The Natural Philosopher wrote:

It is essentially thin wire ethernet using the mains instead of coax.
OK as a P to P link but no good as a whole network

So is there bridging between each unit's ethernet and the mains bus?

Chris Green wrote:
I am investigating my options for getting the LAN to work as well as
poosible around our property. We are having quite a lot of changes
done at the moment (new shower room, balcony, etc.) and so some parts
of the existing cat5e plus WiFi will have to move and/or be replaced.

I live somewhere with no cat5, wifi propagation is a bit lacking, and every
room is going through a separate MCBO (so powerline is going to be slow).
However there is CT100 from every room to an aerial amp in the loft.

My current plan is to run Bonded MoCA ethernet-over-coax which coexists with
DVB-T by using the same bit of spectrum as satellite would do. It's popular
in the US with cable TV companies, but not popular over here.

I bought a couple of these gigabit adaptors:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Motorola-Ad...dp/B07C38WBWZ/

but I'm going to return them and order some of these 2.5Gbit versions:
https://www.gocoax.com/products
when they get more stock (8-10 weeks they said).

They work a bit like ADSL - the box filters off TV to one port, and then
presents ethernet on an RJ45. It behaves essentially like shared-medium
ethernet. For the coax you need a F-type splitter and a filter to stop the
power backfeeding into the aerial amp.

Theo

On 19/07/2019 18:21, Andy Burns wrote:
The Natural Philosopher wrote:

It is essentially thin wire ethernet using the mains instead of coax.
OK as a P to P link but no good as a whole network

So is there bridging between each unit's ethernet and the mains bus?

?

Not as ethernet itself, no. It just behaves like it


--
When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over
the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that
authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

Frédéric Bastiat

On Fri, 19 Jul 2019 18:19:59 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

snip

Now I have three ssids on the three furthest apart channels and let the
device pick the strongest.

Nothing stopping you having three APs using the same SSID and on
spread WiFi channels and letting the devices pick the strongest?

Mostly it does, since the places I am in tend
to favour one over the other two, massively.

So now you have to have enter three passwords on every wireless device
and the same for visiting friends ... ah ...

Cheers, T i m

On Fri, 19 Jul 2019 17:15:10 +0100, Andy Burns
wrote:

DEMPR

It looked similar. I think I remember it being brown and was a 19" 1U
RM unit (I took the ears off and had it on a shelf, high in the
Customer Service office as it was central to the building).

D-Link or Netgear but for some reason Allied Telesis comes to mind?

It would automatically isolate a badly terminated segment so that
protected the rest of the company from someone thinking it was ok to
play with the cabling etc (like adding an extension to the T piece to
move their PC across the room). rolls eyes

Cheers, T i m

On 19 Jul 2019 18:23:42 +0100 (BST), Theo
wrote:

Chris Green wrote:
I am investigating my options for getting the LAN to work as well as
poosible around our property. We are having quite a lot of changes
done at the moment (new shower room, balcony, etc.) and so some parts
of the existing cat5e plus WiFi will have to move and/or be replaced.

I live somewhere with no cat5, wifi propagation is a bit lacking, and every
room is going through a separate MCBO (so powerline is going to be slow).
However there is CT100 from every room to an aerial amp in the loft.

My current plan is to run Bonded MoCA ethernet-over-coax which coexists with
DVB-T by using the same bit of spectrum as satellite would do. It's popular
in the US with cable TV companies, but not popular over here.

I bought a couple of these gigabit adaptors:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Motorola-Ad...dp/B07C38WBWZ/

but I'm going to return them and order some of these 2.5Gbit versions:
https://www.gocoax.com/products
when they get more stock (8-10 weeks they said).

They work a bit like ADSL - the box filters off TV to one port, and then
presents ethernet on an RJ45. It behaves essentially like shared-medium
ethernet. For the coax you need a F-type splitter and a filter to stop the
power backfeeding into the aerial amp.


Crafty. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

On 19/07/2019 17:15, Andy Burns wrote:
T i m wrote:

The first commercial network I installed used an 8 port Thin Ethernet
Repeater

DEMPR?

The first network I installed used vampires and eight port vampire hubs.

An Intel NRM.

The ethernet cards were a pair of multibus (IT) cards.

I had 2500m of yellow cable manufactured in the UK as there were no
suppliers and the company wanted a minimum order to tool up.

It all worked very well even though the cable was hung out of a window
across to the roof of an adjacent build for a while while underground
ducts were built.

It didn't run TCP/IP, that didn't exist except in labs at the time.

On Friday, 19 July 2019 14:16:04 UTC+1, Chris Green wrote:
"Most houses ..." seems a little hopeful! :-) I think in reality very
few houses even have interlinked smoke detectors

I'm sure people here have above the average number of interlinked smoke detectors.

and there isn't a requirement for interlinked (wired or radio) alarms
to be on the same or dedicated circuit.

wired interlinkeds have to be on the same circuit as otherwise there'd be leakage between different circuits from the voltage on the interconnect wire.

Owain

On Friday, 19 July 2019 10:48:04 UTC+1, Chris Green wrote:
I am investigating my options for getting the LAN to work as well as
poosible around our property.

Solwise do leaky feeder cable where you can put 30 - 50 metres of feeder of coax onto an access point and the whole cable becomes an access point, so you can then use devices so many metres from the cable.

ideal if you have a long narrow house/garden or tunnels

https://www.solwise.co.uk/wireless-l...50-12-24ls.htm

Owain

T i m wrote:
On Fri, 19 Jul 2019 16:42:08 +0100, Chris Green wrote:

snip

Wouldn't you simply set the SSID and password on all AP's to the same
so that clients could / would reconnect to the loudest AP as required
(when reconnecting) albeit not the same handover as on a full system?

No user intervention required though or was that what you were talking
about above?

I think the difference is that with mesh the handover is forced/encouraged
by the mesh 'routers' whereas otherwise it's down to the client system
and they don't, in general, move from WiFi to WiFi very easily.

Yes, that was my thought when you said what you did. ;-)

Having researched this some more it seems that 'mesh' *isn't* anything
particularly special. Whatever you do 'roaming' is down to what the
*client* decides to do and all the WiFi access points can do is be as
helpful as possible.

There are a number of WiFi standards which, if implemented in both
access point and client may help, i.e. 11r, 11v and 11s.

--
Chris Green
·

Pamela wrote:
On 15:56 19 Jul 2019, David Wade wrote:

On 19/07/2019 10:52, Andy Burns wrote:
Chris Green wrote:

I am investigating my options for getting the LAN to work as well as
poosible around our property.

If you've got "work" going on now, including rewiring etc, I'd bite the
bullet and lay in enough ethernet cable (cat5e/cat6 your choice) to do
it properly, I know Brian and co dislike powerline for interference
reasons, but the real reason to avoid it, is that it's never as fast, or
as reliable.

Also as current practice moves away from ring mains to radial systems
(or at least smaller rings) with perhaps multiple RCBOs you may find
that performance becomes limited because the couls in the RCBOs filter
the signal...

Dave

Worse than that, my powerline adapters are noticeably worse if I plug them
into trailing sockets. I get poorer throughput and more dropouts.

The adapters are by Netgear and the trailing sockets seems reasonable
quality.

Yes, that's what I found too, they work much better when plugged into
wall sockets.

--
Chris Green
·

I am one of those people who have 12 interlinked smoke alarms all connected on a run of 3 core cable and all fed from a single RCBO....


Mmmmm must replace them all with 12 mesh Wifi devices.....

On Fri, 19 Jul 2019 19:09:23 +0100, Pamela
wrote:

snip

... my powerline adapters are noticeably worse if I plug them
into trailing sockets. I get poorer throughput and more dropouts.

The adapters are by Netgear and the trailing sockets seems reasonable
quality.

If the trailing sockets have any suppression in them I'm not
surprised, even a long lead will make a difference.

So, I typically 're-wire' any installation putting the PL adaptor
straight into the wall socket and anything else (light load) on the
trailing lead.

Many have a utility you can use that actually shows you the
performance so it's easy to experiment / tune for the best results.

Cheers, T i m

On Friday, 19 July 2019 21:34:05 UTC+1, wrote:
I am one of those people who have 12 interlinked smoke alarms all
connected on a run of 3 core cable and all fed from a single RCBO....

I only have 5, a heat detector, a CO detector and a locate/hush switch :-)

Owain

On Fri, 19 Jul 2019 20:35:52 +0100, "dennis@home"
wrote:

On 19/07/2019 17:15, Andy Burns wrote:
T i m wrote:

The first commercial network I installed used an 8 port Thin Ethernet
Repeater

DEMPR?

The first network I installed used vampires and eight port vampire hubs.

I had a segment running 10Base5 off the AUI port on the repeater. As
you say, both vampire taps and properly terminated ones down a
corridor (in the roof space) and AUI drop cables going either way to
AUI ports on the back of the Combi NE2000 (compatible) cards. ;-)

An Intel NRM.

The ethernet cards were a pair of multibus (IT) cards.

I had 2500m of yellow cable manufactured in the UK as there were no
suppliers and the company wanted a minimum order to tool up.

Pioneering days. ;-)

It all worked very well even though the cable was hung out of a window
across to the roof of an adjacent build for a while while underground
ducts were built.

I went to such a temporary install that stayed out there too long and
was hit by lightening (or impulse noise at least), taking out one of
our Muxes.

It didn't run TCP/IP, that didn't exist except in labs at the time.

NetBIOS was one of the fastest protocols for local networks (lowest
overhead), something many visitors to out site commented on. Then I
built and installed a Netware server so added IPX/SPX and only later
included TCP/IP when we stared adding various gateways and let the
Unix boys play on our LAN. ;-)

I feel very lucky in my career. I was into electronics when The Post
Office needed electronic service Techs. I was working as a Datacomms
Field Support Tech when modems and Leased Lines between offices were
the norm, then Kilostream / ADSL / X.25 / Frame Relay etc.

Then when running the Co customer 'Help Desk' I was also given the
task of bringing the Co up to speed with it's IT / internal Network
(installing one ... and building the PC's and servers etc) and did so,
mostly in my own time after work and out of my own interest. ;-)

As long as I looked after our customers and the local (and remote [1])
staff, I was pretty much left alone to do my own thing. ;-)

I was later able to make use of some of those experiences via IT
training.

Cheers, T i m

[1] That ended up going International as all the other (and Head!)
offices wanted to join 'our' MS Mail system. ;-)

On Fri, 19 Jul 2019 13:01:34 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

On Friday, 19 July 2019 10:48:04 UTC+1, Chris Green wrote:
I am investigating my options for getting the LAN to work as well as
poosible around our property.

Solwise do leaky feeder cable where you can put 30 - 50 metres of feeder of coax onto an access point and the whole cable becomes an access point, so you can then use devices so many metres from the cable.

ideal if you have a long narrow house/garden or tunnels

https://www.solwise.co.uk/wireless-l...50-12-24ls.htm


That could come in handy but not for my mates (long thin) place (well,
not in the ceiling spaces anyway).

The reason is because most of it seems to be lined with foil backed
plasterboard, hence why we ended up with an AP in each of the main
living spaces.

Cheers, T i m

On 19/07/2019 15:48, Tim+ wrote:
Chris Green wrote:
John Rumm wrote:
On 19/07/2019 11:32, Chris Green wrote:

Finally, do any of the more reasonably priced 'mesh' systems have
wired interconnections between the mesh boxes? Just relying on the
WiFi to connect them is a bit hopeful in our house.

You don't need a mesh system for wired interconnects - ordinary APs will
do for that.

The whole point of mesh is it establishes potentially multiple
connections between the devices giving redundancy and added throughput.
So to work well you need enough of them in a layout that allows them to
actually mesh rather than forming a long chain.

But doesn't mesh mean that client devices will 'roam' transparently,
whereas adding wired WiFi access points won't do this (i.e. it's down
to the client, or me, to change WiFi connection).


Exactly.

Before we had the mesh system we had to have a homeplug Wi-Fi access point
in our bedroom to get adequate coverage there. The problem was though that
our bedroom is at the front of the house and our phones would always latch
on to it whenever we drove into the driveway. Wed find then that when
when we passed trough to the back of he house and our main living areas,
our phones would hang on like grim death to the bedroom access point
despite a much stronger signal from the router in the hall downstairs.

We were always having to manually switch our access from one to the other
manually. If got to be a real pain in the arse.

You can get round that a bit by enabling fast roaming on the APs if they
support it. It allows caching of credentials and makes handovers much
faster to different APs. Some also have a mechanism for an AP to boot a
client off if the link quality is suffering.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

No indeed and also of course there is not very much between a mains supply
and the sensitive bits of your computer and interface bits. Somebody I know
had one go rogue and blow up a computer on board Ethernet chip. I blame the
Chinese!
Brian

--
----- --
This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please
Note this Signature is meaningless.!
"Andy Burns" wrote in message
...
Chris Green wrote:

I am investigating my options for getting the LAN to work as well as
poosible around our property.

If you've got "work" going on now, including rewiring etc, I'd bite the
bullet and lay in enough ethernet cable (cat5e/cat6 your choice) to do it
properly, I know Brian and co dislike powerline for interference reasons,
but the real reason to avoid it, is that it's never as fast, or as
reliable.

I do remember some years back when Plasma screens were in, that putting the
house one on completely obliterated powerline internet, but then the set
also obliterated almost all frequencies from medium wave up to about 24mhz,
goodness knows what nasty power supply was in the thing, a Sharp I seem to
recall.
Brian

--
----- --
This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please
Note this Signature is meaningless.!
"T i m" wrote in message
news
On Fri, 19 Jul 2019 10:52:17 +0100, Andy Burns
wrote:

Chris Green wrote:

I am investigating my options for getting the LAN to work as well as
poosible around our property.

If you've got "work" going on now, including rewiring etc, I'd bite the
bullet and lay in enough ethernet cable (cat5e/cat6 your choice) to do
it properly,

Agreed.

I know Brian and co dislike powerline for interference
reasons,

Apparently.

but the real reason to avoid it, is that it's never as fast,

Not as always fast as wired, no, but often faster than WiFi under many
circumstances and generally a lot easier than drilling holes and
running cable. ;-)

or
as reliable.

Again, 'than cable', probably but I'd say more reliable than WiFi
under difficult circumstances and can be pretty reliable.

A mate has a long thin house and wanted wireless coverage over the
house for phones, tablets and laptops etc.

Whilst he was having some rework done, I got him to run Cat5e to key
locations but he wasn't able (at that point) to get cable though to
the rear addition. So, that area is covered using a pair of Powerline
adaptors (the remote with WiFi) and it has 'just worked' for a long
time now. In fact, the only times it hasn't worked is when the cable
feeding the end of the house failed!

Daughter has PL to a gaming PC in a remote bedroom in the flat and
that too has worked faultlessly (and after power outages etc).

But yes, I would always try to go for wired over anything else, given
the choice, but if it's not portable, PL can be pretty good.

Sister couldn't get reasonable performance (buffering) from a NowTV
box when using WiFi. Went to PL and it's been fine ever since.

Cheers, T i m

On Fri, 19 Jul 2019 21:17:07 +0100, Chris Green wrote:

T i m wrote:
On Fri, 19 Jul 2019 16:42:08 +0100, Chris Green wrote:

snip

Wouldn't you simply set the SSID and password on all AP's to the same
so that clients could / would reconnect to the loudest AP as required
(when reconnecting) albeit not the same handover as on a full system?

No user intervention required though or was that what you were talking
about above?

I think the difference is that with mesh the handover is forced/encouraged
by the mesh 'routers' whereas otherwise it's down to the client system
and they don't, in general, move from WiFi to WiFi very easily.

Yes, that was my thought when you said what you did. ;-)

Having researched this some more it seems that 'mesh' *isn't* anything
particularly special. Whatever you do 'roaming' is down to what the
*client* decides to do and all the WiFi access points can do is be as
helpful as possible.

And it shouldn't be too long a stretch to get a client to 'see' there
is an alternate station (on the same SSID but possibly different
frequency and other details) that is stronger and switch to it (and
have that as an option in case one AP is not connected to the Internet
etc)?

There are a number of WiFi standards which, if implemented in both
access point and client may help, i.e. 11r, 11v and 11s.

I'll check them out.

Cheers, T i m

Chris Green wrote:

it seems that 'mesh'*isn't* anything
particularly special. Whatever you do 'roaming' is down to what the
*client* decides to do

Not always, there are systems where a device will be forcibly kicked off
one AP that is weak it, when the system knows there is another AP that
will be stronger for it.

On 19/07/2019 10:38, Chris Green wrote:

My tests with a fairly basic pair of Tenda (supposedly Gigabit)
powerline devices suggest that they're only 'good' when used on a
single, or at least closely associated, circuits. However if I can
add more of them so that they 'chain' across the system that could
well be a reasonable solution, but I need to know if they can
interconnect like this. Does anyone know?

I don't know of any that chain together. The way I use mine is that the
relatively low traffic stuff goes over powerline ethernet - printers,
internet radio and email/web browsing of seldom used computers.

It works sufficiently well for me that even across different consumer
units for the original house and extension the printer throughput is not
noticeably affected. Speed isn't great like that. I put a new repeater
Wifi node to fill in the worst gap at the furthest end of the house same
password as the master, but with a different SSID and channel.

You have to experiment to find what works best in your circumstances.
Units likely to have big suppression capacitors on like fancy sockets
for hifi, fridge freezers and oil burners tend to rob signal.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

John Rumm wrote:
But doesn't mesh mean that client devices will 'roam' transparently,
whereas adding wired WiFi access points won't do this (i.e. it's down
to the client, or me, to change WiFi connection).


Exactly.

Before we had the mesh system we had to have a homeplug Wi-Fi access point
in our bedroom to get adequate coverage there. The problem was though that
our bedroom is at the front of the house and our phones would always latch
on to it whenever we drove into the driveway. Wed find then that when
when we passed trough to the back of he house and our main living areas,
our phones would hang on like grim death to the bedroom access point
despite a much stronger signal from the router in the hall downstairs.

We were always having to manually switch our access from one to the other
manually. If got to be a real pain in the arse.

You can get round that a bit by enabling fast roaming on the APs if they
support it. It allows caching of credentials and makes handovers much
faster to different APs. Some also have a mechanism for an AP to boot a
client off if the link quality is suffering.

That's essentially what a mesh system does, plus it automatically sets
all the WiFi 'servers' to the same SSID and password.

As I understand it now (after quite a bit more reading aboout it)
there is nothing particularly special about a mesh system except that
it sets everything up to make it as easy as possible for client
systems to roam.

Adding APs 'manually' and setting them up with the same SSID and,
possibly configuring some of the 'advanced' defaults (if the user
interface allows it) to help roaming will get essentially the same
result as a mesh system.

--
Chris Green
·

Andy Burns wrote:
Chris Green wrote:

it seems that 'mesh'*isn't* anything
particularly special. Whatever you do 'roaming' is down to what the
*client* decides to do

Not always, there are systems where a device will be forcibly kicked off
one AP that is weak it, when the system knows there is another AP that
will be stronger for it.

According to (most) things I have read about it this is a 'bad idea'.
APs should *never* kick a client off, the client should *always*
control this. An AP disconnecting a client is a last resort action
and indicates that something has gone wrong.

--
Chris Green
·

On Saturday, 20 July 2019 08:16:15 UTC+1, Brian Gaff wrote:
I do remember some years back when Plasma screens were in, that putting the
house one on completely obliterated powerline internet,...

I remember decades ago that next door's TV (just through the wall) made nasty whistling noises on our Radio 4 Long Wave mains valve receiver.

We just put up with it though. People did in those days.

Owain

Chris Green wrote:

Andy Burns wrote:
there are systems where a device will be forcibly kicked off one
AP

According to (most) things I have read about it this is a 'bad idea'.

Tell that to Cisco (yes enterprise systems with dedicated controllers
managing hundreds of access points are a different kettle of fish to a
home mesh system).

On 20/07/2019 09:42, wrote:
On Saturday, 20 July 2019 08:16:15 UTC+1, Brian Gaff wrote:
I do remember some years back when Plasma screens were in, that putting the
house one on completely obliterated powerline internet,...

I remember decades ago that next door's TV (just through the wall) made nasty whistling noises on our Radio 4 Long Wave mains valve receiver.

We just put up with it though. People did in those days.

It always used to do that, even if there isn't a TV anywhere near. The
interference appears to be mains borne, and can be remedied by means of
a parallel capacitor (if it can stand the current without burning out).

--
Max Demian

On 20/07/2019 09:42, wrote:
On Saturday, 20 July 2019 08:16:15 UTC+1, Brian Gaff wrote:
I do remember some years back when Plasma screens were in, that putting the
house one on completely obliterated powerline internet,...

I remember decades ago that next door's TV (just through the wall) made nasty whistling noises on our Radio 4 Long Wave mains valve receiver.

We just put up with it though. People did in those days.

Owain


Like getting Radio 1 on the toaster :-)

On 20/07/2019 09:42, wrote:
On Saturday, 20 July 2019 08:16:15 UTC+1, Brian Gaff wrote:
I do remember some years back when Plasma screens were in, that
putting the house one on completely obliterated powerline
internet,...

I remember decades ago that next door's TV (just through the wall)
made nasty whistling noises on our Radio 4 Long Wave mains valve
receiver.

We just put up with it though. People did in those days.

In a similar way I got a very early practical introduction to display
screen security.

I had a VIC20 setup at school, feeding a 12" B&W TV via its RF output.
However said TV was also used for TV watching via a portable Labgear log
periodic aerial. The reception conditions were not ideal, so an
Antiference set back style aerial amp helped. To save titting about
moving leads each time, there was a 2 into one splitter/combiner being
used to merge the aerial and RF output from the computer. On one
occasion this had been setup with the combiner feeding the input of the
amp. In effect adding some gain to both the live TV feed from the aerial
and the computer's display output. One day we got a visit from lads from
the room above to announce they were watching me playing Astro Blitz[1]
on *their* TV. Their TV tuned like mine with a continuous rotating
control and no presets. So you either just twiddled until you found a
decent looking station, or made a mental not of the channel number
printed on the knob bezel. However that did mean you could end up
unintentionally doing a visual scan or anything and everything that the
TV Was able to pick up just by changing channel. Turns out my aerial
setup was also broadcasting the computer output well enough to get a
fuzzy picture on a TV 20' away.


[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El7MvkyWWRA

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/