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Way OT: Routers and Switches

Unknown_K said:
All of this stuff will end up obsolete and junked sooner or later since most people don't want to run cables anymore and just use wireless.
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I hardwire everything I can. This applies to LAN, phone, speaker cables, etc. In fact, pre pandemic, when I did some work on the house I ran all new Cat 6A for networking and CAT 3 for my phone lines. So I am 10G ready if I ever make the leap. Plus I left empty conduit so if I really wanted to I could run fiber. Plus how are you going to get your APs powered without POE since they don't have PSU plugs anymore? LOL!

Honestly wireless has improved by leaps and bounds since the dark times of 802.11b but wire is still better IMHO. Must be the GenX in me...
 
I wish new homes came with better conduits or any conduits to run more cabling later on. My house has cat 5e. I would have preferred better. But it works as I need.
 
Shadow Lord said:
I hardwire everything I can. This applies to LAN, phone, speaker cables, etc. In fact, pre pandemic, when I did some work on the house I ran all new Cat 6A for networking and CAT 3 for my phone lines. So I am 10G ready if I ever make the leap. Plus I left empty conduit so if I really wanted to I could run fiber. Plus how are you going to get your APs powered without POE since they don't have PSU plugs anymore? LOL!

Honestly wireless has improved by leaps and bounds since the dark times of 802.11b but wire is still better IMHO. Must be the GenX in me...
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Oh if we're talking audio, my proper setup will always and forever be hard wired. Music games and DJing (I have close to 2000 records) demand no lag.

My friend who owns a record label in Detroit was telling me what a nightmare it is when places have Sonos. The lag is so bad you have to mix in your headphones all night.
 
Shadow Lord said:
Honestly wireless has improved by leaps and bounds since the dark times of 802.11b but wire is still better IMHO. Must be the GenX in me...
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802.11b was simple and great compared to the dumpster fire that Wireless is today.

At least you had a fixed set in stone standard that everyone had to implement. After that, wireless vendors started implementing their own incompatible standards, along with making various "half" standards by adopting parts of draft standards, or the full standard at non-standard speeds. Let's not get into the additional landfill fire that is the various encryption algorithms after WEP was dumped for being insecure.

Then there's range issues, which can be caused by literally anything. I never remember having range problems on 802.11b. Modern wifi can be blocked by interfering signals from radio towers, microwaves, wireless phones, walls, metal of various shapes and countless other things.

I prefer hardwired networks as well, and avoid wireless whenever possible. I spent a good deal of time hardwiring my house 15ish years ago, though only for gigabit with cat5e. Whenever 2.5g, 5g and 10g LAN becomes cheap enough, I'll have to pull new wire, but that won't be for awhile.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
microwaves
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One of my stranger and more memorable service calls as a cable tech was "customer loses wifi service while microwave is running." I reproduced the issue, changed the wireless channel on their router (which actually "fixed" it), and advised considering a new microwave.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
802.11b was simple and great compared to the dumpster fire that Wireless is today.
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I don't know about that. I just got an IBM R50e with 802.11b wireless running WinXP SP3. It sees my wifi network but absolutely refuses to connect. I have tried different drivers, updated everything I can, and even have provided the PSK both as hex and as text with no luck. I sem to recall the sme kind of issues back in the day with XP and wireless on some old Compaq R3000 notebooks and then suddenly one day they just went away. I always chucked it up to some driver being updated...

GiGaBiTe said:
Then there's range issues, which can be caused by literally anything. I never remember having range problems on 802.11b. Modern wifi can be blocked by interfering signals from radio towers, microwaves, wireless phones, walls, metal of various shapes and countless other things.
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This right here. Never do I have to worry about spotty connections or slow down because someone is nuking a burrito....
 
Shadow Lord said:
I don't know about that. I just got an IBM R50e with 802.11b wireless running WinXP SP3. It sees my wifi network but absolutely refuses to connect. I have tried different drivers, updated everything I can, and even have provided the PSK both as hex and as text with no luck. I sem to recall the sme kind of issues back in the day with XP and wireless on some old Compaq R3000 notebooks and then suddenly one day they just went away. I always chucked it up to some driver being updated...
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It's likely not working because of outdated root certificates / security certificates. Almost all of the certificates released during XP's lifetime have long since expired, or been revoked and no longer work.

The only way I know to get it working is to make an open wireless network that's walled off and heavily restricted with a whitelist. Sometimes that even doesn't work, in which case, you need a really old wifi router from the same era to get it working.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
The only way I know to get it working is to make an open wireless network that's walled off and heavily restricted with a whitelist. Sometimes that even doesn't work, in which case, you need a really old wifi router from the same era to get it working.
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Does updating the XP root certificates help? Why would and old wifi router work? If the SSL certifcates are expired wouldn't the old router also reject them?
 
Shadow Lord said:
Does updating the XP root certificates help? Why would and old wifi router work? If the SSL certifcates are expired wouldn't the old router also reject them?
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Microsoft hasn't provided cert updates to XP since 2014, when it was EOL'd. A period correct router would work, because it uses the same certs. As long as there wasn't a FW update that broke them.
 
Shadow Lord said:
I don't know about that. I just got an IBM R50e with 802.11b wireless running WinXP SP3. It sees my wifi network but absolutely refuses to connect. I have tried different drivers, updated everything I can, and even have provided the PSK both as hex and as text with no luck. I sem to recall the sme kind of issues back in the day with XP and wireless on some old Compaq R3000 notebooks and then suddenly one day they just went away. I always chucked it up to some driver being updated...
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Perhaps your WiFi is using WPA3 (introduced in 2018, could've been a software update if new enough router).
 
Neerajkirola said:
I think,
Nope, your router port speed does not need to match your switch speed. The router's port speed is typically determined by the WAN connection it handles, which is often slower than the LAN speed. Having a faster switch within the LAN won't significantly affect the router's performance for local traffic. Routers with slower ports (e.g., 1Gb) can handle essential tasks like firewall, DHCP, and DNS without being a bottleneck for most consumer networks. In consumer spaces, 100Gb routers are rare because they are unnecessary for typical home or small office setups, where 1Gb or lower speeds are enough.
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Welcome to vcfed.
 
Neerajkirola said:
I think,
Nope, your router port speed does not need to match your switch speed. The router's port speed is typically determined by the WAN connection it handles, which is often slower than the LAN speed. Having a faster switch within the LAN won't significantly affect the router's performance for local traffic. Routers with slower ports (e.g., 1Gb) can handle essential tasks like firewall, DHCP, and DNS without being a bottleneck for most consumer networks. In consumer spaces, 100Gb routers are rare because they are unnecessary for typical home or small office setups, where 1Gb or lower speeds are enough.
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Thanks. That is essentially what I was asking. Given what you are saying there doesn't seem to be any need for a router with 100Gbps ports. As long as everything is connected to the switches you just need one connection to the router and you are golden.
 
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