# DECA real world use as a backbone.



## rahlquist (Jul 24, 2007)

Ok, so one of the reasons I wanted DECA installed is the length of my house means at the farthest reach wifi is weak. So with the deca in and my readings of deca speed on the DVR over 240 I started thinking. I wonder if I connected the ethernet to a WIFI AP could I add an overlapping wifi network to the far end of the house. I ordered an ASUS RT-N12 and did just that, pulled the ethernet cable from the back of my HR20, hooked to the WAN side of my new AP(Had already configured it) and then proceeded to test. The HR34 was able to stream a sho from the HR20 still just fine. But what I have found is that same AP whic when hooked to a ethernet connection right off my router got 30Mbps to my test box here in the house only gets 3mbps on that DECA unit upstairs and that connection steadily slows and eventually fails. 

Has anyone really utilized a DECA run like this for any sort of serious bandwidth?

Thanks!


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## Combat Medic (Jul 27, 2007)

I haven't tried what you are doing, but I would like to make a suggestion for a change to how you have it hooked up.
Rather than connecting the line to the WAN port, it should be connected to one of the LAN ports. First though you'll want to turn off the DHCP server and set the IP address for the router to .2. You will then have basiclly created an access point and it will probably work better.


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## rahlquist (Jul 24, 2007)

Thx Combat medic. I tired your suggestions and no appreciable change. 

I did some testing after that and then changed a few burst related settings in the AP and it is better now, still not fantastic but I can live with it for now. (vs returning the AP). All speed tests are using Speedtest.net's mini speed tester you can run an instance of on your own local server.

All results are against my media server which connects to gigabit port on my etherswitch (also where my DECA connects to network). 

Desktop connected to Gigabit switch 
267.49Mbps down /343.43 up

Deca ethernet port at HR20 hardwired to laptop gigabit port with cat 5E
95.18/65.42

Deca ethernet port at HR20 hardwired to ASUS RT-N12 hardwired to laptop gigabit port with cat 5E
94.74/65.69

Wifi connect to ASUS RT-N12 and laptop with ASUS wifi adapter
32.71/27.64

The problem seems to come from any non ASUS branded wifi product connecting to their device. For those devices if I run the speed test a few times it will suddenly drop to 3Mbps and then the connection seems to fail. 

I may try to put DD_WRT on it and see how that goes. If I cant get it working better its going back.


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## dennisj00 (Sep 27, 2007)

Be sure the APs set to the same SSID / security are set to different channels. The DECA backbone shouldn't affect this throughput. In fact, if you can, you can isolate this coax with a deca on each end separate from your Directv cloud.

DD-WRT is a good idea if the router will take it.


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## Diana C (Mar 30, 2007)

The ASUS firmware is based on Tomato, and in my experience it is quite good (though I have the N12's big brother, the RTN-66U). The fact that you're getting basically fast ethernet performance at the DECA shows that the coax segment has no influence on this scenario. That is what you should be getting (the 240 number in the mesh test is the full duplex throughput over the local segment).

As dennis points out, you need to make sure each AP is on a different channel. For maximum wireless-n throughput you need to use 1, 6 or 11 (this allows the AP to use two bonded channels and get 40MHz wide channels). When I had 2 APs in our house I used 1 and 11. Now that the 66U delivers a decent signal to the furthest reaches of the house (as well as to the front and back yards) I use just channel 6 (and there are no other APs on 6 in the area). Your wireless throughput of 25 to 30 Mbps is typical of 20Mhz wireless-n channel, or wireless-g level performance.

In any event you should not see a steady degradation of performance as long as you are not fighting interference. This is typically seen when there are multiple APs all at similar signal strengths. You can fine tune many aspects of your wireless network with a tool like InSSIDer - I highly reccomend this tool to see what signals are around you and to help choose the optimal channel for your situation. The home edition is free.


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## rahlquist (Jul 24, 2007)

Diana C said:


> As dennis points out, you need to make sure each AP is on a different channel. For maximum wireless-n throughput you need to use 1, 6 or 11 (this allows the AP to use two bonded channels and get 40MHz wide channels). When I had 2 APs in our house I used 1 and 11. Now that the 66U delivers a decent signal to the furthest reaches of the house (as well as to the front and back yards) I use just channel 6 (and there are no other APs on 6 in the area). Your wireless throughput of 25 to 30 Mbps is typical of 20Mhz wireless-n channel, or wireless-g level performance.


Thats where I am sitting right now except for using the bonded channels, I have had lots of flakiness with bonded channels so I am going to avoid them till I can get rid of some more of my old hardware. Knock wood the new ASUS has held up great today with every machine but my own laptop which was not one of the intended users. Maybe its my Intel 4965AGN in my 2005 vintage laptop.

I will primarily stay on my E3000 which is one floor directly below my recliner (AREN2109 2.4ghz and AREN2109_5 5ghz) the new ASUS is labeled USAREN in the attached screen shot. So my E3000 will maintain one end of the house and the ASUS the other. The house isn't that large just too much structural interference combined with lots of neighboring wifi which all seems to cause some flakiness.

It all seems like overkill until you take into account the geography and the 30+ physical devices on my home network. For the moment it all seems good and I cant say I am disappointed in the DECA backbone, at first I was concerned that the router was causing some sort of fragmentation issues on the DECA but it looks likely I had some other issue affecting it. This particular extension of my LAN wouldn't have been nearly as easy without the DECA.


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## Diana C (Mar 30, 2007)

I'd move USAREN to channel 6 - you have much lower level "foreign" signals there.


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## rahlquist (Jul 24, 2007)

Sorry to revive an old topic but I didn't want to leave this hanging out there in case anyone else wanted to try it, saw my post, and gave up. No matter what I did I still seemed to have issues with this location. It would work fine initially but any sort of prolonged use (more than a few seconds) would cause a steady drop in traffic. I did install DD-WRT on the router and this didnt help and was showing me signal strengths in the 40% and above ranges. The primary use for this router was to be for the craft room across the hall and the Eye-Fi card in my wifes camera and even the Eye-Fi card was dropping off in the middle of transferring a picture. My only thought was the coax portion was loading up and causing issues, last night I figured out I was wrong.

We were watching a DVR'ed program and I was working on updating the ROM on my Nook. As I kicked off the d/l I was connected to the AP in the bedroom. Shortly after this I noticed the surround speaker on my nightstand dropping out. So I switched my nook over to the wifi from the router downstairs and the dropouts ceased.

Today I disconnected the wireless transmitter for the BDV-E770W and turned off the receiver for it (in case it also transmittted) then I picked up the digital camera with the Eye-Fi card and took a picture, it uploaded lightning fast to the wife's computer. I ran some more tests and I can now get full 30/4Mbps broadband speeds out of this location in the house. All I can guess is that the Sony wireless surround was swamping out the Wifi signals, and perhaps the transmitter worked like our wifi and cell transmitters and when it met interference it would increase its output power and drown out the wifi or perhaps it would just retransmit (assuming the audio data was sent digitally to their remote surround box)... Here are the specs for the wireless surround.



> Wireless transceiver (EZW-RT10/EZWRT10A)
> Communication system S-AIR Specification
> version 1.0
> Frequency band 2.4000 GHz - 2.4835 GHz
> ...


So I know that there is limited frequencies available for many things, but for crying out loud, WTH would Sony choose the dominant wifi signal band for a wireless speaker setup? For now we have no surround in the MBR because my sanity over the wifi issues we have had takes precedent. In short DECA appears to be working jsut fin as it always had it was the wifi attached to it getting drowned out by the surround receiver 2 feet away. So now I guess since there is a connected Coax drop in the craft room I will just get another DECA end point and move the Wifi AP into that room.


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## Diana C (Mar 30, 2007)

The vast majority of wireless AV equipment uses the 2.4Ghz band, not to mention MANY older cordless phones. The only other band available is 900KHz, which suffers from lots of EM and RFI interference generated by things like flourescent lights, flat screen TVs, etc.

The over-crowding of the 2.4 GHz band is one of the reasons for the increased popularity of the 5GHz WiFi band. However, 5GHz signals don't propagate through structures as well as 2.4GHz, which is both a blessing and a curse. In a larger home, it can be difficult to get a solid 5GHz signal in more remote locations, but there is also far less interference from the neighbor's routers.

There were 5GHz cordless phones that were popular until DECT overshadowed them. They operate at the high end of the 5GHz band, but if you stay to the lower channels there is little out in the wild currently that interferes with 5GHz WiFi.


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