Ran Another Test by Connecting to a Different Room Power Outlet

 I ran a different test with the AV2 Powerlines.  This time I purposefully plugged a different AV2000 into my small bedroom outlet to see what the increase in bandwidth would be from the living room to the small bedroom.  Unfortunately, the increase was only about doubling the speed.  I was getting around 93 Mbit/sec throughput instead of 35 Mbit/sec.

The test was composed of putting a new Powerline adapter into the small bedroom, connecting the new Powerline adapter to my HomeLab switch, and running some iperf tests.  The small bedroom circuit breaker is on the opposite side of the breaker box from my large bedroom circuit breaker; and on the same side as the circuit breaker for the living room.  Again this is 25 year old wiring.  I guess in the grand scheme of things I could have an electrician move the wires between the two breakers to get the large bedroom circuit breaker on the same side of the breaker box as the living room circuit breaker.  But, is the increase in speed worth it?  It will cost me money but in the end I will have more bandwidth.

Update: I am now trying to see if there is a different way of putting my Travel Routers and arranging my network in the back bedroom that will increase my throughput to the HomeLab.

Added a new 802.11ax Router to the Apartment

So I have purchased a new router, the Gl-iNet FLINT (GL-AX1800).  The reason that I did this was to optimize the connection between my HomeLab equipment and the apartment WiFi end point.  The FLINT is located 17 and a half feet from the end point and has 4 external antenna.  In addition, the FLINT is based on OpenWRT, which the SLATE was also based on.  Right now, being a new product, the software load is not quite up to the current edition of OpenWRT, but the beta test versions are promising.  I have downloaded the latest Beta and will be updating this router prior to the full software release.  The reason is to be able to setup vlans so that I can also plug in my TV and DVD player without interfering with the HomeLab connection.

After setting up the router in the space in the living room, I am measuring a speed of 400Mbps/400Mbps to the end point when setup as a repeater.  This is the kind of speed gain that I am hoping for.  The WiFi connection is continuing to reset itself and I need to know why.  I have noticed that the main indication of failure is that the DNS is no longer able to work through the connection and that the Weather Station is no longer pushing out information.

Update: so now the FLINT router has crapped out, possibly because I did some setting I shouldn’t have.  I have updated to the latest v4.1.0 beta without any custom values and now it works.  Go figure.

Update2: the problem with the WiFi connection stopping appears to be related to a DNS issue.  I can still ping IPs but just can't use DNS names.  Is this some setting somewhere?

There appears to be an issue with the WiFi in my apartment

I have discovered that the WiFi is now stopping on a regular basis in my apartment.  I have no control over it but I would like to set things up so that I don’t have as many issues in what is available.  I have moved the Tempest Weather Station to the Portal SSID so that it has the most connectivity that it can get without being connected to the equipment in my rack.  I am also going to take down the UniFi AP AC Pro so that it doesn’t add to the interference in the apartment.  Perhaps removing this source will help with the overall speed of the WiFi in my apartment.  The problem with this is that I am using the UniFi to connect to the Tasmota switches.  I need something to do this with.  It occurred to me that I might use one of the RPi Zero Ws that I have to make up an isolated network within the rack.  If I keep the power level low enough, I should not cause interference outside of the rack.  Note, I do not have control over what the WiFi does or does not do.

I am also setting up an active/passive WiFi checker within the apartment so that I can get some data with which to analyze what might the problem be.

Update:  I have found 25 APs for the complex included in 832 devices just in 45 minutes.  There is ample amount of WiFi packets that could potentially cause issues, especially if they are on the cusp of the signal.  Further research is warranted.