Is Your Broadband Router the Weak Link in Your High-Tech Home?

Majordennisbloodnok · 2024-11-17T15:18:43Z

So you’ve invested in a heat pump, a solar PV array and battery, an electric car, an EV charger and goodness knows how many other smart devices – CCTV cameras, doorbells, smart plugs, smart TVs, streaming services and many more. How much have you invested? Excluding the car, £10k? £20k? More? And how do you control all this? Apps? An integrated home automation system? Manufacturers’ portals? Whatever your answer, somehow and somewhere in all that you’re relying on that broadband connection of yours. Not only that, if you work from home then that broadband’s indispensable. Even if you don’t, you most likely use it with your phones, your tablets, any laptops or PCs you have. That’s a HUGE dependency. It’s sobering, then, to think that whilst we’re busy building and adding to our technological life, few of us have considered the foundations we’re building onto. The starting point So let’s take a look at how things are set up in most homes. At some point you had a chat with a service provider and they installed a connection. The engineer who visited likely installed their little box on the wall at a point convenient to them, and they left you with a router that would let you use your swanky new broadband. That router now represents your home network in its entirety. If you want wifi, that box provides it. If you want to plug in something with a network cable, that box has a few ports that allow that. You obviously don’t want the world looking back down that connection at everything on your network, so the router also has an inbuilt firewall. Not bad for a freebie. However, if you look a bit closer you start to see the limitations. The “convenient” point the engineer put the router was near the front door, meaning wifi is rubbish at the back of the house (or other installation point vs furthest point away from it). If someone’s watching a movie, everyone else’s wifi slows down. If you want to plug more than four network cables in, that router isn’t the tool for the job. And the ISP promised a router; they didn’t promise a GOOD router. So what can be done? I should point out here and now that investing in your home network is not cost-free. Everything you do to improve it has a price tag and whilst the improvements are often well worth the cost, everyone’s budget is different and you have to decide whether any particular improvement is worth doing in your situation; after all, the cost of doing nothing is still a working broadband connection. Pretty obviously, if everything’s centred round the router and you’re being held back by the router’s limitations the temptation is to upgrade by getting a better router. Certainly a valid option, but not necessarily the best. The problem is that even a better router is still being asked to do everything; a jack of all trades, if you will, and it most certainly still won’t be a master of any of them. And the one thing you’re unlikely to tangibly improve on is the ability to actually route internal traffic out to the broadband connection. A more effective path of improvement, therefore, is to start reducing the number of different jobs you’re asking of the router and get those jobs done by kit that’s designed for the task. There are a few key rules of thumb that are worth mentioning here to help with identifying which functionality is most important for you. Improve your wifi coverage.Your wifi signal has about a 20m range from the antennae and bits of building (walls, ceilings and so on) can hamper it further. Wifi coverage, therefore, can be hugely improved by the placement of the antennae and/or adding more antennae to the system. Use a network cable where you can.The beauty of wifi is that your device can be truly mobile. However, your wifi network is shared amongst all your devices on it so your connection’s speed slows down as more devices connect. A wired connection isn’t shared in the same way so if your device doesn’t move around (desktop computer, for instance) then a physical cable is faster, more secure and doesn’t drop out. Jack of all trades, master of none.Extra functionality your router can provide include a firewall for security, a mechanism for dishing out network addresses (that’s DHCP in I.T. parlance) and a means for finding servers based on their names (that’s DNS). If you want better or more complex functionality than your router can provide in any of these areas you’ll have to install something more capable separately on your network. People’s upgrade plans often go in that order too, so let’s explore the different areas as such. Better WiFi Making your wifi more stable and extending the range often go hand in hand although they’re not the same thing. The key is to understand the basic limitations. Imagine for a moment you’re listening to your young child; you’ll be able to hear them clearly whilst in the same room. Move to the next room and they will still be clear but slightly more muffled. Move on upstairs and they will sound very muffled and quite ...

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13/09/2025 11:22 am

Posted by: @scalextrix

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I suppose our ASHP will need to go on the general VLAN so the Mrs can set the heating schedule,

It's the UK Government who want to set your heating schedule...
as part of their Delivering a Smart and Secure Electricity System (SSES).

Turning off heat-pumps remotely is their No.1 target.
DESNZ are building the framework for the database which links together customer addresses, Smart Metering and your account with your Energy Supplier,
with advice from NCSC on cyber security and command-encryption.

But it's 3rd party agents who will sign up households and be responsible for crediting your account whenever your ASHP has been switched off for a few hours.

What could possibly go wrong? 🤔

If you can think of any flaws, there's still time to submit a response to the current (3rd) stage of consultation.

There is also a live online discussion next week (Tue 16th, 14:30) where the DESNZ team leading the SSES Programe will respond to questions.
As I'm known to them, I received an invitation by email,
but I can't find a link to this session on their website.

If you want to take part, then email SSESconsultation@energysecurity.gov.uk and ask for an invitation!

You have to Register 24hrs ahead.

Save energy... recycle electrons!

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