Wi-fi & routers

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Wi-fi & routers

Unread post by NSNO2021 »

With help from the good folk on here I am going to get into streaming. I have already got a mini fanless PC, an XXL Master clock, next on order will be some DHL labs USBs cables if I can get some stuff moved out via fleabay to pay for them. I will probably run Volumio and Tidal as my software which only leaves the cables from the Openreach wall socket to my TalkTalk router (RJ45 to RJ11) and then the router to the mini PC which I envisage will be a generic Cat 8 RJ45 to RJ45 cable.

My simple thinking is I want to make the data connection as fast and as clean as possible and the potential bottle neck as I currently see it is the cable from the Openreach socket to the router and maybe the router it's self as I have no way of knowing what throughput the router is capable of.

So is possible to have a Cat 8 RJ45 to RJ11 cable as I have yet to find one and would I be better off replacing my bog standard TalkTalk router with a better router or a second hand Cisco or other big network router ? Thanks in advance Paul B
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Re: Wi-fi & routers

Unread post by Fretless »

Sounds like a question for Lindsay. :grin:

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Re: Wi-fi & routers

Unread post by slinger »

I agree with Fretless, Lindsay's your man.

My personal preference, re Ethernet cables, is these guys http://www.bluejeanscable.co.uk/store/data-cables/index.htm They're Cat6a, which is plenty "fast" enough for music streaming, and they're exceptionally well made. They also come in pretty colours. :lol: Joking aside though, I've got them running from my BT Hub to my router, and from my router to both NAS drives, and my source, which at the moment is a mini-PC running Volumio.

The Blue Jeans cables are definitely preferable to the no-name Chinese cables on Amazon etc. because their quality is guaranteed, and they really do make them up with cable specced by them and provided by Belden, and they test each cable before it's sent out. One caveat, they come over from the US via FedEx which means delivery time is fast, but the cost isn't added until you're checking out, so be prepared for a total that's higher than just the price of the cables you've chosen.

Obviously, as with anything, that's just a personal opinion. ymmv.
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Re: Wi-fi & routers

Unread post by terrybooth »

Ok. Let's follow this from source.
Source Tidal - somewhere out there on t'intertwizzle accessed via a cloud network brought to you by Talk Talk (what bandwidth do you have - probably totally sufficient.
That phone cable to the router is most likely inconsequential, as long as it isn't broken
The router - I'm assuming fairly modern and so will have 2.4 and 4ghz wifi - (which you will be using to control the PC ideally, rather than keyboard, VDU and mouse) - and 4 gigabit ethernet points - 1000mb (1gb) is way greater than the upstream bandwidth, ever 100mb ports would easily do it. So I'm really not sure what benefit you'll get out of replacing that.

Ethernet cables - they need to match the rest of the interfaces the cat specification is for the network they are in (Cat 8 cables are no use if the router interface is cat 5). Cat 5 or Cat 5e good enough I would say.

The PC you have opted for Volumio - I run it but on a Pi - I've no experience of the PC version. Will you have a screen, keyboard and mouse on the PC - you'll probably need them to get it running. However, I would opt to control volumio (or any music player) from some sort of mobile interface. Volumio works via a web page (so you have a tablet/smartphone on the wifi network which is on the same network as the PC (which it will be using the Talk Talk router defaults) - in sorting that you will need to discover, via either the PC or the router interface, what the PC's IP address is. I personnally would look to give the PC a static IP address (best done via the router configuration. However, that's for later on.

Note that my set up is to stream music from a local NAS, I've tried other sources briefly. but in all that I'd say, it's the quality of the connection to the internet (pretty much beyond your control) which is the most important element. And I've tried to follow the KISS principle. I'd only think to upgrade he router is I wanted better network management capabilities (e.g. segregating the home network into different zones to keep nasties out), none of which would affect SQ. I've used both Virgin Media and Fristz!Box routers (as supplier by difference ISPs) and the management of the router has been the biggest problem I've encountered (VM released a version of their router which had a load of firmware issues - it hadn't been tested before release).

Lindsay and Fretless will chip in.
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Re: Wi-fi & routers

Unread post by CN211276 »

I believe a second hand Cisco switch would be of benefit. The model contained in my signature seems to be the one to go for and can be bought for around £50 on fleabay. I also have Cat 6 ethernet cable connecting the wall socket to the router. This is seperate to the cable connecting the phone which I think is better than a splitter.
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Re: Wi-fi & routers

Unread post by Fretless »

To me, Ethernet cables do affect SQ in streaming systems. Main factors are wire quality and shielding. CAT8 wiring strands are internally shielded and ordinary CAT8 gives very good audio reproduction at a minimal price.
I have an 'audiophile' router and use AudioQuest Cinnamon Ethernet as link to my streaming PC. This CAT7 cable has silver-plated copper strands and sounds slightly smoother and more musical that CAT8 for more thann 5x the cost.

I find CAT5 and 5e to be audibly inferior on a transparent system but they are fine to get going with.

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Re: Wi-fi & routers

Unread post by Lindsayt »

Apologies if this post comes over as teaching you to suck eggs, or as too technical...

For the router replacement - for a home network - I think it could be done.
However your ISP (internet service provider) will be of no help in troubleshooting any issues that you have.
As the people on the Helpdesk will have a script to go through and one of the first things they will say is "Switch off the router (that we supplied to you) and switch it back on" Followed by "What LED's are showing on the router (that we supplied to you)?"

If you've got some industrial strength Cisco or HP Procurve router, you're not going to get very far into the helpdesk's script. Unless you lie to them.

From their point of view they want all of their millions of customers to have the same router, with the same config on it (done by them). It makes support so much easier.

If you can configure routers you should be fine. If you can't configure them, you're stuffed, because you'd at least as a minimum need to configure your ISP specific WAN (Wide Area Network - your connection to the internet) credentials.

The tightest bottleneck will almost certainly be the speed from your local internet distrubution box to your internal wall socket.

As an example, the speed for me is of the order of 70 mbps (mega bits per second) download and a measily 20 mbps upload speed. That's with a fibre to the cabinet connection. This time 2 years ago I had a much slower connection than that.

Once inside your house, 18 year old switches will do 100 mbps in both directions.
More modern switches will do 1000 mbps - commonly known as gbps (gigabits per second)
And if you get into fibre optics you can get speeds of 10 gbps or higher - which starts to get a bit daft because hard drives then start to become the bottleneck.

Gigabit switches (max speed of 1000 mbps) are pleasantly affordable on ebay - if you buy used. The industrial strength Cisco and HP Procurve ones are good. Reliable. Well engineered. Most of them have cooling fans. Which is fine if your switch will live in the basement. If it will live in your listening room, get a fanless switch.

In reality, for a home network, I bet I could swap out a 100 mbps with a 1 or even 10 gbps switch randomly and you wouldn't notice the difference.

I've not seen anyone use fibre optics for their home network for hi-fi use. Theoretically this should be the bees knees.
Last time I looked I estimated that it'd cost about £300 to connect up your main home devices with fibre. That's going 2nd hand. With a risk that the fibre NIC (Network Interface Card) drivers might not work (well) with your PC. Because used fibre NIC's would typically have been used in servers in data centres. Like Google's servers. Real mega industrial strength computing.

Fanned Cisco and HP Procurve copper switches can be bought for about £20 off ebay. They would have been in the region of £800+ when new. Fanless copper switches cost a bit more, about £50. The lower electrical consumption of fanless is nice - for something that's on 24/7/365. Although fanned switches have longer MTBF (mean time between failure).

As for cables, Cat 8 can be bought from Farnells for £15.42 for a 5 metre length.
https://uk.farnell.com/c/cable-wire-cab ... egory=cat8

Or you could look out for reels of cat 8 on ebay. As well as deals on the cat 8 plugs - which so far I've not been able to find at a reasonable price. Making your own cables is easy. and makes sense if you want something that's exactly the right length.

With Cisco and HP Procurve switches you can just plug them in and they should work with the default factory settings. However I do wonder if putting a half decent config on them would make them sound any better? If nothing else, a config should get a device working on the network quicker when it is plugged in - due to techie stuff like spanning tree portfast settings.

For Cisco AP's (access points - to extend your wireless network) they DO need to be configured to work.

Cat 5e cables are fine from a home network speed point of view. From a sound quality point of view, try different cables and see what you think.
I have so many Cat 5e cables that I give them away free to friends and clients.
It's also worth noting that there may be a high proportion of Cat 5e cables out there that are fake. They can get away with fake cables because they still work fine from a computing point of view - probably because most connections get nowhere near the specified limits of 100 metres and 1 gbps speed.
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CN211276 (Sat Nov 28, 2020 12:27 am) • savvypaul (Sat Nov 28, 2020 12:39 am) • NSNO2021 (Sat Nov 28, 2020 12:37 pm)

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Re: Wi-fi & routers

Unread post by antonio66 »

Or there's this https://silversonic.com/products/digita ... -ethernet/ with 25% today, a little surprised Fretless hasn't given it a go yet. :lol:
A question from , I've seen routers costing well over £100, are they any better than the one given away with the Sky tv package?

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Re: Wi-fi & routers

Unread post by Lindsayt »

antonio66 wrote: Sat Nov 28, 2020 12:45 am
A question from , I've seen routers costing well over £100, are they any better than the one given away with the Sky tv package?
Thinking about routers a bit more.

Most people have a combined gateway and router that is provided by their ISP (Internet Service Provider). Usually in the form of a combined VDSL modem and router.

Most industrial strength Cisco routers only have RJ45 ethernet sockets on them. You could buy one of those and connect it to your combined Gateway Router via an RJ45 lead (also known as a copper connection). In which case you'd be looking at disabling the routing on your Gateway Router and telling it to pass the external IP address onto your Cisco router.

Or you could buy something like this:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Cisco-890-Se ... OSwWHdfNA8~
which is a combined VDSL modem and router. It was designed for use in small businesses / small branch offices - up to 50 users. It has an rj11 vdsl socket on it for the connection to broadband, as well as a few rj45 ethernet sockets for the internal network. Plus an sfp slot (into which you could plug a 1000 mbps fibre module).
In terms of network speed, this Cisco C897VA-K9 would be no faster than my plasticky ISP provided VDSL modem router. Both go up to 1000 mbps for the internal network connections.
You can buy the older model Cisco 887's for £20, but they only go up to 100 mbps for the internal network speed.

The Cisco C897VA-K9 would appear to be engineered OK. It cost abour £800 when new. Whether that translates to any better sound quality would have to be found out by putting it to the test.

I'd need to delve into CCNA / CCNP textbooks to get a proper understanding of how to configure a Cisco business router like the C897VA-K9.
It's one of those things where once I'd knocked up and tested a config I could create a template which others could use and adapt for their particular home situation.

One thing I'd need to check is how a Cisco router would cope with your ISP giving you a floating external IP address - which is what the vast majority of home users will have.
You can get a fixed external IP address from your ISP, but you have to pay a little extra each month for that.

The advantage of a Cisco business router over one provided by your ISP is the additional features that you can get. Such as additional security, voice over IP, remote management of the router. The sorts of things that would be useful to a company with multiple branch offices. I'd need to look into this more to determine if any of these features would be useful to a home user.
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Re: Wi-fi & routers

Unread post by antonio66 »

Informative post Lindsay, if I only knew what it all meant. I'm sure my brother would be interested if the router could be improved. The Sky one at present is powered by a small Chinese LPS.

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