Computer operating systems

[Hell Razor5543]

You might want to look at the 'mains' repeaters you can get. You get a pair of units that you plug into wall sockets, connect up a network cable, and then they use the ring mains in the house to transfer data. About £25 for a set. I just did a google search for mains network adaptors, and got lots of hits;

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/tp-link- ... oCtG_w_wcB

[Zelandeth]

I did poke a power line networking setup when we first moved in, briefly.

Throughput was dismal (again, probably because the areas needing it were waaaaaay at the far end of the house to the router, as is the consumer unit), struggling to get a stable connection anywhere over 1Mb/s, and when running it *completely* obliterated pretty much the entire AM radio band with digital noise throughout the whose house. I do know that this place is wired with no less than four ring main circuits, each floor being split down the centre line of the house, not sure if that was a contributing factor. I could get a decent connection between two nearby points, but as soon as I put any real range between the adaptors it just dropped like a stone, which kind of defeated the purpose really. After fiddling with it for a week trying to find a combination of useful socket locations and trying to make sure I wasn't being an idiot, that got returned to the store. Sorry I can't remember what make/model that was.

Not sure if they've improved over the last year and a half though?

[Hell Razor5543]

I cannot offer an opinion, as I have not had to try them, but I quickly looked them up for a friend, as they have a similar problem to you. I don't know if they have tried them though.

[Ben82]

Yeah I briefly considered the powerline ethernet for getting stuff wired up in our house, but given the house was built in 1929, I didn't really want to take the chance that they wouldn't perform up to scratch, especially for the cost over here.

In the end I bought a bunch of 4 port wall sockets with back boxes, and so far have wired 4 ports between my office and my wife's, and 4 ports between my room and the lounge. I want to try to get 8 from my office to upstairs if possible, even though there's only really 2 devices upstairs currently requiring internet connectivity (3 really as I want to move a wireless AP up there as signal from down here to there is ropey at best), but as I did with the 4 ports here, if I'm going through the hassle of 1 cable I might as well run as many as possible

[Zelandeth]

I really need to do some research to be honest...can't for the life of me remember what sort of maximum cable run lengths you're meant to use and stuff like that, been far too long since I dabbled in anything like that and it's long since vanished from my forgettory.

Not really surprising the wireless struggles, between the most troublesome desktop in the lounge it's probably 20-25m to the router - through two exterior walls as the house is built in sort of an L shape. The repeater was installed in the outer edge of the corner of the L with the intention of it having good line of sight with the router and computers on that side of the house having line of sight with the repeater. That was the theory anyway.

[Hell Razor5543]

Copper wire networks have (IIRC) a maximum length of 100m before they need to be 'boosted' by a network switch or something. My cousin Bob had a problem in his flat in that his repeater couldn't reach the full length. It turned out that where it was sited it bas being blocked by a high quality oven. Moving the repeater 2m to the side sorted that problem out.

[Ben82]

Yeah 100m is pretty much the limit for the specified speed. Cat 5e 100mb cat 6 1gig and cat 7 10gig, I think cat 6a is also 10gig but not an official standard. Obviously cat 7 will future proof you, but generally for the home and distances cat 6 should do fine even for 10gig up to a certain length. You also need to run network cables a certain distance away from the power cables to ensure no interference and cross over them at right angles where needed to minimise it.

Obviously 100m for a single run in a household is going to be very rare and would probably be taking an elaborate route at that.

Also make sure the cable you get is not CCA (copper-clad aluminium) as this is very cheap and brittle. There is a basic calculation that you can do based on the weight of the ream to determine if it's CCA or not as CCA is a lot lighter than full copper cored cable.

[Zelandeth]

Think I still have a huge reel of Cat5 somewhere, not sure where mind you but it was rescued from a skip when our office was being demolished (with permission from the demo guys), and all I really know is that it weighs a ton!

[Zelandeth]

Well, I decided for the sake of investigation to try a more modern power line networking kit (found my original one, dating from 2002 apparently...so it was pretty ancient!) and yes...they've come a loooooong way in the intervening years.

Despite the warnings on the box saying that everything must be on the same circuit etc, it is working perfectly happily now, with throughput ranging from 79Mb/s upstairs to 40ish downstairs at the far end of the house. That's actual real-world throughput data though rather than connection speed. That's a six-fold increase as far as the desktop in my office is concerned!

There is a *slight* increase in background buzz on MW and SW radio, but that's only really noticeable on very weak stations and certainly doesn't seem to radiate beyond the property (I could hear it from the far end of the garden with the original units!). The only place I can hear it outside is within 10 feet or so of the meter cabinet. Testing there was done using my old Selena Vega battery set which has a very sensitive tuner on all the AM bands, so I'm reasonably confident that I'm not going to be causing anyone outside our property headaches.

This has resolved the connectivity issues for the Win 10 machine, allowed me to ditch the wi-fi repeater, and finally move the server into the alcove in one of the rooms which used to house the previous owner's central hi-fi unit hidden behind a mirror. It was the ideal location for the server, save for the fact that it was in the worse network blackspot in the whole house...

[CitroJim]

Excellent! I keep one of my servers in the now redundant airing cupboard... Mains supplied via the old immersion heater circuit...

Pleased to hear the mains networking is good... I've heard mixed reports about it and one problem where very large file transfers seem to fail...

[Zelandeth]

Interesting. Largest files our network generally needs to deal with is in the region of a gigabyte save for when I occasionally stick DVD .ISO files in the software folder - though that's not all that often.

I'll throw a 100 gig or so file together and run a few tests and report back if I run into any problems.

The only problem like that I have run into in the past (on my old server) was an issue with the Realtek drivers for Linux where it would start randomly (and silently!) dropping packets, but only under conditions of very heavy network load and only when it felt like it so it was incredibly difficult behaviour to reproduce. It would behave absolutely perfectly 90% of the time, but occasionally a file transfer would result in file corruption (the transfer would still appear to work), and things like SSH sessions mysteriously dropping for no readily explicable reason. I chased that problem around for nearly a year before I found someone else having the same problem. Problem was resolved by sticking another network card in which used an Intel chipset. That was a good few years back now though so not sure if it's still an issue.

[CitroJim]

I've seen that very problem of random packet dropping on Ubuntu on wireless Zel, but not on wired Ethernet... I have a feeling that was Realtek hardware too... Not a great fan of it. It used to get to the point where wireless would stop working completely and you'd need to reconnect...

Although I'm mostly using W10 these days, Linux is not by any means dead.. It finds great use in my Amateur Radio station. I find the very best Morse training software I can find only runs under Linux and from a command line at that!

[Zelandeth]

Well I've run a few tests shuffling a roughly 100Gb file around from various points in the house (just stuck a bundle of .ISO files into a massive .7z file as it seemed the easiest way of making a huge file) and so far things seem to be rock steady.

That packet dropping problem I had I think had to be one of the most maddening networking (or computing in general) problems I've ever had to try to track down! Must have wasted tens of hours on it.

[CitroJim]

It's so easy to waste loads of time on computer problems Zel

Time seems to change when dealing with them in such a way that one minute == 1 second...

Pleased to hear the new mains networking is good.. I guess the cabling standard is called CAT240V...

[CitroJim]

After two weeks of 'fun' with my TalkTalk Internet I have just signed up for PlusNet fibre...

Hopefully that will put an end to the very frequent disconnect and generally poor performance I've been suffering with my old provider just recently...

PlusNet seem to get some very good reviews.

Not only can it offer me 30Mb downlink but it's cheaper too...