Home Networks

Connecting a home computer to the internet only requires a modem, which is a device that allows a home computer to connect to the internet via a specific type of data transmission system.  Before high speed (broadband) internet, modems connected to the internet via [dial-up] modem (MOdulator - DEModulator) that transmitted digital data at the computer to acoustic information via the telephone lines.

The telephone modem has long fallen by the wayside for most people.  With the ubiquity of broadband internet in homes, having a home network is a natural progression that only requires the addition of a router.  A router is a device that combines a switch (a device that allows devices to communicate with each other) with a gateway (a device that allows one network to connect with another network, like the internet) and is installed downstream of the modem. The router allows multiple devices (personal computers, mobile phones, etc) to use a single internet connection simultaneously.

An important advantage of having a router between internet and your computers is the router's hardware firewall capability.  A hardware firewall shields your private home network from external cyberthreats.  See:

• PC & Account Security - Part 1 - Hardware Firewalls & Network Encryption - Runescape Weekly
• Hardware Firewall vs Software Firewall | Network Security | TechTerms

Residential Gateways are devices (typically provided by an Internet Service Provider - ISP) that combine multiple functions including modem, switch, and wireless access. Depending upon the ISP, some features built into the residential gateway require additional monthly subscription fees to unlock.  It may be cheaper to provide your own devices to get around the ISP's money grab.

A home network is considered to be an intranet, meaning that the devices can communicate with each other and are peer-to-peer in that there is no hierarchy (ie, each has the same importance/priority).  Most home networks have both wired devices and wireless devices and many of those devices require the ability to connect to the internet.  While the standard for wired connections is Ethernet, there are a variety of wireless standards that have evolved over time.  Ethernet is the generally the fastest and most reliable means of data communication although some forms of wireless communication can be faster.

Being in a rural location, broadband internet availability here is limited to radio-based systems (ie, cellular & point-to-point) rather than wire-based systems (like cable & DSL).  We decided to go with a point-to-point system, which required a line-of-sight connection to a tall radio tower.  With all of the trees in the area, we initially put up a TV tower attached the house and later a free-standing 70' tower beside my detached garage.  Since a free-standing tower is fairly expensive to install, many people do not opt for this system.  However, my ISP uses my tower as a repeater there are 3 antennas on this tower:

• high speed antenna that communicates with another network tower
• omni-directional antenna that provides internet service to nearby residences
• uni-directional antenna that provides internet service to a group of residences farther away.

All 3 antennas are connected to a switch mounted in a box on the back of my garage. I am connected to the internet at that [tower] switch and the router is installed in my detached garage because that building is between my internet tower and my house. Because my router is connected to the high speed antenna via the switch, I should have much higher connection speeds than the other customers using this tower.

When I built the garage, I connected it to the house with a buried PVC conduit. I ran the same outdoor Ethernet cable that goes to the antennas on the top of the tower from my router to an Ethernet internet distribution panel in the house via the conduit.  The Ethernet distribution panel consists of a couple of Open House H628 Termination Hubs and a couple of 10/100 Mbps switches ( D-Link DSS-8+ and Linksys EZXS88W), all of which been working fine for well over 10 years.

I had been using several routers over the years but I've had to replace them as they burned out.

• D-Link DI-704P
• Linksys BEFSR81
• D-Link DIR-601
• D-Link EBR-2310

I have a D-Link DAP-1650 as the Wireless Access Point (WAP) for WiFi access in the house, which is connected via cable to my Ethernet panel. My house was built with a foil vapour barrier (see Faraday Cage) so the DAP-1650 doesn't have a very strong WiFi signal outside.

Earlier this year, I was having trouble with mobile devices connecting to my home WiFi and often my desktop computer (connected via Ethernet) would seem to not connect to the internet. My ISP (Last Mile Wireless Internet) checked my connection and it found no issues.  None of the other customers using this tower were reporting any issues either. They told me that the only way to test the router is to bypass the router and connect directly into the modem to see if there is any difference. My ISP does not like D-Link and recommended ANY router made by Asus or TP-Link.

Since I was using an old D-Link EBR-2310 router (in the detached garage beside the tower), it was a bit inconvenient for me to try bypassing the router because my good laptop fried. I found that Amazon had a cheap wireless router for $20 (TP-Link TL-WR841N) that appeared to have really good reviews so I thought I would try it instead. The TL-WR841N was a big improvement in WiFi connectivity but my download speeds since the spring of 2018 have been verrry slow. For example, I was trying to download a large file and the download speed is around 20-40 KB/s and the process had already failed several times. I used to get 5-10 Mbps (625-1250 KB/s, using Ookla Speedtest) when the EBR-2310 was working better. Sometimes, rebooting the TL-WR841N improved its performance somewhat but not spectacularly.

To check the various devices, I found a long Ethernet patch cord and fired up my old Thinkpad T30 laptop.  I discovered that, when I downloaded that same large file, my download speed (reported by Firefox) increased to 200-400 KB/s at both the router and at the tower switch. I then went to the Ethernet distribution panel in my house and found that connecting directly into the cable coming from my router also gave me a 200-400 KB/s download speed.

When I plugged my laptop into one of the ports in the EZXS88W switch, my file download speed dropped back down to the 20-30 KB/s range. Moving the router cable to a different port in the EZXS88W seems to have gotten my other devices to now have faster internet connection speeds.

Last Mile Wireless has responsive tech support and, after letting them know that my internet speed still seemed to be a bit on the slow side, they rebooted their antennas.  That got my connection speed back into the 5-10 Mbps range again.

Wired routers should have lower cost (due to no additional WiFi components) and better Ethernet performance over cheap wireless routers.  Economy WiFi routers often use 4-pin (10/100 Mbps full or half-duplex) instead of 8-pin (1000 Mbps full-duplex) Ethernet RJ45 ports.  10/100 Ethernet only uses 4 of the 8 wires so there should be no adverse effects on connection speed.  Full-duplex means that data can transmit in both directions simultaneously while half-duplex means that data can only transmit in one direction at a time, effectively halving its bandwidth.  See Ethernet over twisted pair.  A 10/100 router/switch can downgrade from full-duplex to half-duplex depending upon the negotiation configuration of the devices at each end of the Ethernet cable (eg, auto/auto on one end and 100/full-duplex on the other).

The TL-WR841N shows 10/100Mbps Ethernet ports in its specifications and they are in fact 4-pin ports rather than 8-pin ports.  TP-Link confirmed that pins 1, 2, 3, and 6 are used to internet transfer and this has no effect on Ethernet performance.  If I needed a better performing WiFi router, I would instead look at one with the latest WiFi spec (AC) and Gigabit (ie, 1000 Mbps) Ethernet ports like the Archer C9.

My DAP-1650 works fine in the house and I'm going to repurpose the  TL-WR841N as an outside WAP.  Having checked around, it looks like there are very few wired (ie, with no WiFi) routers for the consumer market.

Moving the router cable to a different port seems to have gotten my other devices to now have faster internet connection speeds.  Having two 8-port switches servicing my Ethernet panel is a bit messy and this seems like a good opportunity to replace both a single 16-port Gigabit switch, especially since I've upgraded from the TL-WR841N to the TL-R600VPN Gigabit router.

I'm not sure how far the TL-WR841N will transmit so I might have to upgrade to a better WAP outside.

Many devices (like printers and scanners) now have network capability so that they don't need to be connected any one computer. I find that having a network printer is useful and I still have lots of dot matrix printer tractor feed paper.  It is possible to continue using older printers that have only USB or parallel ports.  I have a D-Link DP-G321 (print server) but D-Link no longer makes these devices.

Another useful device to have on a home network is a file server.  Digital data is extremely fragile and the best way to protect it is to store your data in multiple different locations.  It's not always cost effective to use cloud-based backup (like Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive) so local backup drive can be a good option.  I started off with a Netgear SC101 as my Network Attached Storage (NAS) device that used a pair of PATA (Parallel ATA) hard drives and it worked great while it worked. However, after one of the hard drives failed, it was challenging to recover the data because it was stored in a proprietary Z-San file system.  Modern NAS drives are pretty much plug & play as well.

After my SC101 burned out and never wanting to do things the easy way, I decided to put one of my old Windows XP computers back into service as a file server with a couple of SATA (Serial ATA) hard drives in Raid-1 Configuration.  It worked great until a Windows 10 security patch prevented me accessing it on my network.  More about my file server project here:  Home File Server.