How compatible are routers that you do not get with your service provider. What should I look for with a router that needs to centrally run the whole house. I am currently having connection issues with a central router from Century Link, It has run fine for about a year but now it drops off intermittently and sometimes I cannot connect to Netflix and amazon on my smart tv. I have not increased any peripherals in the year but have used the smart TV more when my mother visits. Had to move the router last year to cover the whole house and there where issues with phone lines with it being an older house but once they fixed them everything was fine. How do I trouble shoot to find the issue or should I have century link take a look because I have insurance?
Can you post the brand and model # of your current device? I am assuming it's a MODEM + ROUTER + WIRELESS AP gateway device. I know people use the word router interchangeably but usually the device from your service provider is a 3 in 1 device.
https://www.centurylink.com/home/help/internet/modems-and-routers/compatible-modems.html I'm no expert but it looks like most of their compatible modems are also WiFi routers. But in theory you could connect another router of your choosing to one of those (I think you would want one with a gigabit ethernet port) and just connect wirelessly to your router. I did something similar a while back, switched to Comcast and bought an approved modem (just a modem, no wireless capabilities), then connected to it a router with mesh points place around the house to increase coverage. My modem/router are upstairs so the connection wasn't great in some areas downstairs where we needed it.
Not 100% sure about CenturyLink. I know ATT locks their **** down pretty good to where if you have fiber in particular, good luck getting another router/modem/AP combo.
Doing a little more digging, this is the "blessed" list from CenturyLink regarding compatible devices. https://www.centurylink.com/home/help/internet/modems-and-routers/compatible-modems.html
I own my own Cable Modem and a separate Router with WIFI. I don't want to be on some sort of mesh, bandwidth hogging 'free wifi' network for every Comcast subscriber. I want everything I pay for. Something you might be seeing is that you have too many devices on your vendor-provided router. It's what I ran into with my old personal wifi router and had to upgrade. My business partner also had the same issue. 25 devices seems like a lot but when you start adding things up you run out quick. What you have to match up to your company is the Modem. There are combos, as other people have said. @Space Ghost for an expert opinion.
I recommend running your own router (store bought or even custom), like personally I would set up a box to act as a firewall/router (like a Pfsense setup or alternative) but that's definitely more than what people want/need since there's a lot of initial steps to get it working (but I think a setup like that will allow the most features). With that said though, an Asus/Netgear router (or other brands) will still perform better than most isp provided equipment. So assuming your router/modem is separate or if it's not (you can just go bridge mode on it and make the combo device act as a normal modem, or you can possibly even run your own modem. Just to make sure though - I'd troubleshoot a bit more - like is it only wireless devices that stop but wired devices work, or is it where nothing network related is working? I know you mentioned wifi only, so if that's the case and wired devices still work, just go with a replacement wireless router that you purchase and make it the main router for the house. This will not only fix the wireless it'll also get you better performance in my experience. Lastly depending on sqft you might want to add a 2nd wireless AP.
This is pretty technical for the average consumer but a friend of mine set up a PFsense and he absolutely loves it. I am also looking at running two (for redundancy) PiHole boxes at my house to cut down on ads, which drive me bananas.
Definitely agree with you on all of this and with your friend - I really like it a lot too On a side note, I want to incorporate a PiHole soon too - currently I'm running the pfblockerng-devel package and it does a very good job on blocking ads for the most part, but I think the Pi setup could be really nice and iirc it also has some more features. Even with just using the pfblock package though it took ads away from a lot of pages and some apps, really nice to witness, especially when a video/page loads and you miss ads entirely and you don't have to load more software on devices to block them.
I forgot I posted this,thanks for the tips. They seem a bit technical to me will have do more research. why would the performance all of a sudden drop off? Should I check for interference? what could interfere? The Modem/Router is probably 2 years old could it just be degrading? Will probably just have service come out and trouble shoot.
Like I said this 3 in1 was working fine until about 2 months ago. So I think a 3-1 would do fine if its hardware related.
I'd check for channel interference or setting it to a better/more open channel before I go buying new equipment. New equipment isn't going to necessarily solve your problem until you prove your current equipment is a problem. Running your own equipment can also be more than the average normal user wants to deal with. lol. You mention that your connection "drops off". Is it your connection dying or is it your signal being weak or is it whatever equipment that loses connection that's the problem? For example, if your connection really dropped off, nothing wireless in the house is probably going to work at that point. If it's your TV that's the issue, then your cell phone's wirelss will still be working, for example. Probably another thing to look for before or while troubleshooting. Call CenturyLink and ask them to walk you through that or find a manual for your router and do it yourself. You can also download apps that allow you to check signal strength around your house from your wireless equipment as well as see how crowded various channels are.
First thing you need to isolate is whether the connection drop offs are happening only on wireless or your entire network. If it's only wireless, than it's most like some sort of RF interference. For all you know your neighbor bought a new wireless access point and started broadcasting on a channel your gateway is set to. download https://matthafner.com/wifianalyzer and post a screenshot of your wireless/RF landscape. we can tell you if your wifi channels are to blame.. depending on functionality of the gateway, we can help you even turn off the 2.4ghz network and use the 5ghz.
Thanks. Will do this weekend. The internet does not drop off its only wifi and i can usually just connect again. I have noticed my computer is picking up different wifi networks.
FYI : I just saw this article online and this is the kind of crap you sometimes have to deal with. LOL. https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/22/uk/o...-intl-gbr/index.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab
I added in a PiHole tonight and holy crap...sites full of ad crap like ESPN load like lightning. I'm running it on one of these, which I got for $16. Took me about an hour total work to spin up. Dashboard says about 35% of web queries are for ads. I bought four total, and I'm going to clone the first one tomorrow so I have two PiHoles going for redundancy and load balancing.
