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Smart home devices not working

Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Wireless
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  • J
    johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @rcoleman-netgate
    last edited by Oct 23, 2022, 9:24 PM

    @rcoleman-netgate said in Smart home devices not working:

    I've got 4 routers running as AP's to cover the entire house.

    Your actually using them as AP only.. They support that mode, or you just connecting them to your network via lan port on the device and turning off their dhcp?

    If they were all AP that should work ok, but if they are doing nat - yeah that could be very problematic with stuff that should be able to talk to each other not being able too.

    My place is less than half your 3000, all 1 floor and I have 3 APs ;) heheh - But then again I don't have any devices that don't have an outstanding signal. And the one in my kitchen is near the patio door so also have great coverage out on my patio, etc.

    Multiple floors make it trickier to get great coverage and properly place AP in the ceilings for sure.. Especially if your walls are brick or other issues with walls, etc. I would prob turn off 2.4 if wasn't for these stupid IoT devices that don't support 5ghz.

    Guess depends on your priorities - one of mine is not having to ever worry about wifi coverage anywhere in the house. And I don't want stuff at the edge of coverage being flacky our causing problems with the other devices on that same AP.. I have been a fan of the Unifi APs - they support vlans, and quite a few other bells and whistles for wifi. Plus you can run the controller on pretty much anything - I have it running on a vm on my nas. And now I can see exactly what is connected to what AP, their signal, what PHY they are connected at, how much data any specific client is moving.. Wish they would add if device is using wpa2 or wpa3.. Stupid iot devices and no support for wpa3 ;) or enterprise.

    The unifi have some very reasonable priced models - you can get newest lite model for like $99 I think.. They can even do wireless uplink, etc. If you need too, but I have all mine wired.. I don't get less than 400mbps on any device that supports that anywhere in the house, etc.

    An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
    If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
    Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
    SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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    • S
      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
      last edited by Oct 23, 2022, 11:46 PM

      I won't argue against using a separate AP because that is better in almost every way. But what exactly is the Asus WIFI device you were trying? How was it configured? Did you see any errors in the wireless logs when the IoT devices tried to connect?

      I use a wifi interface directly in pfSense for IoT devices. It's even a USB adapter. 😱
      Those devices need almost no bandwidth so it's not really a problem in my particular situation.

      Steve

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      • R
        RebekahCraig
        last edited by Nov 4, 2022, 2:50 AM

        This post is deleted!
        J R 2 Replies Last reply Nov 4, 2022, 2:56 AM Reply Quote 0
        • J
          johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @RebekahCraig
          last edited by Nov 4, 2022, 2:56 AM

          @rebekahcraig said in Smart home devices not working:

          Though I’m quite an old person (I’m 63

          Not old my friend.. 57 here.. your not that far ahead of me ;)

          An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
          If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
          Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
          SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

          J 1 Reply Last reply Nov 4, 2022, 12:28 PM Reply Quote 0
          • J
            JKnott @johnpoz
            last edited by Nov 4, 2022, 12:28 PM

            @johnpoz

            And I'm 69.

            PfSense running on Qotom mini PC
            i5 CPU, 4 GB memory, 32 GB SSD & 4 Intel Gb Ethernet ports.
            UniFi AC-Lite access point

            I haven't lost my mind. It's around here...somewhere...

            J 1 Reply Last reply Nov 4, 2022, 1:45 PM Reply Quote 0
            • J
              johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @JKnott
              last edited by Nov 4, 2022, 1:45 PM

              @jknott well that is old ;) hehehe

              An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
              If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
              Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
              SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

              J 1 Reply Last reply Nov 4, 2022, 2:02 PM Reply Quote 0
              • J
                JKnott @johnpoz
                last edited by Nov 4, 2022, 2:02 PM

                @johnpoz

                But I also have a half century of experience in telecom, computers and networks. My first LAN experience was in early 1978, before IP or Ethernet, and first Ethernet in the mid 80s.

                PfSense running on Qotom mini PC
                i5 CPU, 4 GB memory, 32 GB SSD & 4 Intel Gb Ethernet ports.
                UniFi AC-Lite access point

                I haven't lost my mind. It's around here...somewhere...

                J 1 Reply Last reply Nov 4, 2022, 4:01 PM Reply Quote 0
                • J
                  Jarhead @JKnott
                  last edited by Nov 4, 2022, 4:01 PM

                  @jknott Remember Banyon Vines by any chance?

                  J 1 Reply Last reply Nov 4, 2022, 4:17 PM Reply Quote 0
                  • J
                    JKnott @Jarhead
                    last edited by JKnott Nov 4, 2022, 4:25 PM Nov 4, 2022, 4:17 PM

                    @jarhead I remember it, but never worked with it. My first LAN experience was on the Air Canada reservation system, which had a proprietary LAN from Rockwell Collins. It used time division multiplexing in a ring. It ran at 8 Mb over triaxial cable and 2 Mb over coax. Each device had a time slot in which it could transmit and the destination device would listen in that time slot. I also remember ARCnet. It was covered in a course I took, but I never worked with it either. On the other hand, I did work with token ring, when I worked at IBM in the late 90s. One other thing I've done, which I doubt anyone else here has, is hand wire an Ethernet controller. I did this on a prototyping board for a Data General Eclipse computer, in 1989. My first Ethernet experience was with 10base5 connecting VAX 11/780 computers, in the mid 80s.

                    PfSense running on Qotom mini PC
                    i5 CPU, 4 GB memory, 32 GB SSD & 4 Intel Gb Ethernet ports.
                    UniFi AC-Lite access point

                    I haven't lost my mind. It's around here...somewhere...

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                    • S
                      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                      last edited by Nov 4, 2022, 5:00 PM

                      We may have strayed off-topic. šŸ˜‰
                      But my first experience with any sort of computer network was Econet.

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                      • R
                        RebekahCraig @RebekahCraig
                        last edited by rcoleman-netgate Nov 7, 2022, 2:54 AM Nov 7, 2022, 2:53 AM

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