I try not to shit on articles too much because I understand that the vast majority of writers these days are given a prompt and talking points by their editors but…
I have the privilege of knowing how to troubleshoot this stuff on my own largely due to my profession as a tech journalist. To others, this stuff is a foreign language. Knowing how to set up a home internet system is not a skill everyone has, and the complicated steps required to do it properly make moving to a new place more stressful, especially if you work remotely and need the internet to earn a paycheck.
Clearly setting up a home internet system is also not a skill this tech writer has.
This is a solved problem. It is a mesh network. Yes, you can spend insane amounts of money for a ubiquiti solution (and they are nice…). Or you can wait for a sale on a google/amazon solution. Or you can just look into stuff like the tp-link omada system where your access points are 30-40 bucks and can act as both repeaters and extenders, depending on your setup.
Don’t get me wrong, ethernet is always better. But it really is not necessary in the vast majority of use cases. And considering the cost of building or renovating a house, I would not look into drywall alternatives in addition to adding ethernet drops.
Also, if they think THAT networking panel is a mess then… I very much question if they have ever touched an ethernet cable before. I have seen top of the line data/computing centers which were less neatly cabled than that picture.
That’s the crazy part that deserves shitting on: this guy has ethernet in every room, yet he’s complaining about (checks notes) not being able to easily use something worse! I mean, just look at this paragraph:
A plethora of architects, civil engineers, and project managers across Orange and Los Angeles counties in California all told me the same thing: Wi-Fi-penetrating materials typically aren’t a consideration unless it’s a large structure like an office building or warehouse; telecom technicians are called in then, but mainly to help with wiring. However, those same people told me they’ve been able to reduce construction costs significantly by wiring residences for ethernet as they are building them.
That “plethora” of experts is right, and the author is just fucking nuts.
I have never been in any residential situation where just parking a bog standard router roughly central to the building, or even just right next to wherever the cable guy punched into the house, was not perfectly adequate for all users and their myriad devices to receive a reliable wi-fi signal. “Wi-fi penetrating” materials or not. This cat is either residing in a McMansion of epic proportions, or he’s overblowing his issues to pad out his word count.
That is not to say that the wiring situation and cabling situation you may inherit will be adequate for tech nerds (myself possibly included) but for the average citizen just tucking your ISP provided router somewhere out of sight is all it takes and is just fine.
You want to talk about headaches? The house I’m living in was built in the 1920’s and it’s all plaster. I have nowhere to run Cat6, other than stapled to the underside of the floorboards from the basement, and surface mount boxes coming up thruogh the floor. For my upstairs runs I have to run it in channel up the rear corners of closets where it’s out of sight, and punch up through the ceiling and the floor above. Pulling cable through the walls is a non-starter; most of the interior walls don’t even have an air gap between what should be the inside faces. Pull that off and you can come back and talk to me about “hurdles.”
My house was built in the 80s. I am not aware of any special materials, but the pipes and wiring in the wall more or less kill all cell signal if you aren’t on the side of the house facing the tower (I forget the term for it, but I have the kind of baseboard heaters that use hot water). And considering a lot of other houses in the neighborhood have the same issue, it rapidly becomes one or two rooms where I have cell reception. Actually means I bother to set up a guest network on my wifi so that people who come over that I don’t trust to have access to my personal network can still receive texts and the like.
In terms of wifi? If I put the wireless access point in the living room, I more or less have signal. But my drop is in the basement (which is awesome for my server room needs) and that means upstairs has a LOT of dead zones.
It really depends on construction, but this is WHY office buildings are designed around this. I just don’t think apartment complexes need to be because you are going to have an ethernet drop in every unit anyway.
Mesh networks are severely limited in terms of mbps/throughput. They also use their own throughput channel to communicate and sync with each other, further reducing available bandwidth.
They also can introduce a lot of latency and packet loss if you’re into gaming that needs to be taken into consideration.
They have a purpose and a use, but if you want to get the benefits of modern internet speeds, you should set up a wired network and only use wireless protocols for small, difficult to wire, devices.
If there are Ethernet ports in every room (as the article describes) then the back haul happens over wire. No unusual packet loss or latency with a few plug and play pucks throughout the house.
Yeah. Have most just act in mesh mode for the wired internet so that your mobile devices (which are generally latency insensitive) have optimal coverage. If there is a spot that you just can’t reach and that has no drops? That is when you turn on extender mode and start taking the hit.
Also, if there is meaningful packet loss then that is generally a sign that your access points are too far apart. If the signal barely reaches the access point then it can’t really meaningfully extend the reach of the network.
The article is speaking for the masses, not the technoelite. Modern mesh APs wireless backhauls are plenty fast for them. Even an eero setup would be a vast improvement over the router their ISP gave them.
This was true about older mesh systems, that’s not an issue today, you’ll see you’re ping go up a couple of ms and your mbps go down by 10 less. Speaking from experience, in a house where a single router is leaving some deadzones, mesh networks are leaps and bounds better. You can easily game on them.
I try not to shit on articles too much because I understand that the vast majority of writers these days are given a prompt and talking points by their editors but…
Clearly setting up a home internet system is also not a skill this tech writer has.
This is a solved problem. It is a mesh network. Yes, you can spend insane amounts of money for a ubiquiti solution (and they are nice…). Or you can wait for a sale on a google/amazon solution. Or you can just look into stuff like the tp-link omada system where your access points are 30-40 bucks and can act as both repeaters and extenders, depending on your setup.
Don’t get me wrong, ethernet is always better. But it really is not necessary in the vast majority of use cases. And considering the cost of building or renovating a house, I would not look into drywall alternatives in addition to adding ethernet drops.
Also, if they think THAT networking panel is a mess then… I very much question if they have ever touched an ethernet cable before. I have seen top of the line data/computing centers which were less neatly cabled than that picture.
The whole premise is nuts. It’s like saying we should move the beach closer to the city, to improve our vacation travel.
That’s the crazy part that deserves shitting on: this guy has ethernet in every room, yet he’s complaining about (checks notes) not being able to easily use something worse! I mean, just look at this paragraph:
That “plethora” of experts is right, and the author is just fucking nuts.
I have never been in any residential situation where just parking a bog standard router roughly central to the building, or even just right next to wherever the cable guy punched into the house, was not perfectly adequate for all users and their myriad devices to receive a reliable wi-fi signal. “Wi-fi penetrating” materials or not. This cat is either residing in a McMansion of epic proportions, or he’s overblowing his issues to pad out his word count.
That is not to say that the wiring situation and cabling situation you may inherit will be adequate for tech nerds (myself possibly included) but for the average citizen just tucking your ISP provided router somewhere out of sight is all it takes and is just fine.
You want to talk about headaches? The house I’m living in was built in the 1920’s and it’s all plaster. I have nowhere to run Cat6, other than stapled to the underside of the floorboards from the basement, and surface mount boxes coming up thruogh the floor. For my upstairs runs I have to run it in channel up the rear corners of closets where it’s out of sight, and punch up through the ceiling and the floor above. Pulling cable through the walls is a non-starter; most of the interior walls don’t even have an air gap between what should be the inside faces. Pull that off and you can come back and talk to me about “hurdles.”
My house was built in the 80s. I am not aware of any special materials, but the pipes and wiring in the wall more or less kill all cell signal if you aren’t on the side of the house facing the tower (I forget the term for it, but I have the kind of baseboard heaters that use hot water). And considering a lot of other houses in the neighborhood have the same issue, it rapidly becomes one or two rooms where I have cell reception. Actually means I bother to set up a guest network on my wifi so that people who come over that I don’t trust to have access to my personal network can still receive texts and the like.
In terms of wifi? If I put the wireless access point in the living room, I more or less have signal. But my drop is in the basement (which is awesome for my server room needs) and that means upstairs has a LOT of dead zones.
It really depends on construction, but this is WHY office buildings are designed around this. I just don’t think apartment complexes need to be because you are going to have an ethernet drop in every unit anyway.
I have, everywhere I’ve lived for the last 15+ years.
Plenty of materials in walls to kill signal.
Mesh networks are severely limited in terms of mbps/throughput. They also use their own throughput channel to communicate and sync with each other, further reducing available bandwidth.
They also can introduce a lot of latency and packet loss if you’re into gaming that needs to be taken into consideration.
They have a purpose and a use, but if you want to get the benefits of modern internet speeds, you should set up a wired network and only use wireless protocols for small, difficult to wire, devices.
If there are Ethernet ports in every room (as the article describes) then the back haul happens over wire. No unusual packet loss or latency with a few plug and play pucks throughout the house.
Yeah. Have most just act in mesh mode for the wired internet so that your mobile devices (which are generally latency insensitive) have optimal coverage. If there is a spot that you just can’t reach and that has no drops? That is when you turn on extender mode and start taking the hit.
Also, if there is meaningful packet loss then that is generally a sign that your access points are too far apart. If the signal barely reaches the access point then it can’t really meaningfully extend the reach of the network.
Modern budget mesh hardware will happily pipe gigabit speeds over their backhaul. Plenty fast for most people today.
The article is speaking for the masses, not the technoelite. Modern mesh APs wireless backhauls are plenty fast for them. Even an eero setup would be a vast improvement over the router their ISP gave them.
This was true about older mesh systems, that’s not an issue today, you’ll see you’re ping go up a couple of ms and your mbps go down by 10 less. Speaking from experience, in a house where a single router is leaving some deadzones, mesh networks are leaps and bounds better. You can easily game on them.