WiFi advice (I have it)

[dsrtao]

This morning I went over to a house of friends and reworked their house network. Hence, advice that is useful for some people follows.

• The first bit: wires are great. For any device that can take an ethernet cable, that should be your first choice. Things that sit in one place - a smart TV, an Apple TV box, a stereo system, a desktop computer or a server: wire them together. Best is to pull cables back to a single central switch, but frequet ntly that's not as convenient as chaining switches (or access points) together.
• Second: there should only be one device in the whole network that provides DHCP assignment of IP addresses (and infrastructure hints like gateways and DNS servers). It's possible to violate that dictum, but if you know how to do that properly you are not really the audience for this.
• Third: a house wifi router makes a good wireless access point. Turn off the DHCP, configure a reasonable LAN address, and don't plug anything into the upstream (WAN/internet) port. Pick exactly one of themn (if you have one, that's the one) to handle DHCP.
• Fourth: 2.4GHz is longer range and slower, but not bad. 5Ghz is short range and fast. If you have multiple access points, configure them on different channels in each band, but use the same SSID for everything, and keep the same encryption method and code consistent, if you're using that.

Assume that any WiFi encryption system is the equivalent of an envelope on your mail or the lock on your front door: it's a social signal telling people that they are bounders and cads if they break in.