Gone Fibre with Telus 300mbps upload

My Cloud OS 3 Personal & Network Attached Storage My Cloud
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When my Apartment building added fibre to its diet a couple of years ago, I resisted mainly because I was old grumpy man set in my ways plus I didn’t want to troubleshoot my whole network just to reconnect everything back to the internet after the change; so I stayed with the old Shaw Coper wire.

Also the pricing structure was relatively the same; $80 to $100 for either Shaw cable or Telus fibre and when browsing the internet, speed doesn’t really make much difference.

However recently I was accosted by the Telus Evangelists in the lobby of my apartment and I resisted as long as I could, walking quickly towards the elevators with them yelling out the advantages of fibre like it is your own highway without anyone sharing it, upload/download speeds at 300Mbps, fibre optics straight to your apartment, can we book an appointment for you? and suddenly one of them said “and it is 25% off for 2 years” at which I stopped walking. It was at that point another sales intern pounced with an iPad and asked me for my personal info and I succumbed to a price point of $45/month with a start up credit of $150 in my account to pay for the Shaw contract cancellation charges. Looking back it was 3 against 1 and I didn’t stand a chance.

On March 4th, 2019 I moved over to Telus Fibre as you can see by the cleaner text flow and faster postings; it only took me an hour to compose this post.

I have 300mbps up and down which is $10 more per month than the $45/month 150Mbps quote but I am still saving $25/month; not a lot but still.

So what does this have to do with the My Cloud?

Well at first I thought that 300mbps upload was a waste of data speed, I mean the only people that would benefit from a 300mbps upload speed would be the people who is downloading from my bit torrent but after thinking about it I realize that when I am accessing my “My Cloud” from my iphone I will no longer be getting the meagre 2 or 3 Mbps upload speeds that I use to get. I can now enjoy streaming my movies directly from my “My Cloud” without having to download my movies.

Also If I remote access my home computer from my iphone I will getting snappier responses.

I can also backup directly to my Apple Cloud, from my home, at speeds that rivals my wifi backup.

I was lucky in that a few years ago, I moved all my local devices over to switches which isolated everything from the router. All I needed to do was unplug my Shaw Router from the switch and plug my Telus Router in, making sure that the new Telus DHCP was set to give out IPs in the 192.168.0.xxx range and everything just migrated over without a hitch; seriously it was as easy as that.

For a small apartment my network is very convoluted due to my Lutron dimmable light switches, TP link Cameras, Wifi Apple Aiport bridges where two Apple Routers are linked by Wifi only just so my 100Mbs ethernet devices are isolated from the Gigabit devices. My Apple Airport provides the Wifi AC support for all my Apple Devices. There is even a 3rd Apple Airport Express located in the kitchen because wifi signals are blocked by metal corners. The Airport Express provides Wifi N to my Laster Printer.

I think I have at least 60 wifi devices in my apartment which includes multiple smart TVs, sony playstation 4, the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Wii U, Mac Mini, iPhone, iPads, Sony Receiver, Laser Printer, a whole bunch of lutron light switches, a whole bunch of TP link security Cameras with a tiny Zotac PC hidden behind books that records all my cameras onto a SD card, a bunch of iHome outlets that turns on and off my cameras (all requiring an IP) and a home alarm system.

The switches/hubs are strewn all over my apartment much like a power bar. Whenever I need to backup my cough other NAS, I simply pull out my “My Clouds/EX2’s” and plug them in.

In addition I can then plug in my WD USB drives to the Cloud device to give me access to the USB drives.

For those who are always having problems with connecting to your “My Clouds”, it isn’t a problem with your “My Clouds” but with your network. Set a static IP on your My Clouds and you are generally good to go, but I haven’t had any problems with using DHCP IPs either but if you are having problems, try using a switch in between your router and your “My Clouds”.

With Fibre, the evangelists are correct in that I’m now on my own data highway traveling at the speed of light and connection to “My Clouds” are now instantaneous without that middleman Shaw Coper Server that I had to fight with kids playing Fortnite with simultaneous voice taking up all the bandwidth.

I should have changed over years ago but then again, back then I told them to get away from my carpet of my front door.

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60 wifi devices? In an apartment? “huh”.

Don’t think I appreciated the impact of “upload speed” on streaming PLEX across the web. . .but that makes sense. (I personally opt for streaming from devices I bring with me: I generally carry a laptop with me). I find Plex on a EX2 ultra works fine in my home; but not across the Web. I find Plex on a mypassport wireless doesn’t work well even on a home network (it works for low res files, but not 8mb/s 1080P movies)

I have questioned uploads speeds before, then I defaulted to “carrying files with me” rather trying to upgrade service and deep drill cyber issues for transferring big files. I find that portable SSD drives have gotten reasonably cheap.

I don’t see the point of adding switches. . .except to

  • add a bunch more ports to a router or
  • run a single cable to a group of users instead of a group of cables.
  • segregate 100mbs/gigabit stuff.

I have never had DHCP issues; but then again I am now a firm believer in static IPs. . .if for no other reason that it keeps my head straight when accessing different network drives.

I have one switch in my house. . . .sits next to the router, since an 8 port switch+ 4 port router is 1/4 the price of a router with 12 ports. There is one LAN only user “on the other side of the house”; I recently purchased a Gigabit-over-powerline gizmo - - - very effective.

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Ever since the “router yo-yo effect” a few years back, where anything connected to the four ports of the router would reset every few minutes when the router was searching for an internet connection, I decided to separate my LAN from the WAN :stuck_out_tongue: It was very disruptive if you were trying to watch a movie streaming from the My Cloud and the movie would pause every few minutes and you go “what the …” It was just awful when that happen and I swore that WD was behind this disruptive behaviour.

Thus I use only one port from the router feeding directly into a switch. If the router goes down, it is just one device and it doesn’t take down my home network when it goes down.

From the switch that is right beside the router I then branch off to three separate switches, one in each corner of my living room; a switch beside the stereo cabinet, a switch that leads to my Airport Wifi AC/Mini PC/NAS on a shelf and a switch on a shelf that I can connect a bunch of My Clouds for testing. Not a lot of switches but just a lot for just the living room.

The switch beside the router use to be a part of my desk connecting a bunch of PCs, my Mac mini, My Clouds, but I disassembled my decrepit old desk and took it to the dump a year ago freeing up the all the ports. I use the stereo cabinet switch to connect my MacBook and my 65" 4k TV as my monitor these days. My gaming PC is now on a rolling desk that is tucked into my closet.

With the changeover to Telus fibre the old shaw router switch is now just a connector switch from one corner switch to another.

The Telus Router is now plugged into the switch alongside with my Apple Airport Wifi AC, security cam PC and NAS server on a bookshelf.

I might rework all the cabling one day and remove a couple of switches and a lot of unnecessary cabling but that will require new shorter ethernet cables and a bunch of work crawling around my living room, so I’m putting that off for another decade.

I gave up on Plex and found the “infuse” app that runs on my Apple TV to be much better without any Plex overhead. I hated the way that Plex took over my EX2 grinding and cataloging every movie I had. I had to block the ports before my EX2 quiet down; so I disabled Plex.

Can I use “infuse” on the road? No, but the My Cloud app is good enough to watch movies if needed, but these days Netflix, Amazon prime and other streaming services fulfill my needs so much better.

However with that said that now that I have 300mbps outbound I might try streaming a movie when I am out and about or stream a movie to my daughter’s house when I’m there or maybe even set up a streaming service for all my children; no, forget that idea, I would hate to have my NAS gurgling all night long.

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Hahahaha. If my router goes down, I lose the internet. May as well be out of business at that point. (I do have a spare (cheap) router floating about. . . . besides, the last few routers that failed has always been the radio component; since my main gear is wired; I usually have ample time to get a proper replacement.

Yeah. . . .I hear you on Plex. I have a Passport wireless. Every once in a while, I think it works ok. The reality is; it works ok on small content; but not at a reasonable resolution 1080P movie file. Plex does work on an EX2 Ultra k. . .but in my last round of tests; it did seem a bit sketchier than I liked.

Usually when I stream from the EX2, I am using VLC on a tablet; which has much less overhead software wise.

I am giving currently giving Plex one last go as a “portable” home theater solution. . … basically using a proper laptop as a plex server, with the media sitting on the passport wireless. The “receiver” is the Plex app on a Roku stick.

This is only a half step from using a standard USB drive as the media storage device, wired to the laptop. Only another half step from having a HDMI cable running from the laptop to the TV system (and using VLC). . . . .and I wonder why we just always look to see what is on Netflix when the spirit moves us.

I don’t have a problem with Plex grinding away on the drives. . .mainly because I restrict plex to looking at only two or three directories. . .with a total of maybe 150 titles. I also set the “rescan” interval to the longest possible.

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I meant when the internet goes down :stuck_out_tongue:

The Shaw modem/router, programmed by the younger generations, would loop repeatedly trying to re-connect to the internet when either the shaw server is out, cable connection is bad, shaw cable being cut by copper thieves.

My best guess is that since the modem/router has code at the start up that acquires a WAN IP and setup for internet connections, that the younger generation of programmers decides to simply “reset” instead of just testing for internet connection and reconnect when ready.

I know from my hay day of networking that if my local area network was on a switch that I can still watch a movie from the My Cloud to my local IP PC without a rebooting router causing havoc.

Actually I had about 20 movies on my test EX2 when I was trying out PLEX and you know how it is with WD Cloud devices and EX2 drives, they gurgle when your files are being scanned or used. With the EX2 drive it was worse as the fans kicks in after the drives reaches a certain temperature, so not only was the drive gurgling like water going down the drain the fan kept increasing in loudness like tiny turbo jet engine. I even reprogrammed the fans to only turn on when it hit 60 degrees or higher but of course none of the user re-programming works with WD software. PLEX just made my EX2 gurgle 24/7 and I really suspect that they were sending my movie files to all PLEX users. I cannot simply turn off PLEX, I had to block the ports before the gurgling stopped.

At first I thought PLEX was exactly what I was looking for but you have to rename your movie files carefully so that Season files are numbered as SxxExx before PLEX will group them together. Also you had to drop the TV shows separately from Movie files. In other word, you cannot simply drop your whole million movie file collection into plex and expect everything to sort itself out.

Where-as my infuse app does a great job in sorting everything out without any help from me. All I need to do is point the Infuse App to my movie Drive directory and it scans it on the fly, or you can just navigate to the movie you want just by directory navigation. The presentation of all my movies, TV shows are exactly like Apple TV with the top movies on the TV screen above.

One of the reasons that I bought an EX2 was the free Plex or so I thought. It turned out that everyone wanted $$$. Even the codec programmers wanted a piece of the $$$. I know that you can simply ignore most of the begging of $$$ but the whole structure simply smacks of the old pirate gang.

At least Infuse is on Apple’s App Store which means it is locked within a garden wall. So far I have been using it for over a year now and it is subscription base of $12/year. For that price they are constantly upgrading it, complete with the lates codecs and I don’t know where they are getting the movie/tv info from (could be from IMDB) but I love that it makes your movie/TV files looks like it is streaming directly from Apple; wonderful product. It is what Plex should have been.

The only problem with Infuse is that I cannot access my movies when I’m outside my LAN. Infuse works on my iPhone/iPad but only on LAN.

Also I think the latest version of Infuse does 4k and dolby atmos or perhaps it is using the Apple TV up convert, but hey it is an Apple TV app and I’m watching my NAS movie/TV files when needed.

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Wow. That simply is NOT my experience. Plex does not churn my drive like that. And I have attempted internet streaming before. . .I do have port forwarding setup these days. I wonder if something has changed in the software.

That is one major problem with plex. I don’t really have much in the way of TV series. . . .but the few times I have had to rebuild the library (from my own playing around); the ability to “match” movies is mighty poor. Renaming all the files is not a really good option; as I copy movie files to other devices for use. . . the file names affect how I see the files on my tablet - - > so the needs of naming for the tablet wins.

Seems to be the story with everything. I use Roku sticks. Buy them like candy. Many channels want money. Story of the times. I settle for Netflix, prime, spotify and call it a day.

I bought my EX2 because I thought the “beefier processor” (vs other choices) would help with plex. Frankly, it does just fine if I “force” direct play. Problem with that is that is it “seems” to use a default audio track. Which I get right about 70% of the time. (I have 5.1 and stereo tracks on all my stuff. . .because of different endusers) I guess I could methodically figure out defaults and rerip some stuff. . . . . . or I can say “heck with it” and concentrate on streaming using a I5 or I7 based PC as the server; those guys can transcode better and I can use any audio track I want.

Unfortunately, infuse won’t work on a Roku (checked).

I’ve stopped trying to stream to recievers outside my lan: Too cheap to buy the necessary upload speed. Rather drop a few C-notes on hardware to “bring the files with me”.