Keep it simple

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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.

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Ethernet is obviously better but running ethernet around your home can be a pain in the arse

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And then you still need a wireless router to get Internet on your phone unless you use data at home like a crazy person.

CheezyWeezle

If you have only one device on Wi-Fi, multiplexing turned off, or especially if you have MU-MIMO support, Wi-Fi can be faster than a single wired connection. It is still higher latency and subject to other drawbacks such as security and power consumption, but of course it offers advantages that can outweigh the disadvantages depending on use case and user needs.

That said, it's technically not faster than the cable, but rather faster at the data link or network layer. For example, CAT8 physically supports up to 40Gbps, but most consumer and even professional electronics only support up to 2.5Gbps. Only really enterprise level switches can push up to like 100Gbps onto copper, and even then that's using QSFP transceivers, not RJ-45 connections. Fiber cables regularly push 400Gbps.

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A pain in the arse you only need to do once, and you can hire someone to do it for you for basically the same cost as a couple of the high end wireless routers, so in like 5 years, you break even.

Also, how much have you spent on your computer (s), phone(s), tablet(s), and all your other internet connected devices, and you won't spend like $500 on something that can run all that stuff simultaneously? Pouring literally thousands of dollars on connected devices, but most won't pay more than they would for a toaster, to get them on the internet, then pay out the wahzoo for gigabit internet that your crummy d-link router can't handle, and you wonder why all your fancy gadgets run like shit.... It's a lot like buying a Ferrari to drive on dirt/gravel roads.

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I'm a network professional with a specialty in wireless.

Yeah, beam forming and mimo are the main reasons for antenna diversity. There's also more radio chains in those units typically, and more radio chains can provide better speeds if you have client devices that can take advantage of the extra radio chains (both sides need to have the same, increased number of radio chains to see an increase).

The antennas are fairly small/thin pieces of wire that are not very long, so the antennas don't need to look like that, but the quantity is useful.

[email protected]

Dude I just bought 4 refurbished Linksys MX4200 (tri-band) access points for $80 (total), put on OpenWRT, and built a mesh system. I'm incredibly happy with the result, especially for the price. And, I've got wireless bridges all through the house so I can keep some things off the forwarding channels and only in the back haul.

It's not wired, but it's close enough and doesn't require me drilling through all my walls running cable or carving out a space in the house for all of it to coalesce.

Granted, I'm in an area with not a lot of wireless interference...I work in enterprise networking and I've had a lot of issues with remote workers on wireless networks that weren't capable of handling the volume of data that the users were uploading. Sometimes just because there's too much interference...but a lot of the time it's because of misconfiguration (either out of ignorance or because the good features, like multicast-to-unicast, are missing), or printer drivers that spam the wireless with multicast whenever the printer is offline (which I've seen a surprising amount of times).

[email protected]

I’ve wondered the same. Pretty sure they just lean on the ISP equipment offerings and outsource the rest to the cloud. Critically, I envision plug and play users who don’t give a shit about security or privacy, and that simplifies a lot.

Honestly if you take that setup from the ISP (which I think is often free and now usually includes a docsis 3.x with at least one repeater, installed) then just bump the default encryption and add a VPN, I wouldn’t say it’s a bad way to go at all, mainly because when there’s any issue it’s on the ISP to fix it.

It won’t be bleeding edge and you won’t be able to do any directed networking fanciness without your own gear, but the not my problem perk is nothing to sneeze at.

And yeah mesh is a headache. It’s all wired backhaul (sfp+ and copper) but nodes regularly fall out of sync and the mesh doesn’t heal properly. Main reason I kept coming back was the benefit of co-channel stacking, which makes your signal footprint small but really deep so neighboring routers move over.

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Preach! I just finished a long DIY remodel and running ethernet to everyroom was less than a $100 in cable and connectors. Obviously it was easier and cheaper for me because I already had a lot of the drywall down.

Either way such a good point you make, people will drop 1k on a phone no questions asked but a few hundred is too much to get the best home upgrade a tech enthusiast could ever ask for.

beefbot

Way less so if your home is constructed such that the wireless is borked

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Wireless data links should be the exclusive domain of temporary, nomadic and/or sacrificial applications.

If the channel is permanent, static, or critical; as much of the path as practicable should be provisioned with constrained energy transmission.

Midnight Wolf

Disabled, so physically cannot do it, or I would.

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I’m a nice fellow who provides free internet to all of my neighbors.

It’s a pain sometimes.

I worry about the teenager upstairs, but all the others are old ladies and it doesn’t bother me a bit…until I want to do something serious.

I’m about to (tax time) invest in a router that allows me to control their bandwidth. It’s free, so if 20mbps don’t work for them they can pay for it.

I will open up the kid’s PS5 so he can game. His laptop is getting 10mbps though.

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As someone with a telecommunications background who's taken apart some cheap routers that look like that: the only caveat I'll add is that the antennas are only useful if they're actually connected to anything. From a decently trustworthy brand you're probably fine, but I've seen a few where only one or two of the antenna couplings were connected to anything internally.

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What do you define as a "decent" WAN connection?

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Let's see that ethernet cable do orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing...

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Ah butts, you’re right, the first guy said “mobile” and I didn’t read it correctly.

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I could preach all day about this.

I have a simple philosophy: wired when you can, wireless when you have to.

With that being said, doing a site survey for wifi and getting optimal access point locations, then placing Ethernet in ceiling there for said access points, ensures you have good coverage of your space, which then leads into another rant about network hardware and people spending thousands on everything except their router/access points even if they have the structure cables to support such a system....

Then people wonder why their wifi sucks.

I mean, spend a couple hundred one time to get Ethernet run, spend some time on an online ap placement tool and signal estimator for it, and then go buy infrastructure wireless for your home, and spend upwards of $1000 on networking hardware. You'll get more out of it and it will work for longer than your $1000+ smart phone, or many $1000s laptop that use it almost constantly.

Networking is critical and it should be seamless and blend into the background. You shouldn't need to mess with it constantly to get it to work. If that's normal for you, then something is very wrong.

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I know but IDK. Just figured it was an overhead thing. Having a connection that can max out a gigabit ethernet port is still fairly new territory for me.

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There's no shortage of liars and cheats everywhere. I'm unsurprised that a company world either intentionally, or through sheer ignorance, have "antennas" that are little more than aesthetic pieces of plastic.