is not the edge device on the network (I would just plug the internet into one of the routers switchports).

3) Any other things I should watch out for?

richms

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#1429330 17-Nov-2015 08:03

I would re-think the 20 meg upstream with that many people sharing.

Complaints at a friends house about family members ruining peoples gaming dissappeared when it went to 200/200

Richard rich.ms

leaplae

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#1429335 17-Nov-2015 08:13

Sure good point I will try to get everyone to agree to that.

raytaylor

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#1429953 17-Nov-2015 20:44

Dont expect much performance with wifi only - you will want to hard wire as much as possible.

6 guys = ~12-20 devices.

And one person streaming youtube can cause collision collapse for all other devices on an AP.

You might want to get some homeplug powerline units for desktops/consoles and/or run some ethernet cables.

Ray Taylor

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leaplae

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#1429954 17-Nov-2015 20:49

Yep I will be using Ethernet where possible, I know the massive difference it makes (including snaking them through the halls).

I was thinking of using power-line to spread the AP's around / peoples rooms, however has any one tried using multiple of them? Would the performance of multiple power line adapters compare to WiFi?

Jase2985

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#1429968 17-Nov-2015 21:15

problem with many powerline adapters is they reduce the speed the more you add. ie the throughput is shared

raytaylor

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#1430003 17-Nov-2015 21:42

Powerline adapters are also based on CSMA like wifi so there will also be collision collapse.
-BUT-
The idea is to spread the load among multiple access points which could be
- Two wifi AP's
- One homeplug connected to your router

That way the chance of one user affecting others is reduced.

The other benefit is that the powerline units are typically faster than wifi so when a user wants to send or receive data, it will happen faster, freeing up the interface faster.

Its still not as good as hard wired ethernet to each device, but less devices on each radio interface means less chance two devices will want to share a single interface at the same time.

So with two wifi APs you can have two devices streaming at the same time, one on each AP.
With powerline, you can have an extra device streaming, and it will have theoratically more speed capability than the wifi devices.

Ray Taylor

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richms

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#1430017 17-Nov-2015 21:59

Whatever you do, dont install 2 sets of powerline adapters, if you need multiple, then get compatible ones and have a single one on the router, and then the rest on client devices. 2 sets of them make the thruput on them tank totally since they will just collide with each other.

Richard rich.ms