welcome to The Grok Shop, and my new
series on home networking. in this video
I'm going to give some tips on how to
improve your home networking experience.
I'll be providing an outline of these
tips and chapter markers in the
description below if you want to skip
ahead. for this video I only assume that
you have basic knowledge of these
networking components. so coming in from
the internet we have our modem or some
vendors call them gateways; it's tomato
tomahto really. this component can
consist of firewall modem and it can
also have your Wi-Fi router as well but
usually a better configuration will be
to have your own Wi-Fi router for
reasons I'll explain later. and of course
this device can also have your firewall
a switch and a router so it actually
does quite a few jobs for you the
typical configuration will be to have
your Wi-Fi router as an access point
have all your devices connected to
whatever band you have configured in
your Wi-Fi router since your router
typically has a limited number of ports
a lot of times people will add a switch
24 or 32 however many ports you need to
get more wired connections and these
will be devices of course that you don't
necessarily need to move around a lot
which brings us to tip number one wires
are greater than air what do I mean an
Ethernet connection will just simply
destroy a Wi-Fi connection in terms of
available bandwidth and that's because
each device will have a dedicated
typically these days a Gigabit link
pretty soon it'll be 10 gigabits and 100
gigabits and I repeat it's dedicated not
shared among other devices the speeds
you see advertised for Wi-Fi keep in
mind that's a max combined speed for all
devices sharing the link at any one time
a good analogy to bandwidth is a pipe
here you can see a 16 port Ethernet
switch how it compares to Wi-Fi level
five which is also known as AC in the
old parlance or level 4 which is known
as in in the old parlance and this
graphics being very generous to Wi-Fi
it's basically giving idealized
conditions to Wi-Fi but even
so you could see the 16 port Ethernet
dwarfing the AC or level 5 by about five
times but that's not even the half of it
if we take away the ideal conditions of
Wi-Fi and we start comparing against
more real-world band widths you can see
the situation gets even more stark so
hopefully this will help you appreciate
why wired connections can be superior to
Wi-Fi in situations where it's possible
to use wired connections so hopefully
you have Ethernet wiring where you live
and if you do I hope you're using it but
what if you don't well one possibility
is to use MOCA which allows you to do
networking over coax and the MOCA 2.0
will do up to a gigabit speed from what
I've read MOCA is compatible with most
cable providers you may have problems
though if you have AT&T u-verse or
satellite providers be sure to check it
out for whatever provider you have some
routers will even provide one end of the
MOCA connection for you and you just
need a single box like this in other
cases you'll need one MOCA box on each
side of your coax it just depends on
your configuration I'll put some links
to these below in the description if
mocha can't work for you another
possibility is to use powerline adapters
which allows you to do networking over
your electrical lines it can be a little
more problematic that's why I don't
recommend it as a first choice but this
technology is improved in recent years
so it may be a viable option I'll put
links to these below as well ok so
moving on the next tip would be to
balance your load so by wiring up as
many devices as possible you've already
gone a long way towards this end but
also you want to think about how you're
distributing your load across your Wi-Fi
radios most modern routers will have two
or three radios one and 2.4 gigahertz
and one or two and the 5 gigahertz band
a good strategy here we to put your more
distant or lower bandwidth hungry
devices on a 2.4 gigahertz band and use
your 5 gigahertz bands for devices that
are nearer to your router and have
higher bandwidth needs for example your
smart refrigerator or your solar panel
monitor might be on the 2.4 whereas your
mobile devices might be on your 5
gigahertz most devices will have a
setting which lets you ignore certain
SSIDs and this
one way you could possibly gate certain
devices and force them into certain
lanes so other than manually assigning
lanes for your Wi-Fi radio there is
another technology out there called
smart connect smart connect basically
assigns the same SSID to all of your
radios and then the device and the
router will negotiate for the best lane
for that device
it's got mixed reviews it's relatively
new technology but it might be worth
checking out if you just don't have
enough of your own bandwidth to do the
manual configuration ok next tip
probably seems really obvious but place
your router somewhere in a very
centralized location avoid the use of
repeaters range extenders meshes
whatever you want to call them we'll
talk about those more in a minute but I
think sometimes we just get tempted to
put the router next to the modem in an
easy location or what have you but go on
the extra mile putting the router in the
right place can really save you a lot of
headache
okay next tips four and five we've got a
twofer here scan your neighbors and
choose that err so hopefully you're good
friends with your neighbors but in fact
when it comes to Wi-Fi your neighbors
can be your enemies because you may be
overlapping the same channels and if
your channels are overlapping and
interfering with each other that's bad
for your mojo so basically you want to
be watching what channels your neighbors
are on there's lots of ways to do this
and there's a lot of free apps available
on the app I use is called Wi-Fi
analyzer and pretty much it just shows
you different ways of viewing different
channels that are in use my channels are
the cosmic Kahuna channels so you can
see I have two access points going here
looks like about channel six and then I
have a neighbor here showing up about
like Channel nine and I'm running in 40
megahertz mode and looks like they have
40 megahertz and 20 megahertz going and
this is on just one side of my house if
I was on another side of my house I have
a lot more activity on that side so you
kind of have to find a sweet spot where
you have the least amount of overlap
giving the totality of interference that
you have and I live in an area with big
properties and I don't have a huge
amount of interference but if you're in
apartments or something like that it
could get pretty crazy you can see I had
the two
point four gigahertz up first this is
the five gigahertz view now and I have
literally nobody in sight from this side
of my house other side of my house would
show people at least a couple of access
points I think in five gigahertz but
that's not a problem for me to choose
channels here but for sure most people
will have more interference than this
and so again the idea being just find
the sweet spot and check it periodically
because your neighbors will probably
change channels you might get new
neighbors with different routers and
most people don't even know what channel
they're on so just you're just gonna
have to experiment and find a good quiet
channel as possible that you can use for
those who might not know changing
channels on your router super easy just
point your browser to your router login
go to your wireless settings page and
select the proper radio in this case I'm
going to do my in band radio and here
you can see the channel set to channel
eight a lot of times it's just be set to
auto by default so make sure you take it
off auto and set your channel manually
unless you're completely satisfied with
your settings already so you're around I
may look a little different from mine
but follow these basic instructions
they're all pretty much the same
essentially and you should be able to
figure it out okay tip number six use
wide bands where feasible earlier in the
video I showed some Wi-Fi signals if you
look at the green art versus the pink
art that's a 20 megahertz versus a 40
megahertz Wi-Fi signal pretty much the
bitrate that you can get is proportional
to the bandwidth so the area under the
curve of the pink is going to be roughly
double the area under the curve of the
green so that shows you how you can get
a higher bitrate from a higher bandwidth
so the caveat to using wide bands is
that white bands are going to be more
prone to interference and I would only
recommend running wider bands in
situations where you have a relatively
quiet piece of the spectrum that you can
occupy so back in our router settings
you'll find the bandwidth setting near
the mode
in channel settings pretty much the in
band will have 20 or 40 megahertz band
whatz and then if you change to AC mode
or if you're already in AC mode you'll
see a different range of widths so you
might have to do a little bit of
experimentation to see what fits well to
minimize the interference and get you
that highest possible bitrate okay tip 7
use a custom DNS server by default most
people will be using their ISPs DNS and
usually that's not the best selection
and I'll give an example of that here in
a minute
but first a quick overview of what DNS
does so basically when you go to a new
URL like in this example we have www
pedia org your computer doesn't go to
URLs it only goes to IP addresses so it
has to figure out what is the IP address
for that URL and the DNS system is the
lookup system for that so without going
into too many details suffice to say it
can be very complicated and slow and any
way you can speed up this process is
only going to be to your advantage
there's a couple different ways you can
speed up this process the easiest
simplest way is to simply change your
DNS server and you can change it per
computer or you can change it in your
router so that computers that use DHCP
which get their DNS server from the
router will all get the same faster DNS
server another way to do it is to
shortcut the DNS process by using a
local DNS server on the router this is a
little more of an advanced configuration
topic and I'll get into this more in a
later video to implement the first
option you simply need to find out
what's a better DNS server for you I
like to use this tool DNS benchmark by
Steve Gibson it's a really tight tool
and I'll put a link to it in the
description below but you can see here
how it looks in action finding the
fastest DNS servers that just bubble up
to the top there's a few nuances to
getting the best possible results from
this tool I won't get into all that here
but you guys can look all that up if you
want but it's pretty simple to use once
we know which DNS IPs you want to use we
go back to our router config and usually
where you configure your static IP
dress and general router configuration
you'll have an area to enter custom DNS
servers and just pop them in right there
and off you go
since you can also configure your DNS
locally it can be kind of confusing
knowing exactly what DNS server you're
actually using there are several
different ways to test this out in one
easy way though is to go to DNS leak
test com hit the test button in order to
come back and tell you what DNS server
you used to run that test and the inside
of that web page when you hit the test
button they have a random URL which
points to their DNS server and you'll
hit that so they'll know what DNS server
you use when you run the test ok next
it's a good idea to avoid wireless Wi-Fi
repeaters range extenders and meshes and
when I say wireless I'm referring to the
link back to the router now sometimes
when coverage gets spotty what people
will do is they'll buy a wireless
repeater that you just plug into the
wall and it'll run on the same channel
as your main router
but these types of repeaters can be
problematic if the repeaters using an
Ethernet connection or mocha or
powerline adapters to get back to the
router then it's no big deal
but if it's using a wireless backhaul
it's basically using bandwidth that
would otherwise be available for your
devices so I say avoid because it's not
necessarily a terrible thing if you've
placed your router in a good central
location and you just don't have the
Ethernet lines do proper backhauls then
go ahead and do a mesh system that has
multiple radios because that's sort of
the best thing going right now in terms
of these repeaters and I think in the
future it's going to continue to get
better but you need at least two radios
to have a streamlined system that
doesn't self interfere to where the
performance degrades terribly I'll put
some links to these types of mesh
systems in the description below
okay if your router supports it you want
to use that QoS or sq.m which stands for
quality of service and smart queue
management what these technologies allow
you to do is to prioritize your network
traffic so for example if your kids are
playing roblox and watching 4k movies
and you're trying to get some work done
that can be a problem if you can't get
enough bandwidth because of all the
other traffic on your network so these
technologies will allow you to address
those issues in some cases you can
prioritize based on individual machines
some cases you can prioritize based on
ports and in other cases you can just do
ana Galloway an or fair treatment for
all on your network again every router
is different I'm running open wrt on my
router and I'm using the sqm package
there's a different package - called QoS
so yeah research your router see if it
supports QoS or sqm it'll definitely
help reduce congestion on your network
and as a side benefit it will help
reduce buffer bloat which is a kind of
latency you can get when you have a lot
of congestion on your network ok so
hopefully you've been able to get your
old router to work the way you want but
let's face it sometimes you get to the
end of the rope and you find out your
router is just crap if you go to upgrade
your router here's some things to think
about number one look for routers that
are Wi-Fi certified because it should
help with interoperability and security
and as well reliability I'll link the
Wi-Fi or product finder which will help
you find Wi-Fi certified routers ok next
be sure to look for devices that are 4
by 4 MIMO or multiple-input
multiple-output
as a minimum I think it goes all the way
up to 8x8 a lot of routers today are
only 2 by 2 or 3 by 3 and basically MIMO
is a kind of a multipath technology
which allows you to multiply how much
capacity you get for your available
bandwidth without adding actual
bandwidth so it's a pretty cool
technology and as time goes on more and
more devices will support higher levels
of MIMO some devices may only support 2
by 2 and that's going to be your cat
because it's got to be on both sides but
definitely try to make 4 by 4 your
minimum there ok
try to find a router that supports DFS
our dynamic frequency selection what
this is is basically routers have an
opportunity to use bandwidth that is
normally reserved for radar and certain
routers have the logic program to detect
if those radars are in use in your areas
and if they're not you'll have more
channels come available in the five
gigahertz setting at 80 megahertz width
and you'll get basically four additional
channels come available if your router
supports DFS so try to make that a
priority if possible another piece of
technology to look for would be the 802
11 AC beamforming sometimes called wave
2 basically this means if the router has
multiple antennas it can actually put
more transmit power in to give an
antenna and put a larger lobe in a
certain direction and increase the
bitrate by a certain amount ok next if
you're an advanced user and you'd like
to have a lot of ability to fine tune
things on your router definitely
consider open wrt basically it's an open
source software that you can retrofit
onto a new router or an old router and
it's got some pretty nice features you
don't necessarily have to be super
advanced you don't have to use all the
features I'm using it and I'm not really
a propellerhead but most guys who are
they do stuff via the command line but
it has a nice GUI that you can use so
consider that and some routers are built
already to be able to run open wrt I
will be getting into some videos on open
wrt in this series on down the road but
for now I'll put some links in the
description below to help you guys find
more information on it last point on the
new routers Wi-Fi 6 is coming it's
probably going to be out in 2020
sometime as of this video right now it's
still in draft form so I wouldn't buy
into the hype about Wi-Fi 6 support
because if you get one now for Wi-Fi 6
things could change and you might have
problems with it down the road
so I would make it a priority quite yet
if you're watching this video in 2020
and it's already come to fruition
definitely get Wi-Fi six compatibility
in your next router one last note guys
on making changes in general engineering
troubleshooting I've given you a lot of
points here and when you go to
troubleshoot your system and make a
change I would recommend make one change
at a time only turn one knob at a time
note the effect and put it back and then
move on to the next and make that change
note the effect and put it back and then
when you've gone through everything you
can see what had the greatest effect and
was it positive or negative and you
might want to let it cook for a day or
two for each change to make sure it
didn't have any negative effect for
example sometimes it can take a while
for things to surface and then of course
ultimately you go back and apply all the
changes which had a positive effect so
in this way you know you learn a lot you
learn more about what effect each thing
has and when you move on to your next
router later that information can help
you out yes it takes more time to do it
that way but doesn't everything that's
worthwhile so that's all for today be
sure to stay tuned for more videos in
this series on a home networking and
Wi-Fi routers but as far as general tune
ups go and your home network that's how
it's done thanks for watching