There's really a couple different paths to choose when embarking upon this journey. Some folks purchase brand new hardware, while the alternative option is to consider picking up an old/used enterprise server, which can offer incredible value for slightly older, yet awesomely powerful machines with a lot of life left in them for home usage. I hemmed and hawed and was in an almost identical situation as you are right now, only this was roughly ~2 years ago.

I would encourage you to start by taking a gander at /r/Homelab's wiki, you probably won't find a better single source of information anywhere on the web: https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/wiki/buyingguide

It's chock-full of great information. Do you have a budget in mind? What's your ISP bandwidth like? Are you planning to share things remotely, or going to keep most of this in-house? Do you have a decent router to build out your home network around? LOTS of considerations to make, it's difficult to find a one-size fits all solution, as every use case is going to be different to a certain extent.

For me, personally, I started with a trusty little Edgerouter-X that I managed to pick up on sale for $49 way back when. It's an amazingly powerful and versatile device that handled most everything I threw at it. From there you'll need to decide what type of hypervisor you want to run, as this can seriously affect the hardware requirements you initially inquired about.

The path I followed for learning hypervisors was sort of:

• VirtualBox -- widely used, totally free, can pretty much be installed on any desktop PC, but i found it to be a bit clunky once I got some experience with other options.
  
• Microsoft Hyper-V -- there's two variants of this (type 1 & type 2), the former being what you would install on baremetal, as your OS, then manage remotely from another machine on the network... no admin GUI, so you'll need to learn some command line. The latter option (type 2 Hyper-V) can be added to any Windows 10 Pro (or Enterprise) desktop PC, by simply going into "Programs and Features" and using the appropriate checkbox to "Turn Windows features on or off" but be advised, virtual machines want memory. Lots and lots of RAM, depending upon what type and how many virtual machines you ultimately end up running.
  
• Proxmox -- is something i only initially dabbled with, so I don't have much firsthand experience, however it's an excellent choice, is also free & open-source if you are comfortable delving into the *nix realm.
  
• VMware ESXi -- there are licensing costs associated with this, but ESXi is the free version for home use, with a somewhat limited feature set and can be rather particular about what type of hardware you run this on. This is what we were using at work and is pretty much considered the gold standard in virtualization, so I wanted to get my feet wet and learn more about what our guys were using on a day to day basis, so this is where I ultimately landed. You must check the hardware compatibility list before dropping a ton of cash, if you decide to go this route. This is ultimately what lead me to the used enterprise gear, I picked up my first legit server from Craigslist with intentions of going this route... and i currently have two ESXi 6.7 compute nodes providing all my virtualization needs.
  
  These are by no means the only options. There's a very passionate community (albeit sometimes a bit toxic) surrounding the FreeNAS project, and just as many folks love unRAID for the simplicity and versatility it offers (at a small, one-time cost, I believe fifty or sixty dollars for the license). Or you could even run your favorite flavor of Linux server and build everything yourself, from the ground up. This is a wonderful resource for getting an idea of what that might entail: https://blog.linuxserver.io/2017/06/24/the-perfect-media-server-2017/
  
  Some general tips I've managed to pick up over the years; RAM, RAM, RAM... you can almost certainly never have enough. It will be the single most in-demand resource once you get going. Don't stress too terribly much over CPU power, unless you have intentions of pushing out 4K HDR transcoded streams. Knowing what devices the end-users will be using to consume your media from a Plex server is also very helpful, but the general rule is ~2000 Passmark score per 1080p stream. This will be your bible for determining Plex requirements.
  
  Don't just take my word for anything that's been mentioned here, as my network is an absolute mess and being constantly built, broken, fixed, torn down and rebuilt all over again. That poor attempt at a jumbled network diagram is a bit outdated already, but gives a general idea of the various options available. I mostly am what you would call a "tinkerer" type homelabber. If you have a more specific professional sysadmin path in mind, this may be more of what you are looking for, but I tend to stick more to the homelab realm and get into all sorts of bad little projects. They have a great "Start Here!" thread with an incredible overview that presents things in a MUCH better fashion than I have been able to just now.
  
  Good luck and welcome to the machine! Used enterprise hardware can be had for fairly cheap these days and you are in luck, it's a great time to embark upon a homelab journey as flash memory prices have finally started to plummet, so SSDs are much more reasonable, as is ECC memory for your server(s). Storage and memory are going to be your biggest costs getting into this. You can get older generation Xeon CPUs with really decent horsepower for next to nothing. Are electricity costs going to be a concern for you? What about physical space and/or noise constraints? Lots to consider which could tip you in one direction or another.
  
  I think I've given you plenty to chew on for now. My apologies in advance if I've overwhelmed you, as that was NOT my intent... just hoping to save you a little bit of time, as I've spent a couple years constantly reading, researching, evaluating various software and projects and I've really only scratched the surface of what's available. Never enough time in the day.
  
  Regardless of what path you choose, have fun! I highly encourage both Plex and Pi-hole as your first two projects once you get going. In a perfect world you'd have at least two Pi-holes set up for redundancy. My primary runs in a little Ubuntu Server VM, the secondary nameserver is on a little Raspberry Pi 3 B+ which can take over if I need to reboot servers for whatever reason. Bonus points if you consider combining Unbound with your Pi-hole, as well as an OpenVPN server, or PiVPN for secure browsing while out and about and potentially connected to any sketchy open WiFi networks, PLUS ad-blocking for your entire network and while on the go. Next to Plex, it's probably the single best project I've tinkered with over the past couple of years.
  
  Please keep us posted on what you decide -- don't hesitate to ask questions if there's stuff I've ranted and raved about that isn't clear in any way (sorry, i tend to ramble in a stream of consciousness style that isn't easy to follow)... rely on the communities of each of these projects, as they're often fantastic resources to help you. If yer unfamiliar with Linux and wanted to learn, then Linux Mint is where I started and would encourage you to use that as your first Linux VM once you're ready. You don't need to buy anything to get started, you'd be surprised how much you can learn on an old PC that's just lying around -- and once you've gotten your feet wet, you may find that your plans will continue to evolve and change. I don't think I've ever once seen a "finished" homelab. They're always a work in progress as there's no limits to what you can learn and do. YMMV.
  
  Thank you, please drive through. . . =)

Here, have an upgrade guide. This is mostly oriented for gaming, but I tried to make it as general purpose as possible.

First off, if you're trying to survive gaming on an older system and are wanting to upgrade, remember to check out the PC Gaming Wiki as well as the Low Spec Gamer YouTube channel and /r/lowendgaming. There are lots of tips and tricks to get games running better, and if you discover your own, don't forget to share them!

• If you have a motherboard older than DDR3, save and upgrade to a new platform. It's not worth investing in a platform that old for anything other than novelty purposes.
  
  
• If you want to upgrade your motherboard (like if you're looking at buying an unlocked CPU but have a locked motherboard), save and build a whole new system, unless you happen to come across exactly what you want for cheap. Used motherboards are usually just as expensive as new ones so it's not really worth investing that much into an older platform.
  
  
• If you have an Intel motherboard and want to upgrade your CPU, see my reply to this comment. Character limit, woo!
  
  
• If you have an AMD motherboard, I'm not as experienced with this but upgrading to an 8320 or 8350 Black edition would be good.
  
• I'll do some research and put some detailed information here later; like I did for Intel processors. Again, after the aforementioned good night's rest.
  
  
• When buying any used processor, especially on eBay, be very wary of scams. Any price that seems too good to be true or is from a seller with very little feedback is something of which you should be very wary.
  
  
• If you have less than 8GB of RAM, buy a 2x4GB kit. Dual channel actually makes a difference these days. If you want more, well, divide the amount you want by the number of slots you have. 16GB / 4 slots = 4GB sticks, so get a 4x4GB kit. PCPartPicker is a good resource for this, although new DDR3 is getting more expensive. It might be worth looking at the used market, but be careful you don't buy ECC RAM (server memory) unless you have a motherboard and processor that support it.
  
  
• If your system isn't using an SSD as its boot drive, buy an SSD and reinstall your OS onto it. I don't know if I can recommend a SSD smaller than 250GB considering how cheap they're getting. Brand doesn't matter a whole lot but make sure to do a little research first. PCPartPicker, again, is a great resource for this. Filter by the minimum capacity you want and sort by lowest price, then go from there. Samsung is expensive but reliable; I don't know a lot about other brands.
  
  
• If you're running out of space, 2TB HDDs are pretty cheap and reliable these days. Here's a Seagate one, although I couldn't find Western Digital's equivalent for some reason.
  
  
• I don't really know much about graphics cards other than they're hard to buy new these days. If you buy new, I can't recommend anything with less than 4GB of VRAM, because modern games are getting better at using it. If you buy used, try not to go less than 2GB. Other than that, pick what fits your budget and performance needs, and remember you dont have to run everything on max settings. Dropping the settings a little can allow older cards to still compete today. I still run a 7870 and haven't found any unplayable games yet; 99% of games I get a solid 60, and once I upgrade to an e3-1240v3 that's in the mail I expect that to go to 99.9%.
  
  
• Make sure you have a good PSU. You can get really solid ones for $50 or less these days. Don't forget this one when upgrading your system, unless you already have a good PSU. This is the SeaSonic one I've been recommending a lot. Fully modular and 80 Plus Bronze seems pretty good to me. PSUs are a topic of a lot of controversy, though, so make sure to do your research.
  
  
• Similarly, investing in a case you like will last you a long time and significantly improve a build's appearance. Not its frames, though, so this isn't a priority. Pick one with all the features you want, good cable management options, something you don't mind looking at, that kind of stuff. Look up a review (google "[case name] review") where someone builds a computer in it so you can get an idea of what kind of issues people run into when building in it and if those issues are dealbreakers for you.
  
  
• Optical drives aren't really used this day but if you don't have one it can be worth it to pick one up. Blu-ray drives are getting cheaper, too. PCPartPicker -> optical drives -> filter by features -> sort by price.
  
  
• Monitors I cant speak much on, but if you're gaming at all, get one that goes at least 120hz at its native resolution, and don't get one lower than 1080p. If you don't do any gaming, make sure you get an IPS panel. I personally can't recommend any resolution other than 1080p (1920x1080) because compatibility issues are annoying and most software is either designed to work at 1080p, or have workarounds to run at 1080p. 4k is the next jump worth taking since that seems to be the next big standard (again, in my opinion), but hardware is still a generation or two out from that being mainstream.
  
  
• Multiple monitors are a thing. I don't think I can live with less than 3 monitors again. It's so nice to have a game on the center monitor, a webpage on the left, and a voip program on the right. You can kind of do this with window snapping, but, well, you can also do that with 3 monitors for much more information when you need it.
  
  
• Invest in good network gear. I cannot stress this enough. It will cost a chunk of money but will make your life so much better. If you're renting a modem from your ISP, or your modem/router has your ISP's logo on it, you need to upgrade. I'm currently running the Netgear R7000. If you're on cable internet, get a Motorola SurfBoard and something like the R7000. If you're on DSL, there's a variant that has a phone jack for dialing in. If you have fiber, the ONT that you have isn't replaceable but it's probably fine (but you'll still want to replace the included router). For all of these, you'll probably need to look up a guide on switching and it will probably involve calling your ISP. Expect to spend $200ish on the equipment, but seriously, you won't be constantly rebooting your router, wondering why the WiFi isn't working this time, etc. And a good modem will let you know if it can contact the network or not so you'll know if the internet is actually out or not. And if you're renting a router, you'll save money in the long run.
  
  
• If you're using WiFi, get a good network card. I saw this one linked on this subreddit the other day and it looks pretty good. I've personally found USB WiFi dongles unreliable, but YMMV.
  
  
• Don't forget to upgrade your peripherals. Check out /r/mechanicalkeyboards, /r/steamcontroller (it's about more than just the Steam Controller there, the name is a little misleading TBH), and the YouTube channel Rocket Jump Ninja (he does mouse reviews). I think /r/emulation has had some good threads on controllers, too. There's fun stuff like Mayflash adapters for GameCube controllers, or you could pick up a bluetooth dongle for a DualShock 3 or DualShock 4 (or WiiMote passthrough in Dolphin). There's lots of fun to be had in the peripheral department.
  
  I think that's about everything. Let me know if I missed anything and I'll include it.
  
  edit: Updated some stuff and tried to include more details.

---

My rationale for the chosen products:

---

• CPU: Review
  A very detailed review from GamersNexus. These guys make incredible reviews and will go very in depth into every aspect of whatever they review. They also post on reddit a bit.
  This CPU is just the best bang for the buck right now, no question asked. Intel is too expensive and doesn't let you upgrade the CPU on the same motherboard if you would want to do this in a few years.
  
  This CPU is bought in MicroCenter with a combo kit to save $30!
  
  
• Motherboard: Product page
  A very solid board that doesn't break the bank. It comes with 7 USB type A (standard) & 1 USB type C port on the read. With the 2 from case, we get to the total 10 USB ports that was asked for.
  When you buy this motherboard at MicroCenter, you get a $30 combo deal.
  
  I highly recommend to ask one of the sales people if the BIOS is compatible for the new Ryzen 3000 series. I've heard that they would even upgrade the BIOS for you without extra cost to get it working. But it will probably work out of the box by now.
  
• Memory: RAM is RAM. Brands don't matter too much, speed & latency does have an impact for performance on Ryzen though. This video explains it very well. So I went with a 3000MHz, CL15 set from G.Skill. This will work very well and will give you a decent performance boost.
  
• Storage: 512GB NVMe SSD & 2TB HDD for mass storage. This is a very nice balance in terms of SSD & mass storage I find personally.
  The Sabrent Rocket NVMe SSD is extremely fast and very well balanced in terms of price to performance. The WD 2TB is a very standard drive that got a lower RPM to reduce the noise. It will be a tiny bit slower compared to a 7200 RPM drive, but you'll hardly be able to notice the difference. A slower RPM HDD also on pure merit, will last longer because of the lesser amount of mechanical tear it goes through over time.
  
• Video Card: Review & Review (written)
  This is the best video card for the budget of this build. We could spend less on the peripherals and get a better card, but considering the games that are mentioned. This would be a waste in my opinion. It will perform very well at 1440p (the monitor resolution I suggest) and will just be a lot of fun.
  
• Case: Review
  GamersNexus again! Well, this is an a very silent case. It does not come in army green or has handles, but there are very few cases that have either of that. It does have the 2 ODD which was also requested so I went with a case that got 2 out of the 4 requests. Silence is a main factor for my PC builds.
  
• Case fans: It comes with 2 very high quality fans, which is enough for this system.
  
• Power Supply: Review
  10 year warranty, 80+ gold efficiency, fully-modular black cables, semi-passive fan design, 650W PSU from Corsair made by CWT. The 10 year warranty should tell you enough, but if not then the 9.666.. score for this unit should tell you enough. I remove the "value" score from this review since prices change all the time. Ow right, it is the 750W unit, but the 650W is pretty much the same platform. So very close in performance and quality.
  
• Monitor: Review
  An other amazing review that looks at pretty much everything this monitor has to offer. It's a long read, so in short. It's one of the best TN gaming monitors available right now. It will diliver an awesome gaming experience. It also comes with a USB 3.0 HUB for 1 extra USB connection, since it got 2 on the monitor, but you have to connect it to 1 on the motherboard. So you lose 1 there, but gain 2 on the monitor. Useful for the microphone & something else of choice.
  
• Wireless Network Adapter: This card has been highly rated, although I personally have no experience with it. I also don't recommend to use WiFi if possible. It can and often will be a lot worse compared to a hardwired cable. If you can't reach the PC with the cable, then you can use a power-line adaptor. This will allow you to use the powerlines in your house to get from the router to the PC. You will lose some speed doing this, but it is still much better compared to WiFi.
  Regardless, this card does support both Bluetooth & WiFi. You have to connect the USB cable to get the Bluetooth working!
  
  Place this card in anything but the bottom PCIe x1 slot. Since that one won't work when you put the NVMe SSD into the top M.2/1 slot. They share the bandwidth.
  
  
• Keyboard: Review
  Probably the best wireless mechanical keyboard on the market. It's a 60% keyboard, so no F, arrow or numpad keys. If you want any of these keys, let me know and I'll see what I can do. Also because it's a mechanical keyboard, the switch type is something personal. Ask your brother if he wants to have tactile feedback when pressing down a key and if he would like it to click. The clicking can be very loud, so its something to be well aware of. I personally use MX browns and while I can hear it very slightly, it's by far my favourite switch. I had blues and tried reds as well. I don't like red switches since they don't have any feedback, so I don't know when I pressed the key. It's a minor thing and for "gaming" it can be better since you can press keys "faster" but in my opinion this is not really much of a difference or negative.
  
• Mouse: Review
  The best mouse reviewer there is. He rates it fairly highly and because of the cheap price, it was not a hard decision to suggest this. However, it would help a lot to ask your brother if he could measure his hands and how does he grip the mouse? Knowing those two factors will help to say if this mouse will work or if we should look at something else.
  
• Mousepad: I don't know if he will sit behind a desk or not, but can't forget to get a mousepad. I absolutely love the extremely large ones where you can place the keyboard on it as well. It also helps for your wrists a bit to have a softer place for them.
  
• Speakers: You wanted a wireless keyboard & mouse, so you also get some wireless speakers! I actually personally wasn't a fan of wireless audio for a while. But they've made massive improvements to make me feel a bit more comfortable with recommending it. If you want to use wires, you can simply get the T40 series ii. These speakers have been the bar for sub $100 speakers.
  
• Microphone: Review
  Well, finally a LinusTechTips video joins the list! Well, the Blue Yeti has been pretty much the staple of microphones for high quality voice recording and podcasts. I went with it, even though it may be a bit overkill. But heey, you buy this and can use it for many years while sounding crystal clear. You may even get some compliments on how sexy you sound!
  I also included a stand so that you can actually get it very close to your face that most streamers do. It also reduces the noise of the keyboard by a good amount + no shocks when you place something on the desk because of the shock mount.
  
  

  Hope you like it and If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

At a combined 2880 x 1440, the two displays actually have 1.6 times the resolution of the standard Rift and Vive (‎2160 x 1200). It's a huge difference, like a generational advantage, comparable to jumping from an old Oculus Dev Kit to the current model. I should mention that despite the much higher resolution, the screen door effect is still there (which means you can still see a raster of pixels in front of your eyes), however, it is now possible to ignore it after a few minutes of playing. With these headsets, you can make out objects in the distance more easily, texture detail increases, text becomes readable, instruments in virtual cockpits are now actually useful (eliminating the need for immersion-breaking HUDs), there is less flickering. Even if your PC can't handle the higher resolution, an upscaled image will still look better, because the screen door effect is less pronounced. Recently, there have been performance improvements and changes to the reprojection algorithm, which have reduced hardware requirements by quite a significant margin. It's actually possible to use these headsets with integrated graphics for less demanding applications like 3D video, virtual tourism apps that mostly rely on 3D photos and simple games.

With the Samsung model, you get the same display resolution and colors (thanks to OLED) as the expensive Vive Pro (2880 x 1600), but better lenses.

Another advantage that Windows MR headsets like the Lenovo Explorer and Samsung HMD have is that the setup is incredibly simple. There are no external sensors, laser projectors, adapters, breakout boxes, power supplies, etc. There's just a single cable with USB 3.0 and HDMI at the end. Setup time at a new location is at most two minutes for full roomscale, just a few seconds for just standing or seated VR. This means that MR headsets are truly portable and can be set up anywhere. All you need is a well lit room. That's why I bought my Lenovo Explorer.

There is one disadvantage to these headsets: The controllers (which need a compatible bluetooth adapter - Microsoft recommends this one, but others can work as well) and their tracking are not as good as those of the Rift and Vive. Head and positional tracking through the built in cameras and sensors is virtually flawless, you can walk aroud in VR just like with the Vive (which is great), but the controllers have to be in front of you at all times in order to be accurately tracked, since they also rely on the cameras used for positional tracking. This isn't a huge issue however, since the camera's field of view is larger than the user's and since in most games, you will be interacting with things that are in front of you. Fast movement outside of the camera's view is still tracked well enough through sensors built into the controllers (like with the Wii), like grabbing a shield from behind your back or swinging a sword around. What can not be denied however is that ergonomically, both Vive and Rift have far better controller shapes. It's not bad though, it's just that this is the one aspect where it becomes obvious why these headsets are less expensive than Rift and Vive.

One great (and in my eyes essential) aspect about Windows MR headsets is that there is almost full compatibility with HTC Vive and Oculus Rift games, via two free tools: Windows Mixed Reality SteamVR (from Microsoft themselves) and ReVive. With the latest Windows update, rumble support has finally been added, which was the only missing feature. Launch just the first tool in order to play games designed for Vive, run the latter for Oculus Rift titles. The number of games with native MR support is also steadily increasing. Here's a regularly updated list of compatible titles:

/r/WindowsMR/comments/7c97lm/steam_games_status/

There is a small selection of VR games and applications on the Windows Store, but the vast majority can be found elsewhere as well, mostly on Steam. One noteworthy exception is HoloTour from Microsoft, which is a fantastic virtual tourism application, the perfect complement to the astonishing Google Earth VR. Definitely check both out!

I hope this helps. Feel free to ask if you have any more questions.

Alright, here we go:

PLANNING

You mainly need to figure out how many cables you need and where you'll run them to. Obviously you'll need one to each location of an AP or camera, so you need to figure out how many you'll run to jacks for connecting Ethernet devices. The bare minimum is one to each TV location and desk location, in this case you'll connect a switch to the jack if you need to connect more than one device. The ideal number is five to your main entertainment center, and two to every other TV location and desk location. This hopefully eliminates the need for secondary switches. In addition, you should run one Coaxial cable to each TV location including your main entertainment center. Add up all the Ethernet cables you'll be running, and keep this number in mind.

As for the network hub location, the best place for it is the basement, preferably an unfinished part of it near the entry point of your internet service. If you don't have a basement, use a utility room. Just make sure it has some sort of ventilation, you don't want stuff getting too hot.

EQUIPMENT

For the actual Ethernet cable, you'll want to get a 1000 foot bulk spool. Get pure copper rather than copper clad aluminum (CCA) and solid conductors rather than stranded. It needs to be riser rated (pretty much any will be) but plenum rating is pointless unless you'll be running it through air ducts. Your big choice here is the category rating: Cat5e or Cat6. Cat5e is good for gigabit, Cat6 will future-proof you for 10 gigabit. Cat6 is more expensive, thicker, and trickier to terminate as the spec only allows a quarter inch of untwisting rather than Cat5e's half an inch.

Keeping in mind the number of wires you plan on running, you'll need a punch-down patch panel with at least that many ports that matches the category rating of your cable. You'll also need punch-down keystone jacks, these also need to match the category rating of your cable. You won't need them for cables going to cameras or APs, you'll just need one for each other cable. For each location where you'll be installing jacks, you'll need a single gang old work low voltage bracket (or a surface-mount box), and a keystone wallplate. Six ports for the main entertainment center, three for each other TV location, two for each desk location. You'll also want a keystone coaxial coupler for each TV location including the main entertainment center.

You have another big choice to make for the main switch, a managed PoE switch or a dumb unmanaged switch. The managed PoE switch will simplify things a lot as it'll power your cameras and APs, while with an unmanaged switch you'll need to use PoE injectors. A managed PoE switch will, predictably, be much more expensive. Either way, you'll ideally want one with at least as many ports as the total number of Ethernet cables you'll planning to install, plus one for the router. You can get one with fewer ports, but then you won't be able to connect all your cables to it at once, you'll need to just connect the ones you're currently using. If you'll be going with a managed PoE switch, get one of these UniFi switches: 8-port with 4 PoE, 8-port with all PoE, 16-port, 24-port, or 48-port. If you'll be getting an unmanaged switch, any is fine. Just make sure it's gigabit. I used this one in my previous house, for example.

For the router, you'll want the UniFi Security Gateway.

You've got another big choice to make for the APs: Lite or Pro. The main difference is that the Lite has two 5 GHz streams, while the Pro has three. Only high-end devices like Macbook Pros have 3-stream Wi-Fi hardware, so if you don't have any devices with this, the Pro won't give you any benefit. Also, since the Lite is cheaper you can get more of them for the money, as more APs rather than better ones is the best thing you can do to improve your Wi-Fi. Both of these are available in single-packs and 5-packs, the single packs include PoE injectors but the 5-packs don't. If you're getting a PoE switch, consider getting a 5-pack of Lites.

You'll need something to run the UniFi controller. This is the software that you use to manage all the UniFi gear in one place. The easiest thing to do is install it on an Ethernet-connected PC and just run it when you need to make changes or update firmware. If you want a dedicated device for running it all the time, you can use a Raspberry Pi or Cloud Key. The Cloud Key is PoE-powered, so it's particularly convenient if you have a PoE switch.

You'll also need a few RJ45 plugs for the AP and camera cables, a crimping tool for them, a 110 impact punch down tool for doing your jack and patch panel terminations, and something to strip the cable jacket. Normally this will be built into the crimper.

Lastly, you'll need a lot of pre-made Ethernet patch cables to connect everything in your network hub. Get ones that are as short as possible, 1-3 feet. You'll need one to connect each cable you've installed from the patch panel to the switch, one for connecting the switch to the router, and another for connecting the router to the modem/ONT (this one may need to be longer). If you'll be using any PoE injectors, you'll need an additional cable for each one. You could make all these yourself, but this is very tedious and time-consuming, and hard to get right. The wires need to be in the right order and all 8 need to be connected for gigabit to work. Lastly, you'll need one for each actual Ethernet device you currently have, these should be 6 feet or longer if necessary.

INSTALLATION AND SETUP

The first thing to do is run all the cables. Camera and AP lines go to the device's location and get an RJ45 plug, all the others go to a keystone jack box/bracket/faceplate. Whenever possible, leave a foot of slack at both ends in case you need to re-do terminations. I like to terminate each cable after I run it, as it makes things easier to keep track of. For all the jacks, note the port number of the cable at the patch panel, and write that same number on the faceplate next to the jack. When you do the terminations, make sure to untwist the wire as little as possible, particularly if you're using Cat6.

For the APs, install the ceiling mount bracket using the included hardware, connect the cable to the AP, and then just put the AP on the bracket and twist it to lock it in place.

At the network hub, first hook up any PoE injectors you'll be using. Connect the patch panel port for the AP/camera cable to the injector's PoE port, and connect the injector's LAN port to the switch. Plug the injector into an outlet. Now connect the rest of the patch panel's ports to the switch, or if you have a smaller switch just connect the ones you're currently using. Connect the USG's LAN port to the switch, and its WAN port to your modem/ONT. Make sure your APs are getting power, their ring light will be white if they are.

Now, open the UniFi Controller (wherever you have it set up) and go to the Devices page. Adopt everything, and update everything's firmware. Go through it and set up everything the way you like. All the UniFi devices will light up blue once adopted and configured.

The Netgear I linked to is just a modem. It will only have one port (no wireless) which needs to be connected to a router.

If you do a lot of online gaming on the Xbox and don't have to have wired downstairs, it would probably be best to have the modem in the same room to use a wired connection.

I doubt the two floor townhome would be big enough to have significant concerns over wireless performance. But I will point out a couple options you may not be aware of. First you can set up a wireless bridge which is essentially a wireless cable. The device acting as the bridge would normally have 4 or 5 wired ports to plug into. This of course still depends on a good wireless connection between the router and bridge device. But the advantage is that the bridge can have stronger wireless antennas and is better able to communicate with the router than the built in wifi on devices like game consoles or laptops.

The other option is powerline adapters which actually provides networking over powerlines. Simple plug one into the wall near the router and connect a cable to it, and then plug in one or more into other electrical outlets. Powerline performance can vary greatly though. In some homes they work nearly as well as running an ethernet cable, but in some homes they are completely unreliable. In most cases they will at least work well enough for streaming and anything else other than gaming. Gaming over powerline is certainly possible if they end up working well in the townhome.

In a two bedroom townhome these probably aren't necessary, but something to keep in mind if the xbox isn't wired and the connection isn't stable.

For the router/wireless..

Personally I am a big fan of Ubiquiti products, but they are a lot more advanced than routers designed for home use. Their routers do not have wireless built in, but rather they sell separate wireless access points (Unifi). I use an Edgerouter X which costs about $50 and a single Unifi AC wireless access point. I have the Unifi AC Pro which is $130, but there are also the Unifi AC Long Range ($100) and Unifi AC Lite ($80) and any of them should be fine. The Pro is capable of a bit higher speeds, but the extra speed would likely only be beneficial if you are sending files between your devices (Plex media server for example). Just make sure you don't get the older non AC models.

While they are more advanced they really aren't very difficult to set up. With the Edgerouter you basically just need to login to it and select a wizard (specifically the one named WAN+2LAN2 which will set it to act like most any home router). Then for QoS (quality of service) to prevent streaming, etc to cause a lot of spiking while gaming, you go to the QoS tab to enable Smart Queue and then simply enter the Download/Upload speeds of your Comcast plan.

Unifi wirelss access points are a little different in that you can't directly access them to manage. Instead you install Unifi controller software on your computer to configure all Unifi devices on your network. There are a lot of advanced options for Unifi but basically all you need to do is go to settings and add one or more wireless network, being sure to set the security to WPA Personal with a security key (password).

Aside from Ubiquiti I have had the best experience with ASUS Routers. Probably just about any of the ASUS dual band wireless AC routers would be fine (such as https://www.amazon.com/Dual-Band-AC1750-4-Port-Gigabit-RT-AC66U_B1/dp/B01N08LPPP/). Not sure how well their QoS features work since haven't used them, but I imagine. Netgear Nighthawk AC routers also have a great reputation although I never used them personally. https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Nighthawk-AC1750-Smart-Router/dp/B00R2AZLD2/

So recommend one of the following:

1. Unifi Edgerouter X ($50) plus one of their Unifi AC wireless access points ($80-130)
   
   
2. ASUS dual band AC router such as the RT-AC66U (around $100)
   
   
3. Netgear Nighthawk dual band AC router such as the R6700 (around $90-100)
   
   Along with the Netgear modem

Not OP, but we've deployed Ubiquiti products in a few of our enterprise customers and it is running great. I am not sure how much you already know about networking, but I'll explain for anyone else reading.

First, some background to fully understand what it is you are trying to do. The thing that most consumers call "routers" are really three things: a router, a switch, and an access point. TLDR the router portion is the thing that actually moves traffic between machines, the switch extends how many physical ethernet ports you have, and the access point gives you wifi.

The Ubiquiti Access Points (UAP) are just access points. You will still need a router to route traffic, and your consumer one will work just fine for most people. If you are looking to get something more SOHO, Ubiquiti also makes their own router/firewall (check out USG, or ideally EdgeRouter). For all intents and purposes, it is a pretty good idea to separate the roles of your network (physical appliances for the router, firewall, wireless, etc...), and you can have as many UAP's as you'd like for wireless. The UAP's run off of Ubiquiti's 24V Power-over-Ethernet (POE), which can be provided via a POE injector or with a Ubiquiti Switch (either Unifi or EdgeMax). So for a basic network, you'll disable the wireless functionality on your consumer router, and plug a UAP into a port (obviously you'll need to pass it through the POE injector first). Rinse and repeat for however many UAP's you want, maybe another one on the other side of the house for example.

The UAP is pretty useless on its own, though. It needs a piece of software called the Unifi Controller. The software is free, and you can run it on Windows, Linux, or with Ubiquiti's appliance called the Cloud Key. Within Unifi Controller, you'll setup the UAP's; e.g. setting the visible wifi name (SSID), security, channels, etc... It isn't too complicated, the interface is really intutive and anyone who is even slightly technical could figure it out. The controller also serves another really important feature, which is zero-handoff. As long as the controller is running, your device will connect to the access point with the best signal. This is the seamless switching you asked about.

Ubiquiti also is focused on mesh networking, although we are generally pretty against that for businesses for reliability reasons. Of course, the exception to that is Cisco Meraki, which is a hybrid that will self-heal. If you lie and say you are an IT professional, you can get a free Meraki with a 3 year license. Just make sure that you follow the rules.

As a note, I would stick to the UAP AC's. They are the newer version and run great. For consumers, the UAP-AC-LITE is going to work fine. Obviously there is more to networking and wireless solutions than what I went over here, but this is the general gist of it.

I apologize. Let me do my best to break it down clearly for you here. Because it's a lot of stuff I was confused too, so I made a document that I hope clearly details my build and the associated costs. For the sake of this, I'm excluding peripherals, because I can't buy them from Memory Express anyways. If you're interested in what I've chosen I can link those too.

So, to begin, ME is holding on to their last 1060 for me, if I do my full system build with them (due to miners, they won't sell it to me alone). As a result, I can price match any of my items with them -- including the video card (of course, I'll be hard-pressed to find the GPU for less than they're listing it for). That's why I listed PCPP -- according to the associate I spoke with, they're willing to price match with any of the sites on there, so long as they have the GPU in stock. This is the most up-to-date build I have -- I've for now excluded the peripherals and the RAM.

****

The CPU is the same as before:

Intel Core i3 8100 3.6Ghz, 6mb

Price Match w/ Vuugo @ $147.25

https://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX68268

**

The motherboard I think I managed to get the same one from a different ME, and it's being transferred to my local one.

MSI Z370-A Pro

Price Match w/ Newegg @ $149.99

https://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX68590

****

The RAM I'm still iffy about. The one I have on the build right now is a Kingston 2x4 GB for $125. I wasn't given a product number and forgot to ask, but through some digging on their website, I found this and I think it's that one because the price is the same (it's the only one at exactly that price). If not, they have it in stock and I can switch it out for this one.

As far as I can tell, it's identical to the one you linked. What do you mean by expandability? As far as I can tell, my motherboard has 4 memory slots. Can I not just add more RAM? Unless I need to use those to connect stuff like my HDD and SSD, but I thought those used PCI-e slots.

If 8 gb will do me fine then I'm happy, I just don't want to have to upgrade any time soon. The 16gb version of the same one is less than $100 more so it's something I'll have to consider. If it was you, what would you do? The choices:

Kingston HyperX Fury 2x4 GB

Price Match w/ PC-Canada @ $117.99

https://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX64812

OR

Kingston HyperX Fury 2x8GB

Price Match w/ Vuugo @ $218.50

https://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX66968


**

From what I could tell, ME had the best price on my SSD.

Samsung 850 Evo SSD 500GB

Memory Express @ $179

https://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX55510

I think I've decided on 500GB. More storage is always better, and again, I don't want to have to switch, transfer, or upgrade later. I aim to put only my OS and most of my games on there, so it will be dedicated to that.

*****

The HDD I went for 2TB. It's a $20 difference from 1TB so I figured the same as above.

Seagate 2TB BarraCuda HD Sata III w/ 64 M Cache

Price Match w/ ShopRBC @ $72.25

https://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX63178

*

The GPU I had to change from EVGA, because ME doesn't have that one in stock anywhere. This one, according to the salesperson and the Internet, has two fans and a higher speed. I figured that would end up being better anyways, but again, let me know if I'm causing a problem for myself here.

Asus GTX 1060 3GB

Price Match w/ PC-Canada @ $364.99

https://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX63930



The case I had to switch a bit to get one they had in stock. It's effectively the same as far as I can tell.

IN WIN G7 ATX Mid Tower Case, Black

Memory Express @ $59.99

https://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX52221




Same with the PSU. Think I used the filter to grab this one, sorted by Memory Express.

Corsair TXM Gold 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply

Price Match w/ PC-Canada @ $94.99

https://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX65812



The monitor they have in stock. I was looking to get a cheaper one at about 120Hz but apparently nobody has those.

ACER GN246HL 24in Full HD 144Hz LCD LED

Price Match w/ Amazon.ca @ $249.99

https://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX64422



So the total price of all of the above comes to:

$1446,44 if I choose to go with 8 GB of RAM, OR

$1546,95 if I choose to go with 16 GB of RAM.

Prices may fluctuate a bit depending on the prices I'm matching with (I'll review as I get closer to picking up the parts) and tax etc.

I hope that was enough. Please let me know if there's any more info you need. Sorry for the late response by the way, trying to get some homework done at the same time, haha.

Once more, thank you for your help. You've gone above and beyond what anyone would have asked of you, and I appreciate your help very very much. This kind of thing is why I love Reddit.


***

I've added the details on my peripherals below, just for fun. You can totally ignore this if you want, but if you're interested, here's the extra stuff I'm looking to get.

Fasteners

$13.97

https://www.amazon.ca/Monoprice-106457-Fastening-Cable-Black/dp/B004AFUJZC/ref=pd_bxgy_147_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=6JVF3PB6QH9VKNGJ9Z50

CM Masterkey Pro S RGB Cherry MX Brown

$139.99

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01D3BDN60/_encoding=UTF8?coliid=I2Q9BUBJBGLQRF&colid=27HBAHJXQ3YZ9&th=1

TP-Link TL-PA4010KIT AV500 Nano Powerline Adapter Starter Kit, Up to 500Mbps, Plug and Play

$49.99

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00AWRUICG/_encoding=UTF8?coliid=I3UXQO0VKJJAHK&colid=27HBAHJXQ3YZ9&psc=1

Mionix Ambidextrous Mouse (AVIOR 8200)**

$79.99

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00D3F7D86/?tag=pcp0f-20

TL/DR: a bit of background and personal experience ultimately suggesting that you run some network cable, and look into a full Ubiquiti setup with USG router, PoE switch & NanoHD Wi-Fi AP’s for around $400 including cabling, provided you’re not planning on upgrading your internet to faster than 1Gbps soon.


I’m not familiar with coax cable internet, but assume you can get some sort of Ethernet handoff from your modem?


Either way, make the effort and run some CAT6 cabling for Wi-Fi AP’s, and key devices too if possible.


My network setup in my 1150 square foot apartment, works perfectly on my 200Mbps fibre connection and would cost you around $483 for the following:

• Router: MikroTik RB3011 ($150) - https://www.amazon.com/Mikrotik-RB3011UIAS-RM-RouterBOARD-10xGigabit-Ethernet/dp/B01EL7TF9E
  
  
  
• Wi-Fi: 2x Ubiquiti NanoHD’s ($149 each)- https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Compact-802-11ac-Enterprise-UAP-NanoHD-US/dp/B07DWW3P6K
  
  
  
• Switch: Netgear 5-Port gigabit unmanaged Switch ($35) - https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Ethernet-Unmanaged-Protection-GS105NA/dp/B0000BVYT3
  
  
  I host the Ubiquiti Controller on a Windows PC acting as my home storage & media server and keep this running as a service (not necessary I know, but I like the stats).
  
  
  My network serves a mixture of around 30 devices, consisting of phones, tablets, computers, my home storage & media server, IoT devices, home theatre & TV’s all whilst doing some online gaming myself in the mix without hiccup. Hiccups are generally self-induced by my fiddling on the network. But from a stability and capability aspect, it’s perfect for me.
  
  
  I’ve previously used the “cheaper” MikroTik RB2011 ($102), which could also work for you - https://www.amazon.com/MikroTik-RB2011UiAS-RM-Routerboard-Rackmount-5xGbit/dp/B00DYWE2Z0
  
  
  However, if you you were already considering Ubiquiti Wi-Fi AP’s, then possibly consider going with a full Ubiquiti setup, by getting one of their routers & Wi-Fi AP’s? Ubiquiti’s UniFi range is quite impressive and I too like the commercial appeal of their products, so I’m slowly shifting my network over to a full Ubiquiti one (don’t tell my wife). A Ubiquiti setup could cost you between $384 with 1 AP and $533 with 2 AP’s... (although I feel you may need at least 2 AP’s)... excluding the cost of the cabling needed.
  
  
  But if I were you, I’d look into a setup like:
  
  
  
• Router: UniFi Security Gateway USG (+/- $128) - https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Unifi-Security-Gateway-USG/dp/B00LV8YZLK
  
  
  
• Switch: UniFi 8-Port PoE Switch (+/- $107) -
  https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-UniFi-Switch-60W-US-8-60W/dp/B01MU3WUX1
  
  
  
• And at least 1 Wi-Fi AP: UniFi NanoHD ($149) - https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Compact-802-11ac-Enterprise-UAP-NanoHD-US/dp/B07DWW3P6K
  
  
  If you could, the more robust UniFi USG-Pro 4 (tad bit expensive) would be a great router as I’ve read that the standard USG can cause speed issues with speeds above 500Mbps, when enabling nice-to-have features like its Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) and Intrusion Prevention System (IPS). These features are not necessary, but nice if you’re like me and like the stats and functionality they bring.
  
  
  
• USG-Pro 4 ($379) - https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Unifi-Security-Gateway-USG-PRO-4/dp/B019PBEI5W
  
  
  Good luck and enjoy the setup once you decide and get the kit. Always fun setting up a new network gear.
  
  
  edit:
  
  
• fixed typos and sentence structure.
  
  
• forgot I had a 5-port Netgear switch. Added that info & updated prices.
  
  
• fixed link for RB3011.

Well - let's see.. I know that you have Verizon with a 75/75 Connection. So it sounds like you have a FiOS Connection and most likely have an ONT (Optical Network Terminal) on the outside/inside of your house. My guess is a 611/612. None the less, it's TYPICALLY better to utilize their Modem with their services. I am not sure Verizon allows a "bring your own Modem" when you have FiOS. I do not have them, however. But from my memory, I believe that is the case. If you CAN use your own - I can definitely recommend a Modem for you!

So otherwise would suggest contacting Verizon or going to a local store - to see if you can get a STANDALONE Modem. Something with 1 LAN Ethernet Port and no internal Router/Switch. As said above - a lot of people with Modem/Router combos seem to run into more issues than not - with a lot of basic configuration changes. Such as Port Forwarding, etc. But - mileage varies depending on the user.

As for a suggested Router? Oh boy.. that depends on how hardcore you want to go. A lot of people give NETGEAR some flak, but they've been killing it lately in their Quality Control and market. I'll give you a few to go by, depending on how intense you want to go.

-----

NETGEAR Nighthawk R7000

• Link: https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Nighthawk-Gigabit-Support-Compatible/dp/B00F0DD0I6
  
  This is the more.."Lightweight" of the Nighthawk Series. They go up in "quality", for more money of course. The feature set is different as you go up in the line, but doesn't necessarily mean things will be "better". But they are great for Gaming. Not particularly because of the reasons they market, but because of how they handle Traffic internally, and their support for any odd configurations you may need to handle. Feel free to check out the Nighthawk Series a bit.
  
  NETGEAR AC1750
  
  
• Link: https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Router-AC1750-Gigabit-R6300v2/dp/B00EM5UFP4/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1494439575&sr=1-2&keywords=netgear+router
  
  It's basically the same concept as the Nighthawk R7000 - actually within the same technical family. The biggest difference for the Nighthawk is more or less it's range and a few other capabilities. But in terms of performance - they typically function the same. Another excellent Choice.
  
  TP-Link Archer C7
  
  
• Link: https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-Archer-Wireless-Gigabit-Router/dp/B00BUSDVBQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1494439549&sr=1-1&keywords=C7+Router
  
  This thing is moderately known - but not often talked about. TP Link has always had some great quality hardware. The software isn't anything too extreme, but the quality and performance is decent enough for me to recommend it.
  
  NETGEAR N600
  
  
• Link: https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-N600-Wi-Fi-Router-WNDR3400/dp/B0041LYY6K
  
  A cheaper alternative, if you don't want anything super crazy - and need something more affordable. It's a pretty decent quality, I used to have this at one point and a few of my friends use these and have never had any issues with any Port Forwarding, or extras that they've needed to take care of. Great signal quality in a 2 story home - and kills it in performance for the price.
  
  -----
  
  Those are a few of my recommendations. Of course there are plenty more - but those ones specifically I have had great experiences with. Either with friends, or my own personal preference. For myself, I have the Nighthawk R7000 and previously had the NETGEAR N600. The only reason I left that one behind - was because I wanted a little more of an extended range when I was outside of my home in the yard. Which the R7000 handled perfectly. But - that's not a scenario many people really deal with. Plus you can always make/buy an extender.
  
  I'm glad to help, when I can! :)
  
  
  

First, for a modem+router to work you need to receive service from a internet service provider (Cox, At&T, etc.) not from a mobile carrier (T-Mobile, Sprint). Do you already receive receive service from a internet service provider? Someone would be paying them a monthly fee and you would be receiving internet to your home from a cable/coax outlet or a DSL outlet.

Second, Nighthawk equipment is typically targeted to intense internet usage. Nighthawk's maximum capabilities will generally not be realized unless you are paying for the highest internet subscription from your ISP and also using multiple network-taxing PCs for gaming, livestreaming, and downloading. If all you want is faster internet for a few home devices like phones, you can use a cheaper modem and a cheaper router.

The first Nighthawk router you linked is designed for train stations and mansions with all smart appliances, not for typical home use. There's probably no reason for you to fork over $450 for it.

The second Nighthawk router you listed for 60 GHz, which means super fast speed but doesn't work outside of close proximity (like 10 feet). While 60 GHz chips have been developed, basically no commercial devices use them, only prototypes. I imagine 60 GHz will eventually be used for 4K streaming to smart TVs located near the router, but it's just not worth forking over $400.

Third, pick a modem that matches the speed of your subscription with your ISP. Here is a guide for picking a cable modem. Basically, higher DOCSIS version number (3.1 vs 3.0) and higher number of channels (32 vs 16 vs 8) means higher capabilities and more expensive. For typical home internet use, DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem with 8 channels is plenty. This is the type of cable modem I have, and it supports my 100 Mbps internet subscription. A DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem with 8 channels should be about $50. If you really want to make sure you match your internet subscription, you can get a DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem with 16 channels for about $80-$90. You probably don't need the Nighthawk DOCSIS 3.1 cable modem with 32 channels that you listed, which is about $150.

Here is a guide for picking a DSL modem. Basically, a VDSL modem has higher capability than an ADSL modem. An ADSL modem might not be fast enough for your typical home use, but you can get an ADSL modem for about $40-$50. VDSL modems should work for your typical home use. VDSL modems are usually sold a as a combination modem+router, rather than a standalone modem. You can get a VDSL modem+router with a faster router half for about $120+. You can get a VDSl modem+router with a slower router half for about $70.

Fourth, pick a router that suits your home use. You want a router that (1) has fast speed and (2) has enough range for a signal to reach you based on your home size. Here is a brief guide of routers speed. Basically, WiFi "AC" protocol is the standard for home use, and higher numbers after the "AC" (AC 1900 vs AC 1750) means faster speed. AC 1200 routers are typically about $405-$50. AC 1750 routers are typically about $80. AC 1900 routers are typically about $120. You might notice the speed difference between 1200 and 1900. You probably won't notice the speed difference between 1750 and 1900. Anything above 1900 you probably won't be able to tell the difference.

There isn't really a guide on router range. Router manufacturers have collectively agreed not to advertise their signal strengths. So you have to look around the internet for reviews, or do your own tests. You can do you own tests by buying multiple routers, using any of the millions of free Wi-Fi strength apps on the app store, and returning the the routers with lower strength. I tested some routers this way and ended up keeping this router.

I prefer standalone routers. They sometimes perform better than combination modem+routers because designers didn't have to worry about incorporating a modem. Also, I can swap them out without having to buy a new modem. However, you can also buy a combination modem+router to save space. But make sure the modem half matches your internet subscription, and the router half matches your home use. By paying for a decent internet subscription, matching my modem to the internet subscription, and matching my router to my home, I have the best in-home WiFi of any of my friends.

EDIT: Fifth, wait for Black Friday and Cyber Monday electronics deals. Electronics usually go on sale the weekend after Thanksgiving. You might be able to pick up compatible modems and routers for cheaper.

Hi /u/codyhart - I am a GH4 shooter. It is a great camera, but with a $3000 camera budget, I would buy a camcorder.

As you say, by the time you buy ND filters, a Speedbooster to compensate for the GH4's sensor size, an XLR audio solution with decent preamps and rigging (e.g., a top handle) to compensate for its ergonomics - you might as well buy a real video camera.

In your price range, I recommend a [$2499 like new Super 35 4K JVC LS300 from a JVC authorized dealer] (https://www.amazon.com/JVC-GY-LS300CHU-Ultra-Camcorder-Handle/dp/B00USBVISE/ref=as_li_ss_tl?m=A2G9URD6L8MGV6&s=merchant-items&ie=UTF8&qid=1487606994&linkCode=ll1&tag=battleforthew-20) with a [$238 Canon to micro 4/3 autofocusing adapter] (http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?icep_ff3=2&pub=5575034783&toolid=10001&campid=5337235943&customid=&icep_item=351515840152&ipn=psmain&icep_vectorid=229466&kwid=902099&mtid=824&kw=lg) and something like a [used $264.93 Sigma 17-50mm f/2.8 lens with a 30 day warranty from Cellular Stream via Amazon] (https://www.amazon.com/Sigma-17-50mm-Aperture-Standard-Digital/dp/B003A6H27K/ref=as_li_ss_tl?m=A3GMNP3CXMIPDP&s=merchant-items&ie=UTF8&qid=1487606647&linkCode=ll1&tag=battleforthew-20).

The LS300 has these features the GH4 lacks:

• 1080/120p slow motion (the GH4 is limited to 1080/96p)
  
• built-in ND filters
  
• built-in pro XLR inputs with phantom
  
• dual card slots (the GH4 has one)
  
• top handle
  
• LOG profile (the GH4's LOG profile costs $100 extra)
  
• built-in IP encoder for [live streaming] (https://youtu.be/Y3oYNy47yYo) with a [$9 wi-fi dongle] (https://www.amazon.com/Edimax-EW-7811Un-150Mbps-Raspberry-Supports/dp/B003MTTJOY//ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=battleforthew-20)
  
• SDI out
  
• full size HDMI out
  
• power zoom rocker with [prime zoom] (https://youtu.be/0Eq4_hPzQPc), which gives you a 2.5x lossless zoom with prime lenses
  
  I have shot with this camera, it is a solid pro camcorder with the ability to produce high quality 4K video at a reasonable price.
  
  Here are a few examples of the image quality this camera can produce:
  
  Narrative
  
  
• [UrbEx by Filippo Chiesa] (https://vimeo.com/200431612) (4K)
  
  
• [Даниил Хармс стихотворение Страх |Тест камеры JVC GY-LS300 by Александр Носовский] (https://youtu.be/xyO_-T7BhdM) (1080p)
  
  
• [JVC LS300 Test Footage by Hamilton Video & Sound Limited] (https://youtu.be/qQoDt62DNak) (1080p)
  
  Music Video
  
  
• [JVC GY-Ls300 Test 001 by Dario Viola] (https://youtu.be/LRWuOhLSAi8) (1080p)
  
  Corporate/Commercial/Interview
  
  
• [Halloween AM Skit by Robert Grant] (https://youtu.be/knzu5ZLgYMc) (1080p - Local TV promo - LS300 used on some shots)
  
  
• [KW Realty Group Experience, Anniston, Alabama by Barrett House Productions] (https://youtu.be/5fSgXSCEg9M) (1080p - [Azden SGM250 pro XLR microphone] (https://www.amazon.com/Azden-SGM-250-Professional-Powered-Microphone/dp/B00XWG2YBW//ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=battleforthew-20) plugged directly into the camcorder)
  
  
• [Indian Oaks Event Center Community Golf Course by Barrett House Productions] (https://youtu.be/CLBbyXualSs) (1080p)
  
  Live Event
  
  
• [Supersonic Lips - House of Blues - Mas Musica Festival by Juan Flores] (https://vimeo.com/185562492) (1080p)
  
  
• [JVC LS300 Sample low light Footage (The Pocket Band) by Lonzos Studios] (https://youtu.be/VXEWARTJhv8) (2160p)
  
  Wedding
  
  
• [4K Ultra HD Wedding Film - Kassandra & Ralph's Photo Shoot by Jim Merchant] (https://youtu.be/d4pILlMyFEM) (2160p - shot with manual Rokinon cine lenses)
  
  
• [Kristin & Doug's Wedding at Glen Magna Farms 4K Ultra-HD Wedding by Jim Merchant] (https://youtu.be/GdKBKd5_e2Q) (2160p - shot with the LS300 and a Sony AX100 consumer camcorder)
  
  
• [Wedding with a jvc gy-ls300 by NOA NOA] (https://vimeo.com/154440004) (1080p - shot with the LS300 and Panasonic auto lenses)
  
  J-LOG on Vimeo (please watch at 4K and your monitor's highest resolution)
  
  
• [Japanese garden with the JVC gy ls300 by NOA NOA] (https://vimeo.com/162712903)
  
  
• [JVC GY-LS300 4K J-Log Vision] (https://vimeo.com/138523082)
  
  
• [Palm Springs Photo Festival 2016 - JVC LS300 footage by Zachary Andrews] (https://vimeo.com/164723392) (4K J-LOG)
  
  1080p on Vimeo
  
  
• [Breathing in New Life] (http://vimeo.com/120445118)
  
  
• [“Honmonji Temple” in GY-LS300 by moribun] (https://vimeo.com/139214323) (downscaled from UHD to 1080p, downloadable if you're a Vimeo Plus or Pro member [if you're not, you can sign up [here] (http://vimeo.com/pro/new?utm_source=affiliate&utm_medium=prosubscribe-cj-vimeo-bizlander-300x250-20130424&utm_campaign=7696)])
  
  
• [JVC GY-LS300 Camera Test] (http://vimeo.com/122736335)
  
  
• [A Snowy Day in Ann Arbor, Shot with the JVC GY-LS300 by Chase Stanton] (https://vimeo.com/158042771)
  
  J-LOG on YouTube (please watch at 2160p and your monitor's highest resolution)
  
  
• [GY-LS300 4K J-Log1 "KYOTO New Year's Day" by GAIPROMOTION] (https://youtu.be/efJrfawjVw0)
  
  Non-LOG Gammas on YouTube (2160p)
  
  
• [GY-LS300 UHD 4K w/ Canon 70-200 and 85mm lenses by JVCProfessional] (https://youtu.be/QYCdxMrvAoA)
  
  
• [JVC LS300 Clips by Hamilton Video & Sound Limited] (https://youtu.be/OzgGwCUdZV0)
  
  
• [EVS’s test footage for the JVC GY-LS300 4K super 35 Cinema camera] (https://youtu.be/S47dceBcuJI)
  
  
• [TOKYO“I”land KOWA PROMINAR w/JVC KENWOOD GY-LS300 by Satoshi Watanabe] (https://youtu.be/WO8DW5d0isE)
  
  
• [JVC GY-LS300 4K Footage by elton chong] (https://youtu.be/0pYEFhE3xLE)
  
  This camera is not perfect. It has a tiny viewfinder and LCD, so you'll probably need to buy an EVF - and, although it has 4:2:2 chroma subsampling, it is still an 8-bit camera.
  
  But for less than $3000, it is the most flexible large sensor, interchangeable lens 4K Super 35 camcorder on the market.
  
  Hope this is helpful and good luck with finding the right camera for your needs!

I can't believe that after 173 comments, no one has the explanation as to why this is the case. I guess it's finally my time to shine. Simply put, the PS3 uses a wi-fi standard that's currently in most homes today. The PS4 uses a newer, faster standard. So why is it slower then? Because most people's routers aren't upgraded to this new standard yet. Sony made the PS4's wi-fi module more future-proof, but as of now it's definitely too future-proof. There are two work-arounds to this issue. You either A) buy a router that uses the new wi-fi standard or the better option IMO, B) buy one of these genius little network powerline adapters. Why do I think the powerline adapter is better? It's cheaper than most routers that use the new wi-fi standard and it's a wired connection. You ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS, want a wired connection with your gaming devices. Save the wi-fi for your phones and tablets. Wire connections are faster and more stable than wi-fi. The network powerline adapter allows you to have a wired connection even if you don't have the ethernet wire routed to the room with your PS4.



"But wait u/IVIajesty, how does this marvelous machine pull off such a magical feat???"



It's simple young padawon. You connect the first module into the outlet and into your router. It sends the ethernet connection throughout your homes circuiting. You connect the second module into the outlet by your PS4 and into your PS4 via ethernet cable, and alakazam! The internet signal is transferred over through the rooms. It's like having a wired connection, without having a wired connection! Woo!



Bonus LPT: If you have an electronics store like Best Buy or Fry's by you, you can buy the device from them and make sure it works. If it doesn't, they have 15 day return policies. This device works in pretty much 99% of home circuiting layouts. There are a few cases where the circuiting of the home isn't compatible with this device, but it's rare. If it doesn't work, you can always return it.



Bonus-Bonus LPT: Best Buy and Fry's both price check, so if it's cheaper on Amazon or any other reputable online vender, make sure you take advantage of that to save a couple extra bucks.



Edit: Used some bolding and italics to make my comment sexier.
Edit 2: It seems as though I might've have confused standard with a different word or I might've gotten my info from an unreliable source. Crossed out the wrong info. Guess I'm not a savior after all :'(

I am selling a few electronic items that are in like new condition for good prices.

I've got:

• A Model YHT-497 Yamaha 5.1 Channel Home Theater in a Box System. Comparable model new for $430, selling for $350. 100W per channel and the sub has a satisfying kick, discrete receiver, sub, and speakers so they can be upgraded separately down the road. Comes with a decent roll of cheap speaker cable.
  
  
• An ARRIS/Motorola SURFboard DOCSIS 3.0 Cable Modem, Model SB6121. New for $69, selling for $50. This has a three star certification for use with XFINITY internet services which is the highest and most thorough level of testing they do.
  
  
• A Netgear Wireless Router w/ Dual Band Gigabit, Model R6300-100NAS. New for $150, selling for $120. This thing's just fucking great. I've never had any complaints about Comcast's service, and I think this guy (recently paired with the SURFboard) is the main guy to thank for that. I think I've had to reset it maybe once or twice ever.
  
  
• Official PS3 Wireless Stereo Headset w/ USB Wireless Receiver, Model CECHYA-0080. New for $100, selling for $75. These are big bulky headphones with a microphone attached. Nice sound quality, though I'm sure audiophiles would disagree.
  
  
• Monoprice speaker stands, set of 2. New for $15-20, selling for $10. These things are flimsy but they'll hold your small speakers off the ground just the same.
  
  Now, you're probably wondering why I'm willing to part for such like new items at such discounts. The reason is that there was a fire a month and a half ago in my old building and these were affected by the humidity and/or smoke to varying degrees. But they're all back from the Electronics Restoration Service, who tested, restored, cleaned, and deoderized each individual component before testing them again to ensure proper function. I then tested each item when I resumed possession of them.
  
  But, because of a gap in communication between the ERS guys and my insurance claim rep, getting these things back took over a month, and in the meantime I had replaced my sound system and internet devices. I'd hoped to be able to return them within the Best Buy returns timeframe but things dragged on too long. The speaker stands I don't need because in my new place I've mounted my rear speakers on the walls. The PS3 headset I don't need because my PS3 didn't make it through the ordeal. The 360 below it and the TV above it did, though, and both work fine as a testament to these guy's abilities.
  
  Related to that I guess I also have a couple other things for sale:
  
  
• A slew of PS3 games. No PS3 anymore and I'm not sure I'll replace it so these are for sale. All barely affected by the incident but still individually cleaned by the guys at ERS. Let me know if you're interested in something and I'll figure a price.
  
  
• 2 PS3 Controllers, one black and one white. Note that they did not try to restore or clean these at all since the system was shot. You can test them and we can figure out a fair price if you're interested.
  
  So yeah. Like new, restored items for good prices. Who's interested?

>EDIT: oh, and turn off the Wi-Fi on the comcast box so it doesn't conflict.

Hey /u/Archvile7, thanks again for the prompt and in depth response. I gave you a well deserved upvote. You clearly have a lot of experience and a lot of insight into the field. I received the floor plan from the owner and I just purchased the Ubiquiti Unifi UAP-AC-LR-US based on your recommendation and the rave reviews it has received. I just needed that little push from someone who has some skin in the game. You make some really good points in regards to troubleshooting down the road. Ultimately, I think that I wanted to do it for experience and they want to have me try it. As the saying goes, it's good to know someone in IT... well that's not really a saying, but you get what I mean.

Thanks for sharing your personal experience with network setups. This shop does in fact run a large dryer used to dry screen printed clothing, so I will avoid those areas due to high temperatures. I have a location already in mind to securely install the AP to a joist. As stated before, the Ethernet cables are already run throughout from the previous tenants, so I theoretically would only have to terminate a few cables.

I may start with the single AP and see how that performs for them. I was considering a guest VLAN for them, but let's keep that on the back burner for now. From what I've been reading on Amazon, users have installed the Ubiquiti software controller on a Raspberry Pi. Again, I may or may not go down that road, but it could be an inexpensive way of getting more control remotely. I will most definitely set up the SSID and password the same to ensure easy handoff. They don't have wireless printers or any of that. Very simple network layout so far. I plugged three of their computers to an Ethernet that is plugged into a 5-port switch.

This may be optimistic thinking, but I am hoping that the Ubiquiti AP will offer strong enough coverage so that I can turn off the WiFi on the Xfinity gateway like you said. The Xfinity gateway is located near their office, which they probably would continue to want WiFi. This was the 'bridge mode' question that I had. If the signal isn't quite strong enough coming from the AP in the warehouse, I may leave the Xfinity gateway running WiFi, or I will simply have them purchase a second AP for the office area.

Again, I really appreciate the deep analysis and sharing your personal experiences with me. I will continue to update this thread for future researchers. I think that this will come in handy for many who are genuinely interested in getting their hands dirty.

ok. I get it. if I'm going to be buying a router I should buy an AC model so I could future proof myself. everyone is suggesting the ac66u, but if I'm going to spend $150 to future proof myself, I'd rather pony up an extra $50+ to get the best available router out right now.

so from my research I noticed that the ASUS AC87U is pretty neat (sorry about the ASUS love but I am basing my research off of mainly one article and the author, at the time of writing, really loved the ASUS routers).

ASUS model: http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-RT-AC87U-Wireless-AC2400-Gigabit-Router/dp/B00MPI5N7U

is this a good option or is there a better, cheaper option? would the ac66u suffice? would this linksys be a better alternative?

Linksys: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00K91DB7Y/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1427049742&sr=8-1&keywords=linksys+wrt1900ac&dpPl=1&dpID=41BI8x1i4HL&ref=plSrch&pi=AC_SY200_QL40

or maybe even a nighthawk?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00F0DD0I6/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1427052167&sr=8-1&keywords=netgear+nighthawk&pi=AC_SX200_QL40&dpPl=1&dpID=41651m2TjVL&ref=plSrch

anyways I'm just wondering how do those compare to the router you've suggested? which is the best today? is it worth it to go for the ac87u even though it's still $250 or am I better off going for the $200 routers?

Everyone is telling you to get a gigabit switch and put all your routers into AP mode. They're forgetting one important thing. You still need a router/firewall on your incoming connection. I recommend the following:

1. pfSense firewall/router. You have many options when it comes to pfSense. You can build a device out of an older computer. The requirements are an x64 processor that has AES-NI (just Google your CPU brand, model and AES-NI. You must have that for future versions of pfSense. Also, it'd be best to have an Intel NIC. Not RealTek or Broadcom. Intel is well supported in pfSense. Or, you could buy a new device. You could buy a new computer and build it yourself or you could buy directly from Netgate. If you don't have anyone that's good with computers you should buy from Netgate (and even if you do have someone who's "good with computers"). Try this model: https://store.netgate.com/SG-3100.aspx
   
   
   
2. Gigabit managed switch. The reason I say managed is that you never know if you'll need to create VLANs for a guest network. You can get a nice switch from eBay. Or if you get a specific Netgate device (SG-3100) it has a switch built in. If you get support on the device (which is extra, but I recommend it) you'll get assistance setting up the appliance with guest VLAN. If you just want a cheaper pfSense device you will still need a switch. Dell, HP or (my preference) Cisco. PoE is nice, but not needed.
   
   
3. Access points. There's no other way to say this. You guys are using the wrong hardware. You should be using prosumer/enterprise level equipment. What's nice is that you don't have to spend enterprise level prices to get this equipment. I'd recommend Ubiquiti AP AC Pro access points:
   
   https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Networks-802-11ac-Dual-Radio-UAP-AC-PRO-US/dp/B015PRO512
   
   When you purchase individual APs from that link above, the PoE injector comes with it. The 5 pack does not have injectors so you'd need to buy those separately. Now depending on the size of each floor, you might need more than one AP one the floor. In WiFi, you never want to max out the transmit power. This seems like an odd thing to say. But think about it, if you're in a lecture hall, you can hear the professor easily because he's using a mic and speakers. However, if you have a question you have to speak very loudly (since you sit at the back of the room). It's possible you can't speak loudly enough for him to hear you. This is the same for wireless devices. Just because you blast your AP, doesn't mean that long distance devices have the power to talk back. This wastes your battery. This is the reason for multiple APs.
   
   This isn't really that bad, price wise. These devices will allow the frat to have good signal strength throughout the house. If you have more questions or would like assistance with the config, I'd be happy to help.
   
   

So the first thing you should decide is what type of internet to get. The vast majority of people get cable or fiber (if they can afford it and if it's available). Both of those options give you good reliable internet. The cheap option is to get DSL which works over telephone lines. DSL usually has low speeds and isn't as reliable but only costs like $30 a month compared to $60-100 for better internet. If you like to stream movies or do anything outside of very basic browsing, I would say to get cable if you can afford it. What you do then is find a provider for that internet (internet service provider - ISP). Comcast, Cox, AT&T, Verizon, and many local companies are ISPs but you're probably limited to only one or two in whatever region you live (assuming USA). You should also know that these companies have random naming conventions for their services (Comcast calls their cable Xfinity while AT&T calls theirs Uverse) So you go to their web sites and compare plans and find something that works for you (if you don't know what speed you need, I would recommend 20 Mbps or more for streaming and normal use, 50 Mbps if you're a really heavy user). You can use this to find out what providers even have wiring in your area (if the top speed for a certain provider only shows as 10-25 mbps, then it's likely only DSL).

If you go with cable, you'll need both a modem (which receives the internet connection from the cable built into your apartment) and a router (which takes that wired connection and turns it into wireless - wifi). I would recommend buying your own hardware because companies like Comcast charge you something like $7-10 a month per modem/router that you get from them, which ends up being more expensive than buying your own to start with. If you buy your own modem, make sure it will work with whatever cable provider you select (something like this is standard). After that, you hook up your router. There are many to choose from. You can get one for as little as $10-30, but I would recommend getting a better one like this if you can as it performs exceptionally well and is easy to set up as well.

If you have any specific questions, let me know.

There is a product out there called Powerline Adaptors that might be able to help you out. That link is just the first one I saw, but they range from 35-90 bucks. They use your home power outlets to transmit internet signals to other rooms. The rooms have to be on the same circuit, I believe. Do some research, but it would essentially allow you to run wired internet to other rooms easily.

Having a wired ps4 makes a literal world of a difference. If I was on wifi, I think I would literally get 1/10th if my actual speed. Last time I check I went from the 180/20 to like 20/2. For the actual remote play, there is an option in the ps4 for the vita to connect directly to the ps4. In some cases that works best, but for me I opt to go through my router to the ps4, and it’s a dream. There’s some boxes to check/uncheck on the vita and ps4, plus a few other network actions like changing device channels and so forth for additional fine tuning. I did tons of research and spent tons of time tweaking it. Once you go through it all and get it just right, it’s just...chefs kiss....perfect. Regardless, id highly recommend getting a Vita anyway if you don’t have one! Loads of great games, a wonderful feeling handheld, and of course, the remote play. If you ever do decide to pick one up, feel free to hit me up if you have any other questions

Here are your options for home wifi networking:

1. Buy a super strong wifi router and you're good to go even in a large home - as long as you don't live in a repurposed bomb shelter. An example of a "super strong" router: here
   
2. Buy a normal router or your current one and add access points. An example of a "normal" router: here . An access point (AP) is not a wifi extender. You must run a cable (CAT 5E/ CAT 6) from your router to the location where you need improved wifi signal, there you plug in the AP and attach the Ethernet cable from the router. The AP simply turns a wired connection into a wireless one and broadcasts the same network as that coming from your router. An example of an AP: here .
   
3. Buy a normal router or your current router and use a wifi extender(s). I wifi extender receives packets from your wireless router, ups the signal strength, and then forwards them to a nearby host. If you are having poor signal at point B and the router is at point A then put the extender directly in the middle of the 2; I have seen so many people make the mistake of putting the extender at point B, which defeats the whole purpose because it is just your host device's antenna vs the extender's.
   
4. An extender/AP all in one device. An example: here
   
5. A mesh wifi system. It can be difficult to distinguish a multi-AP/ multi-extender setup from a mesh system, but the main differences are that the mesh will be easier to setup and more "polished" in general. A mesh system will automatically detect the SSID (network name) from the wifi router and extend it. Want to add a signal booster? With mesh you can buy another matching unit and use WPS for a one button setup. The mesh is also smart in identifying when you move from one area to another ans switching to the closer device to server you your packets. Now, this is seen in some higher end APs and extenders such as here , but its not as seamless and usually more expensive in the long run. An example of a mesh system: here
   
   APs are generally more stable (UBIQUITI makes great ones) due to the wired connection. I like using APs because I can buy as I need more and set some up on different VLANs and hide SSIDs, but those are more advanced options. For most people who do not want to run cable or go with more of a permanent networking setup, the easiest and most effective solution is generally a mesh system. The TP-Link one is great as well as Google WiFi.
   
   EDITED: Because the bot thought I was using affiliate links...

Never, not even once. I have COX, I've offered to pay more... doesn't matter.

I live in Phoenix... I pay for 25 this is what I get. But hey I'm still getting about half of what I pay for... which in my experience with COX should be counted as a win. I say it should be counted as a win because I moved before, terminated service, they acknowledged I'd terminated service by phone.... but, but, but something didn't quite go as planned on their end so I get to pay for an extra 6 months of "service" to an empty apartment that didn't consume a single byte of data during that time.

Anybody from COX who wants to contact me about actually providing me with what I pay for I'd be more than happy to talk with you. 10 service calls to my house has never been able to improve this whatsoever so if you think you're up to fixing it my hat's off to you. For now I'll just say that I feel like I've been financially raped by this corporation & hearing that they are one of the good ones is pretty disheartening.

I'm hoping that the telecom corporations break apart into a million little pieces and that competition drives prices down. To me looking for a good provider is like trying to find an honest Bail Bondsman... I mean there's a certain culture in this industry where looking for the good guys in the mix seems like a fools errand to me, but hey some people weren't fucked over by COX which is great. Glad to hear other people had a better experience.

EDIT: this is the modem I use... just thought I'd throw that out there before anyone pointed out how modems can slow everything down, yeah I know, first thing I tried before I starting asking for outside help.

Your router is simply the point where your local network is translated out to other networks (in this case the internet). Since you want to be on the same local network as everything else in the house, what you're looking for is NOT a second router. I believe you are falling prey to incorrect terminology here. What you want (assuming you want a wireless connection) is to have a WAP (Wireless Access Point) to provide a wifi signal where you need it. Here's how that works. From your router, you use one of your spare ports to run a cable to the area you want a better wireless signal, you then plug said cable into a wireless access point and it will provide wireless connectivity in that area depending on the range and specifications of the WAP.

Now, there ARE ways to extend wifi range and use a second, or third WAP without running a cable to it as some of the other gentlemen mentioned. This can be done if your router (the one going to your provider/ISP) ALSO has wireless capabilities. In that case, a remote WAP could do something called bridging the connection. Basically you could use the second WAP to receive the wireless signal of the router, and extend it as a second hop. This does bring problems though since without the WAP being hard wired, you're relying on the wireless signal from the router to the WAP, and from the WAP to your PC. There's a lot more that goes into doing wireless bridging than if you simply cabled the WAP instead. For example, you need to carefully place the WAP so it's close enough to the router to receive a strong-ish signal, but you ALSO need the WAP to be close enough to the low signal area to provide you with a better signal.

As you can see, the better of the two options is simply to run a cable from your router to the WAP where you need your wireless signal. WAPs can be pretty cheap, easily under 100 bucks. I personally use a UniFi AC Pro AP for my wireless access point since my router doesn't have WiFi, however for your case I think a longer range solution like the UniFi AC LR AP would be better. https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-UAP-AC-LR-Networks-Enterprise-System/dp/B015PRCBBI There are other brands out there too, but this one is nice because it has free software you can use to see who is connected to the WAP, what the signal strength for them is, and how much (if any) noise there is on the frequencies that the WiFi signal is going over. Since you life on a farm house, there should be little to no RF(Radio frequency) noise, so the signal should be nice and strong.

Hope this helps!

1. Run the VR compatibility check: https://store.steampowered.com/app/323910/SteamVR_Performance_Test/
   
2. Upgrade to Windows 10 version 1809:https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
   
3. Load Steam VR: https://store.steampowered.com/app/250820/
   
4. Load STEAM WMR: https://store.steampowered.com/app/719950/
   
5. Bluetooth: For all but Samsung Odyssey HMD+, be sure your computer has a Bluetooth capability to talk to the hand controllers. If capability is not built in, buy a Bluetooth dongle and plug it into a USB 2 port. AND, if possible place this in an USB 2 port that is away from the Headset connection to the computer --- perhaps the front of the computer. Known to work (Plugable Bluetooth 4.0 low energy.): https://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Bluetooth-Adapter-Raspberry-Compatible/dp/B009ZIILLI
   
6. Plug in the your headset:a. Headset HDMI: plug headset HDMI connector into your graphics cardb. Headset USB: plug into USB 3 connector (blue or red)This will cause the headset software to install the headset to start runningAlternate approach: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-set-your-windows-mixed-reality-headset
   
7. Pair your controllers:https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/mixed-reality/enthusiast-guide/set-up-windows-mixed-reality#set-up-your-motion-controllers
   
8. Play Space: be sure you clear plenty of space. If you are 6 foot, you need a nine foot ceiling. You can break controllers, your hands, or TVs etc. if you do not have enough space. I found that standing on a rug the siz of your safe area (for me that is 8 feet by 6 feet) enables my feet to tell me if I am heading toward a boundary where trouble lurks. A padded rug or yoga mat helps with being able to sense edges and play for long sessions.
   
9. Games: start with free and check STEAM for the most played. Consider:
   
   a. The Lab
   
   b. Rec Room
   
   c. Google Earth
   
   d. You Tube
   
   e. Beat Saber
   
   f. Elven Assassin
   
   g. Arizona Sunshine
   
   h. Gorn
   
   i. Pavlov
   
   ​
   
   
10. Location of free WMR software for education: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/search/shop/apps?q=victoryvr
    
    to see the way school use these to make middle and high scholl curriculums, as well as, other items from VictoryVR education company : https://www.victoryvr.biz/victoryvr-products/
    
    ​
    
    
11. Buy rechargeable batteries: people say the Amazon basic rechargeable are great; highly rated from IKEAhttps://www.amazon.com/Ikea-ladda-Battery-rechargeable-2450/dp/B01MQ0U97A/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1544531944&sr=8-4&keywords=ikea+rechargeable+batteries#customerReviews

I'm a little late to your question but here's my two cents:

1. Nothing will be as good as running a cable. CAT5E or CAT6 won't really matter much for most users. CAT6 will get you past the 1Gbps speed at certain distances, but CAT5e supports 1Gbps at 100 m (about 300 ft). CAT6 is also more expansive and more difficult to work with (the strands are thicker which means they won't bend as well and they are harder to crimp connectors). The cable and connectors to do this will cost less than the Moca or powerline adaptors, but obviously you have to install the cable and that can sometimes be prohibitive. You could hire an electrician and he could possibly do it for less than $100, so don't rule that out either. Modular jacks can be terminated in a wall jack without the need to crimp, like Leviton (https://www.amazon.com/Leviton-5G108-RW5-QuickPort-Cat-5e-White/dp/B00029IYUM/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1539285173&sr=1-4&keywords=leviton+wall+jack). All you need is one cable and you can connect multiple devices in your office and even put in a wireless access point so your phone has a good connection.
   
   
2. Barring the cabling option, I think powerline is the next best option. A pair like this (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07B5BTKS3/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1) will only cost you $70 and will give you speeds of a few hundred Mbps in most cases. It's cheap, easy, and reliable. I have personally experienced that these work pretty well, although not as good as real CAT5 cable.
   
   
3. If for some reason you must go with Moca, a pair like this (https://www.amazon.com/Actiontec-Bonded-Ethernet-Adapter-ECB6200S02/dp/B013J7O3X0/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1539284526&sr=1-1&keywords=moca%2Badapter&th=1) will cost you around $170. I have personally experienced that these are mediocre performance wise, but it depends on the coax wiring in your house. If you only have a 2 or 3 way splitter, and it's RG6, and not that long, they might perform OK. But if you have a 5-way splitter or a long distance over RG59, these will not perform well. In addition, you should install a MOCA filter (https://www.amazon.com/TiVo-Authorized-Point-Entry-Filter/dp/B01EKCL1U6/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1539284803&sr=1-2&keywords=moca+filter&dpID=31qi88Oe0PL&preST=_SY300_QL70_&dpSrc=srch) on your main cable line to prevent your network traffic from getting to the outside pole, where somebody could conceivably sniff it. All of these Moca adaptors will reduce your cable signal a bit and could lead to some boxes not getting their required signal, resulting in channel dropout or digital noise in the picture. I can't think of a scenario where Moca would work better than powerline adaptors.

I'll try, if you have any questions or if I wasn't really clear on something, ask away and I'll try to explain it better.

A normal home network is quite simple, in order starting from your ISP's line coming into your house, you usually have a modem, a router, a switch and an access point. Most consumer routers are actually a combo router-switch-access point all in one. They provide you a few ports for wired connection and the wifi in a single convenient unit. What you can also do is split up this combo unit to be able to place each device in a better location. If you have your modem in the basement, putting the router next to it makes sense, but putting the access point there often means it will be completely unusable on the second floor. Don't be afraid, separate unit aren't really more complex, you just need to wire them together. I'll recommend a few unit throughout, but feel free to ask for a second opinion!

Personally, after witnessing the extreme difference in quality between home all-in-one routers and dedicated separate unit, I will strongly recommend you go with a separate unit setup. Ubiquiti makes super great hardware that won't cost you much more than a combo but will give you much more performance. Here are the recommended devices, I'll explain the setup right after :

• Router : Ubiquiti Edgerouter X
  
• Switch : TP-Link Gigabit switch (8 port / 16 port / 24 port)
  
• Access point : Ubiquiti Unifi AP AC Lite
  
  So, your provider will supply you with a modem (or you will buy your own) and plug that directly in the DSL/Cable/Fiber line that comes from outside. Then, you will plug the router in the modem. The router will allow all the devices in your home to communicate with the internet. In the router, you will plug the switch. In the switch, you can plug all the lines that are going through your house. You can also plug several switches in the router, or a switch in another switch (example : a switch in the office plugged into a line that goes to the second floor, a switch on the second floor, that will work). Also plugged in the switch : the access point. You can plug it (or them if you buy more than one) directly in the switch, or at the end of a long line that goes where you want the access point to be. For a two stories house, you might get good result by having a central AP on the first floor, or an AP on each floor, depending on construction, materials and interference.
  
  So now, we have the classic modem > router > switch > AP, using separate devices for greater flexibility and performance. Once it's all plugged in, time to set it up. For the router, simple, follow the wizard. For the switch, these switches are plug and play, no config needed. For the AP (or APs), install the software on your PC, follow the wizard, done! The controller software is used to configure the APs, but is not needed for the APs to work. The APs, once they get their config from the software, are completely standalone and independent, you can turn the PC off without issues.
  
  Hope this answers your questions, as I said, ask anything that wasn't answered and I'll try to explain it.

One fairly simple way to secure your network would be to buy a managed switch like this one and setting up VLANs to separate your network.

In a nutshell, VLANs are a way to partition your switch into different segments or "Broadcast Domains". It's like breaking your switch up into smaller switches that are not connected to each other.

Why would you want to do this?

By virtually separating your LAN, if an attacker somehow gained access to one of your devices (say the Raspberry Pi), they wouldn't be able to access your WD MyCloud or your Camera because they would be on a completely separate LAN.

Based on your network, I would create at least 6 different VLANs. Something like this:

VLAN 2 - Servers (The WD MyClouds and the Dell Tower)

VLAN 3 - Cameras

VLAN 4 - Wireless LAN

VLAN 5 - LAN (Ethernet connected PCs, Laptops, etc.)

VLAN 6 - IoT devices (The thermostat, sprinkler controller, RPis, etc)

VLAN 7 - Guest / Unsecured Wireless

VLAN 8 - Management

The Management VLAN is used to allow access to management functions of your devices like the switch.

How do the different VLANs talk to each other?

For example, how do your PCs talk to your WD MyCloud if they're on a different VLAN? Through the use of a VLAN-Aware Router!

It looks like your WRT1200AC is supported by DD-WRT and OpenWRT. It also appears that it does support VLANs. The stock Linksys firmware will not support VLANs so you would need to flash it with either OpenWRT or DD-WRT in order to use that functionality.

If you don't like the idea of flashing your WRT1200AC I would recommend replacing it with a VLAN-Capable access point like the Ubiquiti Unifi-AC-Pro (which is not bad looking either). You'll also need a VLAN-Capable Router/Firewall. You can use any Linux box with a decent Gigabit Ethernet NIC (e.g. Intel) for this task, or you can go with a purpose-built router like the Mikrotik RouterBoard hEX which has been tested to route at nearly gigabit speed.

This is a lot of info to process, if you have questions I would be happy to help! :)

You are good at this troubleshooting, gold star to you sir!

You're getting there, but basically you just need to be more careful in future not to remove the drivers, but uninstall the device itself (because how are you going to get the drivers again without a connection)

Right, you need to get the drivers somehow. Do any of your friends have a WiFi USB dongle you could borrow? It's basically a wireless network card on the end of a USB. You can pick one up for pretty cheap on Amazon, and I would recommend this one:

https://www.amazon.com/Edimax-EW-7811Un-150Mbps-Raspberry-Supports/dp/B003MTTJOY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1491853009&sr=8-2&keywords=edimax

Invest in one of these, they are lifesavers for situations exactly like these. I have about 5 lol.

If you can find a friend who has one, or get one yourself, install the driver that comes with it on CD and plug it in. You should get a WiFi connection right away under something like 'Wifi 2' in your network settings.

Go back into Device Manager and under the Unknown Devices section you should find some devices there, that are not recognised because of the lack of drivers.

Right click on each of them and click Update Driver Software, and then click Search automatically on the popped up window.

Let it do its thing, and it may take a few minutes. Windows 10 happens to be fantastic at searching for drivers, and it should find the drivers you need no bother at all!

Best of luck :)

I've had tracking issues in the past but seem to have finally figured it out. It's finicky and there are a few things you need to do to get the best experience.

​

First of all, Microsoft suggests this bluetooth adapter.

Second, try different USB ports on your system. If the port you're using shares the same controller as the headset itself or some other device it may not be working perfectly. Try 2.0 and 3.0 ports until you find one that works best.

Third, I have my adapter on an extension cord so I can bring it as close to my play area as possible.

Fourth, try the Marvel driver that Microsoft recommends. Go to Device Manager and find your bluetooth driver, right click and go to properties>driver>update driver>browse my computer for updated driver>let me pick from a list of available drivers on my computer; now uncheck "show compatible hardware" and find "Marvel Semiconductor, Inc." then choose Marvel AVASTAR Bluetooth Radio Adapter".

​

After all that I have basically perfect tracking. I can play Beat Saber about as well as this system can handle I think. In fact I just finished a bunch of the original songs at 135% speed today and it kept up without losing tracking.

> Why metal chassis?

Aside from the fact that you don't have to worry about this yellowing issue, you mean?

Well, there's also the fact that, because it's a pain in the ass to work with, electronic devices with metal chassis tend to be more similar to rectangular prisms, which is better industrial design because then you can stack things on top of them. Compare this metal ethernet switch to the equivalent plastic one, for example. (I would have preferred to use a router as an example instead of a switch because there's even more gratuitous bullshit, including ones you can't even wall-mount or put flat against a surface(!!!), but it's too hard to find a metal-chassis one to compare against.)

Not to mention, it's often the case that I just like the aesthetic of metal better (e.g. in the case of electronics, metal is often more professional/industrial looking). And not just for electronics: I'm also generally a fan of mid-century-modern design, and since most kinds of plastics hadn't been developed commercially yet (except for Bakelite), most products back then were metal. Because design is subject to the limitations (and advantages) of the medium, today's plastic products would have a hard time replicating that look/feel even if they tried.

Consider a Radio Flyer stamped-steel wagon, for instance: the rolled edge of the body was easy to grip tightly for a kid riding in it (or an adult picking it up), the steel made a satisfying clang when you dumped rocks into it, and it had a strongly-horizontal, lithe look. In comparison, a plastic wagon has convex sides that are probably easier to manufacture but harder to grip, surely makes a dull thud when stuff is dumped in it, and just looks thick and bulky compared to the metal version. (Note: I suspect that the difference in noise is not only due to the material properties of steel vs. plastic, but also the geometric fact that stamped steel uses embossing or corrugation to increase the strength of panels, while injection-molded plastic uses ribs instead: the varying thickness of the latter probably deadens the reverb more.) Moreover, the versatility of plastic tempted the designer to add a bunch of extraneous bullshit like a big depression/footwell in the middle, fold-down seat backs, and even fucking cupholders (which you can see in this photo)! The result is that the horizontalness is destroyed and it just looks like a bulbous mess.

Granted, that plastic wagon is probably objectively superior to the classic steel design, in the sense that it won't rust (give or take the axles) when left out in the rain and appears safer and more comfortable for kids to sit in. But even then, the steel design is better because it's worse! The fact that the steel design affords not only the ability to grip the edge, but the need to as well because the sides are low and you're riding more on top of it than in it, creates the opportunity for experiences that the plastic design precludes. If I were a kid planning to ride one down a hill, I know which design I'd pick! In short, if all wagons were plastic, this would not exist.

Finally, I don't know why -- maybe its survivor bias, maybe it's the fact that steel has more heft than plastic, or maybe it's (as you mentioned) simply because it costs more -- but I feel like most products seem more high-quality if they're made out of metal. I guess it's probably mostly the latter reason, because the same phenomenon applies to e.g. hardwood floors in houses: they seem upscale now in comparison to cheap nylon carpet or vinyl laminate, but the reason oak strip flooring is so common in old houses is because it was the cheapest flooring available at the time. Heck, maybe it isn't even the higher-cost itself, but merely the signal that picking a higher-cost material conveys: implying that the designer is optimizing for quality instead of cheapness.

first off, don't rent a router from your ISP. you will need to use a modem or gateway depending on the type of internet you are getting. if you are using cable or dsl i would also suggest to buy your own modem as well. it's a modern version of renting a rotary phone from the company and a racket.

you can get a router and wifi combo that is new and good for about $150 or more for faster or more advanced features.

as far as game plan for your home here is my suggestions
to start you off since you just moved in and are already renting it for now just use the provided router from to fiber provider so you can get connected and plan the rest of this build out.

depending on the layout and size of your home (cinder block construction is terrible for wifi and other rf signals) you may need multiple access points. my suggestion is to look into a brand of networking equipment called ubiquity.

they are relatively new to the market and have really shaken up the price and feature packs. set up is mainly through a web and mobile app and is very easy for a relatively new person to IT. there is also a huge community here on reddit and youtube showing off features and giving how to's.

here is my goto suggestion if you are willing to invest in an infrastructure more than a single router.

the fiber will come into your property and go through a modem and gateway provided by the isp you would then plug it into a router:
https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Unifi-Security-Gateway-USG/dp/B00LV8YZLK/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1526552321&sr=8-2&keywords=unifi

This is a smaller model that is a router and firewall combo by ubiquity, its about 110 at amazon

Then you plug the router into a switch:
https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Networks-Managed-Gigabit-US-8-150W/dp/B01DKXT4CI/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1526552321&sr=8-3&keywords=unifi

This is a sort of backbone device that you would use to send the internet to other devices and for other devices to comunicate with each other. this one is a poe switch which means it can send power to some devices like access points over the one cat 5 cable. this one has 8 ports so that means 7 outboard devices can be connected to the network because one is needed for the router. they make larger ones with more ports for more devices. this model is currently 194 on amazon

you will then need access points:
https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Unifi-Ap-AC-Lite-UAPACLITEUS/dp/B015PR20GY/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1526552321&sr=8-5&keywords=unifi

these are radios that broadcast wifi to your wireless devises these connect to the switch with cat 5 cables and are best placed near where you are going to use wifi devises the average home would benefit from two or three of these one to cover the living room kitchen great room area and one to cover the bedroom hallway are and possibly one for the backyard pool area (that might be important because of your external walls). this model is currently 80 on amazon.

if you deploy this list you will also need a cloud key:
https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Unifi-Cloud-Key-Control/dp/B017T2QB22/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1526553343&sr=8-1&keywords=cloud+key

this is a devise that manages the network and stores configuration files locally. it's like a mini server. this is about 78 on amazon.

you will also need cat 5/6/7 cables of various lengths and a power strip for about 500 you can get a really great network that can cover your whole house and that can easily be upgraded incrementally as technology improves. My suggestion would be to get all this mounted in a closet somewhere and get cat5/6/7 run to all the things that you can and place the access point in the house so you get the best coverage possible for the IOT devises in your house. as your network grows and you need more wired ports you can add a switch or replace the one with a 24 or 46 port one. when wifi tech improves past ag you can just replace the access points without affecting the rest of the network.another big thing is to run cable to anything you can this will help with keeping your wifi fast since there are less devices on the wifi.

Edit:
If there are two main points they would be:

1. wire everything you can so that way the devises that need to be wireless can be faster
   
2. Don't rent non-proprietary equipment from your ISP

I'll cover a few options based on price and level of technical knowledge needed.

For T-Mobile Customers

If you're a subscriber of T-Mobile, I'd recommend taking advantage of their Wi-Fi CellSpot loaner program for a $25 deposit.

This program gets you a T-Mobile optimized router, which is a modified version of the
$100+ Asus RT-AC68U.

It is missing some options from the stock Asus unit but still has options for stuff like bandwidth prioritization and QoS (the thing is also preconfigured to give high priority to wi-fi phone calls).

User-friendly Options

• TP-Link Archer C7
  
  This costs about $80-90 and is probably the best overall option for anyone that wants a decent wireless router that has a lot of useful options. It lets you specify bandwidth settings that apply to an entire guest network (both upload/download speeds), as well as limit bandwidth to specific devices. This unit is generally recommended by r/homenetworking for a cheap, decent router, and by Wirecutters.
  
  
• D-Link DIR-880L
  
  Roughly $100 - I used to use D-Link wireless routers and they are easy to use and I have . This model can also be loaded with DD-WRT if you're so technically inclined. DD-WRT is an open-source firmware that can be loaded onto a variety of routers that gives a lot of options for power users. The default firmware will still have options to control bandwidth and QoS, so you won't need any advanced special firmware.
  
  

  More Technical Options
  

  
  If you want to learn some slightly more advanced configuration, one of the most price-accessible options is a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X combined with a Ubiquiti AC Lite wireless AP. This combination costs roughly $120-130, but it is better than similarly priced (or even more expensive) home consumer combination wireless routers and provide a lot of options and features.
  
  You can traffic shape at the EdgeRouter X, so you can do things like limit the bandwidth provided to the wireless network to begin with, or limit it to certain clients. You could also do limiting at the AC Lite access point and create a special group of users (basically, login information) with limitations on that group.
  
  The ERX can handle an ISP connection of probably up to 900 Mbps, though I have no first-hand confirmation of this as my home connection is 200/10. I've been running the ER-X and UniFi AC Lite at home for about two years with no problems, and fairly heavy internet use.
  
  However, if you just need a relatively easy consumer router, go with the easier options.

Are you deadset on PFSense? There are a number of options for really good routers that can do what your looking for for not to much if your not hard set on PFSense.

• Option 1: Edge Router X - Really cheap at only $60 but it can easily handle routing for 100+ devices. Its software is called EdgeOS (which is based on VyOS, an opensource switch/router OS) and is super configurable and powerful. Admittedly its Analytics aren't super useful, as it doesn't really do much Deep Package Inspection (DPI) but its good enough to figure out whats going on and who is using what. Link: https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-EdgeRouter-Advanced-Gigabit-Ethernet/dp/B00YFJT29C/
  
  
• Option 2: Unifi Security Gateway - This is like the big brother of the Edgerouter X (sorta). The OS is still based on VyOS so it super configurable. It also does the DPI you're wanting for analytics. The downside is that you need to have a Unifi Controller to make real use of that. You can either set one up yourself using a VM, Docker or you can use a Raspberry Pi. If you don't want to roll your own controller, you can pickup a Unifi Cloudkey and it will handle all of that for you
  
  
• Option 3: Meraki - If you do the Webinars you can get a Security Gateway, Access Point, and a 8 Port switch for free. Well sort off. You might need to hound the Sales people to get one, and its possible that you might not qualify for the free hardware. Additionally, the hardware is only licensed for 3 years so you'll have to reevaluate what you want to do when the license is up.
  
  If your dead set on using PFSense then I would recommend that you buy a Zotac Zbox CI323/CI325 Nano computer. It has dual NICs and the CPU supports AES-NI which will be required in furture PFSense versions. I have one myself that I used with well over a 100+ VMs/devices without any issue. Only stopped using it because I got the free Meraki gear. They go for about $150 on Amazon but they are barebones so you need to add RAM and storage to get everything going.
  
  Shameless plug: As I said I have a Zotac Zbox CI323 Nano, and I'm selling it (again because I got free meraki gear) for only $125 with RAM and Storage. You can look at it here: https://reddit.com/r/hardwareswap/comments/9wk6im/usauth_x79_partout_mini_pcs_ram_g903_switch_old/

NOTE: I posted this yesterday and got a lot of helpful information about modems, but not as much about routers. As such, I decided I'd try posting again today to see if anyone else could spare some thoughts on router choices.

My parents are switching their ISP from AT&T to Time Warner Cable. They mentioned that they wanted to purchase a router / modem instead of renting one since it will save them money in the long run and will likely perform better than the leased product from TWC. So, I come here asking for router suggestions

Relevant Information:

• The budget for the router, is $200. Obviously, if it's possible to spend less that would be excellent.
  
• My parents have a fairly large house (I can provide square footage if helpful) with many walls and at times there can be up to three people streaming content at a time.
  
• The internet speed they'll be receiving will be 300 Mbps.
  
  I came across the Netgear Nighthawk AC1900 and it seems like a pretty solid router, but on Newegg it only has three stars. I also came across the TP-Link Touch which has high ratings on both Amazon and Newegg. Any thoughts on either of these? If neither of the routers I linked are adequate, please point me in the direction of one that would work better.
  
  Thanks for your help.

So it looks like Fios is available in Georgetown. If you're just looking for internet I'd recommend their 300Mbps package at a minimum, but with 5 people splitting it I would probably go for the gigabit for $79.99 a month. If you want TV, they have bundles with TV for an extra $20 or $30 a month. I would go with at least the "extreme TV package" if you want TV, because their "preferred" is nothing but Home shopping network and religious crap. If you do Fios, this modem is only $90 on Amazon and can handle speeds up to 1.7 gigabits.

If you're going the cable internet route, Google your modem's specific model number to see what DOCSIS version it is. If it's 3.1, you're good to go with any cable internet package. If it's 3.0, you can still use it with any package up to 550Mbps, but anything over that and you'll be paying for more bandwidth than your modem can handle. If it's 2.0 or below, you need a new modem. If you do need a new modem, just google "DOCSIS 3.1 cable modem" and take your pick.

For cable internet, I recommend RCN. They definitely service Georgetown It looks like they've got a great deal going on right now for gigabit internet and TV for $79.99 a month. That's probably going to be your best bet.

Between moving and switching providers to get a better deal, I've bought internet in DC and set up home networks probably a dozen times by now, so if you have any questions about the process or need help setting anything up feel free to message me anytime.

>Plus it all seems inefficient since I already have the LAN throughout the house.

If you already have Ethernet pulled to places all over the house, then wired Access Points is the obvious and correct answer.

Ubiquiti is the king of reliable Access Points. But switching to Ubiquiti requires a bit more knowledge than your typical wireless router / repeater system, so if you choose this, you'll have to do a bit of learning too.

For 900 sqft on two floors, you can likely get away with just one Access Point mounted on the First Floor in the Center. That would easily cover the floor, plus very likely cover the floors above and below it too. A Ubiquiti nanoHD is my go-to recommendation lately, but if you are trying to save some money, an AC-LITE is fine.

nanoHD:

https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Networks-Internal-1733Mbit-Ethernet/dp/B07FFNTLJD/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=nanohd&qid=1574904222&s=electronics&sr=1-4

AC-PRO:

https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Networks-802-11ac-Dual-Radio-UAP-AC-PRO-US/dp/B015PRO512/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=nanohd&qid=1574903775&s=electronics&sr=1-5

AC Lite:

https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Unifi-Ap-AC-Lite-UAPACLITEUS/dp/B015PR20GY/ref=sxin_2_ac_d_rm?ac_md=0-0-YWMgbGl0ZQ%3D%3D-ac_d_rm&keywords=ac+lite&pd_rd_i=B015PR20GY&pd_rd_r=382f4fce-b8fd-41f5-9d83-2ce30c7d4867&pd_rd_w=2JjVi&pd_rd_wg=IV1TH&pf_rd_p=e2f20af2-9651-42af-9a45-89425d5bae34&pf_rd_r=BRFTH2F9ZHRVN6T7YH6B&psc=1&qid=1574903705

Since you already have Ethernet presumably at ground level, you can also consider the Ubiquiti In-Wall units as well. These units provide you Wireless Access Points PLUS they give you two Ethernet ports at ground level. If you can get your gamer and game machines plugged into Ethernet instead of wireless, you'll have the ideal setup (streaming and other things are fine on wireless).

So maybe 1 ceiling mounted AP in the middle of the first floor, one in wall where the gamer is (for Ethernet ports as well as supplemental WiFi on the second floor), and maybe one In-Wall in the basement if needed (good chance it won't be).

AC-In-Wall:

https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Unifi-UAP-AC-Iw-Wireless-Access/dp/B06XZLP8Q6/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1YA0NR13TWSGZ&keywords=ubiquiti+in+wall&qid=1574903832&s=electronics&sprefix=ubiquiti+in+w%2Celectronics%2C199&sr=1-2

If you do get 2-3 Ubiquiti APs, you'll probably want a PoE switch to power them all. This is another expense, unfortunately, but makes installation much cleaner.

>Based on what I've read (and experienced before) one kungfu wireless router isn't likely to provide adequate coverage throughout the house.

If you didn't want to go the Ubiquiti route, your house is actually a pretty good candidate for an Asus or Netgear, since it's 900sf stacked on top of each other. These consumer routers are pretty good these days. Unless your house is all brick and metal, I don't see why it wouldn't cover it.

The best thing to do is separate everything out so you can future proof your setup. What if down the line you want to extend your wifi or need more wired ports? When you separate everything out (security gateway/firewall, switch and wifi access points) its much easier to upgrade and troubleshoot. Your typical consumer grade all in one routers have all three of those things in one package and none of them are particularly great.

Ubiquiti is the current leader at this for the home user. They have SOHO grade equipment (small office home office) which is basically enterprise grade equipment but at consumer grade prices.

If I were you, here's what I'd do:
Ubiquiti Unifi Security Gateway (USG) - this will be the brains of your system and allow port forwarding, QoS, deep packet inspection, etc.

Ubiquiti Networks 8-Port UniFi Switch, Managed PoE+ Gigabit Switch with SFP, 150W (US-8-150W) - this gives you 8 ports, all of which can be enabled for power over ethernet which can easily power your security cameras and access points. If you don't need this then you can get the cheaper non-PoE switch Ubiquiti US-8 Unifi Switch

Ubiquiti Networks Unifi 802.11ac Dual-Radio PRO Access Point (UAP-AC-PRO-US) - This is a great access point to give you fast wifi at a great range. This plugs directly into your switch via ethernet cable. If you need to extend you wifi then you can get a second one and plug it in. These can be powered by PoE which is really nice.

Total cost: $461

I guarantee you would end up spending more upgrading an all in one router over the next few years. This will easily last you 10+ years if not more and be enterprise grade equipment.

There are dozens of routers available for less than $150 that would offer much better performance than what you have now and support more advanced features like bandwidth monitoring. The easiest way to identify something as trash, although there are exceptions, is to ask the following questions:

1. Can you see antennas on it?
   
2. Does it cost more than $40?
   
   If the answer to both is no, you could probably spend $15 at Goodwill or a yard sale and walk away with a comparable router.
   
   Generally, the bigger and dumber looking a router is, the more capable it will be. This is unfortunate, but mostly true until you start looking at commercial-grade items. For home use, something like a TP-Link Archer C7 or Netgear Nighthawk R6700 would make for a good entry point into higher-end routers. Both are <$150, have bandwidth monitoring capability out of the box, should provide improved range and speed versus your current router, and add AC support, which will offer shorter range but much higher speed to devices that support that standard. Routers are one of the few items where 'what's available locally' is actually a reasonable question to ask.
   
   Since your goal is to gain bandwidth monitoring capability without sacrificing performance or paying more than $150, I'd head down to Best Buy or Walmart or Currys or whatever you have nearby, see what they've got in your price range, remember the "Is it trash?" test, and google to make sure that specific model has bandwidth monitoring capability.

I would recommend the ASUS RT-AC66U Dual-Band Wireless-AC1750 Gigabit Router. From a misc source:

> 5th generation 802.11ac chipset gives you concurrent dual-band 2.4GHz/5GHz for up to super-fast 1.75Gbps

> ASUS Aicloud service: Access, stream, share, sync – all on the go with unlimited storage expansion!

> Gigabit Ethernet ports for the fastest, most reliable internet performance

> AiRadar optimizes wireless coverage with detachable high-powered antennas

> Enjoy the ASUSWRT dashboard UI for 3 steps easy setup, signal monitoring, and network application control

> Download Master for wireless data storage and access to your router-connected USB storage devices

>* File sharing, printer sharing, and 3G sharing via two multi-functional built-in USB ports

Essentially, good range and a good value that is very easy to use and has exceptional capability--in my opinion.

Total cost: $170-$190 USD

*

Alternatively, I'd also recommend the Netgear WNDR4500 since one of your primary concerns is range.

> This is a N-series wireless router and features 2.4GHz and 5GHz wireless connectivity and can go up-to 900 (450 + 450) megabytes per second and Gigabit LAN ports as well as USB for sharing printer or external storage with the devices connected on your network. Also it has a TimeMachine server for all the Mac folks and You can use an attached hard-drive as a TimeMachine backup drive(wirelessly or wired) . You can monitor this router from your iOS/Android smartphone or tablet (using Netgear Genie App) as well as from PC. It has a good Wireless range so you can enjoy connectivity even by your poolside. Got guests? You can enable Guest Wireless and they are completely separated from your personal data and can only surf the web. You can also use DLNA to stream videos to your smartTV and bring up the show.

Price is about $130-160 depending on where you buy it--making it rather affordable.

If the range of the wi-fi signal is not to your satisfaction, you may need to also purchase a wi-fi signal booster such as the ZyXEL WAP3205 v2 for $49.99.

In total, this duo would set you back around $200-$220 USD, depending on where you can buy it--in addition to giving you insane range (you could probably provide wifi for your neighbors too, haha). Only do this if you need really insane range, though.

Yeah, MoCA would definitely be the best option but I don't think it would be that plausible with the location of my coaxial outlets. The Orbi is pushing the budget a little bit, but at the end of the day, I think I'll bite the bullet and try this out, and if it ends up sucking Amazon has a great return policy.

Now I know you mentioned how Google WiFi is just managed extenders above, so I assume that means you think I'd be better off going with the Orbi? They're both close to $300, so I want to make sure I'm going with the best choice here. If it makes any difference, these networks are pretty much gonna be only used for Hue, Google Home, and Alexa, and Phones and tablets and maybe the occasional laptop, never really for gaming or VoIP. Gaming and VoIP will be through the powerlines.

And when it comes to the powerline adapters I have setup currently, should I just keep using those, upgrade them, or move to wireless? I have one of the powerlines hooked up to a TP-Link Switch, and I don't know if that's a no-no either, or a bottleneck on my speeds. I know they aren't optimal, but I think its the best option I have for stability. And when I upgrade, should I leave those plugged into the modem, or to the new APs?

Thanks so much once again!

Netgear is a decent brand, so that's too bad it went out. I always use my own wireless routers because I'd rather spend the money on something good, and typically the routers or modem/router combos issued by the service provider are cheap.

Also if you're using the service provider's router and modem, you're probably paying for it. For example, with my Comcast service I would have paid $7/mo for their modem the entire time I had it. But I bought my own on Amazon for $70, and after the first year it's paid for its self.

I'm not sure what your buying options are in AU, but what I'd look for is a DOCSIS 3.0 modem from Motorola like this one. I have heard people say that, even if you're only getting speeds that would need DOCSIS 2.0, the newer modems perform a little better and they're not much more expensive.

As for routers, I just look for one with good reviews and good features. You'll probably want one that's capable of dual-band, with at least one antenna supporting 5Ghz. This article reviews some good ones, and is pretty recent. They get expensive, but the nice thing about owning your own router is you usually have more options with it, and again if you're not paying a monthly fee to lease one from the service provider you'll earn that money back in the first year or two.


(The reason why that's helpful is because, unlike a regular LAN switch, wifi can't support multiple speeds on one network. So if you have 5 802.11N devices and 1 802.11G like an old wifi printer the entire network will default to that lower speed. When you see routers advertising dual-band with 5Ghz, it's because one antenna can do Wireless-N on 5Ghz which only newer devices capable of N can connect to. That way older devices can connect to the regular network if needed, and your 5Ghz N network will always be fast.)

Congratulations on the new job! The story I am about to tell you is in regards to a new job as well. As well as the Spartan race, my older brother and his wife compete in Camp Gladiator down in Austin every year. From what I can tell, it seems like a satisfying accomplishment.

For the past year, my job has had a really awful boss. After my old one retired, this lady came in from another store, and has since been the bane of my working day. I could write an entire rant about that, but the biggest issues where our gears would grind together was how we viewed basic semi-formal workplace communication. I have been openly scolded on the sales floor (working retail here) many times before, one particular time that always come to mind was for helping a customer when I was paged into her office to help with her computer. She came storming out and started raising hell because she wanted to finish her order so she could leave early. The customer tried defending me, and she gave him the "this does not concern you" routine, so I stepped out of my professional bubble and snapped. I yelled back at her. It was like one of those cinema moments. She was speechless, the customer wore a big grin, and I certainly felt better for doing it. I wasn't worried at the time about getting fired, the whole ordeal was on camera, and I feel I could have contested it. Since then I had only been given shifts where I would close a ten hour shift Friday night and open one Saturday morning. Though noting is particularly wrong with this, I was the only one on the schedule who was getting the treatment, and when others tried to switch shifts with me, the request would get denied. This went on for five months. I was not having this, so I called corporate offices and explained what was happening. After some fiddling around, I was approved to transfer to a store that was not only closer to home, but was changing over to the machinery I am trained in.

This has been the best week ever! because as of this Wednesday, I will have completed my seventh day at the new place. I love my boss, my new director and I are pretty much the same person as far as interests go, and I feel I can do a lot at this new place to make it my own. The icing on the cake of it all, the last day I worked, I learned that my old boss is no longer employed at the store that I was at before, and I would like to think I had a part in that. As awful of a fate as it was for her, she can not be in authority and be demeaning her employees over needing computer help.

I would love this small, cheap wireless dongle for my latest project. I'm planning on making a portable computer out of a Raspberry_Pi (tiny, credit card sized computer) that can be worn like a forearm protector. The dongle is usually more expensive, but the item recently dropped down in price. Having a small wireless attachment for my device would save me the need of having to plug it in to an Ethernet port to access the internet, defeating the purpose of 'portability' I am going for.

Raspberry Pi 2 Model B

Supports CEC. Comes with 4x USB 2.0 slots, an HDMI, quad core ARM A7 processor, 1 GB RAM, and an ethernet port. Also has GPIO pins but I don't know of any Kodi related uses for them. It is an extremely low power device (uses about $3 worth of electricity per year) and requires nothing to keep it cool (e.g., no fans blaring in the middle of your favorite movie).

Base cost is $35. Requires a microSD card, an HDMI cable, and a microUSB charger, all of which can be purchased for approximately $5 each. An existing microUSB charger, such as from your cell phone or a device like a Kindle or Chromecast can be used, of course. Optional components include a case ($10-$20 or 3D print your own), USB wifi dongle ($10+), and an external hard drive ($50+). A few companies put out bundles that include a Raspberry Pi board and various components such as this basic one and this more complete one. A wireless keyboard ($20+) can also be handy. Product links are provided as examples; there may be better deals or smarter purchases to be had.

You'll then want to use a minimalistic Linux distro such as OpenELEC or OSMC, both of which are designed specifically to run Kodi and have optimized builds for a Raspberry Pi. OpenELEC seems to be more popular and is what I use myself. Installation is easy -- you just download and write to your SD card (oh yeah, you might need an SD card reader, $5). If you'd like you can also install a "real" Linux distro and install Kodi in that as you would on a regular desktop computer. You can either store your media on an external hard drive connected to the Raspberry Pi or on a separate computer or NAS and share your files over your LAN.

Pros:

• Cheap base cost
  
• Low power
  
• Very hands off after initial setup
  
• CEC! Use your TV remote to control Kodi
  
• Hardware decoding for h264
  
• As it is full-fledged computer you can easily add in additional software such as emulators, a web browser, etc.
  
• More of a DIY solution (may be a con)
  
  Cons:
  
  
• A few plugins (typically they are Windows dependent) and more computationally intensive skins may not work
  
• May get pricey if you need to buy all the separate components
  
• Can not handle 10-bit x264 (aka Hi10p; rare outside of anime fansubs) or HEVC (aka h265) files.
  
• No 4K output, max resolution is 1920x1200
  
• More of a DIY solution (may be a pro)
  

Not all-inclusive, still need some physical cables and such, but hopefully this is a starting point:

16-port gig switch: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B00GG1AC7I/ Probably overkill but a few more ports doesn't cost all THAT much more and this leaves you plenty of room for expansion. Also managed so can setup VLANs, QoS, whatever.

Router: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B00HXT8EKE/ These are solid for home and small business use. Config can be a little tricky if you are using any of the advanced features but plenty of throughput (1 million pps). Also supports VLANs if you want to spin up a guest wifi later.

Wireless AP: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B015PRO512/ This supports multiple SSIDs on different VLANs and offers really solid performance for not a ton of money. From the physical space you listed below I'm thinking one should me more than enough.

Cable modem: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B016PE1X5K/ I know you said this wasn't finalized but thought I would toss it in anyway. Don't skimp here, a low-end modem will really limit throughput and can crash under heavy-load. Whatever you go with make sure it's on your ISPs compatibility list! They may not support it if not.

That should put a total around $512 USD or so JUST FOR HARDWARE. Keep in mind this is a pretty basic setup but should serve as a starting point. You'll still need the physical cabling and someone able to set it all up. As mentioned earlier also this is only MY BEST GUESS as to what you will need. Please don't take this as your bible or anything like that. :)

I know I mentioned it before but I really don't mind helping set things up if needed. I'm not going to be your "call at 3AM tech guy" but if you need a bit here and there I can try to assist. :) Let me know if you have any questions or thoughts on the build. Cheers!

EDIT: Something else to keep in mind that's not really network related is backups. YOU NEED THIS. Even if you go with a cloud service like carbonite or whatever, you need to make sure the PCs have regular backups. You WILL have a hard drive die and need to pull a backup from somewhere.

Wifi is utter crap, I used it for 2 months in my new home and had horrible lags. I switched to something called powerline. You basically take a cable from your router, stick it into a plug connected to your power outlet and then you take another plug and stick it into an outlet near your computer and from there you take an ethnernet cable and connect it into the PC. It took 5 minutes to set up and I had to install LAN drivers for my motherboard.

I have these and they work great. Also these powerlines work great for streaming!

Ok to your build, this is what I came up with:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

Type|Item|Price

----|:----|:----
CPU | AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor | $119.99 @ Newegg
Motherboard | Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 Micro ATX AM3+ Motherboard | $59.99 @ Newegg
Memory | Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1333 Memory | $59.99 @ Newegg
Storage | Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive | $59.99 @ NCIX US
Video Card | MSI Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition 2GB Video Card | $169.99 @ Newegg
Case | Thermaltake Commander MS/I Snow Edition (White/Black) ATX Mid Tower Case | $44.99 @ Amazon
Power Supply | EVGA 500W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply | $44.99 @ Amazon
Optical Drive | Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer | $17.99 @ Newegg
Operating System | Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) | $89.00 @ Amazon
Monitor | Acer G236HLBbd 60Hz 23.0" Monitor | $109.99 @ Newegg
| | Total
| Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available. | $761.91
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-10-12 11:18 EDT-0400 |

This rig could play most games on high settings (skyrim will be no problem), but since Bf4 is still in it´s beta stage, it is hard to say how the 7870 will perform. But it should play it with acceptable fram rates on high settings. The processor is an 6 core AMD CPU and will be strong in games optimized for multicores.Also it is very strong in multitasks. I added in an extra 1tb hdd, but you can leave it out if you want to put that money towards the purchase of an SSD.
Both Motherboard and the case support USB 3.0, so this is taken care of as well.
8gbs of RAM is standard and can be easily upgraded, there are3 more slots available for RAM in the Motherboard.
The case has enough slots for case fans and extra HDDs, so cable management and air flow should be no problem.
The monitor has an 23" screen and supports 1920 x 1080 resolution, it is a good choice when on a budget.
If you have any more questions, let me know and I will be glad to help you.


Edit: There was a mistake in the PCpartpicker list that showed the wrong price for the RAM, fixed it but now the build is 760$. I hope it is not to big of a deal, since shipping is already included in the price.

At this moment, WPA3 shouldn't be the primary concern. It was only certified back in June of this year.

In order for WPA3 to work in any environment, your broadcasting device (wireless router, wireless access point, etc) AND your client device (phone, tablet, laptop, etc) must both support it.

So, if you have current devices that only support WPA2, getting a WPA3 wireless router will have no benefit at current. If you do get a WPA3 wireless router, you'll be set for the time when you do replace your existing wireless devices with WPA3 compliant devices.

----

In regards to improving your wireless experience (leaving WPA3 out of the topic for the moment), it'd be better to focus on a few other details.

1. How many people within what approximate square footage space?
   
   
2. How many people per room?
   
   
3. How many rooms require wireless coverage? (saying ALL is not helpful, detailing the total number of rooms is)
   
   
4. Does every device support 5GHz?
   
   ----
   
   My basic recommendation is as such.
   
   Determine which devices DO and DO NOT support 5GHz. Determine how many rooms are critical for wireless coverage. Purchase a wireless access point (or multiple - depending on square footage coverage requirements) that are DFS compliant.
   
   If you cannot find specifics on your device, whether is supports 2.4GHz or 5GHz - you can adjust/alter your current wireless settings. Most wireless broadcasting devices should allow you to name your 2.4GHz and your 5GHz networks (SSID) separately. Do so. As example, name your 2.4GHz network something like 'Home - Legacy' and your 5GHz network 'Home'.
   
   Then have each device 'search/look' for the available wireless networks. If they can only see 'Home - Legacy' and NOT 'Home' - then you are holding a device that can only use 2.4GHz.
   
   Document what each device CAN and CANNOT see.
   
   If every device supports 5GHz, great! You can and should disable 2.4GHz - and never use it! In order to determine if & how many wireless access points you'll need, you will need to do some research and intelligent planning.
   
   Use the same device for this test.
   
   Go to the room where your wireless router is. Check how many bars of signal you have. Document it. Go to the next room and repeat this process for each room.
   
   Most devices will show 4 or 5 bars in regards to signal. If they do not, then it is likely a percentage. 2 of 4 bars is the minimum you want (50%), and 3 of 5 bars is the minimum you want (60%).
   
   That will give you your baseline per your current coverage area. Based upon that, you will begin to formulate a plan for how many additional wireless broadcasting devices you will need.
   
   I tend to go with Ubiquiti wireless access points. The AC Lite is a good entry level device. You'll want to leverage the DFS channels too, as it will help you get better wireless speed.
   
   https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015PR20GY/ref=psdc_1194486_t3_B015PRCBBI
   
   Give that a shot. If you have any questions, please ask.

Dang thank you for dumbing that down for me, it makes perfect sense when you explain it like that. So my weakest link is the truly the TW cable service... Well I still want to try it out and see how it goes with their "standard internet". If it seems not good enough I might just upgrade to turbo but from a financial reason I cannot get their "extreme service" internet as much as I would like to.

And to answer your question for right now I'm going to rent their modem for $5.99/month and see how it goes too. I was told by the time warner rep to purchase this modem if I wanted to eventually save $5.99/month. That way I could just swap out their modem and install that one in it's place. The rep told me if I ever move or get turbo or extreme internet from them it would be excellent. He also said they have about a 10 year life cycle. So it sounds like he was trying to help me out. But what is your opinion? You seem to have an amazing amount of knowledge thank you for taking some time out to reply and help me out with this topic, I appreciate it!

Seconded. I use Arlo and love it. Decent price point, good mobile app, usable browser app. Small (easy to hide), completely wireless, and you can get different skins to camouflage the outdoor ones. Up to 5 cameras can be used on a free plan. If you'd like, OP, I recently wrote up a decent wall of text about Arlo and can send it to you.

EDIT: I'll just post the wall here.

_____

Here's some more information about Arlo to help you out.

5 wire-free cameras + base station ($630) - https://www.amazon.com/Arlo-Security-Surveillance-Outdoor-VMS3530-100NAS/dp/B01CT6VOAW/ref=pd_sbs_421_1?ie=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B01CT6VOAW&pd_rd_r=ST6WJ3DCWE0Y7EGRWS34&pd_rd_w=uy9oi&pd_rd_wg=7FNzz&psc=1&refRID=ST6WJ3DCWE0Y7EGRWS34

other camera bundles are on that listing as well. 4 camera bundle for $499, 3 camera bundle for $419, 2 camera bundle for $299, 1 camera kit for $173.99, plus a couple other options. i would say to just get the 5 camera bundle and don't bother with the arlo q if you're only worried about the outside of the house. the add-on cameras are on sale right now for $145 instead of $160, so if you want more than 5 then now is the time to buy!

3 silicone skins ($24.99) - https://www.amazon.com/Arlo-Smart-Security-Silicone-Wire-Free/dp/B016D0O10U/ref=pd_sim_421_2?ie=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B016D0O10U&pd_rd_r=EXQYGG3TDFGC05X6AHD6&pd_rd_w=C2Jxo&pd_rd_wg=MoyX4&psc=1&refRID=EXQYGG3TDFGC05X6AHD6

i like the black skins for the cameras i put outside. if they are on a white background though (maybe the house is painted white where you mount it) then the skins would make it stand out more. since mine are in trees i like the black.


indoor/outdoor mount (black) ($19.99) - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01D2PHVS8

also has the white version, the standard wall mounts the cameras come with (maybe you want multiple mounts for a single camera so you can move it around), and the table/ceiling mount.



as for the cameras themselves, they are weatherproof and can operate between 14 and 122 degrees F (https://community.netgear.com/t5/Arlo-Knowledge-Base/Are-Arlo-cameras-weatherproof/ta-p/1705). the batteries are the limiting factor as they stop functioning properly outside of those ranges. it should be noted that below freezing temperatures will reduce battery life significantly, but the cameras will still operate down to 14F (https://community.netgear.com/t5/Arlo-Knowledge-Base/How-can-I-extend-my-Arlo-Wire-Free-camera-s-battery-life/ta-p/291).

the cameras should be at least 10 feet away from the base station and can be up to 300 feet away. walls and barriers limit distance a bit, but the LEDs on the cameras and base station can let you know if there is a connection problem (https://community.netgear.com/t5/Arlo-Knowledge-Base/How-far-can-I-place-my-Arlo-Wire-Free-cameras-from-the-base/ta-p/35).

you can have a max of 15 cameras attached to one base station, but only 5 can all be streaming at the same time (https://community.netgear.com/t5/Buying-Options-Tips/How-many-cameras-can-one-base-station-handle/td-p/1063320). you can also add base stations to extend your range.

finally, subscriptions (https://community.netgear.com/t5/Arlo-Knowledge-Base/What-are-the-available-Arlo-subscription-plans-and-how-much/ta-p/88). 5 cameras + 7 days cloud storage/1 GB of video for free; 10 cameras + 30 days of recordings/10 GB of video for $10/month or $99/year; 15 cameras + 60 days of recordings/100 GB of video for $15/month or $149/year. if you get an arlo q, you can purchase a 24/7 continuous video recording (CVR) feature for $10/month or $99/year for 14 days or double that for 30 days, all per camera. unfortunately you can only watch these videos from the cloud: they can't be downloaded.

if you want to save your videos, you have to download them yourself and store them. videos are cycled out every 7/30/60 days depending on your plan. there is no undelete, so if you delete something, it's gone, and if they delete something, it's gone.

arlo provides useful help videos for setting up the system and debugging any possible problems (https://www.arlo.com/en-us/support/). there are recommended heights/angles for the cameras and that's all addressed in the videos.

if you happen to own a netgear nighthawk router, you might be able to use that as a base station instead of buying a bundle with a base station. you can also still get the base station and use that to extend the range for cameras you might want to place far from the house. if you don't already have that router and want a good upgrade, i highly recommend it (https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Nighthawk-AC1900-Gigabit-Router/dp/B00F0DD0I6/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1474291904&sr=1-1&keywords=netgear+nighthawk). i don't have mine set up currently, but it's a good machine. if your existing router works fine, then no need to spend the money!

it should be noted that if you want more than 5 cameras but dont want to pay the subscription fees, you can simply make a second account with a second base station and link up to 5 cameras to that. then you have two free accounts, but you do also have to sign in and out with each to check cameras, which can become cumbersome.

First of all, its not really fair for you to limit your sister's videos to 480p so you can play OW without lag. You should both be able to share the internet, just because you see your usage as more important doesn't mean it is.

Now that that's out of the way, I'm guessing that your main issue is that you are trying to game over WiFi, as you said Ethernet's not an option. I would place most of the blame on one of two things, either you've got a shitty router that cant handle a lot of traffic and is causing latency OR you internet speeds are sub 25MB/s.

Option 1, shitty router: Without knowing the specs for your router I cant tell you for certain if this is the issue but streaming media does consume a fair amount of clock cycles and if its an older router (especially a cheaper model of older router) they are not built to handle that sort of traffic. A new Wireless AC router should be able to handle that traffic easily, I really like the ASUS RT-AC68U. ASUS in general has a very friendly router interface. To utilize AC performance, you may need to buy a new wireless adapter for your PC as well but your current one will connect via N.

Option 2, slow internet: With the above mentioned AC router you can implement QoS, without paying for faster internet this is the only way to resolve your issue. As I said before, its not fair to restrict your sisters laptop to slow 480p performance BUT (at least in my ASUS router) you can make a list of up to 5 devices that will be prioritized in the order of the list. Online gaming does not take much bandwidth, watch your task manager while gaming, most of the time you will be using less than 500 kb/s. If you put your device on the top of the list your packets will have priority, but your sister's laptop should still be able to stream without any difference to her quality. Some routers also have a "game prioritization" mode where they will prioritize known gaming traffic from any source.

Hope this helps, if you have any questions let me know.

Edit: I also would like to point out that I've tried gaming over a Powerline adapter as mentioned below. It was OK but there was still some lag and it seemed to max out at 100Mb/s download speed. I had better luck with a wireless AC pci-e card and an AC router.

I submitted the following comment when I made this post yesterday. Unfortunately it got blocked because I accidentally included a couple referral links which I just copy/pasted off the piratebox website. Thanks to the mods for promptly getting back to me about why it kept getting deleted.

SD card and shipping & handling not included.

pi zero - $5.00

pins - $8.95

[wifi adapter](https://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-WN722N-Wireless-Adapter-External/dp/B002SZEOLG?ie=UTF8&ref_=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top) - $13.33

right angle USB ports - $5.64

USB battery - $3.99

micro-mini usb cable - $2.89

Total: $39.80

*I used an Alfa AWUSO36NH but the TP-LINK TL-WN722N should work. More information on compatible network adapters here.

The optional Illuminated LED shutdown switch makes this device easier to use but costs an additional $16.99

About

PirateBox software runs on inexpensive hardware to connect users over an offline wifi network. Join it and your browser redirects to a simple interface where you can share files, chat, and stream video.

Pifm is a small program you can install in a Raspberry Pi PirateBox, aka “pi(rate)box.” It can broadcast on FM radio to inform potential users about the PirateBox wifi network, play uploaded music, and with a USB microphone Pifm lets you talk live to your audience.

Improvements

The first version of this project was well received so I'm back to share design and documentation improvements. Pi(rate)FM Zero is now fully self contained. It turns on and off with a button press and can automatically broadcast information about the wifi network over empty FM stations at user defined intervals.

Controversy

Back in March I was told the FCC would raid me, disassemble my pi, fine me up to $50,000 and label me a terrorist. I'm happy to report none of that happened :) The FM signal may be messy but it's also short range. The Pifm developers claim it can broadcast up to 100 meters. In my experience (with a 20cm antenna) it goes no further than 40 meters.

To my understanding this device is legal in the US under 47 CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) Section 15.239 and the [July 24, 1991 Public Notice (still in effect)](https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-297510A1.pdf]. From the FCC's website:

>Unlicensed operation on the AM and FM radio broadcast bands is permitted for some extremely low powered devices covered under Part 15 of the FCC's rules. On FM frequencies, these devices are limited to an effective service range of approximately 200 feet (61 meters).

Thanks to everyone who shared concerns over Pifm's legality. I took /u/QuirkyQuarQ's advice and experimented with a 100 MHz low-pass filter. Unfortunately, the FM signal leaks through the network adapter. I'll continue to look into it. Pifm may cause interference but there shouldn't be any trouble if you keep it away from airports and don't attach massive antennas to it.

Why not use a car/smartphone FM trasmitter?

You totally could. It might even be better in some situations if you don't mind a slightly larger, more expensive device with an extra battery to charge. Keep in mind you'd lose the ability to live broadcast with a microphone or play audio directly from the PirateBox.

Going forward

In my next version I'd like to improve the PirateBox interface and make a way for users to rate playlists while having Pifm automatically play the highest ranked tracks. Users could upload music and vote on which tracks gets played. It'd be your own personal short range interactive digital-analog radio station hosted on a private intranet.

Bonus**

Here's a .img file for your convenience. Just install it to an SD card (at least 4 gb) and run it in a Pi Zero to get started. Note: auto broadcast on FM isn't enabled by default so you'll need to add a cronjob as detailed in the guide if you want to activate this feature.

You are correct. In my experience, this is generally not a problem. The hotel is probably giving you a slower uplink anyway. Or, even if you're not getting max speed, you're getting plenty to watch Netflix easily.

I'm not aware of a native two-radio travel router. However, being that I am a network engineer and interested in this kind of thing, I eventually ended up looking for a dual radio solution just to see if I could make it work. If nothing else, at least this gets my LAN traffic off the same frequency as the other nearby hotel guests on my same hotel AP.

I started with a Ravpower Filehub that I already had. I was going to link you to the Amazon page for it, but it appears they have reused the same page to sell a new version of the device that doesn't look like mine and I don't know if it can be used in the same way. The one I have looks like this:

http://www.getdatgadget.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/RAVPower-All-In-One-FileHub-3.jpg

That travel router is nice because it has a built in USB battery bank. That can be nice when you're trying to find the magic spot in the hotel where wifi is strong enough. I find the best positioning without cables, then plug it in.

I installed OpenWRT on it and went looking for a USB wifi radio to add on. OpenWRT has limited support for USB wifi radios, and in fact I couldn't find anything 802.11ac. I eventually found this dual-band N adapter, which is supported:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002SZEOLG

This gives me a true two-radio solution. The USB radio is dual-band and the internal radio is 2.4 only. OpenWRT isn't a super user-friendly solution, but it works for me. For example, it is up to me manually to set the LAN/AP channel to make sure it isn't simply sitting on the same channel as the WAN/client radio.

I have used this in a number of hotels (I travel a lot) and it works well with my Chromecast. This gets me past the captive portals on the Chromecast, and also on devices that are technically captive portal capable but annoying (like the Kindle). One login on any device is all it takes for all of my devices, no matter how many or which ones I bring.

I've even used it in a hotel with 128 kbps Internet that was too slow to stream. I was able to use Plex on my laptop to stream local content across the travel router's LAN to the Chromecast. The slow Internet WAN wasn't enough to stream on, but it was enough for the Chromecast to load apps and consider itself connected to the net.

One caveat: Some hotels limit the max speed of each client. If you log into their network with your phone and laptop as different clients, they each get a share. If you use a travel router, they both have to share a single client's allocation.

Random other advice: You know how streaming sticks often come with a short 3-inch or so HDMI extension cable? Use it. One of the hotel TV HDMI ports destroyed my Chromecast's HDMI connector (it actually pushed one of the pins on the Chromecast's HDMI connector back), and it would have been better if it had just destroyed the HDMI extension cable.

Invest in your company, invest in your infrastructure.

I'm going to demur from your provided list, and instead offer an alternative solution. Just hear me out before you look for sticker shock (all prices in USD).

Ubiquiti 24-port Gigabit Switch with PoE ($379)

Ubiquiti Unifi Security Gateway ($129)

Ubiquiti Unifi Cloud Key Gen2 ($195)

Ubiquiti Unfi UAP-AC-PRO-E 2-pack ($290)

Total cost: $993

Why am I suggesting you spend almost three times the average cost of one of those small-business routers? A few reasons.

First is performance. Ubiquiti makes 'prosumer' / Enterprise level equipment. The Access Points (APs, last entry) are each rated for 200+ simultaneous connections. When deployed right, you'll probably connect to one consistently; the other will be used by the network to identify which WiFi channels are least congested and migrate you and your clients to those less congested frequencies. In the end, that's your real problem: congestion. With 62 competing access points, it can be hard for your devices to 'hear' your router. So you need a product with some real oomph to get your AP heard. Ubiquiti can do that in spades.

The second is professionalism. What looks better to a client? A plastic black box on a desk somewhere, or an access point hung from the ceiling, like you'd find in a fortune 500 company's headquarters? ubiquit's stuff is slick, sleek, and professional.

So what are you getting for your money?

The switch (first entry) is used to provide power to the Access Points (PoE: Power over Ethernet), and since you have some extra ports there, you can also run a connection to a server, or hardwired connection to laptops, or whatever you might come up with.

The security gateway is the real 'router' in this set up, but it has no wifi capability built in; this is why you need the Access Points. The way it works, you would take your ISP's modem, set it to bridge mode, and then connect the modem to the security gateway, and the security gateway to the switch.

The cloud key is the brains of the network. It will host the controller software and allow you to set up the wifi. While this software can in theory be run on any device, this particular cloud key also contains a hard drive - very useful if you'd like to install security cameras in the office (I'm sure your insurance company would be VERY grateful, if you dont have these already). As a side note, Ubiquiti does make PoE-powered security cameras.

This setup will 100% guarantee that your wifi is the dominant 'voice' in your office. You won't have dropouts, you won't have connection issues, and this setup is very expandable - 1 port for the gateway, 1 port for the cloud key, 2 for the APs, (ideally) 5 for wired connections for you and your coworkers - that still leaves 13 connections on the switch, which means you can still expand this if you hire more employees. If you find you need a backup ISP, there's a grade higher security gateway that can handle redundant ISP connections. If you need to cover more area with WiFi, you can add another access point.

Make the setup look really professional and install everything into a patch panel cabinet like this one

Hire an electrician who specializes in running ethernet cable, and have them mount the APs in your ceiling (super easy if you have a drop ceiling. If not, its more difficult, but not by any means impossible). While they're there, have them run at least one ethernet line to everyone's desk.

edit: and less you think I'm blowing smoke up your ass, I use a frighteningly similar setup in my own home. Yes, it's overkill, no I don't care. It's the most stable WiFi I've had in a house in my life.

Unlike the other PC gamers in this thread, I'd say that rig for a PS4 is a decent deal - if you do plan on replacing your PC with something a little more powerful, as you say in another thread.

Once you pick up the PS4, what you need first and foremost is a PS+ subscription, which I think is $50 a year. Multiplayer is more or less dependent upon it (except where noted, in certain games). With the service, you also get two free games every month. So far, they've all been smaller indie titles, though the PS3 is seeing some older AAA releases. You can still make a PSN id to buy games and suchlike off the PS store.

Next, you'd probably want a second controller, especially if you're into fighting games like Mortal Kombat or Injustice. Sportsfriends, one of the free PS+ games this month, is also local MP only, and I've really enjoyed it so far.

If your WiFi is not ideal, and you don't have a LAN connection direct to the PS4, you could look into one of these.

Finally, you could look into upgrading the hard drive. 500 GB doesn't last long, since the PS4 installs all games, even ones on discs, to the hard drive. With each title clocking in between 25 and 40 GB, not to mention the two free PS+ games every month, it's gonna run out fast.

Thankfully, it's really easy to replace, as detailed here. I've heard good things on /r/PS4 about a certain 2TB Samsung hard disk, but I cannot find it right now. Or you could go for an SSD, which is faster but more expensive.

That's about all I can think of at the moment. Now for the disclaimer:

If your primary motivation for the PS4 is Destiny, you might want to hold off. I'm enjoying the game, but I would not recommend it to anyone who hasn't already tried it and decided if it's the game for them. I played the open beta for between six and eight hours before deciding to buy it. If you can, play for at least an hour or two on a friend's system before taking the leap.

I know unsolicited advice is often unwelcome, so feel free to skip the following paragraph if you want to:

UNSOLICITED ADVICE FOLLOWS

You could upgrade your GPU and get a PS4 for cheaper than assembling a new rig from scratch. I'm pretty sure you could sell just the GPU for between eighty and a hundred bucks.

UNSOLICITED ADVICE ENDS

Cheers, and welcome to the PS family!

If you can run a cat5 cable to where the other box is, I’d say to turn off google WiFi and buy 2 (or more) of these Ubiquiti access points:

https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Unifi-Ap-AC-Lite-UAPACLITEUS/dp/B015PR20GY/ref=asc_df_B015PR20GY/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=198138936631&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=11706054629834333903&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9009674&hvtargid=pla-381252494348&psc=1

You’ll still need the firewall/NAT/routing that the google network box provides, but if you run your own WiFi, you can have as many access points as you like and put them all over your house. The Ubiquiti access points allow you to broadcast a single SSID (WiFi name) that your phone/Roku/whatever will pick the strongest one and use that.

If you can’t physically run cat5 Ethernet wires to the location you want the WiFi transmitters, you can accomplish the same thing if you get a few of those “mesh” WiFi access points. I use Ubiquiti gear (wired), but I’be heard good things about Eero’s mesh networking equipment. Basically instead of wires, they wirelessly figure out the uplink back to the router (where you have one of the mesh devices plugged into Ethernet). I find the wired solution to be better for my setup (more reliable), but I’ve heard the mesh networking is pretty good as well.

Mind helping me out?

My household is wireless only as the Ethernet's connection is downstairs in a spare bedroom and the house isn't hard wired. So we've been using CenturyLink's modem and their router. We also tried a different router as well. Lately our 1gb internet has been in and out with our many devices. The tv and our phones might have internet access, but our desktops or tablets won't. Maybe check back an hour later and they might switch, or they both might work. We've restarted router/modem, and have had CenturyLink replace the modem.

Tempted to purchase our own higher end router and test the network and see if it would be a solution to our internet pains here. I'm not too experienced with access points, but from basic Googling it sounds like my setup could be CenturyLinks modem -> Ubiquiti Unifi -> Wireless signal for household devices. Correct? I was reading up the basic differences between an access point and a wireless router. Would this Unifi product simply replace a wireless router and be better than normal consumer grade products? I really just want to know if the device I linked below is a good buy and would replace a Wireless Router that supports gigabyte internet.

Here is the Unifi device I found on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Networks-802-11ac-Dual-Radio-UAP-AC-PRO-US/dp/B015PRO512/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

Any help would be greatly appreciated. My parent's house I believe has an Asus AC5300 which works awesome and fixed the Netflix buffering constantly while I was gaming on my computer. I'm just looking for a faster wireless device that doesn't belong to CenturyLink to see if its their shitty equipment causing the issue. Plus it doesn't hurt to purchase an even better device than theirs and run with it.

If you want the absolute best reception possible, a PCIe card is the best choice. Not too expensive.

If you want something that'll save you money and still offer solid reception, there's USB adapters.

Alternatively, depending on how old your house is (I'm not sure of how the logistics go; you'd have to search around on that), powerline adapters are the next best thing to a wired connection.

Wired > Powerline > PCIe > USB

USB isn't bad, but PCIe is a good sweet spot if a powerline adapter wouldn't work.

So roughly $10-40 for WiFi. It's well worth it over purchasing a motherboard with it built-in.

---

With your budget? Yessir. Hardware before luxuries.

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It's not hard at all. There are plenty of instructional videos and articles on how to do it.

tl;dr Make a bootable flash drive (at least 4GB on the drive; might as well have a bigger one, though), put the Windows ISO on there (make sure your Windows is tied to your Windows account; not as a local account either), install it to the SSD, boot up, sign in with the same Windows email as before, and activate it. Easy as that.

Make sure you wipe your hard drive, too.

Ubiquiti access point(s) and their "Cloud Key" controller for management/captive portal springs to mind.

Optionally, depending on how point-and-click you want the management for this deployment to be, also their "USG" router, and a US-8-60W PoE switch to complete the UniFi hardware set.

Amusingly, on amazon.de (used as an example to get EU pricing), those four items together come to €499.34 (UAP-AC-Pro, US-8-60W, USG, UC-CK). How's that for ever so slightly under-budget?

It would need a small amount of work customising the captive portal if you want to do social media logins - I've never done that personally, but someone might know the details. Their forums would be a good place to start if you want to look for someone who has done that, or general advice.

The gateway is definitely optional, and any cheap PoE switch would be fine (or non-PoE, as the AP will also ship with a PoE injector). The controller software can be run on any old PC or VM with 1-2GB of RAM (although I personally like the cloud key for convenience), so you could get the cost down as low as just the AP if you've got a switch and a spare computer.

It also gives you a nice ability to expand with another AP in future if this takes off and you need extra capacity, and a nice management interface which is optionally accessible over the internet without being on-site, which might be nice if you have to help troubleshoot this remotely.

I recently had to figure out broadcom drivers on a Lenovo Thinkpad with Debian...it took a while but was thankfully well documented...I'd recommend a known-compatible USB solution...although I'm ambivalent about wired-vs-wireless as long as you're mindful that WiFi-isn't-Ethernet™

Two known good (native support) solutions -

WiFi: https://www.amazon.com/Edimax-EW-7811Un-150Mbps-Raspberry-Supports/dp/B003MTTJOY

Ethernet: https://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Micro-B-Ethernet-Adapter-Raspberry/dp/B00RM3KXAU

Else, google will be your friend to find someone else who's figured out this specific hardware/software stack. Honestly, with all of the dependencies that you'll likely need to satisfy via a thumbdrive (or something??!), you probably really want a working network connection (or a lot of patience). I tried the Thinkpad's wifi without a network connection at first, and quickly decided to go find an Ethernet cable...

If you had another rPi with a working network connection, you could use that hardware to bootstrap the rPi Zero's sdcard && os && driver...

If you do get this adapter working, make sure to come back and update with how you got it up and running...you probably won't be the only person with this question :)

List:

• ZTE F609 - GPON ONT from ISP, bridge mode and connected to pfsense.
  
  
• Mikrotik CSS326-24G-2S+RM - Super budget 24 ports switch with basic features and 2 SFP+ ports for only $139 brand new, you just can't beat that price.
  
  
• Ubiquiti Unifi AP AC Lite - To handle wireless devices in my house, to be honest I was very disappointed with the temp, it runs very hot and it's the reason why I didn't mount it on the ceiling. If I knew all Unifi AP runs this hot, I would've go with other brand. Many people have told me that it's fine, but mine reaches 70 degrees on idle (I live in place where it can reach almost 40 degrees) and if I mount it on the ceiling without proper ventilation, it probably can go up to 80-85 degrees and I've seen couple post on Ubqt forum that their AP melted due to the temperature.
  
  
• Plugable 7 port USB hub - I have an unused spare. It's kinda expensive if you compare it to other cheap chinese crap but it doesn't backfeed power and super reliable, the other one is currently used to power my Pi2 24/7 for almost 2 years without single issue.
  
  
• Deepcool cooler - Super old notebook cooler I found on my garage, currently use this to blow the hot air from Unifi AP until I finish my mod to mount 120mm fan on the ceiling so I can put my AP.
  
  
• PC - Spec is G4400, Asrock H110M-HDV, PNY SSD CS1311 80GB, 2 WD hard drive 2TB, 8GB RAM, and 2x single NIC Intel PT Pro. This thing run Windows 10 and pfsense under Hyper-V (not a good idea I know). Also act as my media and storage server. I'm very surprised that this thing pulls less than 20w on idle!
  
  
• Others - Old monitor I found in my garage, probably from Intel dual core era, some cheap landline phone, a bluetooth keyboard, and bluetooth mouse.
  
  All these only pull about 40w, my next upgrade is probably to invest in a decent rack so I can have a better cable management.

I can only speak to what I did, and am very happy with. I bought the netgear r7000, flashed dd-wrt onto it, and then setup PIA on it.

Here is the router: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00F0DD0I6/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1425526696&sr=8-1&keywords=r7000&dpPl=1&dpID=41651m2TjVL&ref=plSrch&pi=AC_SX200_QL40

Here is a guide for flashing to ddwrt (I think it's the one I used about 6 months ago). http://www.tweaking4all.com/hardware/netgear-r7000-dd-wrt/

Here is the PIA guide for setting up openvpn on a ddwrt router with PIA. https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/client-support/#ddwrt_openvpn

This is the beginning of what I setup. I've since done more, like only having my HTPC go through the VPN using routes on the router, and certain services bypass the VPN (plex for one). I also can throw other devices onto the VPN as needed like Roku, Xbox one, iPad, etc. But that starts getting a little deep. I love this router, and it is also recommended by wirecutter.com, which usually provides pretty good reviews on products (headed up by a former gizmodo editor).

Good luck, and feel free to ask questions anytime.

Edit: this might be more than you want to spend, and it can be done cheaper I'm sure. The router runs about $200 usually.

The benefit of doing a bridge is that you get to keep all the features from your main router. In my case I have all the features from Orbi router. Like I can still reserve ip address for each device so that they dont drop from network as much. Eero is just mesh wifi extender for me.

If for any reason you run into some dead spots still with Eero, this Powerline adapter is pretty awesome. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AWRUICG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I have all my old 2.4ghz only devices that come with ethernet port like my Bose sound touch speakers and my other network printer connected via this Powerline adapter kit. When I check the connection Orbi consider them as hardwired so the speed is incredibly stable considering I am streaming from Pandora and syncing multiple Bose wifi speakers. I used to get stutters because one speaker gets dropped from wifi and it would stop syncing or playing music. Ever since I switched to the powerline adapters, the problem went away. The music only now stops when Pandora is asking "Are you still listening" I just have hit yes to resume the music.

It's kind of like Eero, just semi-wired. All you need to do is connecting Powerline adapter to router, plugging it into a nearby outlet, and then another where you want the device to be hooked up. There are no cables along the wall.

This is good for appliances and devices that literally dont need to be on wireless especially on older 2.4ghz devices. Fridges, printers, speakers, etc. Also less devices over wifi i think is better for every device in terms of stability. However, if you can get away with just relying on just wifi, dude that's super awesome :)

Other wise, hacking a bunch different system to work together seems to work for me lol. Gotta do what I must when I can't find one single router to handle all the devices and have stable connections.

Personally, i'd opt for this instead of that tp-link plastic one. It's a few bucks more, but has a great track record.

http://www.amazon.com/Netgear-GS105NA-Prosafe-5-Port-Gigabit/dp/B0000BVYT3/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1459347764&sr=1-3&keywords=5+port+gigabit

The CMR looks good, though monoprice wire is cheaper for the same quality (spend some of that difference on the metal 5 port gige switch I pointed out above):

http://www.amazon.com/Monoprice-1000-Feet-500Mhz-Copper-Ethernet/dp/B008I8AJIY/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1459347852&sr=1-1&keywords=monoprice+cat+6+cmr

I would also recommend against crimping your own cables. Solid core is not meant for crimping. Patch cables are super cheap, are certified for the speed, and in most cases save you time and money vs crimping your own.

Get this punchdown tool, it has both 110 and krohn. A lot of punchdowns are universal, and with those, the krohn works better.

http://www.amazon.com/TRENDnet-Punch-Krone-Blade-TC-PDT/dp/B0000AZK4D/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1459348192&sr=1-1&keywords=trendnet+punch+down+tool

Source: I built this and wired my house to 1GigE

https://imgur.com/9vhZYS1

Firstly I would get a "wifi channel scanner" app like Wifi Analyzer for Android, or anything that has a similar graphic to this. Find a channel that has the least amount of SSIDs on it, but try to stick to 1, 6, and 11 to avoid overlapping 2 channels at once. You can get a full signal but have horrible transfer ("tx") rates if it's too congested.

If that doesn't help you can look into something like Ethernet over power. Then you don't have to worry about only 1 device not working with wifi but everything else is fine. Plus better speed for video streaming.

Lastly, the most complicated option, installing DD-WRT on the router so you can get more control options and more in depth feedback, type in the model number here to see if it's supported, then check out some tutorials or videos on YouTube, it's very popular so there's going to be a lot of help available. Only do it if you're comfortable, and are ok with the possibility that it could "brick" the router. It's a fantastic tool even if you never use 90% of the added features, plus it's free.

> I mostly need the speeds for my production business to send files to my editor quickly.

Sysadmin here.

Sounds like you don't need wifi, but a network cable to your computer.

Seriously, with an apartment that big (205m^2) and walls in between, you're better off with more than one wifi device. You can buy a Unifi AC accesspoint for $82, which is a business-grade Access Point.

It's excellent quality, allows for neat, extra features like guest access, Power-over-Ethernet (meaning only one network cable goes to the AP itself, making it easy to hang on a wall or ceiling), but most importantly: it's made to cooperate with multiple units.

So, hang one up in one side of the house, connect it (via the included PoE injector) to the existing router (an AP doesn't include a router, so you need one for the "routing" part, but that can be a simple, cheap router, as long as it can handle gigabit), and hang one up on the other end of the place, and if you find the need for another, just get a third one (total $246 for 3 devices) and then the three will work together.

The experience is like an office that is too big for 1 wifi device, so an office will have multiple wifi devices that work together, letting your phone/laptop transparently jump ("roam") from one AP to another. Now, you can do that too!

You won't generally find an office that, when it turns out that one, normal router is not powerful enough, will just get one bigger router, with more black, pointy, plastic spikes. :P

tl;dr Ubiquiti Unifi (with their "disruptive pricing") is fucking awesome!

I have that ASUS RT-N66U and it's been more than capable of all of my demands. I usually have around 13 devices on the network and it does well. Granted all of those devices aren't using the network at all times but the only issues I've had with any performance issues is due to poor signal (from basement to upstairs bedroom) so not really a problem in the sense that it's bad router, just my implementation. It also has a ton of features so if you want to delve deeper into networking it has a good range of extra stuff you can do if you're into that sort of thing.

I've got 100 Mbps from Comcast and whenever I have strong connection I get my full bandwidth (and then some) according to Speedtest. Looks like you'll have around 10 devices and depending on what your connection is the Asus router should be more than capable of serving all your needs. I've mine for a couple of years now and as I said earlier, no issues.

I might recommend spending a little extra and getting one that has wireless AC on it. That way whenever you upgrade devices that have AC capability you can use it and you'll be a little more "future proof."

Here's a link to basically the same router, but with AC: RT-AC66U

Another suggestion I have would be to go ahead and buy your own cable modem. This is modem I have. Since I own it I can take it with me. I don't get charged monthly to rent the modem/router combo from Comcast. You don't have to do this, but for a lot of people (including myself), it's nice being able to control your own hardware. I know that I received a new unit and not some refurbished unit that who knows how many people have used before me (this applies to routers as well).

Buying your own stuff and getting it set up is easy enough. Usually just have to call customer support or something and give what numbers they ask for. Then you're not paying extra per month to rent a modem.

Just my 2 cents on the matter. This response turned out a little longer that I thought it would, sorry 'bout that. Hope it helps.

Thank you for the well thought out response! What sort of headset do you use on your phone for Discord? I've tried using some cheap bluetooth headsets and my friends usually say I sound like a radio drama from the 50s.

Yeah I keep getting the vibe that I'm gonna need to have a pretty solid connection between the Link and my computer, preferably ethernet. I can't really drill into any walls at my apartment... I'm wondering if I should have one long ethernet cord go out to the Link in the front room? Seems kinda brute force but I guess that would work.

I've also been told that something like this works pretty well, but I'm not sure about it yet. Seems like black magic to me haha but it certainly seems like it would be a more graceful solution if it works.

Honestly repeaters are pretty hit and miss. The better solution is generally a better wireless access point with greater range. If possible wire in a second AP and create a seamless network.

Great value AP (can use more than 1 together if you have a line ran): https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B015PR20GY/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1524511125&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=unifi+apac+lite&dpPl=1&dpID=31-u-5bgo0L&ref=plSrch

If you have to use a repeater I've had good results with this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01CGZPQVE/ref=mp_s_a_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1524511268&sr=8-5&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=tp+link+ac1200&dpPl=1&dpID=31QkJ757pTL&ref=plSrch

I've setup 10+ sites with the unifi AP's they work great and are very reliable. Better to make the jump to enterprise equipment then mess around with home grade junk.

A lot of the "ooh" and "aah" factor of a home is in the kitchen and bathrooms. That's also where you get the most money back at resale.

So if you're deciding where to spend money, that's where to spend it.

You've probably been advised to run ethernet network wiring. I'd also plan to hide wireless access points like these in the attic or other hidden areas. You will be amazed how much you enjoy stable, fast wifi access throughout the house for your various devices. Wired ethernet is better, but most devices these days have wifi built in and don't need gigabit transfer speeds. Just use it.

Where will your broadband modem go? Now's the time to plan for distribution of TV/network/etc. and designate an "IT closet."

Decide now where you might want wall-mounted TVs and plan for it with power and other connections. A nice recessed outlet with cable management can make that whole process much simpler.

In the garage, at the least, wire for 20A outlets. You never know if a future tool or device will need a lot of power, and it's not fun to retrofit. Is there a possibility that you'll ever have an electric vehicle or plug-in hybrid? If so, wire one 240v/90A circuit for each potential EV. That'll max out a new Tesla, even if it has the high-amperage charger upgrade.

I adore having a separate beverage/wine fridge and separate under-counter ice maker. They're expensive, but they make hosting a party much easier. Another must-have is a built-in warming drawer. It's super convenient and I can't believe how often we use ours to keep something warm while the rest of dinner is finishing up or because someone was late getting home and didn't get to eat with the family.

Hi,

yes, Separate modem + Router is always better than Combo devices but it also depends on your needs and use-cases

read this link and see where you land:
http://pickmymodem.com/cable-modem-wi-fi-modem-router-combo-one-buy/

for Suggestions om Combo devices:

1. C7000 AC1900 is pretty good http://amzn.to/2nbGF21
   
2. Motorola MG7550 is good as well and I have seen many good reviews http://amzn.to/2nB50PR
   
   Both of these are Broadcom based and dont have latency issue which has plagued Puma6. Dont buy Low power WIFI Combos as you will regret later.
   
   If you have high budget, I suggest you go separate modem + Separate Router
   
   Modems:
   http://pickmymodem.com/approved-modems-for-xfinity-internet-service/
   
   SB6183 (http://amzn.to/2minyUV) OR CM600 (http://amzn.to/2mG4zPi) are good choices
   
   
   Routers:
   NETGEAR R7000 AC1900 (http://amzn.to/2qnhZG2) OR TPLink Archer C9 (http://amzn.to/2pRApP3)
   
   Mesh??:
   Do you want Best WIFI range and have budget? then go for MESH WIFI systems:
   
3. NETGEAR Orbi RBK50 Kit http://amzn.to/2pq1ojA
   
4. Google MESH WIFI system http://amzn.to/2qmYqO7
   
   
   
   

I am a noob, so listen to everyone else first. However, I can tell you what I've done:

I wanted to route all my internet traffic through a VPN tunnel. I tried this first on a DD-WRT router, but didn't have nearly enough processing power to keep up with my 60/3 mbps cable WAN.

So, I built a pfSense box with a Celeron 1037U mobo, 4 GB of RAM, and a mini ITX VESA case. Shipped cost was about $220. It has been in service for almost two years, and flawless except for a USB flash drive failure (I was running pfSense from the flash drive, and now I have an old 2.5" laptop hard drive installed instead). This setup easily handles OpenVPN AES-128 at 60/3--even without an AES-NI processor.

However, thanks almost entirely to this sub, I have caught the homelab bug and am expanding my network. I needed more ports, and started looking for something:

• Fanless (it's dusty here)
  
• 4 NICs
  
• Low power
  
• Embedded/internal storage
  
  So I picked up a Netgate RCC-VE 2440 and loaded pfSense on it myself. About $350. This blog post was extremely helpful.
  
  As for wireless access points, I'm using an Asus RT-AC66U with DD-WRT. It has been awesome! I briefly considered adding wireless capability to the 2440, but I wanted 802.11ac and I like being able to put the AP somewhere other than where the pfSense box is.
  
  For what you've described, you could save $75 and get the RCC-DFF-2220, or build a box yourself. Also, check in with the awesome peeps at /r/pfsense.

Yeah I'd put money on that being the source of your problem. The 2.4GHz spectrum is already crowded with so many things: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, wireless devices like keyboards, mice, game controllers, etc. Add an entire household of devices and the poor network is going to be crying for mercy.

So you have a few choices going forward:

• There might already be a separate 5GHz network available. Do you see anything like YourNetworkName-5G?
  
• Switch the WOW gateway to 5 GHz, if it's even supported by the device. WOW tech support might be able help with this. If you can find the model number on the device, I might be able to dig up the directions.
  
• Get your own router. Put the gateway into "passthrough" mode and turn off its Wi-Fi, the use your router for 2.4GHz and 5GHz. Most new devices are dual-band. I like this Netgear R6700.
  
• If you want a completely hands-off approach, at the cost $14.99/month, call up WOW and have them switch you over to their Whole-Home WiFi, which uses Eero devices, which are pretty good from what I hear.
  
• Combine the last two options and buy your own Eero devices. Given the cost of WOW's whole-home service, this will pay for itself in about two years. ($393.30 / $14.99/mo = ~26 months)
  
  Edit: typos

For everyone blaming my internet this is what I currently use:

• Modem : https://www.amazon.com/ARRIS-SURFboard-SB6183-DOCSIS-Cable/dp/B00MA5U1FW/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1503838413&sr=8-4&keywords=best+modem+gaming
  
  
• Router: https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Nighthawk-AC1750-Smart-Router/dp/B00R2AZLD2/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1503838466&sr=1-2&keywords=best+router+gaming
  
  Also have the most expensive xfinity internet service, which goes beyond 200 Mbps. I would blame my internet if i was experiencing this in other games, but FFXIV is literally the only game where I have such high ping and notice delay.
  And yes, I am on Wired connection, no way in hell I'd use wireless connection ever considering how anal I can be with these things lol.
  
  Here is my rig as well for anyone wondering: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/7rCpm8
  
  EDIT: At this point, my only solution would be by using VPNs like everyone has suggested. I never used one before, have a friend who used WTFast she claimed it did make things a lot better but after reading some reviews online it seems like it's not the best option available. Is Mudfish a better option? Or which one is considered the best? Thanks everyone for replying btw, very helpful!

everyone in this thread for the most part seems to love Ubiquiti. looks like you can get a secure gateway, 8 port managed switch and an AC access point for ~$400 and have a prosumer/enterprise level system.

if you are looking for simpler/cheaper all in one and like netgear, the r7000 is well regarded at ~$150. i've had one for a couple of years and its been rock solid. (the r7000p might be the better option for an extra 30 for the MIMO capabilities, but i don't have the experience with it to say). when you feel like tinkering, throw Xwrt-Vortex or dd-wrt on it.

ultimately ubiquiti looks like the more robust solution, and future upgrades to new wireless standards would clock in most likely cheaper then a new all in one router as you just need to swap in a new access point, all while giving higher security and more overall network capability and flexibility.

I would stop renting a modem from them. That's throwing money away.

You want to purchase a DOCSIS 3.0 modem to be current. Preferably, you'd want one that bonds eight downstream channels to handle the most bandwidth and also future-proof a bit. I would target a Motorola SB6141. This is probably the #2 best-selling cable modem, only behind the SB6121, which is cheaper because it only bonds four downstream channels. The more downstream channels the better, but the 6121 would be sufficient if you want to save some cash.

As far as the router (most important for in-house network traffic), something that's got access to custom firmware from Tomato or DD-WRT would be nice. The new ASUS routers are really popular. I'd go for the RT-N66U for a solid 802.11n wifi network. You get 3 antennas and it's dual band (2.4/5GHz). If you'd like to upgrade the router even further (and to really handle all the devices you'd connect to it) you may want to consider the new 802.11ac capable RT-AC68U. Stock firmware on these guys should be plenty good if you don't want to venture into flashing custom firmware.

Also, here's Google's list of compatible routers.

**

Slickdeals search queries:*

• SB6141 - $53 to $75
  
• RT-N66U - $80 to $100
  
• RT-AC68U - $149 to $160

Cool! Hope you survived the flooding.

That is a cable modem so: Motorola 6121 or 6141 to replace the modem part

http://www.amazon.com/Motorola-SB6121-SURFboard-DOCSIS-Cable/dp/B004XC6GJ0

http://www.amazon.com/Motorola-SurfBoard-SB6141-DOCSIS-Cable/dp/B00AJHDZSI/ref=zg_bs_284715_2

Ubee makes this, but I have never heard of them before. Recommend: Motorola. The quality goes in before the name goes on. Or was that Quasar?

Regardless: you need a router/wireless router too, and have about 70 bucks left.

IF you can afford an Apple Airport Extreme, and don't have game consoles, please get that. It's a great router and just works, and if the Ubee combo unit was good enough for you, the AAE will be great.

Failing that:

http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-Dual-Band-Wireless-N-Router-RT-N56U/dp/B0049YQVHE/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1370541191&sr=1-1&keywords=asus+rt-n56u

Asus RT56U is in your price range and works great.

If that does not work for you, check back....

If you can't go wired, your best option is a powerline adapter. I've never had to use one as I can always wire directly to my router, but I hear it's the best option vs. wireless. Your second best and only other option really is wireless. For wireless, the best option is an internal PCI-E wireless NIC, 802.11 ac to use the 5 GHz band for the best speeds.

If you are on TWC, what modem are you using currently? Or is it a gateway provided by TWC?

I basically always recommend the SB61XX- series of modems. Not their fancy gateway versions.

the SB6121 is End of Life now, so you have either the SB6141, SB6183 or the SB6190, if you are buying new. If you have one of these or another passable modem, you can continue to use that. The difference between them is the upper limit of service speed. They are all basically the same product besides this difference.

For a router, I typically go with a Mikrotik RB3011, but that is going to require some networking know-how. Since you are here asking questions, it's definitely not your speed.

I would suggest the Ubiquiti Security Gateway, for you. I have personally never used one, since I know my way around Mikrotik, but I hear good things, and I have like any other hardware they make.

For your Wireless, I suggest the Ubiquiti Unifi AC Pro APs. You can have as few as one, but can scale it later if you want.

Also, if you own the home and plan on sticking around for any amount of time, you might consider actually building a network shelf by the Cable/telco demarc (usually by the power panel in the basement by most modern building codes)

Something like so.

Then you can mount your networking equipment out of the way, in the ideal location to put the modem. This sort of setup, combined with structured wiring would be the ideal home network setup.

It really depends on the size of the house and what the walls are made out of. My parents house isn't that big but it's old and the walls are plaster and have chicken wire in between them. I needed 3 APs to cover the house and networks speeds were iffy on the remote APs compared to the main one. This was a 802.11n network though.

I don't know where the bottleneck is on your network exactly so I'd troubleshoot starting with the least expensive options first to determine where it is before you go and spend lots of money.

1. $15 If it's an option, buy a cheap switch and move the NAS to room B as I mentioned above and see if that improves performance.
   
   
2. $35 Buy a Chromecast and see if it performs any better than the Roku Stick.
   
   
3. $80-200 Buy a Roku 3/4 or Nvidia Shield TV. Regular settop box might get better receptions than a streaming stick.
   
   
4. $200 Buy 2x Ubiquit UAC-AC-LR Wireless Access Points. These are considered the best APs on the market and these are the long range versions. I personally love these things
   
   
5. $370 Buy THIS MONSTROSITY and pray the signal reaches all corners of your home.

It's hardly an ideal home router, but I'm absolutely loving my Ubiquiti EdgeRouter but at around $175 US, and with NO WIFI, it's probably not what you're looking for. I recently picked up an Asus wifi router though, and I'm loving that as well, though I wish I had spent more and gotten the RT-AC68U, but at about $200 that's also probably not ideal. I have the AC1200 (RT-AC56R) model and picked it up at walmart for about $100, it lacks exterior antennae, but coverage at my apartment seems good, and it will function as just an access point if you do end up getting the EdgeRouter from Ubiquiti, or just want to later extend your wireless coverage. Here is an image of my current networking setup taken with my potato. The SMC box beneath the EdgeRouter is the modem charter has given me, with the Asus RT-AC56R next to it on the right.


Edit: Forgot I was in /r/wireless... Even lacking wireless, with the POE (Power Over Ethernet) that the EdgeRouter provides, you can relatively easily add a ($70...) wireless access point to the thing, but then you'll be over budget if you just got the wireless Asus router. You could also just get a cheap wireless router to use with it, but if you just get the Asus you'll get a very pretty looking dual-band wireless router.

4 people streaming regularly on a $40 router is probably asking for reboots and slowdowns. I don't own any of the routers on this review site, but you might want to look that over. Their pick for best cheap router is the TP-LINK TL-WDR3600

You have to think of routers like little computers that literally route network signals to each of your devices within your home. Just like a computer, the cheaper routers have slower processors and less RAM, which can slow things down pretty quickly when multiple people are doing bandwidth-intensive things like streaming.

I'd seriously consider upping your budget if you want a smooth streaming experience in your house.

Personally, I have a ASUS RT-N66U and it's an amazing router, and I've never had a single issue with it, but it's well above your price range.

>Personally, i'd opt for this instead of that tp-link plastic one. It's a few bucks more, but has a great track record.
http://www.amazon.com/Netgear-GS105NA-Prosafe-5-Port-Gigabit/dp/B0000BVYT3/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1459347764&sr=1-3&keywords=5+port+gigabit

Same guts? I picked the plastic... cus Im cheap but mostly because I think the front ports look sloppy in a HT cabinet or on a desk.

>The CMR looks good, though monoprice wire is cheaper for the same quality (spend some of that difference on the metal 5 port gige switch I pointed out above):
http://www.amazon.com/Monoprice-1000-Feet-500Mhz-Copper-Ethernet/dp/B008I8AJIY/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1459347852&sr=1-1&keywords=monoprice+cat+6+cmr

Thanks! swapped for monoprice

>I would also recommend against crimping your own cables. Solid core is not meant for crimping.

ok then, I really wasn't looking forward to crimping a dozen cable but I felt like Ill have so much cat6 it would be a waste not to make my own.

>Get this punchdown tool, it has both 110 and krohn. A lot of punchdowns are universal, and with those, the krohn works better.
http://www.amazon.com/TRENDnet-Punch-Krone-Blade-TC-PDT/dp/B0000AZK4D/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1459348192&sr=1-1&keywords=trendnet+punch+down+tool

So what your saying is most of these keytones labeled 110 will except a krohn style punch? Id like minimize my cost and the 110/66 punch I linked is basically in my hands, its still worth going with this other tool?

So should I bother with the crimper/rj45 ends at all? Just buy a pack of 3ft patch cables and be done with it?

>Source: I built this and wired my house to 1GigE
https://imgur.com/9vhZYS1

nice rack (giggity)

A few things:

• Any type of USB to micro-USB cable will work fine. For example: Amazon, Adafruit.
  
• The adapter (the part that plugs into the wall) does need to be 5V - however pretty much all USB adapters will output 5V because that is the standard for USB (other things that have a barrel plug on the end, like laptop chargers, might be 12V, but you shouldn't need to worry about that).
  
• USB chargers are rated at different currents. The original claim was that you could just use any old micro-USB cell phone charger, but some of those didn't supply enough current for additional USB devices plugged into the Pi (mouse, keyboard, wifi dongle etc). If you have a model B+ (which can handle more current than the Model B thanks to a redesigned power circuit) I'd recommend a supply rated for 2 amps, like this.
  
  
• This wifi dongle is very popular. I have it and it works fine.
  
  
• Adafruit has several cases. I have the black one which is currently out of stock there but also available at SparkFun. I think clear cases are cooler but this one works fine.

I'd take a different approach, depending on your level of comfort with networking.

Purchase a USG, and then add an access point (or two, or three, or more, depending on the size of your abode). Ubiquiti UAP-AC-'s (I have the UAP-AC-Lite) are pretty popular 'round these parts, and my UAP-AC-Lite is working perfectly, so far (I've only had it a few months now). Best part of this approach is that it'll be simple to replace the access point down the road, when some new whiz-bang WiFi technology sprouts up, and you won't have to waste cash replacing an otherwise perfectly working / capable router.

The nice thing with the products I linked is that they're all configured from a single interface (the UniFi Controller). No need to fumble about in multiple UIs to configure the devices, as you'd have to do if you take the advice others will likely provide -- instead of the USG, they'll suggest an Edgerouter + UAP-AC-, which while less expensive than what I suggested, use different configuration interfaces / methods.

insert crack about 'not breaking the bank', then listing out three routers that are ~$200 or more :P

• edit : I wasn't disappointed -- while typing my reply, someone indeed posted just what I thought they would... lol

I personally would buy another router. You can easily do what /u/michrech said but it seems like you don't like the prices (which I understand).

So yes searching "wireless routers" is a good term because 9 times out of 10 wireless routers have at least 4 ports on them. If I was in your position I would buy this router, or even this one. I linked these two because I have personally used them and i haven't had any issues with them.

Configuration wise, these routers should have a "Wireless AP" mode. Which will turn off the routers DHCP and just work off your main one, if you said you're running Cat5 cable (hopefully Cat5e).

The other configuration option you can do is to login into whichever router you get and turn off the DHCP server and then only plug ethernet cables into the 1-4 ports and NOT the WAN port. This will simply extend your existing router DHCP range to this new one. So you have options.

Hope this helps!

EDIT: Both configuration options I listed do the exact same thing...just different ways of doing them.

EDIT 2: I just now saw the second option /u/michrech listed and that does seem like a very viable option. Especially if you don't have a basic understanding of how to access a router's login page. It's probably a more plug and play option.

For your NAS I would highly recommend the Synology Disk station. I currently have the 212j, and couldn't be happier with it. It has a great user interface, and some pretty nice features. It has a usb port on it, and will run your printer. Synology also has an application similar to "dropbox," allowing you to sync files between your computer and the NAS. It allows for multiple users, and it's super easy to setup.

Link on Amazon

As previously suggested, solid state drives are probably your best bet.

As for the router, I would suggest the Asus RT-N66U

Link on Amazon

Out of the box it has a great firmware if you don't want to have to deal with Tomato or DD-WRT.

MPEG-2 HDTV over WiFi is a no-go. Things like Netflix can get away with it for 2 reasons:

1. 3Mbps H.264 vs. ~15Mbps needed for the same quality MPEG-2 from cable, with no option for a lower bitrate stream.
   
   
2. Internet streaming services buffer ahead of what you are watching, usually by 30s or more, so if your WiFi goes away for a second or two (which happens all the time...), it can be playing out of the already downloaded buffer during that time. WMC buffering time defaults to 100 ms. You can raise this in the registry but not by much. The reason they keep the buffer so tiny is because a bigger buffer would make it take longer to switch channels watching live TV.
   
   You have a few realistic options:
   
   

1. MoCA. (Ethernet over coax) Unlike Powerline, these things are actually good, and actually deliver the rated total bandwith they are advertised with! (but exactly half that between any two nodes) The FiOS router is in fact a dual band MoCA adapter, and their default installation uses one MoCA channel for the WAN connection from the router to the ONT and another for the LAN to talk to set top boxes. It adds 4ms latency, but that is still way better than WiFi. In the past year or so, MoCA 2.0 adapters have become available to give it 600Mbps bandwidth, but do not get the offbrands of these -- they are still buggy and need to be rebooted every day or two. Off-brand is OK for MoCA 1.0 as that is far more mature. ActionTec MoCA 2.0 adapters are here: https://www.amazon.com/Actiontec-Bonded-Ethernet-Adapter-ECB6200K02/dp/B013J7O3X0/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1486960250&sr=1-3&keywords=moca+adapter
   
   
2. Configure Windows to act like a router, with the HDHR behind that router with Internet Connection Sharing: http://www.home-network-help.com/windows-7-internet-connection-sharing.html
   
   Note: the MoCA signal is much stronger than the cable TV signal, and even though it operates in a higher frequency range, the periodic scans for other MoCA devices will interfere with cable channels near harmonics of the MoCA frequency. If your neighbors are using it, that may actually account for the kind of signal loss you are seeing. You will need to put a MoCA filter in front of the cable tuner to block the interference. MoCA filters: https://www.amazon.com/2-Pack-Extreme-POE-F201C-Point-Filter/dp/B01FT8C5DW/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1486960793&sr=1-4&keywords=moca+filter -- Note: there are other filters listed on Amazon. I picked these out because it lists a larger stopband frequency which includes the MoCA 2.0 range, not just the primary 2 channels for MoCA 1.0. Oddly none of the ones currently on Amazon blocks the 1GHz used by FiOS WAN, but maybe this is OK because the WAN band wouldn't have the higher amplitude pings searching for new devices on the network. Most cable company STBs have these filters built in, while the InfiniTV and HDHR do not. The cable company is supposed to put a filter like this where the cable enters your house to isolate your signal from the neighbors for stuff like this, but might likely not.
   
   

You need a separate modem and router. Gateways that combo the two will pretty much guaranteed not give you the full speed you're paying for.

The kind of router you want is gonna be one of the higher end dual band routers. With the amount of connections is recommend one of the flagship models from ASUS or Linksys even.

Heres the router I have: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00FB45SI4

Essentially a dual band gigabit router. One of the cooler functions is that it supports the newest wireless band which is significantly faster than the current standard (though not many things use it yet). Future proofing, basically.

It supports my house fine, with 2 laptops, 2 wired desktops, 3 smartphones, my 360, xb1, smart tv, Blu ray player, you get the idea. It handles heavy loads well. I recommend it if you're interested in a good investment into a router.

Hope that helped a bit. :)

Im not sure about fixing it, but there are cheap solutions. These things are usually pretty cheap, so the built in ones don't usually work very well. This is a [USB Bluetooth adapter] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009ZIILLI/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_IA6EAbRXS8BC2). This should work with the USB 2.0 ports (if you don't know what that is there a diagram on the Amazon page describing the difference between 2.0 and 3.0) its a really good cheap solution. If you want something more expensive, robust, or integrated with the computer, you can get a [pci express WiFi and Bluetooth adapter] (https://m.newegg.com/products/9SIADMA6PJ9673?ignorebbr=true&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleMKP-Mobile&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleMKP-Mobile-_-pla-_-Accessories+-+Controller+cards+Add-on+cards+Ect-_-9SIADMA6PJ9673&gclid=CjwKCAiA5OrTBRBlEiwAXXhT6PHVh-zsxy6DehfXXqUbfYiNG1dR8oxkR9aHE_7-JabYYPkcwIlO-xoCbzgQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds). As is with this one, most Bluetooth cards that are pci express are a WiFi card that comes with Bluetooth. No garuntee that it's a higher quality (I assume it is). You can find these by searching "pci express Bluetooth". I would only suggest getting this if either you have installed these things before or if someone you know is willing to help you, but it's just like installing a graphics card, but usually without the power cables. There's nothing wrong with the dongle though

I got you fam.

Time to build a lab.

A stackable managed 48 port switch with sfp uplinks.

Managed router with good security options and support for multiple VLANS

Some Access Points

Set you back about 500-700 USD, but this is as close to enterprise as you can get in your home. Do your best to use the CLI to configure the switch, GUI is fine for this firewall/router.

The APs can be managed with UniFi just like an enterprise system.

There's also a pretty good market for old cisco gear. Hunt down 3560, or 3750 which are old, but good enough to learn stuff with. They run for around 80-200 USD for a 48 port switch.

Buy this modem and the router/wireless access point of your choice. I like this one but you can go cheaper or more fancy if you like. Connect the modem to the cable line and the router to the modem. Write down the MAC address and serial number for each thing.

Next, take a shot, and call comcast. Tell them you want their $35/month internet-only plan and you have your own modem. Connect the modem to the cable line before calling to make things easier. They will try to sell you some stuff and get some info, but just be patient and stay on target.

This is where it gets fun. If you've been graced by heaven, you'll be done in 5 minutes but I've never seen this happen. Most likely you will be transferred around to several people, having to repeat the same info while they struggle to activate your modem. They will claim there's no signal, they'll say "maybe it's not supported," and they'll very likely drop the call at least once. Keep calling and eventually, probably within 45 minutes to an hour, they will miraculously succeed.

It will end up costing $40/month, because there's some retarded $5 fee on top of the subscription. If they try to charge you for a modem rental or installation, challenge it immediately.

Yes, this is the easiest and cheapest way to get internet in this city. Fortunately, setting up gas/electric is about a 5 minute phone call with the lovely folks at national grid.

Access Points are better than a repeater, but they need to be wired - either you'll have to do ethernet cable run or use powerline adapters (that make use of house wiring) to connect your router to AP unit.

There are 3 in 1 units that can act as either an AP, repeater, router. So maybe get one of those and keep your options open. Something like an Asus RT-N12 or similar.

Then if you can run an ethernet cable from your router to the AP unit, that would be best. But I'm guessing you can't/won't do this, or you would have run a cable already to the bedroom.

So that leaves you with Powerline Adapters. Get a kit from a place with a good return policy in case it's not compatible with your home wiring. Then if all good, just connect your router and AP with it, and you're good to go. Something like this powerline kit should be good enough. Though you can get units with gigabit ethernet or passthrough if you lack wall outlets.

That link is NOT the UAP-AC-Pro. It's the older UAP-Pro, which is an 802.11n only product. You do NOT want that one.

You want this one: https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Networks-802-11ac-Dual-Radio-UAP-AC-PRO-US/dp/B015PRO512/

That's the new UAP-AC-Pro. It's $130ish. It supports 802.11ac (3x3 antennas) and true 802.3af PoE.

The UAP-AC-Lite is around $80ish as I recall. It also supports 802.11ac but with only 2x2 antennas, and it uses special 24v passive PoE so you have to use the Ubiquiti injector or a special Ubiquiti switch.

The difference between real PoE and passive PoE is that real 802.3af PoE has a handshake sequence for safety. When you plug an 802.3af device into a compatible switch, the device signals that it needs PoE power and then the power flow is turned on. This prevents damage to non-PoE devices.

Passive PoE just means that power is sent down the line without consideration for what's on the other end. If you plug a non-PoE device into a Passive PoE port, that non-PoE device will receive PoE and will usually be damaged or destroyed as a result.

Please note that the injectors included with either device are passive. IE, the UAP-AC-Pro's included injector is JUST an injector, no handshake.

The best way to do things is to get a real PoE switch like a Ubiquiti US-8-150W or a Netgear GS110TP, and the Ubiquiti UAP-AC-Pro.

However if this is the only PoE device that you have or will have, then you're fine to just buy the Lite and use the power injector... just be careful which port goes where :)

• If you're on T-mobile One, enable Kickback on all your lines. That will get you a $10 credit for every line that uses less than 2gb.
  
  
• I'm not sure if they're still doing it, but if you go to your local T-Mobile store, you can get a free "CellSpot" router. It's a rebranded Asus router and it's pretty kickass.
  
  
• If you're interested in Sling TV, they offer a 30% off promo to T-Mobile customers.
  
  
• I would uninstall/disable all of the T-mobile apps you can except for visual voicemail. It's name tells you what it does, but it simply lets you listen to your voicemails without having to call. My T-mobile and Device Unlock cannot be disabled, but the rest can.
  
  
• Samsung and T-Mobile are running a promo that will get you a free VR for purchasing the S8. They're also offering a free entertainment kit that you can redeem in the Shop Samsung app.

You don't have to do top tier everything for a homelab.

Most people will never need managed switches, much less Cisco branded stuff. TP-Link makes competent and reasonably priced dumb switches.

For the router, I used to run pfSense on a custom PC build (~$300 about 6 years ago) but I'm already familiar with enterprise router settings and found all the features I could want in a consumer grade Asus router. At the end of the day, port forwarding, WiFi and OpenVPN are everything I'd ever want it to do. I can offload any heavy lifting or advanced features to my server.

If you're not looking to be super fancy, here's a simple homelab setup:

• Asus AC86U Router: $170.14
  
• 24 port TP-Link Switch: $89.99
  
• 8 port TP-Link Switch: $19.99
  
• 2 Bay Synology Diskstation: $166.87
  
• Dell PowerEdge R710 Server: $209.95
  
  You can swap up or down based on needs but the router does all the basic stuff most people will need it to do. The 24 port switch should be more than enough as the primary switch for most people. The 8 port switch is great for secondary locations. The diskstation can handle your backups and cloud storage and is a nice balance of convenience and price. The R710 server can handle Plex, NAS duties and probably some light duty VMs.
  
  The big add-on expense will be the hard drives, of course. You could probably get by shucking the 10TB easystore drives to save a bit.
  
  I use a custom built server (Xeon E3-1231 v3 @ 3.4GHz, 16 GB RAM, built around 2012 and upgraded the CPU a few years ago) and have never owned a R710 myself, so I can't say much on the actual limits of what you can do with it. That said, I'm suddenly really tempted to grab a R710 to use as network storage because I've reached the limit of my current server. The biggest weakness I see in the R710 is the CPU isn't too beefy but its still decent given the sheer number of (8)cores/(16)threads. Plex and less demanding game servers are probably the limit of what it can handle but it should easily handle a number of less demanding VMs.
  
  Anyways, as a starter setup, this should more than satisfy most people.

Access point 140.35$ each, less in bulk, * 31 = 4350.85$ (3863,35$ using bulk discount).
Controller: correct me if I am wrong but I don't think there is one needed, or at least I couldn't find it on the Ubiquiti website. And if it is needed certainly it's not going to cost 35k$.

What are your toughts on that?
I'm currently studying networking among other things at school and my (educated but without much experience) opinion is that Cisco stuff is waaaay overpriced (pfSense is free and is very good imo), and lacks in the gui departement. Yes, console access is also a requirement, but if a product lacks a nice gui for me it's a show stopper, for me products have to work good but also be good to work with.

This is there one I have

refurbished HP

The best of the WMR sets (this one was on sale last week for $299 so keep your eyes out)

MS recommends this Bluetooth dongle

Note the first two are basically the same: they all are, except for the Samsung which has better screens and manual ipd adjustment. The new version I linked to also has built in Bluetooth so you wouldn't need to worry about a dongle. Again in that price point I recommend Rift, though it's a tossup between way better screens and way better controllers, there :)

Edit: also, run the windows mr test -- you can find it in the windows store. If it says you're good, games like beat saber should run fine

alright, at a high level you want good internet.
You can't cut into the walls (understandable).

How much have you spoken with your landlord? you might be able to do at least a little bit of hard wiring (routing ethernet to more strategic locations than the "default"). You don't have to hard wire EVERYTHING.

If you have the landlord's blessing (spin it as a property improvement) you might be able to hard wire from the current modem/router to a more strategic (usually central OR opposite of the an existing "wireless" router) location and place down a wireless access point)

Flat cable is not ideal when it comes to quality but in practice it is usually more than good enough and you can often place it in a way where it blends in and looks like it's part of the house.

https://www.amazon.com/Flat-Ethernet-Cable-White-Clips/dp/B00WD017BG

wireless access points - https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Unifi-Ap-AC-Lite-UAPACLITEUS/dp/B015PR20GY

you could also try something like the AC pro (3x3 device which can give up to 50% better speed for supported devices).

Now, for the upstairs, consider getting a router which you can use as a wireless bridge and then hard wiring things to that.

One other consideration, if you current "wireless router" is reasonably performant(3x3 MIMO support and wireless AC), move it up stairs and get a cheap wired router (think Ubiquiti EdgeRouter-X) and pair it with an AP for the downstairs.

Doing all these things collectively or at least a subset of them SHOULD get you a fair bit more performance.

I have already suggested 3 options.

https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-EdgeRouter-Advanced-Gigabit-Ethernet/dp/B00YFJT29C

https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-EdgeMax-EdgeRouter-ERLite-3-Ethernet/dp/B00CPRVF5K

https://www.pfsense.org on an old Intel system

The first is cheap, has a switch and uses the least electricity, but is like 2% shy of giving you peak speeds under optimal conditions. People in /r/Ubiquiti can help with it.

The second lacks a switch, but will give you peak speeds under all conditions. Unless you get a separate switch, you would not have anymore wired ports and you will need to put the MoCA bridge and Unifi AC HD on separate subnets. That latter part could be a good thing for privacy if you configure the firewall correctly. People in /r/Ubiquiti can help with it.

The third is overwhelmingly superior to the other two and potentially cheaper upfront if you already have an old Intel system around the house. The electricity costs are the highest though. People in /r/pfsense can help with it.

eh that's what happens when I try to do shit with my phone

https://www.amazon.com/Alfa-2-4HGz-RP-SMA-Screw--Antenna/dp/B003ZWPRUI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1465983658&sr=8-1&keywords=alfa+panel

AMP makes a very noticeable difference but I don't think it's really putting a full 2W. It's cheap though so worth it IMO. Range depends entirely on location, elevation, weather, and what you are "shooting into". Starbucks into an office building is going to have a lot shittier range than say the top of a parking garrage down into a park.

This is basically my "what a hacker might use" set up. The panel, amp, and a NHA and NHR alfa worked great for long range but had some issues with missing packets in Kali. I found the best collection was using airpap cards in Windows wireshark and running attacks via the alfa set up in a Kali Vm.

Also needless to say the airpcap nx card with the 2 external antennas was king but it's a freaking $700 wifi card so it better be.

https://www.cacetech.com/documents/AirPcap%20Nx%20Datasheet.pdf

If you can get 3-4 airpcap classic cards off ebay for cheap (I found 3 for $200) each one can cover 20 mhz of spectrum and you can link them in aggregate with the airpcap control panel. This makes it highly effective for a leave behind collection device against a router that self adjusts. Price might put it out of the range of a regular hacker and more into the industrial espionage price range. You may be able to find an NX for cheap on ebay it seems like cace is getting out of the market with the whole airpcap line so they are getting kinda rare.

edit

also don't forget the noble cantenna. Looks shady as fuck but it's good if you're on a college student budget. You can usually get them just as good as an alfa panel antenna, they just look like a big sign that says "i am up to no good". Make sure if you are using an alfa with an RP SMA connector to build it out of an RP sma and not a regular SMA. Ie fit the pieces together and make sure they're the right kind before you start doing anything.

http://www.turnpoint.net/wireless/cantennahowto.html

edit edit

also check this little guy out. I found him out after I finished my 802.11 stuff but i like it a little better than the alfa cards. Doesn't come with a super fancy antenna when you buy it but it's a lot cheaper and just as good once you put a panel or cantenna on it.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002SZEOLG/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

>If I buy a USB adapter, can I choose somewhere to disable the in-build adapter and use the plugged in one instead?

Yeah! You sure can disable the on-board adapter. Then it defaults to the other one. We can help too. but it's in device manager in windows.

>Is this a good idea?

Powerline? powerline. Yeah. Is powerline a good idea? Trick question it's always a good idea. It basically bridges a pair of ethernet with your buildings electrical wiring. You just need 2 ethernet cables and physical access to the router. If you're at home or apartment and just can't run a cable through 3 rooms this is great. If you're at a uni or work and lack physical access to the router, then this doesn't help. But powerline is going to be lowest latency, highest reliability, etc.

PCIe adapters are also a good idea. USB adapters are an okay idea. Onboard wifi is really most useful in mITX when you a) need wifi and b) don't have room for a PCIe card.

USB works okay too but frequent dropped connections on most of the USB adapters I've tried. by the time you spend enough for a good one you could have just bought a pcie card!

I have one of these access points and it covers my 2000sqft house. My suggestion would be to keep your router, but don't use the wifi from it, use the ubiquiti for your wireless. If you can place it centrally in the apartment that would be best, or as close to where the wireless devices will mainly be as you can get. You'll have to run an ethernet cable to it from your router, so that's something to keep in mind. It has dual band, but the 5GHz may not go through walls very well, and 2.4GHz is going to be shit in an apartment as well, so that's where u/washu_k may have a better option with the nanostations.

Ideally, if you can figure out a way to run cables from your router (or a switch) to the PC's, that would be the best for gaming. I know you said you can't run it down the hall on the floor, but what about mounting it to the walls or drilling holes? They're easy to patch up when you leave, and the staples leave such tiny holes they're barely noticeable. When I lived in an apartment years ago, I ran a cable across my entire apartment, and if your walls are white and you use a white cable and white staples it's not annoying to see.

First, don't go by the antenna bars, they aren't 100% accurate. Download a speed test app, and test the speed strength when you're in your room compared to being next to the router.

I can't imagine losing that much signal strength from being down the hall. You can try moving your router closer to the middle part of your place.

Your current router isn't the latest and greatest, but it is dual band, so I would definitely setup the 5ghz network as well. 5ghz is stronger and usually has less traffic on the frequency, but it doesn't do well with distance. If you have newer phones (iPhone 5 and better), they should have an antenna for 5ghz and might improve your speed. You can easily google if your devices are compatible. Most should now be.

If that doesn't work you can look into getting a MoCa or a Powerline adapter. Don't get a wifi extender, those are crap. Also, I wouldn't bother with any new "mesh network".

If you really need to strengthen your wifi signal, it's always the best bet to run an ethernet cable and setup an Access Point (AP). This is usually the least preferred option for most people because they don't want a cable running down their hallway, or don't want to deal with the hassle of running it through the walls.

It would appear bluetooth functionally is not a part of your computer. To be fair, the method I gave you is not a surefire way to tell, the drivers could be disabled, or the bluetooth chip could be unpowered, but on most computers bought from a company (meaning any pc fully put together and just bought from a Best Buy for example) it should already be set up and ready to go, so it seemed like a safe shot. But I did a quick search of your laptop, honestly I’m surprised it still runs at a usable speed. Your laptop is relatively old and one look at the product page and the fact that it shipped with windows 7 basically told me that you don’t have any bluetooth functionality, being at that time, barely any laptops had it, even some laptops today come without Bluetooth. The driver is probably pushed to all devices with the same motherboard just to be easy, as it takes up an insignificant amount of space and, since you don’t have Bluetooth, it won’t run so there is no performance impacting you. If you would like Bluetooth functionality, you can buy cheap Bluetooth USB adapters at your local tech store or online

Hi there, sorry for the late answer I was out for the week-end!

It will depends highly on what you expect him to do with it, and also your budget. But for the more standard it will be at least:

• The Pi
  
  
• A power cable: the "Alim" was a bad use of a french word for power cable
  
  
• A case or another (You can also build one with Legos! :D )
  
  
• a microSD card for the OS (no preference I took the first link I saw)
  
  Then there can be:
  
  
• A usb wifi adapter if the can't plug an ethernet cable
  
  
• An hdmi cable if you think he will use it on his TV or standard PC monitor.
  
  
• About the controller, if you think he will build a media center linked to his TV with the HDMI cable, some TVs allow the use of "CEC" controller, and so his TV command will be automatically compatible with the Pi. Else, he can use a classic keyboard and mouse set, or some mobile solution or even a snes usb controller if he wants to build a retrogaming console
  
  
• To finish if you have a large budget for your friend there is a lot of accessories you can find in the related articles of the Pi on Amazon, like a webcam, a motion sensor module
  
  
• You can also buy a complete bundle or a starter kit like this if you think he will have fun with all the electronic parts :)
  
  And I confirm, it can be a pretty cool gift for a friend to build :)

WiFi range extenders are not an optimal solution for high bandwidth uses like streaming, or for use in gaming since they can add some latency to the connection.

A floor plan of the house would help to see what you are dealing with here. And how many Square feet? Without this info, everything below is a guess.

I would do the following. You may not want to make such an investment.

• Remove the range extenders
  
• Shut down all WiFi from your cable modems
  
• Don't install, but place a Ubiquity Access Point in a central part of the home as a test.
  
  Did the network performance improve everywhere and is working how you want it? Can you wire it in that location? Paying an electrician a $100 might be great if needed. The install will be for a single CAT5e or CAT6 cable. The power for the AP is sent from what is called a power injector that comes with the AP through the network cable. This is how I did it in my home.
  
  If it did not work well, and assuming you live in a 2 story ranch style/wide house, I would do the following:
  
  
• Install the Ubiquity AP in one corner of the house on the first floor.
  
• Run a cable for a second Ubiquity to the second floor, opposite side.
  
• Run the Ubiquity controller on your PC. This will allow you to use the same SSID (WiFi network ID) for both APs. As you roam throughout the house your devices will seamlessly jump from one AP to the other without changing networks. This is what large offices that are well setup do. And Ubiquity allows a homeowner to do the same for a lot less $$$.
  
  Good luck!

Do yourself a favor and invest in some proper equipment. For $200 you can get yourself a decent router and maybe even an AP.

The very first thing I recommend however, is determining the source of your wireless issues. Is your router simply weak? Or do you have some interferance nearby?

To find out, check out this post. There are several 3rd party utilities that accomplish the same. Determine if there are several other signals on the same channel as yours. If so, it is recommended that you use either channel 1, 6 or 11 as these do not overlap. As explained here in the wireless section.

Changing the location of the router may also improve your signal coverage. There are many factors that impact wireless and it's difficult to determine what by a reddit post.

Ok so you've identified the problem, tried to switch channels and still not content with the results. Here's what I recommend:

Get yourself a AC66U. It's dual band and AC compatible for some future proofness. I can attest to it's performance and range. User friendly and reliable. Not once have I had to reboot the thing other then to apply new settings. It supports tons of advanced features as well. More on that if you'd like.

Or get yourself a router and an AP for better coverage. An AP and a N66U.

Well, one thing you can do is have a second router as a client bridge (Like a cheap WRT54G) and then have a NIC on the WRT54G feeding into the NAS. Or you can use powerline networking to get 100Mbps through electrical, allowing for a Router to NAS link without clogging up your Wifi. I strongly advise that you use Powerline networking if you have multiple devices that use wifi already.

Of course, the best solution is some ethernet, but since you said that's not possible, go for the powerline solution.

Here's a nice powerline networking solution:
http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-PA4010KIT-Powerline-Adapter-Starter/dp/B00AWRUICG/ref=lp_1194444_1_2?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1382895299&sr=1-2


Cheers ! And happy FreeNas-ing !

This! Sort of...

For one, you will need a cable modem:

• $45 NETGEAR CM400-1AZNAS Cable Modem 8x4 Bonded Channels
  
• $90 NETEAR CM600-100NAS Cable Model 24x8 Bonded Channels
  
• $100 NETEAR CM700 Cable Modem 32x8 Bonded Channels
  
  Why multiple options and price-points?
  
  In a nutshell, download and upload bonded channels supports how much up and down bandwidth your cable modem would have. 8 (8 download) x4 (4 upload) theoretically supports 340 Mbps download and whatever upload speed. My current 2x2 supports 125+ Mbps download.
  
  Why get something beefier? You will get slightly better performance if each bonded channel isn't operating near it's ceiling. With Comcast, they have 16 and 24 download channels in most markets so that will help with your overall connection. Also having 24 or 32 download channels will help you break through speed barriers if Comcast offers faster connection speeds in the future.
  
  Personal Note: I pay for 100/10 from Comcast and bought the $90 NETEAR CM600-100NAS Cable Model 24x8 Bonded Channels for my new home. While the theoretical download speed from the modem far out paces what I will get from Comcast, the new modem will take full advantage of the 24 bonded download channels in my area.
  
  Then you will need a router. With Ubiquiti, you can really go with one of two router options:
  
  
• ~$50 Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X
  
• ~$100 Ubiquiti Unifi Security Gateway 9USG
  
  There's a lot of YouTube videos that will explain the differences between each router. The short version is that they use the same hardware and have all of the same features available if enabled over command line but:
  
  
• The EdgeRouter X has more features available in it's existing UI, CAN be powered by POE and is less prone to crashing when making changes over CLI. The Edgerouter also has a built in switch (if you want) and POE passthrough so you can do: Cable Modem -> POE Power Injector -> EdgeRouter -> Ubiquiti Access Point (more on this shortly)
  
• The USG has fewer features in the UI than the Edgerotuer, CAN NOT be powered by POE and is more prone to crashing when making changes over CLI. What the USG does have is full integration into the Unifi family of products which means you can manage the router over the cloud along with any other Unifi product like your access points (APs... We'll get to them in a minute).
  
  Personal Note: I bought the EdgeRouter X because the price point is so good. This thing EASILY out performs my Linksys WRT 1900 AC or any other Linksys, Asus, etc. routers that I have ever owned. With that said, I will never fully leverage all of the controls in the UI and I wish I had gone with the USG as it integrates with the Unifi cloud stuff. I will eventually switch to a Unifi router.
  
  Then you will need an Access Point (AP) to create an access point for your devices:
  
  
• $75 Ubiquiti Unifi UAP-AC-Lite Lite
  
• $100 Ubiquiti Unifi UAP-AC-LR Long Range
  
• $130 Ubiquiti Unifi UPA-AC-Pro Pro
  
  If you get the EdgeRouter X, get a UAP-AC-Lite. They both operate off of 24v so you can do Cable Modem -> 24v POE power injector (comes with the UAP-AC-Lite) -> EdgeRouter X -> UAP-AC-Lite. This is what I have now.
  
  You can upgrade to the UAP-AC-LR which has the longest range of all of the Ubiquiti APs or the UAP-AC-LR because of it's 3x3 MIMO which gives it a higher input/output than the rest of the Ubiquiti 2x2 MIMO. The latter two devices use 48v POE injectors.
  
  Personal Note: I'm using two UAP-AC-Lites in my current two story home and will transition to four in my new three story home. Even at the cheapest price point, these far out perform the other routers and access points that I have ever owned.

I have one of these:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015PRO512/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Which connects to one of these:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MU3WUX1/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The Switch connect to the FiOS Gateway. I wouldn't mind adding a second (or even 3rd) AP, but money is always an issue. The Switch and the other Gateway interaces have several other devices on it:

• 2 Desktops (One is the 'server' I mentioned)
  
• Home NAS
  
• Work Special Access Point
  
• 'Lab' Router
  
  The AP has a pass-through which connects to a no-name switch (that I need to replace) that provides connectivity to the entertainment center stuff (AppleTV, TiVo, game consoles, etc.)
  
  I'm pretty minimal by many people's standards. If I move I'd like to switch to using one of Ubiquiti's USG Firewall/routers and a dedicated controller so I can do wireless guest access better.

I'm the guy who nearly tossed my x201 (2.67 Ghz i7 with turbo boost up to 3.3Ghz, 8gb ram, 256 gb SSD). About 6 months ago it started over-heating to the point of dying every twenty minutes. I had to have one of these monsters attached to the vent whenever I used it. That vacuum fan was a big hassle to carry around and meant I was 1 USB port down. About 3 months ago the internal wifi card stopped working so I bought one of these. Those tiny usb wifi cards suck because the antenna is so small, and that also meant I was another USB port down. Finally, the plastic door to my hard-drive bay cracked so my hard-drive kept slipping out in my back-pack.

I ended up buying thermal paste on amazon (~$10), a new wifi chip on ebay (~$8), a new fan (~$5) and a new hard-drive door (~$6). It took me about 3 hours to take the laptop apart, and another two to put it back together. I re-pasted the CPU, replaced the fan (just to be safe... the old one worked fine), and installed the new wifi card. I had to completely disassemble twice after completely re-assembling it (god that sucked) first because the power-port wasn't aligned with the chassis and plug would not go into the laptop, and second because I didn't run the wifi antenna cables very well. I still need to buy and install a new thermal pad for the GPU - I didn't order one because I didn't expect to find one in there (thought it would be all paste). The current GPU thermal pad is cracked and aging.

Anyway, now my x201 is back together and working like a charm. Wifi signal is great, and it runs nice and cool (~40 degrees idle - it's still breaking in). Ran 20 cycles of IntelBurnTest on "High" and it passed with flying colors. I have all of my USB ports available, battery lasts longer. And the SSD doesn't slip out of the bay all the time. All in all, definitely worth the effort and minimal money! Here she is in all her ThinkPad glory.

Honestly couldn't tell you, but I'm also an advocate of USB wifi dongles, because you get to choose which wifi chipset you use, you get to take the dongle with you when you change your hardware and if reception is kinda shoddy you can use an USB extension cable to try and place it somewhere where reception is better. YMMV of course, but I'd take the USB dongle over the integrated card any day.

P.S. Had a little look around, the cheapest option I found was this:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157746&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-PCPartPicker,%20LLC-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566

Which is 60 dollars more than your board. It's got a much better chipset of course, which would allow overclocking if you were to upgrade your CPU, but it's definitely not ideal for your specific build.

If you want to go with a USB dongle instead, I can recommend the TP-Link TL-WN722N N150:
https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-N150-Wireless-Adapter-TL-WN722N/dp/B002SZEOLG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1494790790&sr=8-1&keywords=TP-Link+TL-WN722N

It's about 13 USD and it works like a charm, I use it myself to provide a wireless access point for my mobile devices from my desktop.

when I google that router the only for sale link that popped up was on ebay for $5 so it may be time for an upgrade in general. There are a lot of factors to consider but in general: you could upgrade your modem from the one given to you by your ISP. It will usually be a little more reliable and saves you the $10 or so a month rental fee. Next, you have to look at your house set up. Most routers should handle more than 30 feet without to big of an issue (assuming there arent weird walls or other things that would create interference). So a simple upgrade would be great. My favorite is the Netgear AC1900. It's easy to work with and will cover a solid area. I get single when working in my yard easily 200ft away from the router location. Those would be the two most common things to upgrade. Also to consider is what speed is expected from your ISP and if your laptop's internet card are current enough to take advantage of current bands.

It will probably be awhile before im done, just something i play with ever now and then. However Google is your friend. NESpi is a pretty common build. Also I'm an amateur when it comes to soldering lol

My final goal is to have it so it you can insert a nes cartridge with a usb in it and it will read games from this. Also working on getting an old laptop fan to run when it reaches certain temps to help cool it down.

I also tore apart a powered usb hub to power the pi and connect controllers. However I would find one better than mine. Get something with high voltage/amperage. I currently have to power the pi separately instead of through the hub.

Some links for you:



Intro:

https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/First-Installation


Switch I use to make so the NES power button works.

https://mausberry-circuits.myshopify.com/collections/frontpage/products/shutdown-circuit-use-your-own-switch


Controllers
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N48L71I/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_0QcmzbVPP292R

Wi-Fi
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003MTTJOY/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_WUcmzbESCH58S

Then just any short usb and HDMI extensions.

Hope this helps!

Wow, I didn't even know this was a thing. I'll need to look at our coax wiring, but this might be the best throughput speed solution and I'm pretty sure out coax comes into the garage and splits from there, so it should work. Also looks like it'll be double what I'd pay for powerline though.

It looks like the Actiontec ECB6200 is currently the only product on the market that gives around gigabit speed, and supposedly the most recent firmware has fixed the speed issues it was having. $163.45 is a bit pricey though.

Has anyone used this that can comment on it?

Uhm, none of the above? Yeah none of the above. It looks like you are looking to spend around $200-230 for your networking gear, which is fine, we can work with that!

• Router: Ubiquiti Edgerouter X normally $50 but appears to be $60 right now. Get fucked I guess.
  
• Switch: TP-Link switch $25
  
• Access Point: Ubiquiti Unifi UAP-AC-Pro $130
  
  Total is around $210
  
  Now here is the thing with this setup. You will mount your access point on the ceiling as close to the center of your home as you can. It will give you much better coverage than the netgear setups, as well as a far more mature and stable access point. If in the future you decide you need better coverage still you can just buy a second one and hook it up, make sure to wire it back into the switch as well. The access point comes with a PoE injector so you only need to run a single line to it.
  
  You are buying gear for your business, buy business grade gear :) Especially because it costs you the same anyway.
  
  

Its called the Unifi Dream Machine, but looks like its only "Early Access" at the moment, which basically means you'd be Beta testing, but I've only heard positive things, with people saying its a lot more powerful than the USG (specifically for using things such as the IPS).

But to answer you questions:

1. Correct, these are Layer-2 only, you need the USG/PFSense for the routing. Why do you need POE? The Unifi AP's come with a POE-Injector. Also, be aware the 16 Port switches have fans, which can generate noise, so you will probably want to stash it away (in a cupboard or garage etc).
   
   Personally, I do use POE, but I use their 8 Port Swich with 4 POE ports (their cheap-cheap version), along with this, I have their standard 8 port switch, see below:
   
   8 Port, with 4 POE: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ubiquiti-UniFi-Switch-Port-Enterprise/dp/B01MU3WUX1/
   
   8 Port, None POE: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ubiquiti-US-8-Managed-Desktop-Passthrough/dp/B01N362YPG/
   
   USG: https://www.amazon.co.uk/UBIQUITI-Networks-Security-Gateway-Router/dp/B00LV8YZLK/
   
   Cloud Key Controller: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Ubiquiti-Networks-UC-CK-Stand-Alone-UniFi-Cloud-Key-Controller-BOXED/401859588968
   
   You don't need the last one, but I find it useful, as it gives you a physical device and it saves having to spin up a seperate VM or Rasperberry Pi for it.. And its pre-baked, you plug it in and go!
   
   

2. Yes. You could actually even do this with 1 NIC... Thats is what I do, I just put WAN onto a seperate VLAN... After all, its just another "security zone", just like each of you internal VLANs, the reason you use VLANs, is to control routing between them.. My Virgin Hub, plugs into a port, which is Untagged on VLAN-1000, has no other VLANs assigned, the only other place that has this VLAN is my Firewall VM.
   
   Some people will cry "danger", and they have a point, if you are not 100% confident in what you are doing, its better to use separate NICs for LAN and WAN. This also has another issue, if you've only got 1Gb NICs, and its carrying both LAN and WAN, you've got a bottleneck (On my servers, I use 10Gbe, so I don't have that issue).