Wired Ethernet/5GHz via ZUM & Pi-Star B+ ???

Help setting up WiFi
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KB8AOB
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Wired Ethernet/5GHz via ZUM & Pi-Star B+ ???

Post by KB8AOB »

While I have used my ZUM Pii-Star B+ unit mobile on a few occasions it normally just sits in my shack and I use it at home.

After looking at the specs for the PiB+ internet connection (below) I was thinking about moving my wireless link on 5Ghz or would move my connection to wired but I do not see a way to move the connection in pi-srar.
Is that in Expert perhaps? Is the wireless connection dependent on the ZUM or the pi? Are we limited to wireless? Are we limited to 2.4 GHz? Even if the increase in speed is not an issue is it possible?

Rich

Specs
Connection;Pi3:Pi3+
Name:Mbps:Mbps

*Wired:94.3:325
*2.4GHz:35.6:47.8
*5GHz:n/a;74.7
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kh6hz
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Re: Wired Ethernet/5GHz via ZUM & Pi-Star B+ ???

Post by kh6hz »

Pi-star does not care about the underlying network connection, that is a function of the operating system and how it routes traffic to/from the 'net.

On my hotspots, I have wlan0 disabled and use eth0 exclusively for my connectivity. I did this by adding an "ifconfig wlan0 down" to /etc/rc.local . Technically, even this shouldn't be necessary as the metric for the default route associated with the physical ethernet connection should always have a lower metric than the wireless connection, thus, the OS should route traffic over it (eth0) first.

I would think you could easily switch to 5 ghz wireless simply by joining those WAPs.

Or, just plug in an ethernet cable, and you're done.

The "wireless configuration" section of the configuration page shows you the wlan0 interface, but that doesn't mean it is the interface your Pi is sending traffic through it to the internet.

ifconfig wlan0
and
ifconfig eth0

will show some basic RX/TX statistics you can use to verify your traffic is being routed correctly

or

route | grep default

should yield one or more lines. The 5th column is the metric. The number should be lower for eth0 than wlan0. For example, if I enable wlan0 on my piB+ hotspot, I see:

pi-star@fn41jv(ro):~$ route | grep default
default 192.168.127.254 0.0.0.0 UG 202 0 0 eth0
default 192.168.127.254 0.0.0.0 UG 303 0 0 wlan0

which means traffic is going over my eth0 connection first, wlan0 second.

ifconfig bears this out:


pi-star@fn41jv(ro):~$ ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr b8:27:eb:20:3c:49
inet addr:192.168.10.17 Bcast:192.168.127.255 Mask:255.255.128.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:4060912 errors:0 dropped:187 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1512615 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:539927768 (514.9 MiB) TX bytes:1544623775 (1.4 GiB)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr b8:27:eb:75:69:1c
inet addr:192.168.10.7 Bcast:192.168.127.255 Mask:255.255.128.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:178 errors:0 dropped:3 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:41 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:21854 (21.3 KiB) TX bytes:6828 (6.6 KiB)
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Re: Wired Ethernet/5GHz via ZUM & Pi-Star B+ ???

Post by M0GLJ »

Why would you disable the WiFi ???

If you don't set it up then it's not used !!!!!!!!!!!!!
KB8AOB
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Re: Wired Ethernet/5GHz via ZUM & Pi-Star B+ ???

Post by KB8AOB »

Thanks kh6hz, very helpful

M0GLJ, not so much.

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Re: Wired Ethernet/5GHz via ZUM & Pi-Star B+ ???

Post by kh6hz »

You're welcome.
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Re: Wired Ethernet/5GHz via ZUM & Pi-Star B+ ???

Post by MW0MWZ »

On my Pi 3B+ here, I did a total of 0 customisations, I only added my SSID and PSK as normal - and...

Code: Select all

wlan0     IEEE 802.11  ESSID:"REMOVED"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:5.24 GHz  Access Point: F0:99:BF:06:AB:39   
          Bit Rate=200 Mb/s   Tx-Power=31 dBm   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:on
          Link Quality=64/70  Signal level=-46 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:8  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0
As you can see, connected on 5GHz and at 200Mb/sec.
What difference does this make in practice, none at all, the bit-rate for all of the digital modes is very low - but it was nice to see that it automatically picks the best option (this really can depend on your WiFi setup and how exactly it is configured).
Andy

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KB8AOB
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Re: Wired Ethernet/wireless

Post by KB8AOB »

What, if any, is the fall back position if one wifi/wired service fails when multiple are specified? Does it require a reboot or ???

Rich
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