Two internet connections

[Bhoot]

So, there seems to be some news in the air of fiber with up to 1gbps coming in. Currently I’m on a 40mbps connection so yes that’s an upgrade. But with everything awesome there is a catch. The cost of the new fiber is a lot. So my wish (I hope I can call it one) is have everything in the house, all random iPads, phones, tv, microwaves and washers on the existing 40mbps including the FreeNAS box with transmission and plex on the same WiFi for easier access to home equipment and also get a 100mbps connection for remote connection. I have seen the plex does bottle up when 4 odd stream of various contents is played remotely, simultaneously. I’m not doing any experiments, just saying what really happens. At some point I have to disconnect atleast 1 person to let the others enjoy a good experience. I was hoping the 100mbps connection will improve the connection with remote clients and probably even give me (1 person only) a direct connection to enjoy good sound and video at another person’s house.
Is it possible? I do not want to add any major equipment. I do have some old routers lying around, so anything to do with that shouldn’t be difficult.

 

[dlavigne]

Did you decide upon a solution for this?

 

[Heracles]

Hey Bhoot,

WiFi is like the old hubs in the 1990s... Only one at a time can transmit. In fact, it is even worst than hubs because with hubs, at least everybody had the same physical link speed. With WiFi, if you have a single WiFi client with a poor signal, he will slow down everyone. The reason is that it takes him forever to do the simplest thing and while he does so, nobody can do anything.

In your wildest dream, you can consider that should you have a WiFi that is capable of 300 Mbits (802.11n) and that is shared among 10 users, each one can have about 30 Mbits of bandwidth. It is more realistic to consider that 802.11n is capable of about 150 Mbits and that bandwidth can not be used at 100% because it is shared (there must be gaps between clients, either in time or in frequencies), so 10 clients will have about 12 Mbits at its disposal.

There are ways to do high density WiFi networking, but you need multiple Access Point, managed by a central controller and spreading your SSID over different channel (1, 6 and 11). That kind of WiFi networking is enterprise class, not residential class.

The best for you would be to eliminate as much WiFi as you can and go to cables. Do WiFi only on devices that can not do cable like your iPad. But for servers and every heavy consumer, cable is the way to go.

Good luck,

 

[sretalla]

I think he's talking about having 2 internet connections and using only one of them for plex, keeping the other (original) for everything else.

It's probably a reasonable wish that should work with some careful thought and planning (and probably the right firewall/router setup... do you run pfSense?)

 

[Bhoot]

Hi. Sorry. I had kinda got a bit of hardware issues on my main machine and I got busy dealing with that. The op was the planning bit and it’s status quo as of now.
I’m not using pfsense