re: The BETTER WI-FI and Home Networking Thread

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Since you already have the Pi, you might as well run PiHole

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Yes. And sorry if I have started a side chat that is a little out of the idea behind the thread, but along the tangent we go!

Technitium has its own very small following, but as I sort of hinted on above, the point of bringing it up was more “for those who don’t mind a tiny background program on a desktop” than as a “you should use this over PiHole.”

I’ll even say it again: I’m pretty sure I’m in the minority for not liking Docker, and many others ran into the problem I had and were able to fix it. I’m also not a pro, but I’m certainly a half-leg up on a standard consumer. So if I find a problem I can’t fix or even find the solution to be cumbersome, I imagine the majority of people are going to struggle with it. I don’t currently have a Linux box sitting around. When I priced a Pi4, it was something like $90 before you put it in a case. In the $130-250 range, I can get a mini-ITX Lenovo thinkcentre tiny/HP EliteDesk 800/Dell Optiplex 7040 with 8-16gb RAM, 256gb ssd, and an i5-6500T. While I would like to get a dedicated Linux box up and running, I also don’t need it and tried my hand at using what I had. A $35 Pi? Hell yeah. I probably wouldn’t even tell my wife. $90 just seemed like a bad value, and I decided to look elsewhere first.

If I’m understanding NOLAGT’s comment right, he’s got four individual, unused Pi boxes. There’s a much broader community for PiHole, and he seems like much more of a tinkerer than who my comment was aimed at (a Unifi user, not a mesh-system-in-a-box-buyer. I think the audience is a bit different), and he’s got computers to spare. Technitium does have installers for Linux with ARM support (made for a Pi), but I would Google “how to install PiHole on a Rasberry Pi” and do that today! DNS sinkhole is a sweet, sweet thing that I never knew I needed til I had it.

RA'd for Sticky

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A question from that thread the other day about the Orbi setup. I'm having a weaker signal in my rec room. Would upgrading to Giga with Cox strengthen the signal as far as distance goes. I currently have around 250-300mb download

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Your internet service/speed is separate from your local network and wifi, so no, upgrading your internet service will not improve your wifi signal strength or distance. Upgrading your internet plan will only improve your speed if the internet service is the bottleneck. If the bottleneck is your local wifi, faster internet won't fix that.

Have you set up your Orbis similar to how we discussed? If so and the signal is still weak in the rec room, then you might have to figure a way to get a unit outside the main house (maybe there's an outlet under the breezeway?). Especially if the addition and/or rec room have brick exteriors, wifi is going to struggle with that. Even if it's not masonry, ~40' through multiple walls can be iffy.

I had hoped you could get by with only 3 units, but you have a tough situation with the house being 1/4 mile long.

If I were doing it I would absolutely run a cable to the rec room via the breezeway, but I understand it can be pricey to have someone do that or a severe pain in the arse to DIY.

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The breezeway is off of the ground so underneath it is outside. I do have an outlet in the middle of the breezeway. Its probably an extra 10 feet to that outlet.

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Checked out the Orbi outdoor unit?

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Yea I was thinking the length could be a problem

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TWSS

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Cox over the years has been pretty good about running cables to wherever on my current house with no onsite charge. I might give them a call and see if they can address that.

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Pretty sure they will only run coax, doubt they will do a cat6 run for free or at all. You can ask, though.

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I might just bite the bullet and get another Orbi but is this price right? $220 for just one satellite?

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Yeah Orbi is probably the priciest of the popular mesh systems. The outdoor unit I linked above is a bit cheaper though.

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Configuring IP Passthrough and DMZplus

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I read a lot of hate on IP pass through for AT&T products, but I had no problem passing the routing through to my Unifi controller. I use it with a USG with dual-WAN as my failover internet source. The only semi-difficult thing was figuring out how to configure the static IP stuff, but that’s easy enough to figure out, mostly on file from AT&T when they install it if you can’t trace upstream and remember the number of addresses they block for you, and not really applicable for the vast majority of use here.

Anyone know anything about Link Aggregation? The Coax thread got me thinking. In most rooms in our house (built in the late 1990's), we have bundled network cable with 2 coax and 2 Cat5 cables in it. The Cat5 limits the bandwidth to 100mbps, which in reality is enough for anything I'd ever do with it. I have the main wireless router and 3 additional hardwired routers configured as access points basically on the corners of the house (2 floors (upstairs/basement) with about 4,700 sq ft. total).

But since there are two Cat5 cables in each drop, theoretically, could you use link aggregation to increase the speeds to the wired access points? I'm 100% sure it would not be worth the cost or effort, so this is basically a thought experiment at this point. TIA.

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I'm actually going try adguardhome soon

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I accidentally just came to experience adguard home, and it was because of this post!


At my office, I have a Mac Mini (don’t judge me. I needed a process to unidirectionally upload files from workstations (SMB share) to an SFTP. I struggled for hours trying to write a little commandlet sequence in windows, had a mac, played around with it, and I got it to work, so I quit wasting time and made it my solution. I have learned more but don’t feel like messing with a functioning workflow). I sat the machine on my desk because no one else really wants to work on a Mac. I spend almost no time at my desk and use a laptop.


So the other day, a nurse gets an annoying pop up ad with voice. I decide I’m angry enough to spend what I have of a lunch break installing technitium since I was so excited about it.
No OSX installer.
I didn’t want to bother with Docker.
I installed dotnet and tried to use the curl command that worked for several Linux systems with home brew, but it did not. So while I was waiting for Xcode to download and homebrew to install, I read about adguardhome. I decided to try it out. I got it installed super quickly, tested it locally, then pointed my Unifi controller’s DNS on both my WANs to my internal IP with adguardhome with 8.8.8.8 as the secondary, and boom. The office didn’t ever lose internet, none of them know any different, but now I’ve got very intrusive ads blocked network wide for the whole office. The GUI is super nice (nicer than technitium, and I like it better than PiHole).

I don’t like it enough to reinvent the wheel at home.

If you point your router’s DNS to an internal computer with Adguardhome, all traffic will appear in adguard to come from the router (you won’t get device-specific tracking). Not sure how that will differ with opnsense. And if you tell individual devices to use the local DNS, you’ll get device-specific readings (first test was changing my phone’s DNS and then letting the workstation use itself as a DNS and getting client-specific traffic info).
If you plan on using adguardhome for the device-specific blockade and timing access, you’ll likely need to set the DNS on the client, but that will be easily bypassable by a savvy teenager if he figures it out. If I understand opnsense, it’s possible that them being integrated gives you different results there.



But thanks for the accidental suggestion. You allowed my 30-minute project to remain a 30 minute project, and you gave me the opportunity to explain that I don’t understand .net6 framework universal installers in a public forum in case anyone wants to direct me to a “4 dummies” guide on the matter (which I’ll use to prove I know how to do it, then uninstall it since I have a working solution but can’t stand that I have a partially abandoned project).

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Anyone know anything about Link Aggregation?

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A little

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The Cat5 limits the bandwidth to 100mbps

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Is this theoretical, or have you actually failed to obtain 1000mbps speeds over these runs? You may be surprised at the result. Well-terminated cat5 MAY support gigabit over residential distances. Cat6 that is poorly terminated MAY not. You would be better off opening the jacks up and looking at how “short” the untwisted line is and redoing a bad job than using link aggregation.

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But since there are two Cat5 cables in each drop, theoretically, could you use link aggregation to increase the speeds to the wired access points?

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I can basically guarantee your AP won’t support it. I think of Link Aggregation as an additive effect of individual wires. So 100mbps + 100mbps = 200mbps, 1000mbps + 10000mbps = 2000mbps, but it requires two plugs on each end. I don’t know of an AP that supports it that anyone would buy for residential use. So you’re talking about two switches that support it + the cable between the “distal” switch and the AP. Cheap aggregation switches on each end, and you could double your throughput. But it’s probably not going to be a big performance difference outside of benchmarking your speed.

Really informative, thank you sir for the service.