Retired Techie
Getting older, not necessarily wiser!
Tagaytay Network Part 1: Some Thoughts
Published on October 21, 2023 at 4:50 pm by LEWIntroduction
In this series of posts I am going to walk through the previous, current, and possible future states of my home network in Tagaytay. I want to review how it became what it is today, and what I hope it becomes in the future.
In its current incarnation the network has developed a few issue. These should be easy to rectify on a temporary basis once I am there, and have direct access. I don’t really have anyone available with a sufficient knowledge of computers or networks to look at it while I am away. Although overall, in spite of a few issues, it has run rather well in the time I have been away.
I was not present during the initial install, and it not being optimal. The fact is that it has been a somewhat shaky road up to this point, with very minimal documentation. However I intend to rectify that issue this time around.
This will be a first for me, trying to bring order out of my own chaos. Starting with this series of posts I want to update and organize the documentation, and tackle some of the existing issues with the current setup.
I do expect these first few posts to be somewhat disjointed, as I wrap my mind around this project. Even thought the network already exists, I am treating this as a new project, and I am in my concept, scope, research, and planing phases. Once I am back in country and get hands on, I can complete and close out the early phases and move into the execution phase.
What Was There
Architecture
I am dealing with a three level cement house. There is some disagreement on this, as the third floor is referred to as the attic on the original plans. But in reality it is more of a dormitory setup. I don’t really have a decent set of up to date plans to go by, as the house went through some modifications during initial construction, and then expanded later.
First Floor Rooms:
- Entry foyer/living room
- Dinning room/kitchen
- Family room
- Bathroom
- Carport
- workroom/office
Second Floor Rooms:
- Master bedroom/walk in closet/master bathroom
- Guest room/walk in closet/bathroom
- Foyer/sitting room
- raised ceiling of the entryway/living room
Attic (Third Floor) Rooms:
- Foyer
- Large dorm room
- Bathroom
- Walk in closet.
Networking
ISP:
- Globe cellular modem for internet connection, 10 Mbps
- Connection strength/quality not an issues, as the cell tower was close (300 meters away)
- Actual speed depended on time of day (varied between 1 and 20 Mbps)
Coax/Ethernet Cables:
- Workroom/office is the termination point for pre-wired cables
- Coax cables go to the master bedroom, guest bedroom, and family room
- Ethernet cables go to the master bedroom, guest bedroom workroom/office
Since I was not there to oversee when the cabling was installed, I had little input into where the cables where routed. As this is a concrete/cement house, this makes rerouting/rewiring very difficult. Also the cement and re-bar construction reduces WiFi range.
Equipment
A majority of equipment was picked up second hand or acquired at no cost, and is around 5 to 7 years old at this point.
- Multiple micro computers (NUC and Raspberry Pi)
- multiple 8 port switches (mostly NETGEAR)
- Multiple NETGEAR N600 style routers (with a few exceptions).
- Cellular modem with WiFi and one local Ethernet port (Huawei 310 type I think).
- Rover wired CCTV System (local brand) with 8 cameras
- ARLO Wireless CCTV system with 4 cameras.
Interesting side note, most NETGEAR equipment does not come with 110/220 adapters. Supplied adapters are specific to the country of sale. At this point in time ARLO was still part of NETGEAR.
What Was Setup
The Cellular modem was in the first floor workroom/office with the local Ethernet connected into the 8 port switch. One of the routers was setup as a Wireless Access Ploint (WAP) in the second floor master bedroom.
The ARLO base station was also in the Master bedroom with four cameras across all three floors in the common area.
The Rover was setup in the workroom/office with eight outside cameras (who’s cables all terminated into the same room.
While not of particular interest at the time, Globe uses CGNAT.
Conclusion
The initial setup was done over five years ago, shortly after construction was finished, and had a few major limitations that could not be avoided. But this was to be expected.
One issue was intent speed. At that time cellular was the only service available in the sub division. It was adequate for security system alerts, but struggled with real time video monitoring. Streaming was limited to basically one person at 720p, otherwise there was lots of buffering.
Wifi coverage of the interior was not overly robust. While the master bedroom WAP provided both 5 and 2.4 GHz, the original cellular modem only supported 2.4 Ghz. And with only two wifi points the cement construction yielded some really low signal strengths throughout most of the house.
Even with these limitations it served fairly well for several years. However, when we began full time residence, it was obvious some things would need to improve.
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