Tag: mesh network

November 10, 2026 – This Will Never Do, My First Project

November 10, 2026 / / 0 Comments

The picture below is actually two projects. One I am actively working on and the second will start as soon as I finish the first one. I am motivated because I need to finish these two projects before I start working on my shop. I need to finish my shop so I can get the garage cleaned out. So, this is an important log jam in my frustration to finally moving in.

Honestly, if were completely up to me I would do things in the reverse order. I would finish the shop and then start doing projects. But, my wife and I think about things is two opposite ways. There is currently a handyman and interior decorator in the mix so I also need to get my part done.

It may not be abundantly clear from the picture what the projects are. Project two is a wine bottle shelf to the left of wine fridge which also includes finishing the trim and a floating shelf, like a mini bar table. In order to get there, I need to clear the way. That means moving the internet so that it is not sitting on the floor in front of everything.

This is the nerve center of the house. Being that we both work from home, internet is absolutely critical to our lives. I am always amazed at how something so critical gets second fiddle in most households. The router is put wherever there happens to be a jack (typically the easiest place to punch a hole through the wall) and that is where the story ends. . I guess I shouldn’t necessarily be surprise since most people don’t have the tools or the knowledge to do something about it. I would think at the very least people would want a safe, organized and logical place to install the internet nerve center. I professional terms, it is called a ‘Demarc‘.

I am sure based on what I have gone through that this is where the previous owners had their internet. How am I so sure? It is the only place it works. I know they worked from home because they left the desk that that had the computer. I just don’t remember seeing a router when we toured. But then again, I missed the fact that there was no furnace, so I guess that is fair. I think that you get what is wrong, I would like to spend more time on what needs to happen. Here are the requirements.

  1. The demarc needs to be out of the way, I dont want to have to decorate around it.
  2. It needs to be flexible. We are starting with the mesh network that we have been using. I do not expect to have a wired back haul like I did at the old house. I do expect to install the outdoor unit somewhere which requires Power of Ethernet (PoE). Most devices will use wireless but I want Cat6 capability if desired.
  3. My low voltage area will also have a space for a door bell transformer. I am already tired of changing the battery in the Ring doorbell, sometimes after 2 weeks.
  4. I am installing the original Spectrum wireless router again. I want the ability to see what the WAN is doing with the onboard diagnostics which I cannot see with the TPLink Deco system.
  5. I want the ability to reboot the system from a central location.

Installing the demarc in the basement was one of the best things that I did. I spent untold amount of hours running cables and modifying as things evolved. Our primary TV location moved at least four times in 20 plus years. Although we never used it, each location was wired for surround sound. What is old is new again and some locations were used more than once. The advantage was that I could go to the basement and pop a new cable on the main floor in a few hours.

I wish that this was one of those posts that I could show beginning and ending. Instead slow and steady progress is the name of the game. I was waiting for weeks for the electricians to finish power in the garage and the furnace to get installed. Then I had to get up the desire to crawl under the house. Once I cut the internet cable for a splice, I was under the gun to get it running again. That day I had visions of significantly more progress. But I was able to re-plan when things didn’t go quite the way I had expected.

I have my board on the wall, I built the shelf to set the wireless router on. I have the hole in the drywall so I can cut out the low voltage location, I have my supplies in order. It is a matter of mounting hardware on the board, building cables and connecting things together. Because it is in the garage, this is something I can do after work and now in the dark.

End Your Programming Routine: One thing that I am learning is that I am getting old an my eyesight is getting worse. I had to crawl under the house multiple times because my cable splice had bits of shielding touching the copper conductor (The fine wire mesh under the plastic skin of the cable). When I finally tested the line, it was registering ‘short’. I literally could not see it in the low light and confined space. That took several hours to resolve. Live and learn; as soon as you think something is going to take twenty minutes and two hours later it is finally resolved. Look for a follow-up with the finished product.

March 11, 2025 – Here We Go Again

March 11, 2025 /

I have put a lot of effort into my network. It is not because this is my desire, but more out of what others want out of it. I did a lot of work in the fall to try and include the apartment into the Wi-Fi mesh and to try and get all of the cameras and things connected so that the batteries were not constantly drained trying to connect. Both of those I feel like I have generally solved.

The one thing that I have generally ignored is in the attempt to connect all of these ‘things’ is the user factor in all of this. My wife complains about it, my son has complained about it, my exchange student has complained about it and even my tenant has said that there are times it does not work well. Time to do something about it.

Against my knowledge, my wife hired an internet consultant. I am not complaining, I was just surprised that there was anyone out there locally doing that kind of work. So, I listened to what he had to say. He was angling to do the work as well, but I just paid the consulting fee. I am pretty sure that I am more than capable of implementing everything since I made it this far.

One area that I am really risk adverse is gambling. To me, spending $200 on something the might work seems like gambling. When the consultant recommended adding three more units of our existing T-P Link Deco network, that certainly seemed easy. I had the same thought but I didn’t want to spend the money to see if it was an improvement. For this reason, I bought a $20 range extender when I was trying to solve my doorbell connection.

The range extender worked, I should have guessed that adding more wifi mesh capability was the solution. Let me just say that I am a wired guy. In my day to day work, all of the items in my office are wired. I never see any issues related to bandwidth that a network reset doesn’t resolve. I think more of that has to do with whatever the Internet Service Provider is doing rather than my network.

I suspect that my wife and my tenant are experiencing the same problem because they are both in the same geo proximity to the network. But regardless, I talked with the consultant about this as well. It was his recommendation to move from trying to get that unit within the mesh to adding a wireless bridge. A wireless bridge is a device that sends a signal point to point.

The plan is to swap out my outside mesh device with this wireless bridge. Part of the reason is that I already have Power over Ethernet run to it. But, now I will have a spare unit to put somewhere else. That location is TBD at the moment. I haven’t had it installed long enough to enjoy Wi-Fi in the yard yet anyway.

I will have to do some antenna work on the apartment. Another recommendation is to retire my ten year old, gateway router. This means I will have to do some cable rework. What all this means is that this is a process. But it has been one that I have been wanting to do every since I started this mesh experiment.

I am finally going to retire old passwords and general network access in favor of a more secure and segregated network. Guests will get access to the guest network. IOT devices will be on the IOT network and neither will have access to my main network. Careless security or old hardware vulnerability will not have a tunnel into the more sensitive parts of my home network.

End Your Programming Routine: This is all recent developments as I just started last weekend. This means that not all of the work is complete and the user feedback is incomplete. It is funny how something like internet grows from a novelty to a necessity. I am moving units at a time so as not to take everything down for an extended period of time. Despite the fact that I really didn’t want to pay $175 for a consultant, I would not have known about the wireless bridge and I am happy to have a reassuring opinion on what I have already done.