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Thread: Home internet and wi-fi overhaul

  1. #41
    High Plains Luddite George's Avatar
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    Does anyone have recent experience with internet from a cable TV provider?

    If so, my question is has the technology changed in the last few years, or do you still get TV & cable signal over the same physical cable coming to the house?

    I'm evaluating cable vs. DSL for internet service at home. Sadly those two seem to be our only options, and I'm not particularly fond of either provider. Anyway, we used to have cable TV and cable internet. I could plug the cable modem into any of a few cable TV jacks in our house and get internet that way. So, I figured we could just call Comcast (TV & cable provider) and ask them to start sending us an internet signal and add it to our monthly bill, if that's what we decide to do.

    Well, I just called Comcast and got a lady who sounded like she was halfway around the world and very difficult to understand. She said they would have to run a new cable to the house for internet, in addition to the cable that's currently coming to the house for TV. That's not how it used to be, and that would likely be a deal-breaker if so. I'm on hold with them again now to see if I can get a different person to ask and thought I'd ask here while I wait.

    Thanks.

    Edited to add: I'm finding conflicting results on Google. I thought this would be a simple yes/no question.

    Edited again: Sounds like the answer is maybe, or it depends, or perhaps.

    Comcast, of course, is of little help: "The salesman technician can determine that when does the installation. Which day works better for you?"
    Last edited by George; April 11th, 2019 at 03:20 PM.

  2. #42
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    My personal experience has always been that the same line coming into your house has both the internet and cable TV signal. It's certainly the case here, I just have a splitter for the incoming coax line and send one of them to the cable modem, the other to the Tivo. Well, technically there's another splitter to head off to the bedroom Tivo, but that's another story. I've never actually seen a situation where there's a separate line for the two, especially now that most cable companies have gone entirely digital, so it's just another bunch of data running over the same wire.

    I wonder if they're being imprecise with the language and mean that it's possible the drop line from the pole to your house is an older one that would need to be upgraded - not so much that you'd have a second line coming into the house, but that the existing line would need to change out. In that case, I'd imagine there's some kind of outside connection where the drop line meets the inside wiring and they can likely just do that without anyone even being home.

    My guess is that's what they're trying to say, and saying they need to send a tech out to check the existing drop line to make sure it's new enough and undamaged. My last place had a drop line that was old and had a ton of nicks in the insulation from the rats that would run across it, so whenever it rained the TV and internet dropped out. That said, they kept telling me it needed to be replaced and that I didn't even need to be home to wrangle it, and then they missed every single appointment they ever set up to actually do that.

  3. #43
    High Plains Luddite George's Avatar
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    Great info. Thanks for taking the time, Tom. Much appreciated.

  4. #44
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    I got the internet upgraded to nbn at the unit that I rent earlier this week.

    The retard that did the install said that he can’t pull the coax through to the existing phone outlet.

    So now I have a modem in my bedroom.

    Joy.

  5. #45
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    So despite dumb modem placement issues, I'm living the tech high-life. The new PC is not going to be subjected to the same abuse my old laptop received, which means no *cough* bittorrent programs or dodgy shit. But that doesn't mean I'm giving up bittorrents. With two PCs available its easy.

    I've set myself up with a 32GB USB stick, which I've plugged into the router, and on the laptop I've set my torrent program to save new files to that USB stick.

    All I have to do is access it from the new PC over the network and I'm good to go

    It even works as a media server so that I can just straight-up watch any movies directly from my TV, in full 4K HDR glory.

    Take that, Disney.

  6. #46
    *Bump*

    That's a neat feature having a central USB stick storage on the router. How does the TV know how to access that?

    -

    I'm updating my internet as well, going from a 75mbps plan to 300 (and saving $ in the process). I've noticed the internet has felt a little choked lately with the slow evolution of increased demands, mostly simultaneous Zoom WFH and HD music streaming in the house (phone keeps dropping connection now too, guess it's last on the QoS list I haven't checked in forever). And sometimes TV/YouTube goes low res for a minute for no apparent reason.

    So one thing I found out I need to do for my new faster internet is change my DOCSIS 3.0 modem to a 3.1 modem. Easy enough. I was thinking I might need a new router too but I'm not sure whether I'll need it. My existing router is a dual-band ASUS RT-AC66U (802.11ac) with separate 2.4 GHz and 5GHz networks. Is an ax router (aka WiFi 6) going to be that much better for my use case? I currently feel like I have enough range, just, for my 1500sq-ft home with centrally located router.

    As I learn about router tech, looks like my existing router already has beamforming. Is MU-MIMO and OFDMA (or whatever) going to make a perceptible difference if I don't have 3+ devices streaming HD content at once?

    I did read a WPA-3 router needs to be set to WPA-2 for older devices to work, so I don't see any need for WPA-3 while I have those older devices still.

    WiFi 6 purports to help battery life on smartphones - by how much in practical use?

  7. #47
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    With the caveat that I have no idea what I'm talking about:

    I've always gotten the impression that WiFi routers are significantly faster than the connection at the wall. Even if one device was completely saturating the cable connection, it wouldn't even come close to maxing out most routers.

    Unless you're having reception issues for WiFi or there's some feature you want on a newer one, I probably wouldn't bother upgrading.

    Alternately, get the new cable modem, run speedtest on a few devices and see if any of them can max out your expected throughput (it's always possible a device is just slow, so I'd check a few of the newest ones). If they can, then your router is at least as fast as your cable modem.

  8. #48
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    Quote Originally Posted by CudaMan View Post
    *Bump*

    That's a neat feature having a central USB stick storage on the router. How does the TV know how to access that?
    Serious bump!

    To answer your question, it behaves the same way as any network media server. If you’ve ever browsed a PC for music or video using a game console you’ll have seen it before.

    On the TV side there’s a media playback feature that can access shared files and folders. On the modem you just set it as a media server and it will share it on the network. The TV can also look at shared folders from a PC.

    It was one of the few smart TV features I ever used, mainly because it was faster than copying 4K videos from my very slow and aged laptop to a device that was able to play 4K videos on my TV. In the end I gave up on it because it was fiddly to use and the stream across the network for uncompressed video files was patchy. When I ended up in hospital I bought a Disney subscription (take that Mick’s wallet!) and never looked back.

  9. #49
    I agree, single-device throughput probably isn't going to be a concern with my existing router. I think to clarify, my question revolves around handling multiple devices doing things at once - one endless Zoom meeting on WiFi, maybe one device streaming something on WiFi, and a wired PC doing some online gaming (packet priority!) at the same time. Stuff like that.

  10. #50
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    Probably still not that much of an issue. I've got the Google/Nest Mesh Wifi and it's got a bit of telemetry you can watch on it. When either me or my wife are on Zoom, it's usually using about 2-3mbps/sec. Streaming 4k video is only like 5-6mbps/sec, so you likely can do all those things at the same time without even getting close to saturating the connection and having to think about shaping.

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