Daddy tech support

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I thought getting a separate modem and router is passé now. You get 2 in one efficient router , modem . I had a copper wire connection previously, I got it changed to fibre connection 6 months ago and the speed is 6 times more compared to the copper one and the ISP charges are the same.

Hmmm... A modem/router combo with more than two LAN ports? Doubtful. With four LAN ports. No way. In my case, I need eight LAN ports. My ISP charges more for fiber, if it was available where I live.

[deepakdeshp]

You can get a port multiplier very cheap.
https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=L&ai=DCh ... EBE&adurl=

[deepakdeshp]

And why go for the messy LAN cabling with 8 devices? After all there are wi fi USB dongles available which convert even the old machines without WiFi to the ones with wi fi.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

You can get a port multiplier very cheap.
https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=L&ai=DCh ... EBE&adurl=

And every device connected to it will share the same bandwidth. If you are going to have two devices anyway, why not go with separate routers and modems in the first place.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

And why go for the messy LAN cabling with 8 devices? After all there are wi fi USB dongles available which convert even the old machines without WiFi to the ones with wi fi.

I don't like Wi-Fi; compared to wired, it's too easy to get hacked, even when password protected and using the latest security protocols.

[rossdv8]

I've been on a Fibre To The Premises connection for many years and in 2016 I switched to the first company we had that offered 100/40Mbps broadband. Their supplied router die on me in 2018. It was only connected to a 100/40Mbps service, but it was rated at 1 Gigglebit. It had started playing a game where it would not let me into the page where I had to log in to access its config. So the ISP sent me their latest updated unit.

In the mean time, towards the end of 2019 I got sick of fighting with tech support people who 'thought' they knew about Internet, and moved to a different company (who have tech support who actually DO know a little). The previous mob's router had worked without mods to config, although I did check that I could log in.

That served well until two days ago. Then - it would not let me access the IP address with the Log In page. And yes, it was the correct address - and no there was nothing blocking it.
Admittedly there had been a massive bang noise outside and a couple of transformers in the street went out of service. It took the electricity supply mob half a day to get power back on. Perhaps that had something to do with it.

So I dug the old Gigabit router out of the spares bin and used a bit of brute force to access it for now (it is giving me 900/45Mbps), but I don;t trust it because every now and then it locks me out again.

https://www.tp-link.com/au/home-network ... cher-ax72/

It is way overkill, but my current service provider's router offer is about $180 and about 10-15 days wait time.
I got this for about $30 more and it should get here in a week. I like TP-Link stuff anyway, and consdering the price in my town is from $280-$300, depending on the store, and none have stock (2 to 5 week wait time), I think I got a reasonable deal.

Not sure about all the Antennae. Looks a news pic of little like what the Chinese built on an island recently for signal jamming

I was wondering about the 4 LAN ports, then I looked at my current unit, and I see that all four are filled, and one of those filled, goes into a SIP box that has a spare LAN port! . .

[AZgl1800]

And why go for the messy LAN cabling with 8 devices? After all there are wi fi USB dongles available which convert even the old machines without WiFi to the ones with wi fi.

I don't like Wi-Fi; compared to wired, it's too easy to get hacked, even when password protected and using the latest security protocols.

In my house, Ethernet cables are impossible, no such thing exists in our town or even within 20 miles of us.

we get every thing via Wireless LTE, so it starts out with us as WiFi.....
a long password takes care of being hacked, I quit the LAN stuff along time ago.

We have 5 tablets, 3 Kindles, 5 laptops, and one Desktop....
so, for us in Cow Pasture land, it is WiFi all the way.
.

Being in Cow Pasture land, we have some insurance, our WiFi is totally impossible to be acquired beyond about 100 feet from the house, and it is 400+ feet to the nearest domicile.... if that is what you can call a metal piece of crap that used to be on 4 wheels...

[rossdv8]

a long password takes care of being hacked

Typing something like "PeterP1perpicKedapecKofpickL3Dpeppers" is fairly secure . .

Painful, but probably secure.

Pemember the days when something as simple as 'm1pa55w0rd' was enough to confuse most guesses?

[MurphCID]

Well it looks like our internet modem/router has gone on the fritz, so I have Spectrum coming out tomorrow night to look at it. We are getting minimal speeds, and lots of lag and buffering. Perhaps I can get them to switch to a faster/more modern modem-router. I have been putting up with "Honey the internet is slow!" all day.

Ugh, I hate that I have to go back to work tomorrow, and we are 100% masked. This is going to suck.

I got rid of the modem/router provided by my ISP with in a year of getting it and installed my own modem/router. Besides being far more reliable, I didn't have to pay rent for the ISP's junk. I later replaced it with a separate modem and router. I have a second router in service now since I thought the previous modem was going bad; it turned out to be the router. I still have the previous modem as a backup now and, once my new beast of a router arrives next week and I get it installed and set up, my current router will become a backup. By having my own equipment, I don't have to wait for the ISPs techs (often incompetent contractors) to show up to get me back online.

It is a combination of lazy (Spectrum (formerly Time-Warner Cable) modem/router works great 97% of the time) in that I don't have time to trouble shoot this, due to time and lack of knowledge base, and two since it is their equipment, they replace it if it breaks (cheap).

[MurphCID]

I thought getting a separate modem and router is passé now. You get 2 in one efficient router , modem . I had a copper wire connection previously, I got it changed to fibre connection 6 months ago and the speed is 6 times more compared to the copper one and the ISP charges are the same.

Our neighborhood is old, and so the ISPs will not run fiber at all. So I am stuck with copper.

[MurphCID]

a long password takes care of being hacked

Typing something like "PeterP1perpicKedapecKofpickL3Dpeppers" is fairly secure . .

Painful, but probably secure.

Pemember the days when something as simple as 'm1pa55w0rd' was enough to confuse most guesses?

I like to use phrases separated by a hyphen, such as No-I-Willnot-fix-your-computer.

[Jymm]

No-I-Willnot-fix-your-Win-computer.

I like that just a little bit better.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Brute Force hacking is not the only way to hack into a Wi-Fi network. I used a long passphrase and someone still managed to steal some of my internet bandwidth (fortunately, not enough to exceed my data cap, which would have really been expensive). As soon as I found that out (it was during only one billing cycle), I changed passwords, then, a few weeks later, routed a couple of Ethernet cables from my network shelf in the bathroom linen closet to my bedroom (which doubles as my home office/entertainment room, then shut off the Wi-Fi).

Despite being in a megalopolis, other than satellite internet (which is a bad joke), there is only one ISP available; cable. I can't even get DSL (besides, I ditched the landline phone company decades ago because they were grossly overpriced, bad customer service, and had ancient copper where I live that was going bad; I don't even use my ISP's VOIP anymore due to pricing and an inability to discourage phone scammers).

I have two devices (TV tuners) that have Ethernet only connections; it would be silly and clunky to add Wi-Fi adapter to them when the router is on the same shelf the tuners are essentially on.

My printer (a Samsung) will connect to Wi-Fi only through WPS (despite Samsung's claims otherwise; their tech help was useless): that may have been how the bandwidth thief was able to get in. Fortunately, it will connect via Ethernet. It's slated for replacement (due to it starting to go bad on me) once I get around to finding a printer I like that will fit in the limited space I have available for it.

[AZgl1800]

Brute Force hacking is not the only way to hack into a Wi-Fi network. I used a long passphrase and someone still managed to steal some of my internet bandwidth (fortunately, not enough to exceed my data cap, which would have really been expensive). As soon as I found that out (it was during only one billing cycle), I changed passwords, then, a few weeks later, routed a couple of Ethernet cables from my network shelf in the bathroom linen closet to my bedroom (which doubles as my home office/entertainment room, then shut off the Wi-Fi).

I check my Admin page regularly to see what is logged into my WiFi channels.

i have 2 Hotspots from T-Mobile, so I have to check it for each of those.
we needed two of them to get the necessary bandwidth for us....

when I first went to TM as our ISP, I only bought one Hotspot, we maxed out the 100gB limit in 12 days, oops!

Life was miserable for 19 days at 128 kiloBPS

I decided that it would best to get another Hotspot, as all of the other ISPs around us, are actually WiFi from a few high spots in our area.... all of those WiFi repeaters are fed by Ubiquity radios.... tied to AT&T ugh. and they are EXPENSIVE....

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Brute Force hacking is not the only way to hack into a Wi-Fi network. I used a long passphrase and someone still managed to steal some of my internet bandwidth (fortunately, not enough to exceed my data cap, which would have really been expensive). As soon as I found that out (it was during only one billing cycle), I changed passwords, then, a few weeks later, routed a couple of Ethernet cables from my network shelf in the bathroom linen closet to my bedroom (which doubles as my home office/entertainment room, then shut off the Wi-Fi).

I check my Admin page regularly to see what is logged into my WiFi channels.

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i have 2 Hotspots from T-Mobile, so I have to check it for each of those.
we needed two of them to get the necessary bandwidth for us....

when I first went to TM as our ISP, I only bought one Hotspot, we maxed out the 100gB limit in 12 days, oops!

Life was miserable for 19 days at 128 kiloBPS

I decided that it would best to get another Hotspot, as all of the other ISPs around us, are actually WiFi from a few high spots in our area.... all of those WiFi repeaters are fed by Ubiquity radios.... tied to AT&T ugh. and they are EXPENSIVE....

Whoever had hacked into my Wi-Fi was sneaky; they would get in to do whatever they were doing (whatever that whatever was had me worried for a while after I repassworded them out), then get back out so I never was able to catch them in the act.

[MurphCID]

Well, spectrum came out they did lots of tests they found out that there is a problem between the box outside the tap in the back yard, which needs repair. But because the tap outside near the fence is where there are cabling runs through the net work and the neighborhood they’re going to have to send their construction people out tomorrow to fix the problem I’m getting half the speed I’m supposed to get. The upside is the new router/modem they installed now gives me Wi-Fi six and so things are much snappier inside. I suspect after they work on their hardware outside my Internet will be even faster. All in all I am not unhappy.

I finally got the Wifi named back to my preferred name instead of SpectrumSetup79. I also got the password back to what it had been. So life is back to normal (at least as normal as it is around here).

I walked into the Sheriff's Office yesterday morning and told him I am going to retire. He was positive. I told him I was going in June/July (it depends on how the pay cycle falls). My LT and our Texas Ranger were less thrilled. Both told me they needed me there, I was too valuable, but they were happy for me, and they were going to start planning my roast, sorry I mean my retirement party. It is sort of scary knowing in several months I will be unemployed for the first time in years. What to do next? I guess I will finally have time to learn Linux.

[majpooper]

Whoever had hacked into my Wi-Fi was sneaky; they would get in to do whatever they were doing (whatever that whatever was had me worried for a while after I repassworded them out), then get back out so I never was able to catch them in the act.

I didn't want WiFi at all but found it was inconvenient for my guests and family members iPhones (unless we wanted to pay data charges) I set up a Y router configuration and have the WiFi on a separate network. Of course that does not mean it can't be hacked - a guy who is a DoD network security engineer was visiting and hacked into it in I swear less than 10 seconds because I had left remote access enabled. I did the things he recommended and I think I am OK.
The main things other than strong admin password and passphrase were disable remote access and UPnP. Disabling SSID broadcasting and MAC filtering won't hurt but evidently are easy to overcome - pretty much just like locking a screen door. I also changed the network IP addressing away the the default - probably of limited value security wise.

Here is conceptually my Y router set up:


EDIT: The edge router (LinkSys WRT 1200) is a wireless router - however the wireless capability is disabled and only has two ports enabled to the LAN.

[ivar]

It is sort of scary knowing in several months I will be unemployed for the first time in years. What to do next? I guess I will finally have time to learn Linux.

Sounds like you'll still be pretty busy doing Daddy life eh, tech support

I also changed the network IP addressing away the the default - probably of limited value security wise.

Probably needs to be done like that in the setup you have to avoid potentional issues with NAT (network address translation)

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Whoever had hacked into my Wi-Fi was sneaky; they would get in to do whatever they were doing (whatever that whatever was had me worried for a while after I repassworded them out), then get back out so I never was able to catch them in the act.

I didn't want WiFi at all but found it was inconvenient for my guests and family members iPhones...

I don't have that issue but I do have Wi-Fi available since I need to use it briefly on rare occasions; I just keep it turned off most of the time.

[MurphCID]

Noticed that this new modem/router takes much, much longer for the TV downstairs to connect since it is a combined 5ghz/2.4ghz and tries the 5 ghz channel first, then switches to the slower one later. Our old LG tv (which the spouse unit won at a raffle), takes almost twice as long to connect to wifi now. But the wifi seems faster on Wifi 6 devices.