My home network is built around a Netgear DGND3300 (all-in-one simultaneous dual-band router/NAT box/firewall/ADSL modem). It seems to do the job reliably, but due to wiring constraints it must be in an upstairs closet in a far corner of the house. Since it's range is dubious for reaching the opposite corner, I have a D-Link DAP-1522, rigged into my entertainment center, and wired through the wall to the upstairs Netgear box. The D-Link serves as a wired switch for the boxes in the entertainment center and as a 802.11g/n AP for the room around it.

DHCP and whatnot runs on the Netgear, while the D-Link is configured to be a dumb switch plus AP.

For the past few months, things have been flakey, like my computer would sometimes fail to associate with the AP and would ask me what the passphrase might be. (I'm using WPA2-Personal, AES-Only, for what it's worth.) Today, I started dorking around, and the culprit seems to be the D-Link. If I turn off its wireless, forcing everything wireless in the house to speak to the Netgear upstairs, then things seem to work, modulo the range issue.

So... my suspicion is that the D-Link has failed in some fashion, maybe it's got heat damage to the wireless section. Unknown. I could buy another one, but then I still don't solve my desire to have simultaneous dual band. The D-Link is "switchable", but in practice it works fine at 2.4GHz and is a total useless junker at 5GHz. I'd like something better.

The question is what a good replacement part might be. Ideally, I'd want a single box that was a four port switch plus simultaneous dual band AP. Gigabit is optional since nothing plugged into the switch can run that fast, and the Netgear is also only 100Mbit (see parenthetical note, below).

Another alternative would be to buy separate boxes (switch + AP), but a single-box solution would fit better in the tight quarters. Also, multiple boxes would complicate the power strip, which is fully populated.

Hypothetically, any four-port simultaneous dual-band router has the necessary hardware to do what I want, but previous ones that I've played with generally insist on running in router mode, with no way to dumb them down to being "just" a switch and AP. I suppose I could go the dd-wrt / tomato route but that seems like overkill just to get a "dumb" switch plus AP in a box.

So... great wizards of the empeg board... any suggestions on what I might do?

(Netgear has recently announced their newest DGND3700, which is essentially the same as my current Netgear but with GigE. If/when I decide to do whole-house GigE, that would be the logical thing to drop in. The only reason I might want GigE is if I were to do a proper file server, but right now I have all my disks direct-attached to my Mac tower.)

I know for certain the Apple Airport Extreme will do dual band, and work in a dumb AP only mode. My older (and since discontinued due to a lawsuit) Buffalo dual band WZR-AG300NH also would work as just an AP, with a physical switch on the back to change modes. Their newer models may have a similar feature still.

You say a router would be overkill, but how good is the router/firewall functionality on that Netgear combo box? One option might be to just let it be a modem, turn off all the firewall/routing stuff, and bridge it to a better router. I'm pleased with my Linksys WRT610N running TomatoUSB, which now supports simultaneous dual-band wifi. Keeping my 802.11g peanut butter and 802.11n chocolate on separate bands has made things a lot smoother, and the TomatoUSB firmware has a lot of goodies that your Netgear probably doesn't have (my assumption is you can't flash a combo box like that with aftermarket firmware since it's got the modem on it.)

So far, the Netgear box, even with its default firmware, seems to do everything I need, which isn't anything particularly fancy.

Why do you prefer dual band, exactly?

On that note, are the two wireless signals (D-Link and Netgear) on different channels or even on different frequency ranges (2.4 one, 5.0 the other)? If not, that may be the problem.

Dual band, I like because all our laptops support it, and you can get more bandwidth because there's more spectrum at 5GHz. However, as I discovered with the D-Link box when it was brand new, sitting right next to it with my laptop, "dual band" is meaningless unless there are dedicated antennae for both frequencies. Otherwise, they're just trying to shove a 5GHz signal through a 2.4GHz-tuned antenna, and the results aren't pretty. That's why I specifically want "simultaneous dual-band."

As to channel settings, I've got everything set on automatic. Several of my neighbors also have routers in the 2.4GHz spectrum, so hard-coding the channels seems like a bad idea.

In my recent experience, 5GHz isn't worth it. I bought a Linksys E3000 explicitly for its simultaneous dual-band support. I've found that I get less than 50Mbps throughput, and the range is miserable.

4 feet from my router:

5ghz network:
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
Sent
[ 4] 0.00-5.00 sec 102 MBytes 171 Mbits/sec
Received
[ 4] 0.00-5.00 sec 102 MBytes 171 Mbits/sec

2.4ghz network:
Sent
[ 4] 0.00-5.00 sec 43.1 MBytes 72.3 Mbits/sec
Received
[ 4] 0.00-5.00 sec 43.1 MBytes 72.3 Mbits/sec


Farther away, other side of the apartment:
5ghz network:
Sent
[ 4] 0.00-5.18 sec 5.00 MBytes 8.10 Mbits/sec
Received
[ 4] 0.00-5.18 sec 5.00 MBytes 8.10 Mbits/sec

2.4ghz network:
Sent
[ 4] 0.00-6.49 sec 2.75 MBytes 3.56 Mbits/sec
Received
[ 4] 0.00-6.49 sec 2.75 MBytes 3.56 Mbits/sec


The second test, I ran a few times, and 3.56 was the best. It was highly erratic for 2.4, stable on 5ghz. With the somewhat densely packed apartment environment, 2.4ghz is nearly worthless. My WiFi selection list shows 15 networks available. Refreshing usually shows one or two drop off, and others take their place. So for me, 5ghz is well worth the investment.

I live in a end-unit townhouse (end terrace), and my AP currently shows twenty-two 2.4GHz networks. I've seen more than that.

5GHz is still only marginally better.

Likewise. There's over 25 around me at the moment. It's one of the reasons I went with powerline for my home theater, because wireless simply wasn't reliable enough, especially between floors.

Ah, good point, didn't thing to check with the AP. 24 total that it can clearly see, and a sniffer on my iPhone is showing 3 more with hidden SSIDs.

Clearly our experiences differ quite a bit on 5ghz. I'm seeing more then double the bandwidth, even with both 2.4 and 5ghz set to use "wide channels". 4 feet from my router, and my laptop barley can receive the full speed of my internet connection (it peaks at 67=68mbit). With 5ghz, I get more room to roam and remain at the peak speed I am paying for.

2.4ghz just simply doesn't have enough spectrum to allow for that many access points close by. 1, 6 and 11 are the only non overlapping channels available for use here in the US. 5ghz has 20 non overlapping channels available.

I live in a single, detatched house. At any given time, I can only see 8-10 other networks. Four of those are from my work, which is about a mile away.

In a crowded wifi environment, I would expect "wide channels" to accomplish little other than doubling/tripling the chances of interference, which then reduces speed.

Why do so many people use wifi, and why do they leave it powered on all of the time? Big waste of precious energy resources that.

While my performance has varied over the past two years, my experience most closely matches Tom's.

Bitt, you might be looking at issues specific either to your environment or product.

The worst performance I've had with 5GHz was during a time period someone must have been using some type of wireless video monitor. Everything seems fine now over the past year, especially after moving the AP up to the second floor.

Agreed. It would be nice if you could simply switch the WiFi on/off with a simple command line command. (and preferably also without having to reboot the router). I would switch it on/off all the time then.

A schedule would also be extremely useful. Maybe time to put through a request for the Tomato firmware to support this - it already does scheduling for connection access.

I looked into it more, and it seems the Airport Extreme only runs wide channels on the 5ghz side. The checkbox didn't really indicate. Doing tests without wide channels, I'm still seeing 95-100mit performance over 5ghz, and the same ~70 on the 2.4 side.


In daily use, I have 4 devices that are WiFi only. My on call laptop from work (MacBook Air, though it could go wired with a USB adaptor), the iPad, the iPhone, and my Chumby alarm clock. The router offers no easy way to just turn wireless off and on again, and I need a 24/7 internet connection, so turning the device off all the time wouldn't be a workable solution. My router is also part of my power conservation strategy, as it allows me to keep my computer in sleep mode, and wake it when I need a resource on it via Wake on Demand. I'm all for energy conservation when possible, but not to an extreme where it also impacts my daily quality of life.

I guess that just sums it all up.

Thanks.

I'm pretty sure that applies to a lot of people, yourself included. For example, how often is your custom built MythTV box on? Why didn't you go with a much more power efficient box? Why do you have any type of media playback device for your TV in the first place? No one "needs" TV, or internet or other things we all use in our daily lives, but they do bring enjoyment (for you both in watching, and in building the devices), and raise our quality of life. Even the device that brought all of us here "needlessly" consumes energy in our cars, requiring a powered amplifier, and other devices that reduce the fuel efficiency of the vehicle. But we are here because we all at one time or another wanted to enjoy music while on the go.

WiFi for me is one of those quality of life things. I wake up in the morning, and can pick up my (very power efficient) iPad, and read about the current world news, without getting out of bed. The alternative to this a decade ago was a much more power hungry laptop. Two decades ago, and it would be a newspaper, with all the power consumption associated with cutting down a tree, turning into paper, and so on.

Overall, my total energy consumption has dropped dramatically since moving to California. I walk to work frequently, something that wasn't possible with my living situation in Austin. Due to the climate here, my heating/cooling system is on much less then it would be in Austin. I no longer even have a TV, and the associated home theater equipment drawing power.

I don't mean to turn this into an attack (and sorry if it comes across that way), but somewhere there is a line between quality of life and energy conservation. We could all do more to conserve energy, but where do we stop? Should we all just give up the modern conveniences that electricity and other sources of energy brings us? Very few people have that bar so high, but some do believe that. It's all a balance, and I do believe strongly in not wasting a ton of energy. I just think it's easier today to tackle larger energy issues, then worrying about and micromanaging the power consumption of a small consumer electronic device. Promoting the switch to more efficient lighting is still one of the best ways for a household to dramatically reduce their energy consumption. At night, my apartment usually has one 10w light bulb on to light the area I am in.

If you can convince my wife to run ethernet cable to the couch, and the kitchen table, and the kitchen counter, our bedside, the bed in the spare bedroom, and the big chair in our daughter's room, we might be able to begin a conversation about turning it off. I suppose I can see if the router has an option to turn it off over night, though.

Since you asked.. the Mythtv box here is on only when recording or doing playback. Otherwise it is "off" (not that any PC is truly "off" these days, another gripe..).

I have wired power relays to it, so that all of the ancillary gear gets fully powered off ("unplugged") when the Mythtv box is "off", reducing parasitic power draw to the minimum.

Our wifi has an on/off switch (pushbutton), and is rarely ever turned on -- we use wired ethernet (100mbit, not energy hogging gigE) through a (measured) 2.5W switch for networking gear.

I'm sitting here now with a large sweater on, and still feeling somewhat chilly because it's winter inside and out. The light bulbs are nearly all the environmentally-bad CFL style, to reduce the monthly power bill, and we just about never leave a light on when nobody is in a room.

The wall outlets above my office desk (I work mostly from home -- zero commute) all have individual on-off switches, so that the stupid parasitic power bricks can be totally "off" when not in direct use.

We choose electronics and appliances based largely on power efficiency, and generally keep everything for 5-20 years before recycling the remains and getting new stuff.

Our modestly sized cars are 13 and 17 years old now, in good repair, and easily pass the bi-yearly state-mandated exhaust tests. The computer I'm typing on is ~5 years old -- not the latest greatest gadget, but it still works extremely well.

Our cellphones go 1-3 weeks on a charge, unlike most newer fancier devices. We use rechargeable batteries in everything that won't accept a more efficient direct power source (plug), and prefer wires over (inefficient) battery-power whenever possible.

The summer garden is fertilised with natural compost from our property, and provides us with quite a bit of food as well as beauty. Right now, in the dead of winter, we enjoy salads based upon window-grown greens and sprouts.

In short, we pay very close attention to minimizing our impact on the planet, given our location as northern city-dwellers. We could do even better by moving to a warmer rural zone on the planet, I suppose, and eliminating our once-every-three years air/rail travel holiday.

Cheers

DD-WRT has wifi scheduling options, and Tomato can do it as well.

Larger gains can be had by choosing a lower power router: eg. WRT54GL rather than a power-sucking multi-band N router.

The router's CPU clock speed can be a good indicator there.

Cheers

My WiFi router (recently reverted to a WRT54G with Tomato from a WRT300N, but for less noble reasons than environment preservation: the 300N was crashing way too often) is on only when we need it.

... on the other end, one can't even conceive human beings as energy-consuming creatures using energy-consuming devices. We are ALSO that. But we are more.

To use a trivial example, if I am a creative mind and I find that for some reason it is only as I wake up that I find inspiration for my art/science by browsing the net, then the energy I consume in keeping my wifi on, to that purpose, would be used to generate art, or brilliant scientific ideas that may allow me to contribute to the creation of a very power efficient generation of electronics/photonic devices.

This is a quite simplistic example. But the principle I am trying to express is that we should probably ask ourselves what really matters and what is the value of things, for us. Keeping the wifi on for no reason is environmentally wrong. But the benefit of commodities is often way deeper than it appears. Rather than less science or technology, I'm in favor of better ones.

I am not taking sides here, but just thinking out loud.

We're not extreme environmentalists here, but the ideas are simple.

If we see a way to reduce energy consumption without reducing "quality of life", then it's really a no-brainer: turn the danged gadget off when not in use. That type of thing.

Use electronic timers for stuff where we find it too onerous to walk back and forth to a mechanical switch (eg thermostats, wifi, the Mythtv box recording schedule, etc..).

Secondary to that, is don't throw away perfectly good stuff just because a newer generation became available. The "old" stuff is still good enough, and should be used long enough to minimize environmental impacts of disposal and manufacturing a replacement.

And when acquiring new stuff, we look to energy efficiency as a primary decision factor, doubly so for things that will be "on" much/all of the time.

There are many people (on this very BBS, even) whose monthly energy usages approach or exceed our yearly totals, despite them living in more temperate climates. Surely there's room for improvement there somewhere?

Mark, I definitely applaud your efforts, as you do go well beyond the norm that most first world people do. There is more everyone can do, but you have a much shorter list then most people. I think John (JBjorgen) has us all beat though, in his move out of North America into Central America and his new living arrangement. :-)

If my router had a scheduling option for WiFi, I'd use it, since none of the devices I have on WiFi need constant connectivity. As for my "need" for 24/7 connectivity, this comes from my use of the ReadyNAS at home. Beyond being one central file repository for everything at home (allowing the desktop to sleep or turn off instead of being a server), it's also used for offsite backups. This board, the rest of my VPS, and my grandparents pictures all get backed up to the same NAS hiding away in the closet. It's using green power drives at their default settings, allowing them to run slower and spin down when idle. I do this with the idea that using my already in use resources at home under my control is potentially better then using even more cloud hosting services elsewhere. I'll admit I haven't run numbers here to really quantify this, and if anyone has input, I'd be curious to hear it.

One advantage Austin did have over my current place of residence was a slightly more green power company. In Austin, about 20% of the power comes from renewable sources, and 16% comes from nuclear. I can't find a good breakdown for Southern California Edison, but they claim currently 17% from green sources, and also use nuclear from a nearby generator.

For anyone looking for a similar solution to Mark's (the relays that cut power when the computer is off), there are a number of UPS solutions that offer similar. They work by having a master socket to plug the computer into, then a number of marked outlets that will lose power when the master device turns off. The APC model I have also cuts power when the computer enters sleep, as it's seen as a big enough power drop that the UPS can tell the difference.

I don't know about other people, but I have two reasons that seem pretty good to me.

1) I share my wi-fi with my downstairs neighbor, and it would not be fair to impose the scheduling of my internet usage on her.

2) My telephone service is VOIP. No router, no phone.

Even though my computer is off when I'm not sitting at the keyboard, the rest of the network (printer, neighbor, SWMBO's Macintosh [if she's using it], telephone) remain on.

tanstaafl.

Sharing wifi sounds good to me.
But why does your voip require wifi, rather than merely "internet" ?

cheers

Presumable he is using one of those small consumer grade all in one router/wireless access point with a 4 port switch in the back.

I figure his voip handset might be wifi-based.. just curious what model if so.

Cheers

Oh yeah, I keep forgetting about those, they seem far and few between. Actually I think a co-worker has one looking for a home. I'll check on that if your interested.