First post, sorry if I've missed existing info on the forum. I did spend an hour search and browsing and found useful info but think best to put my situation... Sorry this is going to be long...
Office in garden, about 120ft from house, semi-rural so not a lot of visible wifi signals. For last 12 years my catV cable run around house, up fence line, under paving to greenhouse and a DIR655 as access point back to Virgin superhub (in router mode, serving the house etc). I was getting 75Mb measured throughput to Macs in my office with that PLUS syslogd-ng (macports and self-config daemon, log rollover etc) collection of router events from DIR655 on port 514 collated into my syslog managed under lnav in terminal. I like that.
A week or so ago in a windy spell I started to see WAN cable disconnect/reconnects in DIR logs. Getting internet connection back up has been increasingly troublesome (I can see DIR but not further typically; some combination of router reboots and replugs of wires either end and cycle wifi was getting me back up but not these days). Wireshark showed a great deal of reset, retx, etc packets. Stats on DIR interface also showed the problems. Last 2 days (in UK) were warm and gentle breeze but I could not get my link up at all. Very time wasteful and frustrating...
Not practical to relay that wire due to growth, sheds arrived etc. and maybe something nibbles or rubs wires in that run. Did not want to wire all the way to office in case of lightning.
My workaround yesterday was to put the DIR in a side shed on a new catV at best point with line of sight to office and only 1 thin polycarbonate roofing sheet en-route. This keeps my logging and gave me best s/n and strength. Getting errors and drops in stats on router but workable - for a while.
Getting about 25Mb throughput on Speedtest. RSSI -75db, S/n 86db, 57Mb nominal estimate by the Mac, 2.4GHz, channel 3)
NEXT OPTIONS
I could try and replace/join new sections into the long catV (crimp tool, RJ45s, through coupler etc) but guessing where the damage is and no TDR to measure where. Just start with the easy ends and give it a go?
I could go for a newer, better router (though I want the log, security and admin features and stability more than big throughput. I only get 85Mb right close to the V-hub anyway). What I could see locally did not satisfy. Would be glad to hear suggestions and likely benefits re speed and packet reliability.
I could also put some bridge / repeater in the half-way point greenhouse. I have a Belkin 54g (F5D7231-4) available and tried that today but various web notes were not all that helpful. Was unsure if it is trying to operate its own DNS, subrange of 192.168.<as used by DIR>, if I should partition the ranges, use different range and NAT. I got it on the same channel, SSID and could talk to it from the office. The house end could also see it attached to the DIR but I felt I was wasting too much time in my ignorance of what I was attempting. Welkin seemed to say it was only designed to work with their router
Plus I might have trouble addressing my syslog packets from the DIR across any NAT to any separate IP range for my log collection. Raising further config/DMZ/routing complexity.
I could do combinations of the above.
I could wish I had time to play with all that and do nothing else, but...
Ideally, I'd like my network to be flatter so every device (house and office) are on 192.168.0/x which would allow more (& simpler) interoperation options (at the cost of less security when the kids mates arrive?!).
Hope that is enough, not too much. And thanks for getting this far!!
Office in garden, about 120ft from house, semi-rural so not a lot of visible wifi signals. For last 12 years my catV cable run around house, up fence line, under paving to greenhouse and a DIR655 as access point back to Virgin superhub (in router mode, serving the house etc). I was getting 75Mb measured throughput to Macs in my office with that PLUS syslogd-ng (macports and self-config daemon, log rollover etc) collection of router events from DIR655 on port 514 collated into my syslog managed under lnav in terminal. I like that.
A week or so ago in a windy spell I started to see WAN cable disconnect/reconnects in DIR logs. Getting internet connection back up has been increasingly troublesome (I can see DIR but not further typically; some combination of router reboots and replugs of wires either end and cycle wifi was getting me back up but not these days). Wireshark showed a great deal of reset, retx, etc packets. Stats on DIR interface also showed the problems. Last 2 days (in UK) were warm and gentle breeze but I could not get my link up at all. Very time wasteful and frustrating...
Not practical to relay that wire due to growth, sheds arrived etc. and maybe something nibbles or rubs wires in that run. Did not want to wire all the way to office in case of lightning.
My workaround yesterday was to put the DIR in a side shed on a new catV at best point with line of sight to office and only 1 thin polycarbonate roofing sheet en-route. This keeps my logging and gave me best s/n and strength. Getting errors and drops in stats on router but workable - for a while.
Getting about 25Mb throughput on Speedtest. RSSI -75db, S/n 86db, 57Mb nominal estimate by the Mac, 2.4GHz, channel 3)
NEXT OPTIONS
I could try and replace/join new sections into the long catV (crimp tool, RJ45s, through coupler etc) but guessing where the damage is and no TDR to measure where. Just start with the easy ends and give it a go?
I could go for a newer, better router (though I want the log, security and admin features and stability more than big throughput. I only get 85Mb right close to the V-hub anyway). What I could see locally did not satisfy. Would be glad to hear suggestions and likely benefits re speed and packet reliability.
I could also put some bridge / repeater in the half-way point greenhouse. I have a Belkin 54g (F5D7231-4) available and tried that today but various web notes were not all that helpful. Was unsure if it is trying to operate its own DNS, subrange of 192.168.<as used by DIR>, if I should partition the ranges, use different range and NAT. I got it on the same channel, SSID and could talk to it from the office. The house end could also see it attached to the DIR but I felt I was wasting too much time in my ignorance of what I was attempting. Welkin seemed to say it was only designed to work with their router
Wireless bridging works with the following models only: F5D7230-4 54g Wireless Cable/DSL Gateway Router F5D7130 54g Wireless Network Access point
The following firmware version must be installed on the AP and the Router for proper operation:
F5D7230-4: Version 1.01.08 or higher
F5D7130: Version 1.01.08 or higher
And it was a 7231 anyway, but did have a screen for bridge mode... but maybe it wanted to be host to a 713x and be told the MAC address of it as AP... https://www.belkin.com/update/files/F5D7130_WirelessBridge.pdfThe following firmware version must be installed on the AP and the Router for proper operation:
F5D7230-4: Version 1.01.08 or higher
F5D7130: Version 1.01.08 or higher
Plus I might have trouble addressing my syslog packets from the DIR across any NAT to any separate IP range for my log collection. Raising further config/DMZ/routing complexity.
I could do combinations of the above.
I could wish I had time to play with all that and do nothing else, but...
Ideally, I'd like my network to be flatter so every device (house and office) are on 192.168.0/x which would allow more (& simpler) interoperation options (at the cost of less security when the kids mates arrive?!).
Hope that is enough, not too much. And thanks for getting this far!!