After my Wi-Fi mapping adventure — I found a few spots with low Wi-Fi signal. Both kids’ rooms on the 2nd floor only had mediocre signal, at -67 and -68 dBm 2.4 GHz, and the side garden had -71 dBm — which is terrible!

I also discovered that Mona’s side of the bed had much worse Wi-Fi signal than my side. This was because I had a clear line of sight to the UAP-AC-IW in the den, but the signal to Mona’s side had to go through a wall and her wardrobe…

Simply not acceptable, something had to be done!

I’ve had many routers over the years — Linksys WRT54GL, Linux and iptables, ASUS RT-N66U, Ubiquiti USG, OPNsense, Ubiquiti EdgeRouter, and MikroTik CCR1009. At least those are the ones I can remember.

But I’ve been fascinated by VyOS ever since I first heard about it, even more so after using the EdgeRouter CLI. As both VyOS and EdgeOS are forks of Vyatta.

Fascinated and intimidated is probably more accurate — the lack of a GUI doesn’t give you a lot of help… But at the same time, it’s a great learning experience — you have to know and understand what you are doing 🙂

So I set out to replace my internet facing router — with a virtualized VyOS instance 🙂

Since we first moved into this house — I’ve wanted to ceiling mount a Wi-Fi access point on the 2nd floor. But getting a network cable to the attic was challenging, so instead I opted for a Unifi UAP-AC-IW in the upstairs living room.

It’s time to do it right, but I’m not running just one. My earlier Wi-Fi mapping revealed poor 5 GHz coverage in the kid’s rooms, so I’m running two CAT6 cables — for two ceiling mounted Wi-Fi access points.

To have the option of running more CAT6 to rooms on the 2nd floor later — I’m including a 10 Gbit fiber as well 😎

And as my previous runs — no visible cables.

I recently decided to give Altibox and their 6rd implementation another go — searching the interwebs I stumbled upon a Norwegian forum post that read (translation by me):

Altibox offers native dual-stack IPv6 if your home central is in bridge mode. You get a /56 prefix though DHCPv6-PD (prefix delegation) and can split it into multiple /64 networks. (…) — sveinse

WHAT!? Really? They offer native dual-stack IPv6 with DHCPv6-PD? Let’s test it! 🥳

Planning out my new network topology; I wanted to use multiple routers — and have them share routes between them. So I started looking into OSPF.

I made a simple lab in EVE-NG, and set up route sharing between MikroTik’s RouterOS and VyOS.

Back in August I wrote about connecting my ISP (Altibox) fiber straight into the Mikrotik CCR1009. I’ve since decided not to include the CCR in my network stack, but instead use my EdgeRouter 4 as, well — the edge router, and VyOS to route the local networks.

So I moved the SFP module and fiber from the CCR — to the EdgeRouter 4 👇

The first network run I did in this house — was to the hallway access point. It ran along the basement stairwell ceiling, through the basement, and into the home office.

Since I’m already running hidden network cables in the same area, I figured why not hide this one as well 🙂

Invisible cables are the best kind of cables!

Ever since we bought the house, last year, I’ve been planning to run wired network to the living room TV and media center — it’s time to finally get that done 🙂

We recently got a family computer in our play room, and it of course needs network. So I ran a 20 mm conduit from the basement, through the kitchen, to the play room, and pulled two CAT6 cables.

Shortly after I upgraded my Unifi access points from 4.3.28 to 5.43.43; I started getting timeout issues. Not all devices, but some; the Raspberry Pi driving our DAKboard, and both our Netatmo air quality sensors.

It took me a while to understand what was happening, and I didn’t immediately relate it to the firmware upgrade.