Good day all I'm wondering if anyone can offer some advice on setting up multiple routers in a non-standard primary / slave configuration. Currently our network is as follows; Satellite internet modem - primary router (provides WiFi and Ethernet to farm buildings) -Ethernet to fibre adaptor - fibre adaptor to Ethernet (to get network 200m to farm house) - un-managed hub Gigabit- un-managed hub Gigabit (provides Ethernet to farm house)- secondary router (provides WiFi to farm house). With this configuration I'm finding that using Plex streaming from my main PC via the secondary router WiFi I am having major issues with poor network performance and dropping connections (main PC is connected via gigabit Ethernet to the un-managed hub). These performance issues happen even when sat 6 feet from the router. With regard to the routers both the current ones are going to be replaced with the latest BT home hub (If BT actually manage to install the new connection at the farm) and a TP-Link AC3200 for the house when i redo the network. I'm wondering if its possible to have the router in the farmhouse set as the primary so the Plex stream isn't having to go through multiple switches etc. to serve the farmhouse and the router on the farm only feeding the satellite internet connection up to the house. However almost all the information i'm finding refers to the standard primary / slave set-up only, does anyone have any ideal on how / if this works? Thanks for taking the time to read the above. Mike
To me it seems like you don't actually want two "routers" per se, you're just using the term to refer to two devices that have wifi, ethernet ports and routing capability on-board, is this correct? I.e. these two boxes are all-in-one router, access point and switch (which gets the typical consumer "router" branding). If you disable DHCP on the house-based router and only use the LAN ports (i.e. not the one on the back marked "WAN"), and make sure it's on the same subnet as the first router, then that will be a good start. You will then be using the first device as a router, and the second as a switch and AP only (i.e. no routing) If the device your PC is attached to really a gigabit hub, or is it a gigabit switch? Hubs are no good for anything, as they share bandwidth across all devices, however I don't think a gigabit hub is even a thing, and it's probably a gigabit switch. Having multiple switches going from A to B is unlikely to impact performance in a perceptible way unless something is set up incorrectly. I might be missing the mark based on your description though, could help to do a diagram and include some model numbers.
Hi, Thanks for the reply. The DHCP on the the house based router is disabled and I'm only using the LAN ports (WAN currently empty). You are correct I meant Gigabit switch not hub. The system has been working fine for the the internet access, only being limited by the satellite connection itself. However i'm finding the setup to be unreliable for streaming Plex but can't really work out why, the lowest bandwidth is the 100Mbs fibre to Ethernet leg and i'm wondering if the system is getting upset by the data going from the PC in the house down to the farm router then back up here to be dished out by the slave router WiFi. Hence I was wondering if anyone had any experience setting up a network with the primary DHCP unit not having the direct connection to the internet modem. I'll try to get the details of the routers tomorrow if i'm over the minor case of flu i have.
I find streaming data doesn't have to travel all the way to primary router once a connection is established. I was able to continue access my NAS and Plex on my wired connection while my router is restarting. I have similar wired layout to you, where the router is off to one side: Internet modem - Router - 8-port Switch -wired-to: - PC's - another Switch to 2 NAS's - another Switch to TV, setup boxes, where Sheld TV Plex server is located Have you tried eliminate Wifi completely? On setting your farmhouse router as main router. Can the fibre adaptor accept the modem output, is it a standard RJ45? Just throw away the second router and connect one router WAN port directly to the other end of your fibre.
^ What he said - If the plex server and client are both attached (via wifi or ethernet) to the device in the house, the traffic should stay local to that device - assuming everything is on the same subnet. Also worth eliminating wifi from the equation entirely just to rule it out. Also worth checking how the plex server is doing - for instance if it's trying to transcode a high bitrate video, it could be having trouble keeping up with the stream? I've found streaming with Plex can be sensitive to things other than infrastructure/throughput, so worth playing with the playback/transcode settings on the clients/server and see if there's a any consistency with certain types/bitrates of video and audio streams where it happens more often. Also make sure that the client is streaming from a local/direct Plex connection, and note remote - not only will that potentially cause issues, it will eat up what I assume is capped in terms of data usage pretty quickly.
Thanks for the replies, I'm afraid the minor case of Flu i had is still with me and has upgraded itself to full on Flu. Most of the issues have been resolved with a new router at the house (A TP-Link Archer 3200) and setting the IP addresses of the clients manually. The router at the farm is suspect as I can't access it remotely and it's not dishing out IP addresses correctly 100% of the time so that's going as soon as I'm well. Just wondering if anyone else has had issues with routers partially failing, i.e. dropping clients and failing to give out IP addresses 100% of the time? As for the server its currently my new build i9-7900X general purpose machine and its streaming at original quality, so hardly working on Plex. The intention once I've finished ripping my film collection is to run the Plex server off an old mac mini and an external HDD I have lying around as we're unlikely to try to stream more than 2 things at once and will use original quality so no trans-coding (I'll be keeping a server install and a complete copy of all the media on the i9 too).
It's called CRS, or "crappy router syndrome" - ISP-bundled routers are particularly susceptible to it, however no router is router is truly immune. In my experience there's a clear correlation between going cheap or using bundled kit, and network aches and pains, though it most commonly (again, in my experience) manifests itself as everything working fine, until nothing works at all, and needs a restart. There's chance that swapping the hardware has resolved/reset a previous configuration issue, but there's also a good chance it's just flaky kit. If your'e swapping the other router out anyway, it probably doesn't matter which it is.
Hi again, Firstly thanks for the replies and the taking the time required to read the posts and assist. With 2 new routers all the issues have been resolved, BT have managed to completely fail to install the new FTTP connection despite having initially giving an activation date of July 2017 and as we are moving to France this July I've asked them to keep their connection to themselves. So I have a Cisco link-sys router on the farm acting as the DHCP server now not a BT one. Everything is playing nicely here and we will make do with the satellite connection until we get to France where we can luxuriate in a glorious Adsl connection at 3.5 Mbs and 35ms ping!
