I never fully understand how this works but I want to make sure I'm not causing unnecessary lag in our network or more importantly my gaming connection. My father set this up a few years ago so I am coming in late to the game. I think I optimized it as best as I can. Connection comes in to a wireless modem on one end of the house at 10/150, the modem has one outgoing connection into a 10/100 switch which goes throughout the house. On the other end of the house we have a wireless router which my pc and consoles are hard wired, along with multiple devices on wifi (tv's, phone, amazon fire etc). We will likely be putting in another wifi router in the basement/downstairs area which would be off the switch as well for netflix etc. since the other two routers dont cover it (and I have basement dwellers currently) Somewhere along the line there is a signal booster as well in the attic. At one point there was another router between the modem and switch causing an unnecessary hop but I took that out of equation. (our original modem didnt have wifi, so they were using it for wifi) 1. Would it be better if my pc skipped the switch/router and was hooked directly to the modem? For some reason I believe I saw that this was a bad idea. 2. i guess the switch technically limits the connection to 10/100 but with all the other devices randomly connecting and using it I doubt I ever really get over 100 anyway right? 3. is it worth uprading the speed more, or any hardware along the way? We currently have 6 adults in the house operating in basically 3 distinct areas.
1)Is your modem a modem+router combo? If not then it is impossible for you to wire your PC directly to it. If it is, then you could but the difference in latency would probably not be noticeable. 2)Unless you are doing file transfers from one machine to another in your network then the 10/100 switch won't cause issues. But if you want to upgrade, gigabit switches aren't all that expensive nowadays. 3)As far as speed is concerned, that is for you to decide. If your current connection can manage your household needs then I don't see a reason for upgrading that. Hardware on the other hand, I'm guessing that a standard router provided by your ISP would have a hard time serving all the devices of 6 adults without causing latency issues or packet loss. But again, unless you are experiencing issues with latency or disconnections, there is no reason to upgrade anything. Edit: It just crossed my mind, are you able to saturate all of your connection with that 10/100 switch? Meaning, are you able to get the full 150mbit connection in one of your devices?
At one point I was having issues with voice comms and wow for some reason but it stopped when I bypassed the extra wireless router my dad had everything running through. I get higher than advertised speeds from speed test etc so I think I'm ok. Our household is actually very light on usage generally but not we have people who stream a lot of video on Netflix etc living with us during the time I play. So just looking to head off any issues
If you are running everything through a 100mbit switch then you are capping your speed at 100mbit. So you are not going to make use of that 150mbit internet connection. Gigabit switches cost $20-40 depending on features so you might as well replace your 100mbit switch with a gigabit one. You will get better latency and speeds if you wire your PC directly to your modem+router combo unit from your ISP, but it isnt going to be some massive improvement. Just maybe 0.5-1ms ping I bet from your network side of things. As for the bandwidth improvement, IDK as I dont know your specific setup and settings. If things are set in a non-optimal way on all those other routers then you may see a bit of a bandwidth improvement simply because you are bypassing having the same processing and stuff being done multiple times as you run through multiple pieces of equipment. That is not how it works. The more devices connect, the more the bandwidth is saturated and the more it has to be spread across all the devices so everything runs slower. Capping it at 50% lower than your maximum to start then sharing that lower speed will make things worse. Also, the 10/100 switch is not 10 megabit upload and 100mbit download, it is simply 100 megabit. Nothing has used 10mbit for well over a decade and nothing negotiates that slow of a speed. Also, your internet speed should be listed as 150/10, as it is 150 down and 10 up. It is always listed as down first then upload speed. Switches and routers are listed as 10/100/1000 as those are the speeds they are capable of, not that one of those is upload and one is download, both up and down are the same and 10/100/1000 are simply speed categories the unit is capable of negotiating. You usually dont ever see this anymore though, it hasnt been used in a LONG time. Now days you just see things simply stated as gigabit and obviously they can also negotiate less than a gigabit as well though nothing ever should these days.
Hmm I see. My ping us generally really good according to rocket league etc but may be worth grabbing a new switch and seeing about direct connecting my pc I also hear a lot of people bitching the stock modems provided by the ISP. Is that really worth it?
Depends what ISP you have. Some are good, most are crap. If you have cable internet which it sounds like you do from the speeds you listed then if you buy a better modem you will have to call your cable company and get it registered onto their network and provisioned in order for it to work. As long as you have not had any problems with your internet service, such as internet completely dropping out until you reset the modem, horrible ping spikes at random, or speeds dropping way down even at non-peak hours then Id say just keep what you have till you have an issue. Spec wise this would be something you would be looking for: http://www.amazon.com/ARRIS-SURFboa...ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1463278048&sr=1-1 Though it seems like there is some bad firmware for that modem recently (which is probably cable company specific issues since your cable company will usually flash their own firmware to your modem) so that specific model you might want to stay away from until things get fixed. Most of the people complaining seem to be on Cox which sucks anyway and their network causes problems all the time as is even without modem problems.
Yeah I have comcast/xfinity currently. had fios for a while. The only thing I seem to have issues with is voice comms like Mumble/Ventrilo/Discord spiking once in a while.
Ok I pologize if I am overly complicating things: I have a:.http://stores.dontleaseyourmodem.co...em-xb2-comcast-xfinity-timer-warner-approved/ For my modem. Plan is currently to switch out the old switch for a gig switch. Since that modem is a router as well (as far as I an tell) should I change my router upstairs and the router in the basement over to a repeater or access point? My setup is currently working ok but I do have issues with nat type on ps4 sometimes which may or may not have been solved by removing the extra router between the modem and switch and should have increased speed by upgrading the switch to a gig from 10/100 And going along with the other question asked, would it be better or possible to have the wifi signal repeat through the house as one signal through the various routers instead of having the basically seperate wifi hotspots/networks?
You can keep the other access points as routers, they are acting as access points anyway. And yes you can name the wireless network on them to all be the exact same thing with the same password and you will only have 1 network then and devices will hop between access points for whichever one they get the strongest signal from. You can even do this for 2.4GHz and 5GHz band wifi networks. Your modem looks fine.
Yeah going to put in the new switch today. My net crapped out last night anyway just on Comcast's end. Will see how this goes
So far so good, I don't think we had a lot of traffic last night though so will see tonight when everyone is home. And will link specs off amazon when home