Internet connection trouble (solved... or is it?)

It also depends on what is around the router. For example, don’t put it on a metallic shelf :upside_down_face:

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Also don’t put it behind a water tank :slight_smile:

You might test both your old and new laptop at the same time, maybe on youtube, and see how they behave.

I don’t know how it works for salt, maybe you can ask for a new one. If the call center doesn’t complain, it means that they do it all the time => the box wifi isn’t good.

Funny you should say that, it stands right next to a metal shoebox…

The placement of fiber socket it my flat is just terrible…

But if all they have is a salt box, then what can they do? I know they offer repeaters, but how is that going to help, when the repeater does not have a good connection with the router? I would need at least 2 repeaters to cover the whole flat…

Since we are talking about that… how do you pick the channel set? I’ve seen there are three: italian,french and german. Can you switch from one to the other? I didn’t compare them too much, but if I got it correctly, the only time you have to pick is if you are fluent in either french or german, otherwise it doesn’t matter. Even italians shouldn’t pick the italian one, since italian channels seems to be complete on all 3 packages. English seems to be complete in all 3.
If I switch I’m in a difficult situation on which one to pick :slight_smile:

Send you a new one. If it break easily, a new one is better. If the first version was shitty, they might send you an improved one.

I don’t really watch TV, but I guess I have the German channels. I’m a YouTube junkie :wink:

Yea that is main learning from using X cable modems over the years – their routers are shit. Invest 300-400 bucks in a nice mesh wifi and never look back.

have you tried changing the wlan channels?
if all the wlan in the building are using the same channel, it will be unreliable.
Just pick an open channel and try again
Cheers
Vasco

I did, as I mentioned. Macs have a built in tool which suggests the optimal channel.

ah ok, I missed that! sorry.
If you plan to move the router, be careful on which fiber optic cable you buy. not every cable works for every router.
I bought 20 meter of optical fiber cable and moved the router near the tv and HTPC, in order to connect both with a ethernet cable. worked out really well, although the fiber cable cannot be bend too much or it breaks.

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Btw I wonder why does Salt have to design their own router? It’s not like they’re network device experts. What do they gain, especially as a budget provider?

Full CPE control can give them significant less troubleshooting headaches. I generally try to use LAN cables where ever possible. Do I understand that the situation was bad since you switched to Salt? In that case I recommend you to either change the location of the Router to some other place and/or buy your own Wifi equipment and put it behind the Router using LAN cables (not a repeater but a Wifi Access Point).

Me2. TV and PC both connected over LAN. I only need Wifi for my smartphone.

I wish I could do that, but my desk is some 6 meters from the router and the TV some 12 meters. There is no furniture or carpets to hide the cables on the way. Not to mention that the router stands in the hall, so the cable would have to go through the door somehow. It’s not an option.

I just pulled the damn router through the hall as far as the cable allows and it’s still crap. I’m losing my mind here…

Maybe you should move to a different flat? :thinking:

My last one had 3 Gbits LAN ports in every room.

O.o that’s pretty good. Some electricians I encounter today still think 100Mbit/s is way enough

They actually had 100Mbits in the first place! In a totally new building (2016) for 100 million CHF! Lol. After I moved in I realised that I’m not getting my full 1Gbits through these LAN ports. I contacted the landlord (Migros Pensionskasse) and they replaced it. The technician said that never saw such a cheap installment in such a building. 3 months later they replaced it in every flat.

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Haha, I had my electrician rip out Cat 5e cables because in connection with the cheap sockets wasn’t getting 1 Gbit/s either. But the building quality of my apartment is a whole different topic :confused:

Buy a good wifi router (Asus RT-AC86U), connect it via cable to the salt box and turn off the salt wifi.

That will probably solve your problems. My PC is a concrete wall and about 8m away and it easily maxed out my 100mbps line on wifi.

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I second the suggestions to buy your own networking equipment. I’ve learned my lesson through the years to never rely on ISP equipment (especially since in search for frugality that can change over the years). So the first thing I do on ISP equipment is to turn off their Wi-Fi and route it to my own UniFi setup. Added bonus is that you always have a stable home network configuration even as you change ISPs.
If you’re interested, here’s my setup (maybe overkill for you, but I have teenage kids, so this gives me a lot of control, such as their own WiFi network with their own On-Off hours):

  • DNS server: Raspberry Pi running Pi-hole for protecting the network against ads and e.g. known phishing addresses.
  • UniFi Security Gateway 3G: This handles assigning network addresses to your devices, as well as maintaining multiple networks and stats on them.
  • UniFi Nano HD: Ultra fast Wi-Fi. You can buy as many of these to cover your flat (or other models as you want, and they are powered by the Ethernet cable). I’ve only needed one to cover my 140m2 apartment. It is located in my living room, and I work from home in my bedroom about 10 meters and several walls away, and still almost max out my ISP connection at 500 Mbps. You can create up to 4 distinct Wi-Fi networks with this setup, with different rules for each one.
  • UniFi PoE+ switch: 8-port Power-over-Ethernet managed switch to power the Access Point and other devices you might have (might not be necessary for you, in which case you could plug the Access Point directly to the USG).

The added bonus of this setup up is that:

  • you’re not trusting a single device. You can upgrade parts of it as your needs evolve over the years, (e.g. upgrade only the AP as new faster Wi-Fi standards come out).
  • since each device is dedicated to a single task, you can decide the location of each one. For instance, you can put the small AP in places where you’d not want to put an ISP device (e.g. hanging on a wall or ceiling).
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Thanks for the tips! Back in Poland I used to have my own router, flashed with open source firmware, OpenWRT. But since then I have become much less hackerish, I just want stuff to work out of the box and be low maintenance (that’s why I became an Apple sheep).

Do I understand correctly, that you have your ISP’s router, your own router connected via cable, and a raspberry pi? That sounds like an overkill for my minimalist soul.

I heard about pihole, but it probably needs a lot of config and setup to work correctly. And that wifi you recommend is not wifi 6 (ax), I would for sure buy it to be future proof.

I just don’t get it, why does the hardware from the ISP not work properly? Salt even boasts about the design, the designer’s signature is printed into the plastic. That’s such bullshit, it’s just a lousy router, does not even look good.

Do you think it could work to replace it entirely by an own fiber router? I guess that could cost a lot though. And I would be so pissed if it did not solve the problem.