My landlord shares his internet connection with me and I helped troubleshoot his networking issues once. I know basic home networking and this is what I advised:
- 2015 Before:
- 2015 After:
- Ubee Cable Modem Gateway w/ DHCP Server => Airport Express MC414LL/Aas an extender.
When we did that, we found old iOS devices with old firmware that may have been causing network issues as well. We upgraded all Mac computers, iPads, and iPhones and it seemed to have worked better.
In addition to that, the a DirecTV Wireless Genie that, when set to either static or dynamic, will still choose any random IP and cause IP conflicts, so we just decided to take it off wifi and forgo On-Demand.
That solution was working well, and then they started receiving more issues. So they "fixed it" themselves.
Here is the current setup:
- Netgear C6300BD Cable Modem Gateway (w/ AC wifi, but unused) w/ DHCP Server connected to=>Airport Extreme 2nd Generation MB053LL/A but this time as a bridge (using a different SSID than the Netgear), using the Netgear's DHCP.
- The Airport Extreme is again connected to 4 Other Airport Express to wirelessly "extend" (repeat) the network, 3 of them were model MB321LL/A and one of them MC414LL/A.
I am connected directly to the Netgear Wifi Gateway, set my devices to a Static IP, but I still sometimes receive several DNS issues even when specifying any DNS: local ISP, Google DNS, OpenDNS.
On the Airport logs, you can see this happening on all the MAC addresses of the extenders:
I told my landlord:
- the AC gateway ALONE will be better than running any of the older Apple Airports together
- Using multiple extenders can cause issues
- Using multiple extenders can reduce wifi bandwidth. 50Mbps on Netgear, 11Mbps on the extended network.
- That it's not good to mix wifi draft-n, n, b/g extenders/routers.
As I mentioned before, my networking knowledge is limited to BASIC home networking.
- Am I understanding this correctly?
- Am I correct that we should just be using the gateway if it can reach every corner of the single family home?
- Are there any other notorious Apple devices that may cause these wifi issues?
- What else can I say to convince him to believe me?
I sometimes work from home and it has become nearly impossible to do that with such an unstable home network. TIA
Edited by outofluckchuck, 19 May 2016 - 02:27 AM.