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Week 10 Talk Nerdy to Me, Network Tips and Tricks for Remote Workers

Technology

Jargon level, 7 out of 10

Now that we’re working and learning from home it’s never been more evident how important your home network is. This web of modems, routers, and switches enable you to connect with the internet and send and receive data to your home computers, tablets, phones and… well, everything.

Most of us have had the unfortunate experience of video stutters, meeting freezes, and music skips. Many of us know how to check our internet speed (more on that later) and some of us know how to set up our wireless routers (so much more on this) to get their house online, but many of us don’t know how these phenomena relate to each other and what we can do about it.

We asked Mike Chatten, IT Professional and Large-scale Event Systems Manager, about these issues and he, has some ideas about the best methods of connecting to your internet,  a few wireless networking tricks to get the best speeds from your internet connection and a super-secret issue most of us have and don’t realize.

Mike: let’s talk nerdy! We’ll start by going over network topology and terms, we’ll talk about some network best practices that everybody can do at home and my favorite super-secret number one that not everybody talks about; is actually a huge problem, and probably the single best thing you can do to optimize your home network.

This is a simple graphic of what a home network looks like. You start with your internet connection coming from your service provider going into a modem. It could be cable, DSL, fiber, or bonded telephone connection. Your devices in your home connect to the internet through a router connected to that modem.  Unfortunately, it’s probably one of the last pieces of technology that people really think about. Networks have a really big impact on the workflow. We are more likely to focus on the latest software and the latest computing hardware. Now with so many people working from home, having a good stable connection is so vital. It’s something that everybody really needs to take a step back revisit and do a little bit of network triage.

Network Best Practices:

  • Network triage
    • How old is the tech?
    • What kind of flexibility does it have?
    • Does it serve my needs?
    • Where are things located?
  • Modem

How old is the tech?
I had Ed send me a screenshot of his laptop modem properties. I can tell by the picture that he posted that he was using a wireless router that maxed out at 802.11g which is three standards ago. We see a maximum data transfer rate of 140 megs per second, which is the highest theoretically it is ever going to connect. If you’re rocking old technology like that on your wireless or even your hardwired connection, it’s really something that you should think about revisiting which leads us into the second point.

What kind of flexibility does your current hardware offer?
If you rely on the modem from your ISP you could be limited. This could create a bottleneck on your network.

Does it serve your needs?
Do you have enough capacity? Do you have enough physical ports? Do you have the wireless range that you need? Do you have the data throughput that you’re looking for?

Where are things located?
This is especially important if you are relying entirely on a wireless infrastructure to get a connection to your devices. The greater the distance the less throughput, the less speed, the more latency you’re going to have.

A great place to start your triage is right at that first point of entry into your house. When you sign up for internet service at Verizon, AT&T, or Cablevision, whoever it is, they drop in a device and it just sits there. I know a lot of people rely on that to be the head end of their network. These companies are mass producing or they are purchasing in such large volume that these devices tend not to be the highest quality. ISPs are not concerned so much about device performance. I prefer, and what I’ve done for many years is, I don’t rely on that device for more than just performing the role of taking the signal from the coax from the wall and converting it to ethernet or taking the signal from the fiber and converting it to ethernet. I do not want it to perform as a router, as a firewall, or any other function. I want as clean a signal as possible to come into a device of my choosing, one that gives me the flexibility that really works within my needs. Pro Tip, those cheap modems often are also spitting out a wireless signal, so if you have a wireless router beyond that initial device, you’re just clogging up the airwaves around your workspace.

Let us step back a moment from that router talk and say that the number one best practice for getting a signal to your computer or device is via a wired connection. Finding a way to wire up should be everyone’s number one priority. It is not always going to be easy to do but we always want to have the cleanest, most stable, least prone to interference, or latency as possible. Especially if you are somebody that is controlling graphics, speaking on video chat, or providing any upstream data. If you are providing the feed up, it is vital that you are on a hard wire. If you are somebody that is just watching as a participant there is a little bit more flexibility but ideally hardwire is the way to go. Most electricians will run wires physically through the wall for you. It is generally not that much of a charge. If you’re somebody that doesn’t need it permanently, only when you’re presenting, invest in a really long ethernet cable, have it snake through the house during the event and unplug it, coil it up and throw it in the closet when you’re done. It really is the best way to go.

But because no one can survive without wireless…

  • Proper Setup is key
    • Create 2 wireless networks
      • 4 GHz (printers, security cameras, IoT devices)
        • OG WiFI: Travels farther, through more things but with less capacity & more interference
      • 5 GHz (phones, laptops)
        • Newer, faster, better: Distance decreases but reliability and data capacity increases

The first consideration is whether you want to have a standalone wireless device built in, meaning built into your router or do you want to make the investment in an expandable system? One advantage of an expandable system, if you have a larger house or if you have a greater distance from your wireless router to your workspace, is having the flexibility to add additional components easily and seamlessly into the ecosystem. Enabling you to expand your wireless bubble with a much greater range. Another important consideration to think about is the actual location of your wireless device. Right now, my wireless device is in a good central to position in our apartment. Where we used to live that was not the case. It was off in a far far end so we would see the quality of service drop off very rapidly. My wife and I both work from home. We had to supplement the router with an additional wireless access point to make sure that we had good coverage. If you’re experiencing that same sort of thing where your connection to your wireless router is on one end of your home you may want to look into what you can do to expand that wireless coverage into an additional area.

Proper setup of your wireless network is key this is not something that you just want to rely on the default settings. Regardless of where you live, whether you live out in the woods and you are the only wireless traffic and airwaves or whether you’re in a really dense aggressive area one of the easiest steps to do is to separate your wireless networks. You do this by creating one wireless network with a unique name that services just the 2.4 gigahertz spectrum. Covering things like printers, security cameras, IoT devices like hue lights, wireless speakers, things that typically only function in the 2.4 gigahertz spectrum. This is what I call the OG or the original wireless standard. It has the advantage that it travels further, and it travels through more things but it has a data capacity that’s not as high and it’s a little bit more prone to interference. I would recommend separating those things out within your router. You will still be able to have communication between devices, it’s just a way of forcing those things to live off on their own. The second network would be a five gigabyte or 5G only, network for your laptops, phones, any newer hardware that would support the 5G technology. You want to always force these devices to connect to the fastest wireless network possible and not have it be slowed down by any of those OG devices. The drawback with 5G is the decreased distance for efficient signals, but you have increased connection reliability and stability within that shorter range.

  • Manually set channels
    • Use software like InSSIDer (PC, Mac beta) or WiFi Explorer
      • Find least utilized channels
      • Select non-overlapping channels
        • 4 GHz: Channels 1, 6, 11
        • 5 GHz: It’s complicated.
      • Decide how wide of a channel you want

The first thing you want to look at with wireless networks is to manually set your channels. Do not rely on the default or have it come up and select channels automatically for you. It’s not necessarily going to make the best choices for you. The way you can do this most effectively is by utilizing wi-fi analyzer software. There’s one that’s free called https://www.metageek.com/products/inssider/  by a company called MetaGeek. They have a free pc version and they also have a mac beta that’s out right now. There’s also a great one that’s actually my preferred now which is https://www.intuitibits.com/products/ Wi-Fi Explorer. I run that off of my Mac right now just because it has a little bit more of an expanded reporting range than Inssider.

Once you download a piece of software like that you want to find the least utilized channels for both spectrums. For channels for the 2.4 gig range you’re primarily looking for a non-overlapping channel and there’s only three that exist for 2.4 and that’s channels 1, 6, and 11. We will get into why those channels are important in just a minute. For 5 gigahertz it gets a little bit more complicated.

This is what my airspace around my apartment looks like. This looks a lot better than it used to. I think some people moved out of the complex and air space is a little less crowded.

You can see here I’m im2g-sl which is my wireless network. The rest are all different wireless radios in my complex. I can tell right away what some of these, like where it says Arris Wireless, I know that that is a standalone AT&T fiber modem that has built-in wireless capability. I can also tell by the settings they are spitting out at an 80-megahertz channel width on 5 gigahertz band which is not good.

Let’s first look at this side of the screen. This is the 2.4 gigahertz band, so this is a little bit of an older technology. If you remember, before, I brought up non-overlapping channels, you can see them highlighted at the bottom 1, 6, and 11. Those are the three channels that you want to stay close to within the spectrum. 2.4 gigahertz is such a narrow band, not very wide. When you start to cross channels like where Hamilton is you create adjacent channel interference, which is bad. Essentially that kind of interference is like being in a crowded restaurant and the table next to you starts talking louder so you talk louder which makes the table on the other side of you talk louder and then it just becomes a cascading effect, where there’s so much noise surrounding you and nobody can hear anything. If you look at Hamilton, he thought he was doing the right thing by picking a channel that was separate from other people but he’s actually making the connection for himself and for the people around him a little bit worse. I ended up picking channel 11 because when I set this that was the channel that had the least amount of interference. I could go back and pick 1 but I’ll actually probably still avoid 1 because Hamilton is creating a little bit of cross-channel interference or adjacent channel interference.

You can also see that Fernandes2g is doing the right thing by separating out his networks he has a 2.4G and a 5G network but he is broadcasting in a very wide band. he is broadcasting in a 40-megahertz channel which is unnecessary at a 2.4Ge speed. Fernandes2g is introducing a greater chance of interference and decreasing his overall range in an area that already has some known interference.

If you go back over to 5G on the right side I did the same sort of thing. I picked a channel that had the least amount of interference. There are more people that are broadcasting and wider channel width in the 40-megahertz channel range. The numbers in blue on the bottom right are channels that are part of the Dynamic Frequency Selection range DFS. You typically want to avoid those if you live close to an airport. I don’t live that close to an airport, but I live close enough that I prefer to avoid it because you can pick up interference from radar systems. If you live close to an airport within a flight path where planes are about to land, I would think about changing that and staying out of this.

The 5 gigahertz bandwidth has a greater ability to set what is called a channel width. At the hardware level, you can bind groups of channels together and the advantage is you can exponentially increase your potential data throughput. When you see the latest 802.11ac router gets 1.7 gigs of throughput what they are really giving you is a best-case scenario with a channel bonded at 160 megahertz. Taking all of the channels, let’s say in green on the left 36 through 50 and grouping them together to give you the best, fastest, most, data throughput. Spectacular if you live in an area of very low-density wi-fi. If we refer to the graph slide it is something I would never do. You would end up taking up a huge chunk of this airspace you would start stepping over people’s toes creating interference not just for them but also for yourself. There would be no advantage to it. Look again at this spreadsheet:

All these people are spitting out 80-megahertz channel bandwidths to get that high rate of speed to get 1.7 gigs of throughput. The reality is they are not getting that actual amount of data throughput because they are just causing interference with each other.

The more spectrum you are taking up as you make your channels bigger and bigger, you are increasing your data throughput but you’re decreasing the range and the reliability of that signal. I personally keep my 5G radio just in that 20-meg spectrum. I would rather have a more stable connection with slightly lower data throughput.

To reiterate, increasing the channel width decreases the range. Let’s take a theoretical number at the 20-megahertz range. You could have a great connection from 50 feet away. Going up to 40-megahertz might drop it to 25 feet away going up to 80-megahertz. you might get a great signal at 10 feet away on 160 you might have to be right on top of it. I’d rather have a signal that’s going to function over a longer range than something that’s going to give me great speed. When they advertise router speeds, they are showing speed results from a lab environment where you are incredibly close to the connection. There is probably no other wireless noise in the area. Take that with a grain of salt. Sometimes having a stable connection is better than a fast connection, which leads me to probably my favorite topic. One of the things that a lot of people do not really talk about, but it needs to be addressed and that is bufferbloat.

Super-Secret #1 Tip

One word:  Bufferbloat

There are some people in the networking world that dismiss it. I am not one of those people. I am a firm believer, just like bigfoot. To me, this is probably the number one thing that you can address, that’s easy to address within your network. With the right equipment, you will get the best performance increase. What is bufferbloat? Bufferbloat is a term for undesirable latency caused by your router or another network device from buffering too much data. Bufferbloat causes sub-optimal network performance including packet loss. Packet loss occurs when one or more data packet on a network fails to reach its destination. Bufferbloat will negatively affect all applications, like online gaming, streaming media, online meetings. Those are the areas that you are going to notice the quickest. You can also see it just in terms of general lag on the internet. For example, go to a page like CNN.com, if you look on their back end, they have got a thousand ads running and those are constantly sending out little packets of data to pingback to their servers. They track everything you are doing. That is fine but it has an overall negative effect on your connection.

  • Bad FIFO
    • Network traffic is handled ‘First in, first out’ (FIFO).
    • Size doesn’t matter

Standalone networking devices basically function on something called FIFO ‘First in First out’ it is going to take the first request to send data out or to bring data in and that is how it prioritizes traffic. It is not a very elegant system. It doesn’t care about the size of the information that you’re trying to move it doesn’t care whether you’re just looking at a web page that’s refreshing tracking cookies or if you are on DropBox syncing up files. FIFO is going to handle the first data request take care of it and send it on its way before it moves on to the next one. Picture it like this, you are on the highway and two miles ahead of you somebody slams on their brakes because they are not paying attention and the ripple effect that that causes. Nothing bad really happened but it was just one small event that caused this whole backup that potentially leads to miles of traffic. The same thing happens on your home network. Web pages are constantly sending out little bits of data, if you’re on a network with other family members, other devices that are streaming, even IoT devices, they may not be sending huge amounts of data but they are sending packets of information. Those packets are causing a bottleneck of traffic. The size doesn’t really matter.

Your data is everything that you are trying to push through your router and push through your modem. The data is going into a buffer, but your actual internet capacity is not that great. You are trying to push a huge amount of traffic from a big pipe into a small pipe and that buffer, especially cheapo routers and modems fills up very quickly. When that happens pages will start to slow down, you will get more latency, and when that buffer overflows you start experiencing packet loss. VoIP calls will become gargled you will start to see that pixelation and slow down with Zoom calls that are so infamous. What do we typically do? We blame the ISP, we blame the network congestion that is going on the outside world, but the reality is there is a lot that we could do to fix that on our own managing your own traffic. You need a traffic manager or flow control set up that helps buffering.

The buffer manager takes that huge stream of data and releases it in a more intelligent cued manner to prevent system overflow. The result is you can end up passing a lot more traffic. You can have better net results by implementing a system like that.

These are some real-world speed test examples. Some of these people have phenomenal speed, 403 megs down that is incredible, 716 megs up that is a ridiculously fast speed, but if you look at their bufferbloat scores: F, C, D. Without knowing these people, I can almost guarantee that they have experienced some issues when they are doing things that are a little bit more network-intensive, like being on a Zoom call or streaming things. They are having quality issues. If you call your ISP and say “I’m having problems with my connections” what do they do? They try to sell you on a new piece of hardware, or they try to sell you on a faster package. The reality is that it is still just trying to push too much through an improper setup or improper hardware, to begin with.

This is somebody that was pinging a server, as soon as they started to upload a file to DropBox you can see the response time took a huge jump. It went from under 20 milliseconds to 170 milliseconds and then you can see subsequently it just it goes all over the place. Jumping up and down, you see these huge spikes. Where it says “Request timeout” that’s an actual packet being dropped, so if you’re transferring a file or you’re having a call that’s going to be an element of jitter or static or an improper file transfer. This is not what you want to see. How do you know if you have bufferbloat? I can almost guarantee you have it whether you realize it or not. You don’t have to take my word for it, http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest DSL reports have within their speed test a specific metric that measures for bufferbloat. Test your speed, most people will probably have a pretty bad score.

My own personal case: my old bufferbloat, in the first graphic I disabled some of the rules that I had set up personally on my network. I’ve got a score of B it’s not terrible it’s not great though. It’s not the optimized connection that I want to have. The second one involved me going back in re-enabling some of the cueing rules that I had but also decreasing the overall amount of bandwidth that I allowed myself to have straight from the ISP. I am getting 120 megs 25 megs up and down I am dialing back the connection to 90 percent of that. The last one is with the same queueing rules that I created for my router but also dialing my overall bandwidth that is available down to eighty percent of my overall speed. You can see that my buffer bloat score shot up to an A+ which is awesome. I am completely happy with that. When I run my connection like that, I very rarely experience any problems, any jitter. My ping times if I am uploading or pulling down files stay extremely stable. If I am on a hardwired connection doing a call like this, I rarely have any dropout or any loss of quality. It still happens but by tweaking it I really minimize the number of times that it does happen.

What can you do to get rid of bufferbloat?

  • Enable Smart Queue Management on your router
    • If SQM not available, enable QoS rules
  • Limit bandwidth to 80-90% of the overall tested speed
  • If you cannot do this on your router AND you have a horrible bufferbloat score (C or lower) or notice significant lag on your network, you should really consider revamping your network.

The best thing to do is to enable Smart Queue Management on your router. Smart Queue Management or SQM refers to a couple different protocols, one called fq-coddle and there’s one called Cake. SQM allows your router to manage the packets going in and out more efficiently. If you don’t have a piece of hardware that has SQM look for a setting called QoS or Quality of Service. QoS can take a little bit more tweaking sometimes to find the best settings but it’s the next best thing. If you have a bad bufferbloat score, another thing that you could do is limit your overall bandwidth. You never want to fully saturate your overall bandwidth because if you need a little bit of burst or if your router decides it needs a little burst because you have a lot going on you’ve given yourself no overhead. You are creating a bottleneck in your connection. If you cannot do either SQM or QoS and you have a horrible bufferbloat score you should really investigate revamping your network hardware.

There are a couple of really great brands out there that make hardware that’s relatively inexpensive. Ubiquity, they have two lines that are great, their Edgemax and UniFi line they give you great control over SQM and fq_coddle. They have a great user base online and they’re a little bit more user friendly. Unify can be a little bit easier for the average person to set up. Another brand called Mikrotik make ridiculously amazing products. They offer a ton of control, but they tend to be a little less user friendly to set up. I personally use a Mikrotik, once I got it set up I haven’t touched mine in ages and I haven’t had any issues. They’re amazing but they can take a little bit more work to set up. A project like Open WRT gives you an expanded feature set. It’s open-source software you can run on a lot of different routers including the Netgear R7800 and a couple of different Linksys models. You reflash the firmware with Open WRT andf unlock that whole feature set. You still have to be cognizant of making sure you’re tweaking the right settings to get the best performance. There’s a new product out for about two years called the IQrouter which simplifies some of that setup. I haven’t tested one yet, I’m trying to get my hands on one. They offer an out-of-the-box remedy to buffer bloat and to optimize your connection. You don’t really have to do a lot of setup; it happens on the back end automatically so that may be worth checking out. and a lot of these systems here they’re relatively inexpensive. You can get Ubiquity or Mikrotik routers that will perform amazingly well for under $100. The router that I use cost me $45 online and the wireless signal lights up my entire apartment, 1700 square feet. With Open WRT some of those routers out of the box cost $170 to $200. The software itself is free but to me, it’s a great trade-off especially if you’re going to get increased performance out of it. The IQrouter sells for $220 on Amazon or you can buy it directly from them right now.

Brands that I like:

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