Wi-fi - how to avoid

Posted by: Solid Air on 22 April 2014

I have noticed a lot of forumers mention connecting their streamers over wi-fi. I understand why that is - because their internet connection comes into their home remotely from the hi-fi - but it is sub-optimal for SQ and there is a possible alternative.

 

In my house the internet wiring comes in upstairs and the UQ is downstairs. So I have a Router upstairs. I then have a Range Extender downstairs that connects to the Router over wi fi. I connect both the UQ and the NAS to the Range Extender. And voila! 

 

What that means is the NAS to UQ connection is via wired ethernet. No wi fi at all between those two, so no bandwidth issues, drop-outs, congestion or other wi fi related nasties. 

 

Of course, iRadio relies on an internet connection so that does travel over the wi fi (I've set it as a wired connection, so it goes from the Router to the Extender over wi fi and then to the UQ via ethernet). But that's no worse than it would have been without this set-up.

 

The Extender cost £80 or thereabouts, from memory, and there are many alternatives on Amazon. For that investment, you can do away with wi fi connection between your streamer and your NAS. I haven't found any downsides to this so far - I even get better wi fi connection downstairs because of it :-)

 

Alex

 

Posted on: 22 April 2014 by hafler3o

Hi Alex, interesting write-up, it's always good to hear specific methods on how to achieve an effective streaming set-up.

I am not so sure the wireless connection is a bad thing though when weighed up against other factors, I can't run Ethernet from the home office (router placement) to the SuperUniti or Qute but as the office has it's own separate consumer board the cheap SMPS NAS and router power supplies are a LONG way electrically from the musicmakingmachines, also the NAS itself produces a little noise that can be detected in the listening room. The Qute does some bizarre things when connected to the network wirelessly but that's a different story.

In essence it could be "swings and roundabouts" with network switches and wired/wireless connection.

Posted on: 23 April 2014 by Richheart

Nice one Alex.

I had considered that, glad to hear it works. Now I have my computer/Nas/UQ wired through the router and system two (SBT-Hegel) is on wi-fi.