*Excluding running ethernet cables to every room through the attic, down the walls to wall jacks. Also the cost of the jacks, and the various switches needed for several rooms. And the contractor to do it all.
But hey for like $600 I have cat6a in basically every room so
And the contractor to do it all.
Why wouldn’t you do it yourself?
Like, in an old house its a massive pain in the ass to run that, but still firmly in DIY territory.
And then you still need a wireless router to get Internet on your phone unless you use data at home like a crazy person.
Ethernet is obviously better but running ethernet around your home can be a pain in the arse
I have about 6 or 8 ethernet cables in use plus more in my spare cables box, and I don’t remember ever paying for one. Where do they come from? I never seem to run out.
tell that to the $800 of copper running through my walls.
Hay $800 worth of copper, I found a 1000ft roll of shielded pure copper for $2.11 because someone misplaced the decimal point I know because it was listed for $2.1199 every thing was automated through amazon so they just shipped free shipping to, thank for listening $800 worth of copper, your the best.
Still cheaper
My PC, laptop, work laptop, are all wired using gigabit. But my laptop on wifi reach 1200Mbps so it’s faster than cable!
Faster than gigabit, but not 2.5 gigabit. Your cables likely support the speed, just your ports and switching hardware are capped at gigabit.
It’s not extremely expensive, but unless you move around a lot of big files, you’re probably getting very diminished returns, even spending less than twice as much for 2.5x speeds.
Impressive, I lose half my speed with the router around the corner.
Same lol. I get 800Mbps on Cat6, but 1100 on Wifi 6 with one of these fancy expensive 11000ax gaming routers that has all those antennas (antennae?).
Something is wrong there then, because no other ethernet spec is going to cap at 800 Mbps, it’s 10, 100, 1000, 2.5g 5g 10g etc
Does this ridiculous number of antennas even do anything or is it just marketing wank?
Technically, it does provide better connection speeds by enabling the router to avoid channel hopping, so it can talk to multiple devices (or the same devices if it has multiple antennae) at the same time. This is part of the recent wifi6 and wifi7 standards so more and more devices will start to gain speeds using this technique
Realistically computers have at best 2 antennae and this is largely marketing wank.
Lookup “phased array” and “beam forming”
Though if you have multiple devices all trying to connect to wifi, like even a phone for example, then a computer having two antenna that it can actually use 100% of the time still sounds valuable to me.
Lord Sauron would like a word.
It does. Wifi uses MIMO (Multi-in, multi-out) to run multiple concurrent data streams over the same channel width, which overcomes individual channel bandwidth limitations (there’s only so much radio frequency space to go around). Each stream having its own antenna, and having larger antennas, gives stronger signal/noise ratios, less retransmitted packets, and overall better connections.
A lot of those high end “gaming” routers are often oversold though… MIMO improves throughput if you have an Internet link it can saturate; realistically even a midrange 2x2 802.11AC router will provide more wifi bandwidth than your internet does. And for gaming, they do nothing to improve latency no matter how many streams you run, as wifi’s inherent delay (5-15ms) is pretty much a fixed quantity due to its radio broadcast time-sharing nature. The meme is correct. A $6 ethernet cable beats any and all wifi routers and client adapters, and always will.
What fast of a WAN connection are you talking about?
I can’t see how a midrange 802.11AC AP could suffice for a decent WAN connection. IMO you need at least 802.11ax
2x2 AC on 5ghz has an 867mbps max PHY throughput, which after a 50% derate for signal quality and overhead is still a very comfortable 400mbps… typical cable internet is around 100 to 500mbps with a lot of places offering “1gbps” that it never actually reaches, so it’s certainly sufficient for 90% of people.
If you have a very heavy multi user (6+ devices always on) household you may find some benefit from an AX 2x2 or 3x3 router just because it can handle congestion better.
It’s not all about the WAN speed. Having fast LAN speeds is always worth it.
This will help hugely with stuff like PC game streaming (from your PC to a tablet or TV for example), screen sharing to TV, file transfers over LAN, media servers, etc.
Six plus always-on devices is rookie numbers. I’m in the twenties, in a house with a handful of people.
And yes, the router I’m currently using is faster than all my wired devices over wifi, save for the two that pair some form of 2.5/10Gb ports. Also yes, my 1Gbps WAN hits about 900-ish on the downstream, with the ISP guaranteeing at least 800 as a legal requirement. I don’t know if other regions allow ISPs to sell connections that run at 50% of the advertised speed, but… yeah, no, that’s illegal here.
Honestly, full home coverage is the biggest issue I have. If this was a new house I would have wired it as a solution, but as it is, I only got the whole home fully connected with reliable speeds by spending a bunch of money in wireless networking gear.
Well since the ruler’s out, 133 here. It’s hell.
Explanation: mostly younger roommates. Majority of bandwidth goes to just 21 personal machines, 4 MLO devices in particular, 1 of which uploads a fuck ton of cam stuff.
That said, most connections are idle. In particular there’s a chunky subnet of energy monitors with a low hum of usage.
I say “hell” because it takes 7 mesh nodes to reach everyone (while playing nice re: antenna strength in a congested building), maintaining security and privacy for everyone requires planning, and the second anything goes wrong everyone loses their minds.
Woof, yeah, now you’re talking.
I mean, once you factor in a phone, a computer, probably some gaming device running updates in the background, you’re thinking at least three devices per person, plus whatever tablets, smart TVs, printers and IoT garbage you have lying around the house. And if you live on an apartment you’re trying to service all of that alongside a bunch of other people trying to do the same.
Honestly, I struggled a lot to get a solid, cost effective mesh to solve the issue. I ended up going back to brute forcing it with a chonker of a router. No idea if that impacts my neighbours and, frankly, at this point it’s every bubble of electromagnetic real estate for themselves.
It’s honestly crazy how much networking you have to do at home these days, particularly if you work from home or throw in a NAS into the mix. I have no idea how the normies manage. Maybe they pay somebody to set it up?
Yeah the meme is just trying to be superior edgy. We live in an old duplex and no, my landlord won’t let me run networking through the walls and ceiling. I tried cabled network over electricity sockets and it’s worse than a good wireless connection.
You won’t ever get anywhere close to that though on 2x2 AC.
Where do you live where 1 Gbit/s is much lower than 1 GBit/s? When I had 1 GBit/s, I got around 800-950 Mbit/s. When I had 2 Gbit/s I got around 1,7-2,5 Gbit/s
To be more precise it’s not each stream having it’s own antenna, you combine the signals from all antennas and then “spatially filter” it into separate streams, but the number of concurrent streams is limited by the minimum of the number of antennas at both ends of the connection, if your device has only one antenna and your access point has eight you can only have one data stream.
Great answer. Thank you
I believe it’s for beam forming which can be used to improve signal strength in a specific direction.
Some of them are marketing wank, some of them have MIMO channels that need multiple antennas to support independent bands with multiple devices.
1 MIMO channel = 2 antennas, so this router could theoretically have 4 devices communicating bilaterally without interrupting each other.
Unless you need 6ft of cable or you just run wires on the floor it’s more like $200 of plenium rated cable, and keystone jacks and the labor involved with the run.
My house with a half finished basement (easy access) took probably 16-20 hours running to 5 rooms.
Yeah when i did my house i was quoted $100-200 a drop and that was years ago. I bought materials for 20 drops for about 1k (cables, keystones, plates, cable tester, ethernet cutter, puncher, drywall knife, flex drill bit, wall fishing tape, network switch, and a bunch of other stuff im probably forgetting). It took me 1 hour per drop on average. Some were easy, some were a pain in the ass. Now you can save on materials slightly by doing 1 drop per room whereas i did individual drops for each jack (because i wanted full bandwidth on each line), but either way it is going to end up more costly than an access point or mesh system unless you’re just running one line within the same room.
Definitely worth it if you care about the speed or reliability of your connection but i think for most people these days it’s probably overkill.
If you do go wiring everything then now you’re mostly already set up to do some Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) devices for cameras, access points etc. And next thing you know you’re an amateur home networker!
6.99 is just one cost though. If you’re needing ethernet actually done in walls then you’re going to be paying a lot more than an access point.
I’m seriously thinking of getting a usbC-ethernet dongle for my mobile, for when I’m at my desk.
I, too, have shitty wireless. In fact, for my work laptop, that’s exactly what I do. So much more reliable. Way too many wireless connections on too many channels close by.
If you have wireless charging then you should definitely get the dongle. I have one for those times I need stability. Get a thin lightweight USB C extender so the dongle is not getting in the way.
Getting a USB dock instead would probably get you both charging and Ethernet.
I have one that has hdmi and usb as well so I can use my phone in desktop mode on a monitor, then I use parsec to get in my VM and I have access to a full desktop experience
Nice!
For others considering this, keep in mind that not all phones support external monitors, they need specific hardware for it. Pretty much all Samsung S phones support it, Pixels do not. So check if your phone supports external displays before you buy any hardware!
Google added external monitor support starting with the Pixel 8. So, yeah… Most don’t support it, but newer ones do!
Can you not charge and use a single USB-C port at the same time?
Yes you can. You just need a dock instead.
I mean I just have more than one port and can charge using the dedicated charging port.
What laptop are you using that makes it such an affair to use two USB-C ports?
If I’m reading the thread correctly, they’re referring to a mobile phone which only has 1 USB port typically
Wait, what does the bomb from Halo 2 have to do with an ethernet cable?
Phased arrays are not a joke. You can get ridiculous dynamic range with those
Just use something shielded and at least cat 5
But that cable can’t summon Kel’Tuzad unlike the router.
I have a cat 5 cable running to a wireless access port that is connected to my wireless router. Online I show as having a physical connection, because the last connection to the PC is a plug.
The connection is also pretty solid compared to when I try to use wifi on the same PC to connect to the same wireless access point, which is just over 6 foot away with no obstructions (just checked), or the main router which is in another room.
Seems weird, but it works.
Your PC probably has poor antennas and/or WiFi chipset. The pc might also be located in a worse place
The pc might also be located in a worse place
Like, mentally?
