At least it's ideally placed at ground floor's centre.

Ubiquiti's Unifi APs immediately comes to mind.

1. A good cable matters. I got some free CAT5E cables that are actually CAT5. Dintek is the best, Prolink also OK. Generic cables I bought so far also OK.
2. For cables longer than 15 meters, normal cables better coz better shielded, stronger & better when bending. Flat cables are good for short length eg 50 cm or 25 cm. I use short flat cables for connection between my router, switch, modem & Raspberry Pi as all sit next to each other, less clutter compare to normal 1 meter cables. Flat cables also more practical for non-permanent applications eg connecting to laptops at different places.

This post has been edited by taqu: Nov 20 2019, 01:27 PM

Flat cables should nicely slip between the gaps.

Maybe it's rented house, so no drilling allowed?

It should be easier to do with flat cables, like below. Just need to properly secure the cable on floor/wall. If nails/case not an option, you can use tape / hot glue gun to stick the cable.





This post has been edited by taqu: Nov 21 2019, 12:32 PM

Good spec. Huge improvements over the older box. Let's hope it's not locked so I can install MX Player on it.

Minor updates to my custom home network monitor

Trying to make it short:

1. I use a switch (TP-Link TL-SG108E) that mirrors all traffic from my router to Raspberry Pi running ntopng traffic monitor app.
2. ntopng has almost everything I want except detail DNS requests monitoring. To do that, I send my router's DNS requests log to a syslog server on Raspberry Pi, which is processed using a custom Java app I created. Note: My router (D-Link DIR-868L) uses custom firmware (Tomato) that can send its syslog to a remote server.
3. I wrote another custom Java app to find out device names using data from both ntopng and my router's DHCP lease.
4. Data from both ntopng and my custom processed data displayed on Grafana dashboard as in the screenshot.

Luckily I have sufficient technical skills to pull this off. Most people would simply buy a high-end router or setup Ubiquiti Unifi system. Very glad to be able to do this


Some more:

I'm an old guy not used to dark theme

My custom solutions are tailored for Tomato firmware, ntopng app, using Java codes. You also need a server eg Raspberry Pi to run everything.

I'm lucky ntopng app is free for University users. I love ntopng for its super-detailed info. IMO its DPI engine (ndpi) is better than TrendMicro / Ubiquiti. ntopng free version already very good but lack critical features to me like live traffic dashboard & monthly reports.

To customise for other firmware & monitoring app will require a re-write 😬

This post has been edited by taqu: Nov 28 2019, 11:21 AM

Some more screenshots from ntopng:





Found 1 review:

https://www.pcwdld.com/deep-packet-inspection

Already used Pi-Hole before, but some devices couldn't connect when I set Pi-Hole as DHCP server. Therefore I moved to Tomato's dnsmasq, Tomato's built-in Adblocker & CleanBrowsing DNS. But I had to build my own DNS dashboard to match Pi-Hole's dashboard

Of course not. They're times I need more, like this:

Enable "Intercept DNS Port". Then all DNS requests no matter what DNS setting, are always redirected to Pi-Hole.

I use ntopng monitoring app, running on a Raspberry Pi, connected to TP-Link TL-SG108E, setup to mirror all traffic going to router. So you need a router, a smart network switch, a Raspberry Pi, and another router setup just as an AP (Access Point).

Easier to use Asus routers eg AC68U which has a built-in traffic monitor. I don't think it's anywhere close to ntopng, but should be good enough for casual users:

Can you see individual devices' IP in Pi-Hole dashboard when setup this way? When running ipconfig, it list Pi-Hole as DNS, not your Mikrotik IP?

This post has been edited by taqu: Nov 28 2019, 07:33 PM

In my case, this is where some Android devices at home were unable to access Internet. Eventually I gave up on Pi-Hole and went my own way

If your modem is located near stairs on ground floor, and you can place your router high near staircase, a single router router eg Asus RT-AC86U or TP-Link Deco M5 x3 is probably enough.

If not, I feel no single router or Mesh Wifi within your budget can sufficiently give 100mbps on 3rd floor.

This post has been edited by taqu: Dec 5 2019, 06:35 PM

Then M5 should be OK.

IMO Mesh Wifi limited to 3 floors, and main Mesh must be at the middle floor.

Beyond that, centralised wired APs eg Ubiquiti Unifi ecosystem is a must.

PPPOE