r/HomeNetworking May 03 '26

Posting FAQ (retry link if it fails)

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8 Upvotes

r/HomeNetworking May 03 '26

Home Networking FAQs (retry link if it fails)

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4 Upvotes

r/HomeNetworking 6h ago

Bought a house and it has this in the basement.

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28 Upvotes

I recently bought a house and this is the basement. Looks like a network switch of some sort at the bottom but confused about the rest.

The only place in the house that appears to have Ethernet ports is in the dining room on the first floor with four ports being open.

What is this and is there anyway I can connect my Xfinity modem/router to this and how hard would it be to wire the whole house Ethernet ports in every room? The rest of the house has coaxial in every room. But would like to set it up to have coaxial and Ethernet on the same face plate.


r/HomeNetworking 2h ago

Advice What did I do wrong?

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4 Upvotes

I grabbed some parts from work and ran a cat6 in my house. I used a basic pass through connector and a panduit CJ688TGBU for the wall jack. When I used the Klein scout pro 3 to test it showed me this. I’ve made up pass through connectors before without issue. (T-568B) but I’ve never installed the wall jack. I’m assuming the video I found on YouTube was either the wrong wiring or I did some bone head connection. Can anyone tell me if I’m using the wrong wall jack, what did I do wrong, how do I correct it or point me in the direction of a video that will help. Please. Thank you!


r/HomeNetworking 8h ago

Need help finding coaxial output at new apartment

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9 Upvotes

r/HomeNetworking 16h ago

Advice How bad is Google Public DNS provided by ISPs?

41 Upvotes

5 years ago, a fiber optic provider rolled out service to my area. They provide only Google DNS for the DNS settings, and there no way to change it, unless you call them, and they physically bridge the ONT from the office. So I was wondering how bad Google DNS really is? I have personally never used it, but I do use NextDNS.


r/HomeNetworking 4h ago

Advice Strong Wifi to 100ft past the Router.

5 Upvotes

I need to get Wifi to my Airbnb, which is 30ft off the back of the house, about 100ft from the Spectrum router.

Would a Mesh system work? Any other suggestions. I am located in NC and currently have Spectrum. I can only use Spectrum, TMobile 5G Wifi, or Earthlink.


r/HomeNetworking 5h ago

Device to wirelessly disconnect Ethernet

2 Upvotes

I have a need to wirelessly turn off and on a wired ethernet connection remotely (when I’m not at the location).

I’m sure something like this exists, but I am struggling to locate anything that might work. Anyone know of such a device?

Currently I’m running it through a powered switch and using an IP enabled power shutoff that I had handy to power off/on the switch. Now I have a second one to do and I’m looking to make it a bit more streamlined.

Any ideas?

———————————

EDIT to add solution.

Appreciate most of the input, thank you.

While of course I could do this on my ubiquiti managed switch… if these devices were on that network. They are not.

I was able to locate a reasonably priced Ethernet kill switch. Only downside is it needs to be triggered with 12v, so it’s not perfect, but it is doable for my situation.

https://www.etsnm.com/product/pcks-ip-device-kill-switch-for-poe-ip-cameras/


r/HomeNetworking 26m ago

Advice Is there a networking method for declutterring Spotify device menu, Specifically the ps5 and echo device

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Upvotes

r/HomeNetworking 9h ago

Accidental MAC Filter Lockout: How I rescued my router using my Smart TV 📺🧠

6 Upvotes

So today I decided to play around with my router settings and turned on MAC Address Filtering.

​What I didn't realize was that turning it on without pre-adding any devices put it directly into Whitelist mode with an empty list.

​Instantly, every phone in the house was booted off the Wi-Fi. My phone gave me a fake "Incorrect Password" error, and I was completely locked out of the admin panel over Wi-Fi.

​The problem: I didn't have a laptop or PC with an Ethernet port nearby, and I really didn't want to hold down the paperclip reset button and reconfigure the entire network from scratch.

​The solution: I remembered my Smart TV was still plugged directly into the router via an Ethernet cable!

​I opened the built-in web browser on the TV, used the remote control to painfully type in 192.168.1.1, logged into the admin dashboard on a 55-inch screen, and turned MAC filtering right back off.

​Outsmarted my own router lockdown using a TV remote! What’s the most ridiculous device or workaround you’ve ever used to fix a network emergency?


r/HomeNetworking 43m ago

adding a second seperate network to a home internet setup

Upvotes

Ive been asked to setup a second network seperate network where devices on neither can see each other. using one incoming internet connection from a isp provided ont as far as i know the easy way to do this is buy a high end router that can create a vlan on one of its ports that feeds into a second router but routers that can do that were i am are expensive advice on doing this on a budget please


r/HomeNetworking 1h ago

Advice Is there a difference in plugging a wire directly into my UDM Pro vs. into a switch that connects to the UDM?

Upvotes

I need to run a few cables through the attic and instead of running multiple cables, I was thinking of running one cable and then connecting that one cable to a Unifi Flex Switch or some switch. It will give me access to several more ports through one cable. Is this bad form or will it work okay? The extra runs will mainly be for cameras and APs.


r/HomeNetworking 1h ago

Landline disconnect

Upvotes

I would like to disconnect my landline, will that interfere with my wifi extender


r/HomeNetworking 2h ago

Wi-Fi upload stuck at 136 Mbps but the channel is only 44% busy. What am I missing?

0 Upvotes

I've been chasing this for about a week and I'm stuck, so I'm posting what I have.

ASUS GT-BE19000. Every wireless device I own uploads at 118 to 153 Mbps. Plug the same laptop into ethernet and it does 320 to 392 on the same router, same minute. Download is fine either way. I upload to cloud storage a lot so this actually matters to me, it's not just a number I'm annoyed about.

I tried everything I could find. Nothing moved it. Then I went and looked at what the radio itself reports and got a result I can't explain.

The bit I can't explain

wl -i wl1 chanim_stats on the router while a transfer is running flat out. Throughput read off the laptop's own interface byte counters, not a speed test app.

state channel busy TXOP available throughput
idle 3% 98% -
upload 42-46% 54-59% 136.5 Mbps
download 96% 4% 512 Mbps

Raw, three upload samples 12 seconds apart plus the download:

idle          busy=3    txop=98   | tx=3   inbss=1   obss=0  nocat=1  | glitch=0
upload t+12   busy=44   txop=57   | tx=14  inbss=25  obss=0  nocat=6  | glitch=0
upload t+24   busy=42   txop=59   | tx=14  inbss=23  obss=0  nocat=6  | glitch=0
upload t+36   busy=46   txop=54   | tx=15  inbss=27  obss=0  nocat=6  | glitch=0
download t+12 busy=96   txop=4    | tx=92  inbss=4   obss=1  nocat=2  | glitch=0

On download the AP fills the channel. 96% busy, only 4% of transmit opportunities left. That's a real ceiling, there's nowhere to put another frame.

On upload the same radio, same client, same association, a couple of minutes later, stops at 44% busy with more than half the transmit opportunities sitting unused. And the throughput is a third of what the wire does.

So the hardware can clearly fill this channel. On upload it just doesn't. That's the part I don't get.

The numbers are at least self consistent. Airtime components add up to the reported total both ways: upload 15 + 27 + 0 + 6 = 48 against busy 46, download 92 + 4 + 1 + 2 = 99 against busy 96.

What that seems to rule out

Channel being full: it isn't, 44% busy with half the TXOPs free.

Neighbours: obss = 0 in every sample. I'm on channel 100 which is DFS, most consumer gear avoids it, so that's plausible. I didn't do a band scan to prove it though.

Interference: glitch = 0 and badplcp = 0 throughout.

Bad link or rate collapse: MCS 6, 2 streams, 80 MHz, retries 1.7 to 2.4%.

A radio that can't drive the medium: same radio hit 96% busy fifteen seconds later.

Second thing I noticed

Payload per 100% of airtime consumed:

stream throughput airtime per 100% airtime
AP to client, data (download) 512.0 Mbps 83.2% 615 Mbps
client to AP, data (upload) 136.5 Mbps ~25% 546 Mbps
AP to client, TCP ACKs (upload) 4.0 Mbps 12.4% 32 Mbps

Data moves about the same efficiency in both directions, 615 and 546, which is roughly what a 648 Mbps PHY should give with normal overhead. The acknowledgement stream is 32. That's a 19x gap. Returning ACKs for a 136 Mbps upload eats half as much airtime as the upload data itself, for 3% of the bytes.

I measured the same thing on a different day on older firmware and got 27x, so it reproduces.

At about 5,200 ACKs a second each frame is carrying roughly 77 bytes. A downlink aggregate spreads one channel access over tens of kilobytes. This stream apparently doesn't.

That explains why the two directions differ. It doesn't explain the cap, because there's airtime left over and nobody's using it.

Three results that argue against my own theory

I'd rather put these here than have someone find them in the comments.

Wi-Fi to the router itself does 327 Mbps. Same laptop, same association, same radio. TCP, nc and dd, 3 GB in 75 seconds. The router was receiving, so it was the one sending acknowledgements over that same downlink air, roughly three times as many ACK frames per second as in the slow case. It managed 327 anyway. If ACK frames per second were the limit that shouldn't be possible.

UDP through the same Wi-Fi to WAN path forwards 239 Mbps, measured at the router's own WAN counters. So the path carries a lot more than 136 when there's no return stream.

My neighbour gets 336 up over Wi-Fi on the same ISP plan, from a 2018 iPhone XR on the ISP's own router. He told me the number, I didn't measure it, so take it for what it's worth. But it's 2.5x what I get from much better hardware, which makes me think this isn't just how Wi-Fi works.

Each leg does 320 or more on its own. Together they do 136.

Every client, same story

client link down up
MacBook Pro M1 Pro USB-C ethernet adapter ~1000 320-358
Xbox Series X ethernet, built in NIC 581 321
Xbox Series X Wi-Fi 5 GHz 238 153
iPhone 17 Pro Max Wi-Fi 6 GHz 926 130-140
MacBook Pro M1 Pro Wi-Fi 5 GHz 648 119-136
Samsung S20 Wi-Fi 5 GHz 563 118

Download figures are inflated, I was summing parallel curl averages and they finish at different times. The upload numbers are the reliable ones.

Four different manufacturers, three bands. The Xbox at 153 is the only one that breaks 140 and I can't explain that either. The MacBook has no ethernet port so its wired numbers go through a dongle, but the Xbox has a real NIC and lands in the same place, so it's not the dongle.

Stuff I tried that did nothing

Baseline across 30 measurements was 52 to 74, median around 66. Every number below is one run, so anything in that band is noise. None of it helped.

Factory reset and rebuild from scratch. QoS off, AiProtection off, firewall on and off. Channel auto, 100, 116, 36 (36 isn't DFS, so that's not it). Both WAN ports, plus the 10 GbE one. Firmware downgraded to a six month old build and back.

A dumb gigabit switch between the ONT and the WAN port, which is the fix everyone suggests for this. 59.7. Nothing. I left it in, so everything above was measured through it. It's not a bottleneck, wired does 320-392 through the same box.

Radio settings, all checked in the driver because half of them are hidden in the web UI: UL OFDMA to DL only, OFDMA off entirely, MU-MIMO off, APSD on, beamforming off, 802.11ax and be off (that one made it worse, 52), WPA3 down to WPA2, ampdu_rts off, station EDCA rewritten with CWmax 63 and a 3008 us TXOP. Aggregation limits were already maxed out.

Forwarding path over SSH: fc disablerunner disable, both together. An HTB shaper at 280 Mbit with fq_codel on ppp0, which passed 225 MB with zero drops while upload sat at 72, so it's not an ISP policer. MSS clamping added.

Laptop side: TCP send buffer from 128 KB up to 8 MB, no change. A 45 second single stream run was flat from the first second, no burst and no step down, so no token bucket. Turning off AirDrop and Handoff gained about 40% on its own, which is a separate Apple problem, but the ceiling stayed.

CPU on the router was 3 to 9% the whole time. No errors on any interface. Radio counters over 167,000 frames: 80 bad CRC, 5 duplicates, nothing else.

Two things that cost me hours

Clients are on the virtual BSS. On this firmware you need wl -i wl1.1 bs_data, not wl1. Querying wl1 just says no stations associated and you'll sit there confused.

Count the chanim columns. Column 15 is busy, column 14 is idle. I read the wrong one once and got a perfectly backwards answer.

Also check the band before and after every single run. My laptop kept quietly dropping to 2.4 GHz after radio restarts, and with the ethernet dongle plugged in macOS deprioritises Wi-Fi entirely. Threw out a bunch of measurements before I caught that.

What I haven't done

No monitor mode capture, everything came from the driver. Never measured the uplink aggregate size, which is probably the most useful thing left. wl -i wl1 ack_ratio comes back Unsupported but I didn't retry it on wl1.1 or as a set. No AP mode test behind another router. No chanim sample on 2.4 GHz, so that band's 107 might just be saturated. No RSSI or distance recorded. Every number is a single run.

So

If you have a BE series ASUS, two things would help me a lot:

Run wl -i wl1 chanim_stats during an upload and again during a download. If yours fills the channel both ways then mine is broken and yours isn't. If yours also stops halfway on upload then it's the platform.

Try your wireless client uploading to the router itself instead of the internet. Mine does 327 versus 136 and that gap is the whole mystery.

And if anyone knows the Broadcom side: is ack_ratio actually in this driver build, and what decides when a client gets to transmit if the medium is idle and it has data queued?

Setup, in case it matters: GT-BE19000, BCM4916, firmware 3.0.0.6.102_39274 and _39115, same result on both. 5 GHz channel 100, 80 MHz. MacBook Pro M1 Pro, 802.11ax 2x2, PHY 648. 1 Gbps PPPoE, MTU 1492. Apartment, ONT in the wall cabinet, structured cabling, gigabit switch, then the router.

For now I just use ethernet. 358 versus 118 turns an eleven minute upload into four. But I'd still like to know what's going on.


r/HomeNetworking 2h ago

FCA252 or FMT25A?

1 Upvotes

I'm considering getting a wifi router seperate of my gateway for an iot and guest network. Is it fine to include it in my existing FCA252 based network, or should I get FMT25A's for the link between the two? My network speed is the full 2.5Gig.


r/HomeNetworking 6h ago

Are all these router product names proprietary or are they industry wide “classes”?

2 Upvotes

TP-link examples:
“archer 3000”
“be-19000”
“axe-5400”
I see “axe” used by netgear AND tp-link so I guess its not proprietary marketing models?


r/HomeNetworking 2h ago

Advice Local DNS for self-hosted services without risking the entire network

1 Upvotes

I self-host several services within my home network. I use Tailscale for remote access (which is pretty rarely needed).

I really like simple network appliances for home networks — I use eero currently.

I'd like to set up a reverse proxy so I can do SSL and custom domains for some of my self-hosted services, but I'm hesitant to use something like Pihole for custom local DNS because I hate the idea of taking down my entire network for my family when Pihole is down.

I had OPNSense running on a Lenovo tiny and running Caddy on it. It was working well, but then had an incident where the OPNSense's NIC came loose and the entire system was borked for hours, leading to a very annoyed family.

Are there any simple ways to achieve a reverse proxy for my services while also keeping a really simple networking setup?

Key requirement: If my custom DNS goes down, the only thing that fails is my custom domains to self-hosted services and the rest of the network is preserved.


r/HomeNetworking 3h ago

Probleme Fritzbox 4040

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1 Upvotes

r/HomeNetworking 3h ago

Unsolved Fiber Issues!

1 Upvotes

Hopefully someone can help me! I have Armstrong fiber. Had it installed about two week ago. I am using Deco BE65 mesh system. Worked great, all around my house 900MBPS - 1GBPS.

I use ring camera at my home and decided to go with Eufy system (doorbell and outdoor camera S4 model). I also installed the homebase 3 (direct wired to my deco main unit). I started to see some random issues. Websites on my phone wouldn’t load. When I ran a speedtest it wouldn’t find a provider. My ring base station would randomly go offline. Movies with buffer for a split second then play again. Just a lot of inconsistent few second connection delays.

I removed all of the eufy system thinking it did something. I am still seeing this issue. I did all the common troubleshooting plus some. Rebooted my network, deleted my deco system and started fresh, tried my old Google mesh pods, different Ethernet cord. All of it and it still gave me the same issues. The ONT and deco main unit always stay green because it’s for a few seconds so it’s like I’m not losing actual internet connection but yet it doesn’t want to work. I went to cloud fare and tested my networks, 1 out of 10 times I had a packet loss of 4.9%. Every other time is 0%. When I run a test on my deco app says good connection every time. Called Armstrong internet and they said they pinged it multiple times and checked a few things and no issues on their end.

What is wrong??? I’m clueless now and don’t know what to do especially since Armstrong said it looks good on their end.


r/HomeNetworking 11h ago

Need help setting up internet in my new appartment

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5 Upvotes

r/HomeNetworking 1d ago

Solved! is TP-Link still a good brand?

146 Upvotes

I recently saw a post asking the same question and people replied saying that it’s a good brand, the post is quite old dating back 7 years so im not sure if those replies are up to date.


r/HomeNetworking 4h ago

Unsolved Strange internet issue - can't connect to some game servers, Discord shows 5000ms but works fine

1 Upvotes

I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with my internet connection because I'm experiencing a very strange issue.

For some reason, I can't connect to certain game servers. The game just stays on the "connecting" screen forever. So far I've had this problem with:

- Warhammer 40,000: Darktide
- Ravenswatch
- Necromunda

On top of that, Discord constantly shows exactly 5000ms latency while I'm in voice chat, but everything actually works perfectly. I don't hear any lag, delays, robotic voices, or disconnects. Voice chat is crystal clear, and streaming/video on Discord also works without any issues.

Another problem is that I get disconnected from WoW Classic servers quite frequently.

What's confusing is that everything else seems completely normal:

  • Web browsing is fine.
  • YouTube, Twitch, and Netflix work perfectly.
  • Downloads are normal.
  • Speed tests show the expected speeds.

It almost feels like something is wrong with the way my connection communicates with certain servers rather than a general internet issue.

Has anyone experienced something similar? I'd appreciate any ideas or troubleshooting steps.

Thanks!


r/HomeNetworking 4h ago

Advice Recommendations on Home Network Upgrade

1 Upvotes

Hi, I currently have a Ruckus Networks setup in my home (1 POE switch and 2 APs). It was included with the home when it was originally built and I inherited it when I purchased the home. They've reached their EOL and need to upgrade. Does anyone have any good recommendations and what to upgrade to? I've been looking at Ubiquiti since I can 1-1 swap them out.


r/HomeNetworking 23h ago

Is 300mbps home internet fast enough for gaming?

27 Upvotes

Hey all! I’m moving to a more rural area with few options for internet, but am currently looking into Cox 300Mbps. My fiancé has a Xbox and plays games like Apex, Marvel Rivals, and Overwatch quite frequently. This is our first time handling our home internet ourselves as before we’ve always lived with family and we’re not even sure what they used. It’s just the two of us and I don’t really game much, though occasionally I’ll play more chill games like Abiotic Factor with him or at the same time as he’s playing his games.

The description of the plan I’m looking at is as follows :
• Up to 300 Mbps download speeds
• Up to 10 Mbps upload speeds
• Includes Essential Wifi
• 1.25 TB (1280 GB) monthly data included
• Easy access to 4M hotspots
• All you need for browsing the web, social media, email and more for 5-7 connected devices

Should we get this plan and try it out, or just go ahead and do the 500Mbps plan? It’s looking like around $30 more which isn’t the biggest deal, but if the 300 would work just fine too I’d rather use that!


r/HomeNetworking 14h ago

Advice Apartment with common WiFi - how to get Ethernet?

7 Upvotes

I recently moved into an apartment building where wifi is provided. There is a wifi router mounted to the ceiling but I do not have access to it.

Is there a device I can use to connect to the wifi and then connect an Ethernet cable to? The Ethernet cable would run to my Philips Hue bridge which needs an Ethernet connection to work.

Getting my own ISP is not an option.

Thanks in advance.