Hey folks, I'm fairly new to networking builds, but have been in the tech/computer space for most of my 10+ year career. Typically in the past, I've just used mesh WiFi systems along with Fiber ISP.

We bought a new house, our forever home and I want to build a fairly minimal UniFi compact system. I'm thoroughly happy with a simplistic setup, I like clean and minimal. We will have T-Mobile Fiber 1 Gig as ISP. I intend to bypass their router/modem.

First off, the networking cabinet will be located in the basement near electrical panel. I don't need or want a rack due to the the small amount of equipment. I will be routing PoE from the basement to the attic where it will connect to four G6 Turrets on each corner of the house under the soffits. Then, I'll route two U7 In-wall on either side of the house (3k sq ft total, basement, main level, upstairs). If need be, I can install a U7 Pro in the middle of the house, second floor ceiling. I don't have a crazy amount of clients/devices, maybe a total of 15-25. I also don't intend to build onto the system other than maybe a doorbell camera, another camera or two.

For NVR storage, I'll have a 2 TB M.2 SSD in the Cloud Gateway Fiber. Let me know if anything looks off or want to provide recommendations.

Is Pinging an ISP's provided DNS servers blocked nowadays?

I notice that BT(a UK telephone company and ISP), provides the DNS IP of 81.139.56.100 and 81.139.57.100

If I ping www.google.com I get an IP v6 address back.

And if I try to ping those IPv4 DNS IPs 81.139.56.100 and 81.139.57.100 which my router lists as having gotten, then it doesn't work.

But interestingly,

the command "nslookup bbc.co.uk 81.139.56.100" works

also ping -4 www.google.com returns an IPv4 address.

And of course I could change to use Google's 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4 which can be pinged and also work.

But, is this a new thing now of ISP's blocking people from pinging their DNS servers?

I notice that ipconfig for my connection says DHCP enabled, and lists an IPv6 address that tracert shows resolves to my local router. So my local router is my DNS server, and that access those DNS IPs.

Is this a new thing?

When did this change occur?

Everything was working fine with my internet but for 3 days now i am having this issue where internet keeps dropping every half hour or less and this last for like half a minute. This happens on ethernet, which is my desktop PC and on all devices connected to wi-fi too. They all stay connected, for example web icon on my windows desktop doesn’t change and it doesn’t say “no internet”, wi-fi also stays connected but web pages are not loading, video playback stops… etc. This seems to be happening randomly every 20-30 minutes like i said, everything works fine and then internet will just drop for like half a minute until it goes back to normal again. Nothing unusual happens on the router, the lights are all green and normal looking and router doesn’t restarts during these short outages. Any advice please?

Buongiorno,sto pensando di organizzare la mia rete in quanto è un casinò,qualsiasi consiglio per aiutarmi,al momento arriva tutto dietro a un mobile tv e da lì partono per tre camere,garage più sottotetto.pensavo di intervenire direttamente su la scatola di derivazione e mettere un rack di rete dentro al armadio che sta in ingresso,mi manca solo una presa ma ho la scatola lì dietro.secondo voi è fattibile?

Hello!

New house is a rambler with a basement (~3400 square feet equally split). Not sure if I should get a strong router or try a mesh system. I play Xbox with buddies few times a week, we both work from home and stream Netflix, YouTube tv, etc. I have the option for fiber and was planning on that. Any thoughts or recommendations would be appreciated!

Thanks you!

This is my real first attempt at doing my own "high-end" wifi.

Is it worth getting some Noctua fans to mount on the face of it to push cool air through it?

Two U7 Pros Cloud Gateway Max NS Switch Flex 2.5G PoE Ubiquiti UPS Tower

I have a 3000 sq/ft house with some basic AP's that were provided by my ISP. They frequently have poor and dropped coverage around the perimeter which is a problem as the house has almost no cell-phone coverage (so all our calls are Wi-Fi based)

I have Cat5e cabling to 3 different points in the house. I am looking for a solid recommendation on a (simple) AP system that works cohesively and provides great coverage. 2.5gb+ ports would be necessary. I'd like whatever system to be very simple as I am terrible at networking stuff.

I was looking at the Deco X50, which I thought was what I wanted, but I found a bunch of posts on here saying it's trash.

New house, got the massive AT&T router in my tiny comm closet. I have the need for something like a 10 port switch. I plan to hook up two eero devices, a gateway and an access point. Would also like to have my NAS in the vicinity.

Hello! I am having an issue where my phone will constantly buffer on WiFi, pages won’t load, YouTube will buffer, etc. the weird thing is it’s just mine and my wife’s phone. Online gaming, YouTube/streaming on the TV, her iPad and our laptop aren’t affected.

I was initially inclined to believe it was our phones, but I work in a setting where I have YouTube going in the background on WIFI offsite, and have absolutely 0 issues.

Both my work, and my house have the exact same provider, spectrum, and they also are both set to the same speed (500 megs). It doesn’t matter if I have 10 devices connected, or I limit it to just my phone. I don’t know what to do to fix this, if there’s even a fix.

Really struggling trying to get this set up and I need the geniuses of Reddit to help me out, I have several questions I may need answering so forgive me for my ignorance. I live in Canada and recently moved into a new apartment, I have a Cogeco modem but happened to notice that there is a previously installed Bell Fibre optic box in the living room. I would traditionally just use my 30ft Ethernet cord to hardwire straight to my PC from the modem but I don’t seem to have the proper hardware to connect to the box, if that’s even the proper way to use this box. Do I need to buy a cable compatible with this box that plugs into my modem, and then use my Ethernet cable to hardwire from modem to PC or am I completely misunderstanding the applications of fibre optic? Another dumb question is that my modem normally plugs into a coaxial cable, should I still have one of those present somewhere in the apartment to plug into or is the whole point of having Bell Fibre that it doesn’t require coaxial for connection? Sorry if these are some pretty smooth brained questions I’m not the best when it comes to tech stuff. Appreciate any and all info/help and thanks! :)

Hi all,

I recently bought a 1300 sq ft house and have been looking into possible WiFi options. I live alone with my two cats (who haven’t grasped the internet yet), so it’s really just me on this connection.

Devices/Uses:
-Gaming PC with frequent use for several hours at a time. Most common games are league of legends, path of exile, and some multiplayer steam games.
-Discord calls, which I generally take on my phone while I’m gaming with my friends.
-Zoom calls which I take from my phone or my computer for work, depending on what type of mobility I need.
-Streaming, sometimes at the same time as gaming and on discord. Generally YouTube, but sometimes Hulu or something like that.

The most concurrent things I would have going at once would be an online game, a YouTube video, a few websites, and a discord call.

Options:

Spectrum, AT&T, Socket (Fiber), T-Mobile.

Socket is the only one I’ve seen with symmetrical up/down speeds, but I’m unsure how important that is. However they do seem expensive, with their 300mbps plan being 60/month

Any advice? Mostly looking for a range of what would be acceptable to pay, and what I need. 100mbps or 500mbps or whatever! Happy to answer any questions that I may have left out.

So asking here as its networking so just thought someone could confirm my concern. As I asked a few weeks back about getting to a mobile network SIM, its IP. Was pointed out unless its static you likely won't be able to due to double NAT and the like.

At work I need to give a pentesting company the external IP of a chip and pin machine for security testing. So they don't hammer the main network, thought I'd put it on a mobile SIM instead. Then remembered my last question and now think this won't work for their security testing. Although it then, surely, means its slightly more secure because even they won't be able to remote and scan it?

I have Verizon Fios 2g home internet. I've got that running into an Eero Pro 7 router, also have the wifi 7 mesh network up and running, which is working fantastically. I have the ethernet running direct into the Eero from the Verizon ONT. Then out to a QNAP QSW-2104-2T-R2. It's the QNAP unmanaged network switch with 4 x 2.5g ports and 2 x 10g ports. Going into a 10g port. Using Cat 8 cables.

The issue that I'm having, is it seems like some of my older wired devices are not vibing with either the switch or the router. In this case, my Verizon LTE Network Extender, Phillips Hue Bridge (about 7 years old), and a TP link powerline adapter I was using for a desktop in another part of the house. When plugged into the 2.5g ports on the QNAP, the Hue Bridge cannot be discovered by the app, the LTE extender can't find the router, and the powerline adapter won't link. All using the OG provided cables, though I tried the Cat 8 as well with no change. However, if I plug in my laptop or desktop (both circa 2026) using the same cables and ports they work fine. I had an older TP link basic 1g unmanaged switch laying around and when I plug that into the QNAP then plug the older devices into that, they all work fine.

Ultimately everything is working and 1g is overkill for a Hue Bridge and LTE Extender, but I'm curious why they're not working directly into the QNAP. I had Verizon's basic 1g router before, I think it's like 1 generation old maybe, and everything worked.

Is it something to do with the speed? I did what reading I could, and seems like some people have issues with the LTE Extender on high gig ports/lines citing the device being unable to keep up. Is there a setting in the router I am potentially missing?

Thanks!

Running a small Etsy operation out of the house means my work traffic and personal smart home stuff all share the same router. Spouse just moved in so there are even more devices on the network now. At some point I started wondering whether keeping shoprelated traffic on its own segment actually matters for a setup this small, or if I'm overcomplicating it.

The practical concern is less about speed and more about visibility. I want to see what the shop laptop and label printer are doing versus what the smart home hubs and streaming devices are pulling. Right now everything is on one flat network and I have no real insight into which device is eating bandwidth or behaving oddly.

I picked up a TPLink ER605 a few months back and it supports VLANs. My current AP is a basic mesh system that may or may not play nicely with VLAN tagging, which is the part I haven't figured out yet.

A few questions that would help me move forward: does it make sense to VLAN off smart home devices separately from work devices, or is one guest network good enough? And for anyone running a small home office setup, are you actually using traffic monitoring tools that surface useful data without needing a full selfhosted stack?

Curious what the realistic middle ground looks like here, because I've seen setups that clearly went way too far for a threeperson household.

When I click the "start stream" button on OBS there is a 1/2 chance that I will have 0% dropped frames and can stream without any issues for 5 hours or a 1/2 chance that I will have 50%-60% dropped frames.

However if I restart the stream a few times, then no matter what time off day, I can find a good connection with 0% dropped frames. So for the most part I can still stream I just have to start out by awkwardly restarting a few times.

I don't understand enough about networking to know what is going wrong, I have found other people with similar problems, but they didn't seem to have solutions and I can't remember what I googled to find them anymore. I have testing ever setting I can think of and the only thing that seems to consistently help is using an Obfuscated VPN, but that comes with it's own set of problems that I would rather avoid.

Is this a problem anyone else has seen or knows what's going wrong? Am I being throttled? Could getting my own router help with the problem?

Recently upgraded my home network to take advantage of higher ISP speeds (1.5gbps via Astound).

As part of the reconfiguration and setup of the Easymesh, I’ve been hammering ookala on my phone to understand my speeds. They are typically back to back tests. I’ve noticed that there will be times when after several consecutive tests, my phone will lose connectivity to the internet; no other devices appear to suffer the same fate. I’ve to recycle my wireless off/on to get connection again. Am I correct this is the ISP throttling/disabling my connection due to the Speedtest spamming?

Hi all,

I'm looking for a network box/rack which I can mount into my basement - by lack of better place. It will contain a 24 port POE switch and I'd like to reserve some room for a future NAS.

The internet and AI have gotten me no closer to selecting products to build this, as my basement is dry but not clean like a typical technical space.

Since the 250W POE switch has 2 vents that run pretty much all the time, I wonder if I need active ventilation in the box. If so, I suppose forcing clean air (via a filter) into the rack results in slight overpressure which is ok for anti-dust.

Renovation has put me on a budget, so I can't currently afford €500+ options.

Any advice on what to look into?

Thanks.

Hi everyone,
I’m trying to understand something about Nmap and network isolation.

I have an OpenWrt router with two separate networks:

**LAN**: 192.168.1.0/24
**Guest**: 192.168.3.0/24

The firewall is configured so that Guest clients can access the WAN, but should not be able to access the LAN. Guest clients can also query the router for DHCP and DNS.

I came across this YouTube video where the author discusses Nmap discovering the hostnames of devices on the LAN, apparently because of DNS resolution.

I tested this myself from the Guest network:

nmap -sn 192.168.1.0/24

and got:

Nmap scan report for iPhone.lan (192.168.1.135)
Host is up (0.0027s latency).

Then I disabled DNS resolution with:
nmap -n -sn 192.168.1.0/24

and got:

Nmap scan report for 192.168.1.135
Host is up (0.0022s latency).

So I understand that DNS explains why iPhone.lan appears instead of just 192.168.1.135.

However, I’m wondering about the **“Host is up”** part.
Is it expected that Nmap can still report Host is up even after DNS resolution is disabled? Does this mean that the Guest network is actually able to reach the LAN host, or is Host is up based on some other kind of probe that doesn’t necessarily imply normal IP connectivity?