Last time I came to Natalie's house, I upgraded her computer, her bike, and
even her piano. You know how I know this is the number one instrument? The piano,
not the piano. But there was one major issue that was
left unressed. How did you not spend any of your $5,000 budget upgrading your
terrible Wi-Fi?
So bad. It took over an hour just to install a Valerant update on this
computer. And while many of you pointed out that Riot Games launcher can be
inconsistent at times, that wasn't the problem. As it turns out, there are over
30 different wireless networks here, resulting in a level of Wi-Fi congestion
that puts many apartment buildings to shame.
And Natalie and Michael only made matters worse when they tried to fix the
problem by upgrading to a mesh Wi-Fi system. In fairness to them though,
everyone asks Wi-Fi, but no one ever asks how. Thankfully, I have the answer.
With some help from GLET, who sponsored this video, we're going to migrate
Natalie's access point to the 6 GHz band, which as long as her devices
support it, which they will, will result in not only better performance, but more
consistent performance, even if her neighbors are all binging Love is Blind.
Of course, we don't want to go in blind. So, before we run around making
improvements, we need to establish a baseline. We're going to run both speed
tests in several rooms around the house and use this RF Explorer Pro to check
out which channels are least congested in those areas. That could help us if
Natalie has devices that can't move over to Wi-Fi 76 GHz. More on that later. So,
first, where would you say your Wi-Fi connection matters to you most?
>> Near the computer in the family room, near the router, near my computer upstairs, and finally the upstairs TV.
>> And I assume the toilet, but we can leave that unspoken. Shoot, I said it. I
mean, I mean, I said it. I'll stop.
>> I'm going to break my monitor. I swerve. >> Now, on the surface, you might look at
some of these results and think, "Hey, buddy, that's not too bad." But the
intermittent nature of Wi-Fi problems is part of what makes them so hard to
troubleshoot and solve. And the reason comes down to how Wi-Fi works on the 2.4
band, for example, >> or you might say, "Howi."
>> Thank you for interrupting me. Really worth it. On the 2.4 Four band, for
example, there are 14 channels, three of which are non-over overlapping. Let's
imagine those three channels are roads, and the cars that travel on them are the
packets of Wi-Fi data you want to transmit. No matter how many Wi-Fi
routers you add, every data packet has to stream over the same shared roads.
So, all it takes is a game download or a couple of Netflix streams on your
neighbors network to dramatically impact your experience. 5 GHz is a lot better.
It features more lanes and faster transfer capabilities to reduce
congestion. But once you scale up to dozens of nearby access points, even
that struggles and complicating the matter, wireless devices are constantly
sending out pings, checking in with one another. Meaning that even if your
neighbors hate Love is Blind, the mere fact that they own a Wi-Fi router can
lead to an unusable experience for you.
If you want to learn more about this, check out the video where we set up 50
access points in a tiny room and then tried to watch YouTube. It was a mess.
The RF Explorer Pros says that channel 6 is probably the least congested for any
legacy or low-end gear that only supports 2.4 GHz.
>> But the problem is that even that is not a guarantee. Many devices by design will
actually channel hop around according to their own programmed sometimes moon
logic, often creating an even worse environment than it had to be if
everyone just picked a freaking lane and stayed in it. So, you might find
yourself constantly monitoring which channels are the most available. And a
good way to do this for free is to use an app like Wi-Fi man for Android or
Good Luck on Apple because iOS doesn't give access to the antennas for their
developers. need. With all of that out of the way, step one is to remove
anything from Natalie's house that might be broadcasting unnecessary Wi-Fi horse
plop. >> There should be a new series. We just call ourselves the Wi-Fi mans. We just
bust into people's houses and make their internet better. >> The old Pimp My Wi-Fi series was
supposed to be a series like that, but after the very first one in Singapore,
which did really well, we did one for my neighbor and it like bomb, but uh so we
never did another one. >> All right. Well, >> we bought a pimp outfit and everything
and I never got to wear it again. >> That's what he says.
>> Disappears behind the car. Sorry.
>> Got him. I'm I I didn't bring a cutting thing.
>> Well, as long as it's unplugged. >> I didn't bring a cutting implement with me. I guess it's living there now.
>> Sorry, boy. Afraid we're going to have to put you down.
>> Five of these. It's amazing how much it costs to make your Wi-Fi worse.
Look, I've made the same mistake myself. I was actually having a lot of
disconnection issues with my EcoB smartarthome thermostats because I
didn't turn off the 2.4 GHz antennas on some of my Wi-Fi access points. Um, I'll
put this with the rest of the Wait, so are you just like pretending to work
right now? You don't even have internet. >> I turn I closed my Windows for the editor. With that out of the way, it's
time to set up the Flint 3 from GLET. This is their first Wi-Fi 7 router. It's
rated for up to 2,000 ft of coverage, which is perfect for Natalie, and has
all the bells and whistles that you'd expect from a premium router, including
five 2 and 1/2 gig Ethernet ports, built-in VPN, multan failover,
pre-installed OpenWRT software, and
support for MLO, which means that if a client device supports it, it can
connect using multiple bands for better performance and stability. Also, with
MLO, this bad boy can fit so many megabits per second. What the heck?
There's two here that both go like the
vertical way. Okay. Well, this is a precarious
situation. >> Yeah, I accidentally turned this off.
>> Thank you. I was just enabling bridge mode. >> Yeah, I did it by accident.
>> Okay. >> I accidentally hit the switch on the power strip. >> Cool. Also, if Natalie really wants, she
could set up the bark feature and troll Michael by setting up parent controls
and content filtering. If you were to filter something of mine, what would you filter?
>> Like filter what? Like sites. >> Whatever. Carrie,
>> nothing. Is there something I should note that? >> No. No. You You're good. You're good. Do
do what you're doing. >> I'm I'm just wait I'm just waiting for >> change nothing. Elijah, you're perfect
as it is. Don't let anyone Don't let all those people tell you otherwise.
>> Wow. >> That and Adgard Home are both included
with no subscription fee. We're going to have this baby linked down below, by the way, if you're interested in picking one
up. Setup was super simple. First, we had to set up her default ISP router
into bridge mode. >> Yeah, don't miss that step because it like will not work if you don't do that.
>> And then once the Flint 3 powered up, I plugged in a computer and a web page
popped up and walked us through setting up the admin user for the router and
configuring the Wi-Fi. A little trick, by the way, when you're setting up a new
Wi-Fi network is to use the same SSID name and the same password as your old
one. There's a very good chance that your devices will just connect to the
new router, no problem. It saves you from needing to run around and reconnect
every smartome device in your house.
That's a tech tip. I give the tech tips. Sorry, sir. Don't call me sir.
>> Sorry, sir. >> I'm the one who scripted it this time. The look on his face when I added this
in script. >> Big moment. >> And let's go.
>> It's definitely a bit better. And the ping is much lower. >> And what's hilarious is the AP was there
before. It was right there.
Now it's like through the wall and across the house and it's still better.
And we can do even betterer. See, getting rid of the extra devices is just
half the battle. We also want to migrate our current devices to at least 5 GHz or
ideally 6 GHz, which is the newest piece of spectrum that was opened up for Wi-Fi
and therefore the least congested by your neighbors, at least for now. Man,
this feels old school, right? like adding Wi-Fi to a computer with a PCI
card. What is it? 2005. Oh, yeah. We haven't done a merch integration.
>> You can barely see it. >> Oh, sorry. Sorry. Yeah, there's a
screwdriver there. I know it's really hard to tell. In all seriousness, even
if your motherboard has basic onboard Wi-Fi, an add-on card like this can be a
great way to boost your speeds. And you don't have to use a PCIe card. You can
also use a USB module. It's just that with speeds this high, I would rather
keep that traffic off of the shared USB bus, which is why I have questions about
the card we chose. It comes with a little USB header thing. What is it
using this for? >> I think it's for Bluetooth. Okay. Oh,
this sucks. I can do it, though. I have the power. Small hands. Power activate.
Big moment. Here's your old Wi-Fi antenna. >> What's the big moment?
>> Well, you're going to connect to the new Wi-Fi and see if it's faster. Damn it.
I'm assuming it's this one. >> Yep. >> Uh that is >> But you're not getting a B.
>> Oh, but drivers. >> Hold on. Hold on. >> Wait.
>> Drivers. >> Oh, yeah. No. No. That's still your onboard Wi-Fi with the no antenna on it.
Yeah, we need to put in drivers for the new one. Uh oh. Well, I unplugged this
prematurely. Premature unpluggation.
Oh god. Editor, don't. >> Okay, so yeah, connect to something that
works. >> I don't know if it works. She already
had support for 6 GHz. >> Okay, >> so why did we put a PCI card in?
>> Well, cuz we got her Wi-Fi 7. >> Well, I know, but the 6E supports 6 GHz.
We could have just put this in Michael's computer. >> We wanted to show the people that this
is how you can upgrade. >> Sorry, Michael.
Whether her computer needed it or not, it's more about showing that you can do
this.
With the drivers installed, we've disabled the onboard Wi-Fi that made it
completely unnecessary for us to put a add-in card in. Now is the big moment.
Do you want to go ahead and connect to here? We're going to change all these
names after. Anyway, God, I forgot. There's so many. Can you scroll? Just
keep scrolling. Just keep scrolling. Freaking ridiculous.
>> Okay, huge moment. Elijah, did we do a good job? This is where we find out. I
guess we will. >> Okay, >> cool. Speed test.
>> Well, no, we should be downloading Valerant. >> Oh, sure. Let's download Valerant.
>> Also, this is, I assume, better. >> Yes, it's a little bit better.
>> That is so much. I would have gotten out of here so much faster. You wouldn't
have been late for softball. This is way better. Now, to be clear, this is not
the maximum speed of Wi-Fi 7 by any stretch of the imagination, but this is
completely across the house, through multiple walls, through a floor, and now
we are getting a very acceptable experience. There's another key part,
too. So, you can see our pings are a little bit inconsistent right now.
They're going anywhere from 80 milliseconds all the way up to like 160
milliseconds. Okay? But that's because we have a freaking download going in the
background. If all you were doing was gaming,
look at that consistency. It's not as good as being wired. But
compared to what we had before, this is night and freaking day. So, the speed
comes from upgrading to a newer generation of Wi-Fi. But that
consistency in the pings that comes from switching over to 6 GHz. You love to see
it. Now, some of you might have been wondering, Natalie already had full bars
from the mesh Wi-Fi booster that was in the hallway. Why is two bars better? The
problem with range extenders is that they're dependent on an already strong
incoming signal. So, if I were to place one of these right next to my router,
it'd have a strong incoming signal, but it also wouldn't do that much. But then,
if I were to put it at the edge of my router's range where the signal is
already weak, well, it doesn't magically heal the network. So, I might think that
my coverage is better because I've got lots and lots of bars on my devices, but
all I've really done is add more latency thanks to an additional signal hop. Now,
I can practically hear you screaming into your monitor. Why don't you just
run an Ethernet cable or failing that? What about Ethernet over power line or
coax? And you know what? You're right. Those are fine options, but depending on
your situation, you might not be able to. And we're here to give tech tips to
all the people. If you want to learn more about Power Line and Mocha, we're
going to have videos featuring those technologies linked down below. Keeping
with Wi-Fi, then there is more that we could do to improve Natalie's network.
For one thing, I could line the walls with some sort of RF blocking material
that would prevent Natalie's neighbors from interfering with her Wi-Fi. See,
there are some devices that simply can't leave the 2.4 or 5 GHz spectrum like
some smart devices. But that would be crazy. I think this is enough
improvement for one day. And it should be a really big improvement, especially
for things like real-time streaming, like video calls, remoting into friends
computers with Parseek for some gaming, or even using something like GLET's new
Comet Pro. This little guy is their new remote KVM, which Natalie could hook up
to her PC at the office, then use it to remote in to get her work done from
home. No more blaming things on bad internet. Right, Natalie? She's not
paying attention. The coolest thing about this device is
it allows even BIOS level access to a connected PC in case you need to reboot
and make changes to it. And it operates remotely at up to 4K 30fps. Okay, 30 FPS
isn't enough to do any competitive gaming on it, but for managing a server
or client devices from afar, this little guy could be a lifesaver. If you're
interested in checking out either the Flint 3 Wi-Fi router or the KVM, we're
going to have links to them down in the video description. And if you guys enjoyed this video, then maybe go check
out the time that we painted Elijah's house with RF blocking paint. Yeah, that
thing I said when I was definitely really playing piano. That that was
true. We did that and it actually worked way better than either one of us thought
it would.