Had been considering moving away from Origin back to AAISP (in spite of the cost) as there seemed to have been funny goings-on at Origin. They ditched my fixed IP address and were rather evasive when I asked why, and told them why I wanted fixed IP (the shared IP I was on got blacklisted by my webhost as someone else on that IP had been doing some dodgy stuff, which meant I could not connect to my webhost unless I used a VPN). So, sod ’em… I’ll move when my contract’s up in September.
Then I got a call from Origin, offering a (slight – 40 to 55Mbps) speed upgrade, plus Zyxel VMG8825-T50 dual-band router, for £3 a month cheaper. So, I decided to give it a go. And it all seems to have gone rather well. Although both bands were set up to share the same SSID, I”ve now given them separate SSIDs so that I can force a connection to the 5Ghz band for devices that can take advantage of it (I’ve just kept the Sky box alone on 2.4Ghz so far). Speeds and stability seem fine.
The only problem was that my (2014) PC’s 2.4Ghz wifi card wouldn’t work with the Zyxel (it connected, but got no Internet), so I had to run an ethernet cable down the stairs to the router. But I finally got round to buying a USB dual-band wifi dongle (Realtek 8811CU) and that’s done the trick. No more trying to avoid tripping over a cable during the night, and speed seems as good (and maybe faster) than ethernet!
(There’s one slightly disturbing thing, though, which I’ll cover in a separate post…)