This is how you fix home WiFi (turning it up to "11")

Today I want to share with you how I fixed the home WiFi blues of a neighbor & friend. 

To begin...

They built their home 15 years ago and have the typical useless wire closet that the builders love to charge you to install. 

This one was no different. 

Added to that, the local internet provider did their usual "WiFi router in a closet" trick.

 As seen below, the wireless router/modem is in this upstairs closet and basically as ineffective as possible in providing a decent WiFi signal to anywhere but the room it is in. 

The downstairs and the back patio have next to no signal. 

A WiFi extender was tried, but failed to meet the need of streaming video on two TV's. 

BEFORE

Thankfully, this closet is located on the second floor and access to the attic
is a key benefit for adding some major improvements. 

The goals were simple.

• Get solid WiFi coverage in the house and back patio
• Add two new outlets for wired connections in the upstairs game & guest rooms. 

There were some secondary goals as well. 

• Add a wired connection to the garage & add an AP there
• Add a home NAS (network attached storage) to create a home cloud. 
• Create separate 2G & 5G network names to better manage devices
• Create a guest login for the WiFi

How do we get there? 

First, I went to work pulling some new cables.

I needed to run two external Cat6 cables - one to the patio and one to the garage.

Then I ran inside Cat5e cables (to match existing cables in house) to feed the gameroom and the AP that would be installed in the upstairs hallway. 

In the interest of full transparency, pulling wires in an existing home means opening access holes to drill thru ceiling headers. 

Next, I terminated the ends of the cables and tested them. 

Once we had all the cables in place, I could move on to installing the AP's (Access Points)

For this job, I used two models. 
Click the links for more details.

Both of these are latest generation of 2G/5G 4x4 MU-MIMO  technology.

Ubiquiti Unifi FlexHD

Ubiquiti Unifi nanoHD

These units receive both power and data from a POE switch

Ubiquiti Unifi  US-8-150W

And to bring it all together, I disabled the ISP's WiFi router (bridge mode) and provided a dedicated gateway that complements the AP's and provides router/firewall functions. 

Ubiquiti Unifi USG

And to ensure these devices are protected from our crazy power, I made sure they are powered by a UPS. 

Never rely on a power strip or extension cord to protect your hardware! 

APC UPS

Here's a view of the upgraded closet with the hardware above:

Some additional tweaks are being discussed to decide if we 

notch the box to allow clean flow of network cables. 

AFTER

The AP's that were mentioned were located in 4 locations:

Garage & Upstairs Hallway

Kitchen & Patio

In this case, the NAS device by Qnap is also running the Unifi controller software. 

This software is free and manages the network just like the big name enterprise systems.

Using an app on my phone, I can monitor the network
or the homeowner can log into a full dashboard at home.  

Below is a screenshot of the devices cited above:

Outcome

There was great success of the goals of building a better network. 

As part of my ongoing service, we can continue to fine tune any future issues as they arise. 

Additionally, I can continue to add value by making sure firmware updates stay current.  

Contact Me! 

Use my convenience WEB FORM to contact me to discuss your upgrade!

Or email me >> rob@blomstrom.tech

If you are building new, let's build a plan right now so I can come in before the walls are up! 

New Home Network Design and Install

A friend of mine from church came to me with the desire to have his new house have a great network. His family was having a house built which meant that we had a fresh canvas to work with. 

So the first advice I gave him was to have the builder wire all the rooms he may possibly want to connect to a network in the future and also include overhead wires in boxes for access points and future camera locations. These wires need to go to a common location. 

Those locations included all the bedrooms, behind planned TV locations, the gameroom, office, back porch, etc...

Well, that more or less happened. On the plus side, all the desired wiring got routed and made its way to a "common location". Sadly, the builder yielded the usual useless 3 inch deep wall box. This box is intended for simple telephone and cable TV distribution - not a full blown Ethernet network! And worse, their idea of a "common location" is a child's upstairs bedroom closet. Oh yeah, that's a great idea! 

 

In this box, you will note several things. 

• There are (15) BLUE Cat-6 Ethernet data lines. 
• There are (6) RED Ethernet camera lines
• There are also (6) BLACK useless analog camera lines

In addition

• There are about (12) WHITE Cat-5 Ethernet lines being plugged into a splitter box presumably for old fashion POTS telephones
• About (10) BLACK & WHITE coaxial lines for TV plugged into a splitter that is just hanging there as well as those white coaxial lines on the left that are not terminated. 

WHAT A MESS !!

So my plan was to pull as much of those lines out of this box and instead route it to a shelf area on the wall above this box. There I would organize a small 19 inch rack and some network components. 

 

Above is the cleaned out box. All of the Ethernet lines that were relevant have been removed. The coaxial splitter/amplifier was secured to the box, and its power brick was now plugged into the UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) so the cable modem input would remain on if the power went out. 

This closet can now be closed, locked and ignored in this closet location. 

Seen above is a small 19 inch rack chosen to fit in the shelf space above the cleaned out box in the closet. Out of the view of this photo is the cable modem and the UPS.

All of those BLUE Cat-6 lines and some of those Cat-5 lines
are connected to the back of the patch panel.  

Items shown are as follows:

The switch shown is a Ubiquiti Unifi 24-port 250W POE+ 

The gateway and firewall that links the cable modem to the home network is a Ubiquiti Unifi USG

The Ubiquiti CloudKey G2+ is both a network controller and will serve as an video recorder for the future cameras. 

The Access Points  that were chosen:

Ubiquiti Unifi NanoHD for inside the house

Ubiquiti Unifi AP-PRO for outside porch

In the future, the cameras will come from the Ubiquiti family such as the G3-Pro or -Dome

The network is working great, my friends family is happy, and the system has room to grow! 

My friend or I can monitor the network controller from anywhere using the free software apps from Ubiquiti. And when software needs updating, I can do that remotely as well!