Agencies and other headaches, keys and cleaners, running costs and contracts...in short, all the things we spend so much of our time doing behind the scenes.<br>
We've just found out that we have been taken off the superfast broadband list for Devon. Cheers for that Openworld - I am obviously going to be in the 5% of the populations that will never get superfast, despite being only 6 miles from the nearest town and only 14 miles from the county town
So, we are stuck with our steam powered wifi.
I have state of the art hardware, but obviously with a weak supply, things can get very slow when the cottages are full and every guest has an ipad/laptop/phone connected to wifi. My tech guy has changed the channel and that has improved things very slightly. The other option is to limit the number of devices guests can connect to wifi Does anyone else do this? If so, how many per party do you allow.
Also, does anyone block any websites to guests such as netflix etc????
If you want to find me, Google The Barton Poughill!
What is superfast? What speed do you have now? Through Wifi? Through network cable? What Wifi standard are you using?
It's not the number of devices which is a problem but what they are downloading. You could be looking to solve a problem that doesn't exist and certainly has not been quantified.
WiFi is one side of the modem/router and broadband on the other. They should not be confused. If tweaking a channel helped, it would indicate a WiFi issue as normally your WiFi would be many times faster than your broadband, so not a limitation on internet speed.
Last edited by kevsboredagain on Mon Mar 14, 2016 6:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Have a look at Satellite broadband, its really fast and no where near as expensive as it used to be.
If its a little expensive then consider sharing the service with a number of other neighbours.
You can restrict access in many ways but first you need a really good router such as the Draytek range. Very powerful giving you the ability to control things in a whole range of different ways. Far too many to describe and list here.
I control user access in a number of ways using a dratek router and without complaint. Well those people that are using the service within the rules have not complained. Those that have complained have been trying to download pirated movies, music and programmes using P2P networking applications. I control individual download speed per device but not so much that it interferes with streaming movies via a number of legal providers, Netflix and amazon for example or the itv or bbc iplayer. by doing this the bandwidth is shared out amongst guests more evenly and nobody is hogging the service.
You could restrict the number of devices by restricting the ip address range allowed.
for example restrict the range to 192.168.10 to 198.168.19 only 10 devices can be given access.
Using a draytek router you can create more than one network. Give yourself a chunk of the available bandwidth within one network (Your own Network) and allocate the rest to second network (Guests Network). Give your own network unrestricted usage of the available bandwidth you have given yourself and breakup the bandwidth that's given to the guests network in any number of ways.
kevsboredagain wrote:What is superfast? What speed do you have now? Through Wifi? Through network cable? What Wifi standard are you using?
It's not the number of devices which is a problem but what they are downloading. You could be looking to solve a problem that doesn't exist and certainly has not been quantified.
WiFi is one side of the modem/router and broadband on the other. They should not be confused. If tweaking a channel helped, it would indicate a WiFi issue as normally your WiFi would be many times faster than your broadband, so not a limitation on internet speed.
Gosh sorry - I only asked
If you want to find me, Google The Barton Poughill!
akwe-xavante wrote:Have a look at Satellite broadband, its really .............
Thanks - useful advice. I've been given the same by my tech guy today and he's checking out equipment. In the meantime (I need to get listed building consent for the dish) he and others have suggested we limit access to sites such as netflix and amazon which may help in the short term.
If you want to find me, Google The Barton Poughill!
kevsboredagain wrote:What is superfast? What speed do you have now? Through Wifi? Through network cable? What Wifi standard are you using?
It's not the number of devices which is a problem but what they are downloading. You could be looking to solve a problem that doesn't exist and certainly has not been quantified.
WiFi is one side of the modem/router and broadband on the other. They should not be confused. If tweaking a channel helped, it would indicate a WiFi issue as normally your WiFi would be many times faster than your broadband, so not a limitation on internet speed.
Gosh sorry - I only asked
I only tried to understand the problem. You can have the fastest broadband in the world but if there's a problem on the WiFi side, it won't solve the problem. Your tech guy will have measured the speeds and know which part is the bottleneck.
Annew Wrote "only 6 miles from the nearest town and only 14 miles from the county town"
This is an extremely long way for ADSL2+ broadband and Fibre.
I suspect that even if you did get Fibre, at these distances from an exchange you could actually be worse off with Fibre.
As the "Last Mile" as its called increase beyond 1500mtrs the bandwidth is less than what you would get from an adsl2+ service. Fibre from the exchange to the cabinet (Green Box on the Street) should not be more than 3miles or 5km. The "Last Mile" is the length of copper wire from the cabinet (Green Box on the Street) to your property. The longer it is the more the service degrades. The Fibre service suffers greater than an ADSL2+ service does over the same overall distance.
How far are you by road (not in a straight line) from your nearest cabinet (Green Box)? How far are you from your exchange by road not in a straight line?
At 6miles to the exchange your lines speed will be very poor indeed. If its 14 miles to the exchange I'd be surprised if you could even get an ADSl2+ service or Fibre. At six miles from the exchange I'd wager that an ADSL2+ service would be faster than a fibre service.
If your nearest green box is more than 1500mtrs I'd forget about fibre altogether.
Some counties offer grants for community satellite services too.
akwe .... Fibre has been installed to a cabinet in the next village to me (2 miles) but not to the cabinet that serves our village. We were never going to get anything other than fibre to the cabinet then copper overhead cable to our house. I'm afraid that if you don't know the area it's a bit tricky to explain. It's more to do with take-up and I'm not going to bore you with our local problems
Kevsbored .... My OP was about limiting access to guests in various ways and asking for LMHers views on that NOT about tech stuff which I do not understand in detail (which is why I employ someone to deal with the tech for me)
So sorry ... next time I'll think twice before posing such questions.
MSO
(edits for typos only)
If you want to find me, Google The Barton Poughill!
Your Tech Guy should be able to help you actually limiting user usage and restrictions given a suitable router that will enable him to do this as it is complicated.
I limit my guests usage to avoid abuse and misuse and illegal online activities.
The trick is to control user access without restricting access too much.
I install various systems for local guest houses, hotels and campsites etc and also listen to many other home users moans and groans about poor or non existent wifi etc.
I find its better to have a reliable internet access service even if its a little slow than a unreliable one or not available some of the time so I wouldn't restrict the number of simultaneous connected devices because some people won't get a connection and others will, even within the same group of guests, not good.
I'd look at restricting each persons overall bandwidth therefore evening out the available bandwidth for everybody and use a router that can identify devices that are using P2P networking applications such as Bearshare, Shareaza, Utorrent, Bit Torrents, eDonkey etc and block such connections.
I have restricted guests devices to a maximum of 175 simultaneous connections with an upload bandwidth (Upward TX Rate) of 100Kbps and a download bandwidth (Downward RX Rate) of 2850Kbps.
This is enough for a single device to check emails fast enough, access websites such as Twitter and Facebook without restriction and stream a movie from the ITV, BBc iPlayers and the likes of Netflix and Amazon without feeling restricted and no buffering. Using Skype is not a problem either. But if they try using all of these services simultaneously on one single device then that person only would then have restrictions imposed on them only and temporarily for a specific time period without effecting anybody else on the network.
Guests have no idea there access is being controlled and so far everybody has been happy bare two guests who complained about poor access and speed but when I had a look at the routers log files they were given poor access by the router because they were abusing the service by attempting to use Utorrent for downloading illegal software, movies and music.
Given the distance you are from the exchange I would look at Satellite Broadband and cap user bandwidth to a fair level per person so that no one device or person can hog a large part of the overall bandwidth at the expense of other guests.
1. Very fast cable broadband. Only 2 people connecting to internet. It's still possible to make Youtube pause if I copy huge amounts of data from over the WiFi. No bandwidth limits in place.
2. Very slow 3MB ADSL. 6 or more users connected at any time. TV streaming is just possible and no one complains. Bandwidth is limited by the router so that no one connection can take it all.
The examples show that preventing problems is not so much about the speed of your broadband or the number of devices connected but the allocation of bandwidth to the devices connected. Obviously having faster broadband gives more bandwidth to play with.
Sorry if you don't want to hear the tech stuff but unless you understand a problem, it's pointless throwing money at it. You asked a tech question after all. We've no idea if you currently have 1MB shared between 20 users or not.
The advice by akwe-xavante is very good but also requires an understanding and is also technical.
