"Final" New Blodgett Network ~ New Design, Added Mesh, Xfi "OK" As Bridge 02Sep26

Xfi OK Finally ~ Just A Bridge... I segregated COAX plants: terrestrial and Xfi separated directly at the house coax box, no diplexing ~ and then I removed routing from the XB8; it made all the difference. The Xfi "gateway" is just a modem (bridge mode) now. My first attempts to network via Comcast were frustrating as mentioned HERE. This frustration was such that I needed to minimize their admin footprint on my network. Net routing and admin duties are much better now. I also relocated the router near the modem and distributed Cat5e and WiFi from there. Not a great WiFi router location but serviceable.

Blodgett Router Up To The Task ~ WiFi 6e & 1Gbps... Once I got the router and modem assigned their duties and configured I went about the rest of the net. I reviewed the Cat5e run from the router to my main PC, a mac Studio in the study. I discovered an issue and replaced a patch cord. My mac's NIC now negotiates 1Gbps with the router. Wired was my main concern but performance is almost equal on wired and wireless in the study. I'm always checking my latency. While I'm loving the new bandwidth I still note a 50% latency increase from my "previous" ISP Century Link, which was 8msec to DEN. I have not "fired" them yet in COS, but I probably will now that Xfinity is stable and performant and the routing gear is much more manageable and adjustable. 

HD HomeRun Reception & WiFi 6 Extended... I have two HD HomeRun OTA receivers (2 tuners in each) getting terrestrial HD VHF/UHF from a bow tie array antenna in the attic pointed at Cheyenne Mtn. They convert OTA reception into packet streams over Ethernet. I use these with my Plex DVR capability to get live TV and do recordings of shows on the 6 primary stations (ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, PBS, CW). The HD HomeRuns are wired Ethernet only and I had to place a WiFi-Ethernet bridge near them where I attached them to "their" coax. No problem, and it acts as a WiFi 6 mesh extender too, which provides better coverage to the back of the house.

Performance Throughout... I measured WIFi 6 reception & performance throughout the house, at mid-day. Pretty decent even at the extreme locations farthest from the router and mesh gear. Between my main server and my mac I get a pretty consistent 1.6-1.8msec ping/latency and 1Gbps throughput... I could get more if I updated some switches to 2.5G or 10G but I'm good  right now.

 

Next Steps... Next I'll work on secure remote access to resources on the Blodgett network. Likely via a Wireguard VPN.

Update 12Sep26 ~ New Arris S34 Modem... After discovering the Xfi XB8 was still using the radios and throwing WiFi SSIDs I did not need or want, despite my having disabled all of that, I bought the latest Arris DOCSIS 3.1 modem. I provisioned the new modem in just 15 min and it delivers fine performance. I even saw improvement in latency! But, I seemingly dropped in upload capacity by 66%! Maybe the channel config negotiated will be better with time ~ I need to look at the ATM/QAM log. I'll return the retired XB8 to Xfinity, else they'd likely charge me something. Speaking of charging me, I looked at my latest Xfi bill and they'd tacked another $100 for the tech call to my house to repair their network and modem. I call and railed, as all the problems were with the Comcast COAX network and Xfi gear, and they reversed the charge. Sheesh.

Update 21Sep26 ~ Cancelled Century Link... I cancelled Century Link's bonded twisted pair service to Blodgett before the next billing period. Xfi stable and offers 10X the bandwidth for the same price, though as noted latency is a bit slower. What a process: on the website, calling service center, receiving call back, etc.