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Offline Today

From 3am this morning our home network has been offline. This was expected. Comcast, our primary access provider, was quite good about notifying us of a planned fiber upgrade. The process has been taking areas of the neighborhood offline briefly…

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The Ubiquiti LiteBeam Wireless Bridge Looks like Fun!

Occasionally something crosses my path that looks like a fun toy. I find myself wishing I had a project to justify the purchase. Such is the case with the Ubiquiti LBE-5AC-GEN2-US LiteBeam Wireless Bridge.

A pair of these devices form a long-range wireless bridge operating in unlicensed spectrum. It fits right in with our existing Unifi Cloud Key and AC Pro Wi-Fi APs. Best of all, at under $70 per end, it’s really affordable.

LiteBeam 5AC Gen2

Ideally, I’d use a pair of these radios to gain access to the Tachus fiber internet service that runs up Harvard Ave. That’s 1.43 miles (2.29 km) due west of our home. The Ubiquiti setup tool shows that we could achieve 250 Mbps over that link.

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Power-Over-Ethernet Splitters are Good Fun!

Power-over-Ethernet is for more than IP phones, Wi-Fi access points and surveillance cameras. It can be used anywhere there’s a low-power device that would benefit from continuous power and the reliability of Ethernet connectivity. Assuming your network switch (or POE injector) is connected to a UPS, POE allows the attached devices to remain powered in the event of a power failure.

In my home and office, I use POE to connect and power a number of Raspberry Pi single-board computers configured as music players. The RPi3 B+ isn’t natively POE capable, so I use a POE splitter like the one pictured here.

Anvision POE splitterGiven a POE-capable switch upstream, this wee splitter provides 5 VDC at up to 2.4 A via a standard micro-USB connector. This model from Anvision is under $10. A 4-pack is just $37 on Amazon.com. 

Another option would be to use a POE HAT installed right in the RPi. However, a POE HAT cannot be used along with another HAT, like the Hi-Fi Berry audio interfaces that I use for music playback.

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Rebranding Networks: Wi-Fi 5 vs 5G

The hype around 5G mobile networks seems to have the Wi-Fi Alliance crowd a little nervous. In early October they launched a rebranding initiative to make the alphabet soup of Wi-Fi easier for grannies to understand. Were once we refereed to 802.11a/b/c/n/ac and/or 802.11ax…now, to be Wi-Fi certified, the correct terminology is:

  • Wi-Fi 4 (formerly 802.11n)
  • Wi-Fi 5 (formerly 802.11ac)
  • Wi-Fi 6 (formerly 802.11ax)

The entire guide to this new marketecture, which includes a library of symbols for use on packaging, is here. It’s worth a glance. Remember, the point of the exercise is to bring clarity to the oh-so-confusing world of Wi-Fi.

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