How WiFi turns into Mashed Potatoes Tech Support |
| How WiFi turns into Mashed Potatoes Posted: 26 Nov 2021 05:09 PM PST Edit: Thanks for the Karma and awards and gold! You've all managed to quintuple my karma and make the dopamine center of my brain go crazy! TLDR: How I fixed the internet and got invited to Thanksgiving Dinner. I'm a digital nomad, and I moved into a Airbnb (a garden apartment attached to a house) I'll be at for a month on Sunday. The WiFi was crappy (low speeds, drops often). Now this isn't abnormal, especially when I'm staying outside the country, but I'm in Florida. This is especially confusing because there is a Google Nest Wifi access point 2 feet from my laptop. I message the hosts about it, and they have no idea what to do, although they are very kind and know they need to fix it. In these situations I can either pretend I don't know anything about tech, and hope it gets fixed eventually, or try to be helpful. I go back and forth each time. But these hosts were rather nice, let me arrive a day early (and didn't charge me for it!), plus, I'm here a month, and would like good wifi, so I offer to help. I used to do IT support, but that was a decade ago. It's amazing how things never really change. They had a Nest mesh router connected to the Cable Modem/Router, and two other mesh access points elsewhere in the house, which their son had setup. As far as everyone in the family was concerned, it was plugged in and there was a blue light, so it's working! Thus they were just confused why wifi sucked on both ends of the house (the host had even ordered a separate internet service for the guest quarters on the opposite side of the house from me, as service was almost non existent there. ) When I saw the access point right by me and saw my crappy signal, my assumption was that particular access point had just never been setup. It turns out that all the son had done was plugged things in physically, and never actually setup the network. We were all using the default cable modem/router network. So, I setup the mesh network, advised them on placement and that they order an additional access point (then set that up). Speeds went from 10 to 150 Mbps at the edges of the house, and the network now covers the entire house and yard. The separate internet got cancelled, saving $60/month. I then got invited to Thanksgiving dinner and to go Dragon boating. Very sadly, I had other Thanksgiving plans, so I was not able to be tech support for the entire extended family yesterday. (Although I still had to fix my Moms printer, ironically by rebooting their router. ) [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 26 Nov 2021 08:29 AM PST This is a couple of months old now, and the short of it is I replaced someone's router and they got way better internet speeds. I'm a physician, and my partner I share an office with turns to me for tech advice, and she loves to save money whenever possible. So a few years back I encouraged her to buy her own modem to work with Comcast, linked her to a refurb model from Woot. Fast forward to 2 months ago, she had been complaining her internet speed was crap for some time, she tried all the steps I taught her like resetting the modem, router. Then she did something I don't usually advise, which is to call Comcast. Comcast told her the modem was outdated, no longer supported. She then bought a new modem (did not check with me on this) and when she told me, I immediately told her to not open the box because I don't think it's a modem issue. I imagine Comcast's scripts say to give that advice and in the long run maybe was trying to sell her their gateway/modem/router. Anyway so then later I'm at her place and use my phone to verify her speeds are terrible, she's getting 7-8 Mbps in her dining area. The router is in her bedroom which is not very far, but behind a wall. If we walk over to her living room (which is the furthest from the router) the speeds drop to 2-3 Mbps. This was with an iPhone 12 Pro Max which has good antennas. So I tried connecting directly to the modem with a laptop. I didn't have my laptop on me and her newer laptop doesn't have ethernet. Fortunately she keeps everything (becomes relevant in a second) so we find her 10 year old laptop and manage to boot and connect it, running Windows 7, it has ethernet, and when connected to the modem we're gettin 50-75 Mbps. So I explain it's probably her router since the modem is getting fast enough speeds. So finally, I look at the router. It's from 2007. She keeps everything. If I remember correctly it was maybe 802.11n. I laughed quite a bit, and told her how it's crazy she's using a router from >13 yrs ago. Her response was it was meeting her needs, so never felt the need to replace it, and her dad set it up for her a long time ago so she's never thought once about it. So we do an immediate run to her local Best Buy and I find a WiFi6 router, Linksys. Run back to her home and install it. Repeat speed test in her dining room and it's now 250 Mbps. She is so happy she asks me if she can hug me. (I'm not a hugger). Living room? 250 Mbps. I explain to her that she's been paying for this internet forever, but never been able to utilize what she's been paying for because she was kind of cheaping out on upgrading her equipment. She brushed that off. Now she can even stream 4K to her living room. I'm always amazed how much people don't want to touch their equipment, or think about upgrading it. I understand the principle of it isn't broken don't fix it, and how tempting that is for a person not familiar with tech. Still, she was being misled by Comcast, and if they did manage to convince her to get their all-in-one device it would have fixed everything but given her the wrong impression about what the actual problem was. [link] [comments] |
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