WiFi advice

[NRG]

As already stated I am a numpty, so please be patient. What is WiFi is not my connection to the internet? In other words, if WiFi is not the magic fairy dust that links this iPad to the black box in the corner of my room which links to a WAN, what is it?

Your Wi-fi is your local area network LAN. Along with any locally wired devices you have. It means you can transfer files between PC’s or print stuff on your local printer. To get a connection outside of your LAN you need a router, this forwards packets of data that have no destination inside your LAN to a Wide Area Network (WAN).

The two are separate and is why you have to determine if getting on to your favourite website is a LAN issue (bad wi-fi) or a WAN issue (your ISP has cut you off)

 

[Darth Vader]

As already stated I am a numpty, so please be patient. What is WiFi is not my connection to the internet? In other words, if WiFi is not the magic fairy dust that links this iPad to the black box in the corner of my room which links to a WAN, what is it?

Its difficult to explain in these short notes as the subject is complex. Your LAN can use cables and radio to perform exactly the same function i.e. connect your local devices together. Its a medium for transport and has no intelligence of its own. It just connects your local devices together thats all. Although your devices use IP addresses these aren't actually used on your LAN instead it uses the burnt in network medium adapter addresses (MAC) on each of the devices.

The 'black box in the corner' as I have outlined previously is actually 3 devices in one box a) the LAN infrastructure b) a Firewall with limited routing capabilities and c) a MODEM that can send data over a WAN connection. The Firewall part monitors both the LAN and WAN activity. If it sees an IP address that is not part of your LAN it will send it (if the Firewall rules allow) via the MODEM over the WAN connection. Similarly the Firewall monitors incoming IP data from the MODEM and (if the rules allow) will map it to a local MAC address and forward it over the LAN. A device with the correct MAC address will then process the data. Each device on your LAN keeps tables to manage the network. If you are interested in macOS and Windows shell you can use the command arp -a in terminal or cmd that shows the association with the burned in MAC address and its temporary IP address. Unfortunately this command is not available in iOS as this is not an O/S and does not have a shell through which to interrogate the kernel.

As I have said the whole process is complex and the above is a very short (terse) description. Thats why when trouble shooting we have to break the process down to individual steps that is identify whether the problem lies within the LAN, Firewall or Broadband WAN.

DV

 

[omers]

Another TPLink Deco M5 user. After years of wifi collisions, analyzers, xtenders, bought that trio. One of them is also a wired access point to a Lumin streamer which will only accept wired. Not a single problem in two years now.

 

[garyi]

Full unifi here, but my three access point are all connected via ethernet, rather than relying on wifi meshing. If you can get ethernet to where you want it, then adding switches and APs is easy and far better.