Home Networking with the NETGEAR ProSAFE Switch and Hands on with Open-Mesh Wireless Access Point – HGG247

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Nathaniel Lindley (@thanlindley) joins Jim Collison  https://twitter.com/jcollison and Mike Wieger from http://2980network.com/ for show #247 of Home Gadget Geeks brought to you by the Average Guy Network, part of http://thegeeksnetwork.com community.

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Nathaniel topics

New network hardware at home.

Replaced a 8-port dumb switch with a 16-port Netgear Smart switch because of added devices needed plugged in closer to pfsense hardware.  NETGEAR ProSAFE GS116E 16-Port Gigabit Desktop Web Managed (Plus) Switch  http://amzn.to/1UTR5ep  $126

Now I can see traffic on ports, setup VLANs and LAG down the road and has QOS, low energy on unused ports.  Web interface.  Needed to turn off IGMP Snooping because it made Apple AirPlay and XBOX Media Extender unreliable.  Liked this design and mountable in closet.

Replaced 3 wireless Access Points (Airport Extreme, Airport Express and Linksys) with a single Open-Mesh MR1750 gateway.   http://bit.ly/1PVjMtg $230

This new access point is now central in house, provides Guest and Internal SSID, Cloud based controller(cloudtrax.com) with Client view and traffic reporting.  More reliable than previous setup for wife’s work laptop and VPN.  Had a few issues with disconnects, especially ecobee3 thermostat dropping off.  Working with support to use 6.x beta firmware which appears to be helping.  Thanks to HSS forums for suggestion, itGeeks, pcdoc and Jason for sharing their experience.  Cloudtrax is nice for seeing traffic type and devices.

Did a bandwidth stress-test a couple times with new WAP and Switch.   Had 23 devices all streaming video or audio in the house.  Game consoles, desktops, laptops, chromebooks, phones, wired and wireless.   Saturated Comcast 60 Mpbs connection for 30 minutes and saw 30 Mbps sustained on Wireless.  Vimeo Staff picks is a great way to test continuous high bandwidth video.

LastPass

Using Enterprise version at work with team of about 25.  Some are new to LastPass (and password manager in general) and like it.  Others have been using LastPass for years.   Shared Folders is a huge feature, both notes and URL logins.  We retain ability to reset an employee’s Master Password for them.  Still need help on tricky websites to get right login credentials, but overall big improvement.  I like that you can “trust” your personal account inside your Enterprise account (except for personal shared folders).

LastPass 4.0 – version is nice upgrade, I don’t like big icons.  Like the

Emergency Access feature, I used the One-Time password option before, but this is nice for verification loop.

Chrome  in Education

Now managing over 5400 Chrome devices, including Chromebox (for Kiosks, walk up stations) and a couple Chromebits.   Going well for simplicity and now being used for secure online testing.  This works very smoothly in Kiosk App mode where student can launch test software prior to login.  Looking at Chromebit for digital display options–runs hot and doesn’t charge from USB port….https://www.google.com/work/chrome/devices/for-signage/

Exploring option of Chrome for meetings, using more powerful Chromebox and Camera for better video conferencing.

 

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