Networking

Michael's apartment WiFi network security is wide open, with logins based on the apartment numbers and the office phone number as the password. And they won't allow him to change his password. The best solution is to lobby the apartment management to allow him to change the login password.

Kent needs more reliable wifi. He has a wifi router with extenders, but as he has wifi calling, often the call would just drop or buffer. So he went with an Orbi mesh router, and while he has a more consistent connection, he has an issue with the actual connection to the internet. Leo says that Netgear's Orbi is the fastest out there, but it's very simple in design. Dropouts can occur if the access point isn't connecting to the base station. So he can reboot the access point when it happens. Kent is using an ISP provided router that he has to use.

JC has a ton of pictures on his computer and they aren't organized. It's a real mess on his hard drive. How can he organize them in the Cloud so that they are not only backed up but easier to access? Leo says that Google Photos is ideal, but they only backup unlimited hires JPEGs, not the uncompressed RAW versions that JC wants. But it's a good backup to the backup.

Vip wants to know if he should wire his home with ethernet cable while he has the walls open. Leo says ABSOLUTELY. And use Cat6 while you're at it to future proof it. Hardwired is always preferable to WiFi and it'll be faster, have far fewer dropouts, and no congestion. Leo just did it himself. We're lifting a lot more data now with WiFi and IoT smart devices. There's a lot of congestion. 

If you have a challenging wifi environment and can't afford to wire your home, Leo advises going with a Mesh router: eero, Netgear's Ubiquity, even Asus has gone mesh.