Transcript
Micah Sargent (0:00)
Coming up on Hands On Tech. I, Micah Sargent, have some tech questions that need answered. We talk about, well, a pretty popular, pretty often recurring question. We talk about home mesh networking. We also talk about switching from Windows to macOS yet again. And some conversations about how to connect network attached storage to your device and have it stay and and work as you expect it to. All of that plus more coming up on this episode of Hands On Tech. This is Twit. Hello and welcome to Hands On Tech. I am Micah Sargent and this of course is the show where I take your tech questions and do my best to answer them or sometimes I review products. I keep promising that one's coming soon. It may or may not have been on its way to happen today before I had a little trouble with this overhead camera I have here. So that's coming down the line. But in the meantime I am very excited to be answering some great questions that made their way here. If you are joining me in the Northern hemisphere, I hope you're staying nice and toasty in the cool, cool air. If you're coming from elsewhere. Well, good for you because you're probably warm and wondering why I'm in a stocking cap. Anyway, let's get into the show. This week we're kicking things off with Susan who is, I would call friend of the show Susan. Susan is for people who've been watching Ask the Tech Guys and Hands On Tech after the fact. After the transition, you will likely remember that Susan is the individual who has a photo archive business and Susan has had some great tips in the past on helping to organize your photos. But today Susan has written in with this I have the Orbi AX6000 tri band mesh wifi 6 router. I always hear you talk about Eero and wonder if the Orbi mesh I have is okay. I have a 4000 square foot home, 2000 on the main floor and 2000 basement where my studio is. It seems to work okay, but I have terrible speed delays when using my tv. I have the TV hardwired to the satellite in my family room and yet it's not always great Internet. The other weirdness I'm having is that when I'm on my iPhone was 12 now 16 pro when on my wifi and trying to download something. Being on my wifi is slower than turning it off and using my Verizon data. I do have a cell extender for Verizon on my network because their cell service is so spotty, but I would think my own wifi network would be faster. I've got fiber to the house and currently see 950 plus megabits per second speeds up and down. So Susan, first and foremost, I don't want to introduce some sort of wifi anxiety into your life. The reason I talk about EERO so much is simply because I've used EERO for many years at this point. And it is the product that I recommend to others whom I know because I'm able to then help them with their EERO systems. And then, you know, once you're kind of on a router, you know, you've, you've made your brand choice, you tend to stick with it. That said, there's, there's a lot to kind of dig in with your question, but as far as using an Orbi, I think, or the ORBI system, it also gets really great reviews and is a okay and totally fine. I think that the problems that you're having probably involve some other things and that's what we're going to talk about. So first and foremost you said that you have terrible speed delays when using your tv. So let's talk about this. Depending on what you mean when you say using your tv, this could be different things. I don't know if you know this, but there was for a long time an Apple TV which included an ethernet port that was slower than the WI FI chip that was built into the TV that set top box. It is sometimes the case that because Ethernet is not as important a feature for a consumer, then that means that they are prioritizing something like the WI FI chip that's built in. Plus different other issues are involved, including what chip Apple decides to put into it. So if you are using an Apple tv, you'll want to check if you have a modern Apple TV with the modern ethernet port that has actually been updated to support these latest speeds and give you that much throughput that you were looking for. The same thing though would apply to a smart TV. Particularly when it comes to smart TVs, those things are consumer built, consumer focused through and through. And that usually means that they're expecting that you're going to use wifi as your means of connecting. So I would suggest, Susan, that you consider trying it over wifi and seeing if the speeds improve versus Ethernet. If that happens, then you know that the ethernet port that's built in is probably not a modern ethernet port that's going to support all that throughput. Particularly because those ethernet ports, I can't remember exactly, there was a term that somebody in the home theater area used, but Basically they called it like the dentist port or something like that, because the idea is that many times those televisions are used in dentists office and other places that have, you know, as part of the corporate building, Ethernet running to everything. And all they need to do is use that Ethernet port to kind of display some slideshow or what have you. So in that case, it's not as necessary to have that huge throughput. That said, there are a bunch of different reasons why your router may be reaching some places better than others. If you have your TV set into the wall and there's brick around it, or if you have an older home and so the walls have metal in them, I mean, there are a bunch of different reasons why that might be the case. And that is where I recommend using a tool called wireshark, which will essentially let you kind of map out your space and the wifi signal that is available. So if you decide to go with wifi for it, that could be the difference. I'm just now remembering that we were first talking about Ethernet. So in that case, again, it's hard to see how that could be a problem, except for the fact that I just recalled now, yes, you have that Ethernet running to one of your satellite Orbi devices, which means that it's wifi from the main device going into the orbi satellite, which is then running an ethernet cord. So you're only going to. Even at the best, you're only going to get the speeds that the main device can send over wifi to that satellite. If you can run ethernet from the satellite to your main router, that is very good because that does something called backhaul and that gives it essentially frees up more of the router to do what it needs to do with the actual antenna because it can use Ethernet to get in touch with the main router. So just reviewing there a couple of options that you have. First and foremost, try WI FI on that TV and see if it improves things. Then you know, it's the Ethernet port that's just old and outdated. And then secondarily consider very much consider strongly consider running an ethernet cord from your router to that satellite. In fact, that would be more preferred than anything else. And Keith's 512, I thought that wire. I thought I remembered Wireshark having a network mapping plugin. Am I mistaken on that? Yeah, there's network analyzer, right. Maybe I'm misremembering. Anyway, that's kind of your secondary tool if you would like to try to. Is there Something going on with the wifi at that point. Now the other question that you had was that Your iPhone, that's a 16 Pro now it seems to be slower than if you are using your Verizon data. I hear this a lot and the first thing that I tell people, and I wouldn't be surprised, Susan, if you are an Apple iCloud Plus subscriber, either directly or through the premium subscription, whatever it happens to be, check if you have the IP filtering settings on, which is basically Apple's VPN style relay. It's called iCloud relay system that helps to protect your privacy. What you want to do is launch the settings app on your iPhone, tap on wifi, tap on the I, the information icon next to the network to which you are connected, and look for limit IP address tracking. If it's toggled on and you're having slower, you're having a slower connection. Try toggling it off and then using it and see if that improves the speeds. If it improves the speeds, then you know that it's Apple's iCloud private relay that is causing the issue for you. And that is something that I just hear from a lot of people. ICloud Private Relay will help with improving and increasing your privacy, but it does not help in improving and increasing speeds. And that has been the issue for people. And the reason why I think that it might not be showing up on cellular is that it's more likely to be turned off by default on cellular because there are certain cellular carriers who do not support iCloud private relay. So to see it be faster with your Verizon data, that's one suggestion there. So that is what I recommend. And then I'm just double checking to see. Okay, so I do not remember why I thought that that's why. It's because people use Wireshark and NMAP together. So the tool that I'm actually going to recommend to you, by the way, thank you to the chat room for helping me out there, is nmap. That's nmap.org nmap has a tool, zenmap, which will help you to map out your network and see where the speeds are to to be able to and like the dead points and all of that kind of stuff. So forgive me, people use wireshark and NMAP in conjunction and that is why I kept thinking it was Wireshark. But NMAP is the tool that you want. So Susan, give that a shot to just kind of map out your network in your home and see what where you Might have some slowdowns, some dark spots and that can help you to consider where you put those satellites. But ultimately you're good to go when it comes to using Orbi. Everything's fine there, but I called Private Relay. Why I yadda. That thing causes so many people so many issues and I understand why it's there. It's a great feature, but still. All right. Hey Loquacious, let us move on to our next question.