Keep it simple

[email protected]

I’ve looked into wiring decent Ethernet through our walls, where the phone lines are. Wooden flooring isn’t very common here so pulling through the wall ducts that have dodgy AC cables and Cat-negative-1 telephone “cables” is the only realistic option. Personally I even think I’d like to run double Ethernet cables anywhere just so I can have flexibility. When I get my own place someday, the cable duct provisioning will be absolutely ridiculous, I’ve already promised myself.

The ducts are complete trash and it’s a miracle the phone lines even worked for so long. Our electricity is so goddamn noisy here that any Ethernet signal would be affected, meaning I’ll definitely need better cables and end up with worse speeds. So noisy that powerline Ethernet really sounds like a punchline. The WiFi isn’t great because the only place the AP/router has access to the phone line is right where it enters the apartment, which is from the elevator shaft - meaning a giant Faraday cage shields half the apartment from the WiFi. We’ve disconnected the phone lines in the walls because those are completely fried and have started to introduce so much noise that it’s audible on the landline and completely kills any synchronization with the phone center. Like it’s fucking bad. All that headache for 2-4 megabit unreliable DSL. Even for Lebanon, the perennially cursed paradise we call home, pretty goddamn bad.

I’ve looked into coax Ethernet, the problem is that every few years a bolt of lightning hits the TV cable network in my neighborhood and deep fries every TV that wasn’t manually disconnected at the start of the storm. Just awful. I suspect the cable integrity is better throughout the walls though. A lot of splitters though.

The best part? I live in a part of my cursed country where they’ve started connecting FTTH. And for some reason they stopped laying the cables mere meters from my building in like 2020 and just never bothered to keep going. And the fiber company has legitimately blocked every phone number I’ve since inquired from. I’m not joking when I say I’ve considered just suspending a thick thick optic (remember the lightning, there’s no grounding here!) SFP cable along the municipal power poles (let’s not discuss legality here, it’s okay, this is Lebanon habibi), putting a nice switch in a neighbor’s house, and just paying for their internet in return for making sure that one port is nice and snug.

I do think my best bet is (when the fiber finally arrives in 2097) some kind of mesh WiFi with no backhaul, or some kind of Ethernet backhaul that relies on routing the meatiest Ethernet cable I could find on the outside of the building.

Another alternative is paying out the absolute ass for a corporate Internet subscription, but microwave internet is susceptible to the weather, and the whole thing is just so much upfront cost that it can’t be worth it. Although maybe going that route five years ago would have been worth it.

Just awful. At least everyone’s on Netflix and short form video now so data caps have moved past the pathetic 20 and 30 GBs they were only a decade ago.

Counterpoint: I’ve probably saved a significant amount of money by having the odds overwhelmingly stacked against me setting off on my homelab journey. lol

[email protected]

To be honest, I think a lot of Lemmy users are old and yearn for the older technologies simply because they have been more familiar with them than newer ones. They would have used the first gen of a technology, which may not be efficient, and dismiss it altogether, without realising that subsequent generations of that technology improves over time.

I have had that realisation of cognitive bias when I had Bluetooth headphones back in early 2010s. The wireless connection isn't great and gets cut off every now and then. I dismissed the technology as less efficient than wired earphones. It was over the years with the popularity of airpods that I gave wireless earphones another chance. And honestly, the Bluetooth connectivity vastly improved than I expected and I would not go back to using wired earphones again on regular basis. I only use wired ones as backup if my wireless earphones went missing or broke.

Sorry to say this to OP, but it seems that you're being an old man yelling at the clouds. Look, I'm also old and I admit I have had that moment of yelling at the clouds too. We will have that more moments as we age.

[email protected]

I have a similar setup to @[email protected] in regards to my home network and I wouldn't dream of removing my wifi network. I still consider wired to be superior though it rarely matters at those latencies.

My Windows laptop on wifi:

My Fedora on wired network:

Subverb

I'm a cable guy too; it's just better. But you can't get quality CAT6 or better cables for $6.99 anymore.

[email protected]

wired will always be better, faster, more reliable, and cheaper

ZeroOne

Oh you're one of those people
(I don't face any issues, so everyone else must be also not facing any issues)
I've had my Wifi Router just suddenly lose strength (& it was brand new)

[email protected]

50mbps is a fuckterrible bitrate for 4k HDR video content.

You should be playing physical media anyway, though.

[email protected]

You could have 30 clips break and it would still be cheaper.

[email protected]

Oh, you're one of those people (I have an issue therefore everyone must have this issue too and there is a fundamental problem with the thing I have an issue with)

[email protected]

Oh god that sounds frustrating AF.

AngryMob

Testing on my phone with a few different services: 0.0 to 0.2% packet loss. 9 to 12 ms jitter. Ping 5 to 25.

I'm not claiming to be a network expert on why wireless is noticably worse in practice, i picked packet loss and jitter randomly, i assumed that's how it manifests. but i'd suspect these tests aren't indicative of actual game netcode. They are short too. The whole point is the stability. If i play for 15 minutes no issue but suddenly have a single rubberband, thats an issue which may not show up in 100 tests.

On wireless i can feel that pretty much every session. Everything fine for a while, then not for a moment, then fine, etc.

On wired i only have an issue if the server itself or my isp itself is having an issue.

[email protected]

Are you connected over 5ghz or 2.4?
2.4ghz overlaps with other consumer devices that cause interference, like microwaves, drones, and cordless (landline) phones. If one of those devices turns on nearby, it could cause that until your router hops bands.

I haven't had this problem with 5ghz (so for over a decade, on my gaming PC).

AngryMob

Yeah ive had 5ghz for ages as well. Use a channel scan to try and avoid my couple neighbors, Pretty decent hardware (not isp junk). House is small so max distance is only 1 wall and ~15ft.

Honestly id just guess you arent as sensitive to it. Are you the type who doesn't notice other types of screen related feeling stuff too? Like 60fps vs 120+, input lag, or screen tearing, micro stutter, macro blocking, soap opera effect, etc.?

I've known plenty of people who are more or less sensitive to all the various ways things fuck up.

If you are sensitive to the other things, then who the hell knows lol.

[email protected]

I don't imagine I'm especially sensitive to those kinds of things, but I don't expect I'm especially insensitive to them either.

I personally feel like it's hard to get gamers to honestly self report these things, since being able to notice them is caught up on a lot of macho gamer ego bullshit. Whenever I see semi-rigurous tests, it turns out that people over report how sensitive they are.

So do I notice those things? Yeah, I think I do, but I'm not confident in my ability to self report it.

Have I ever experienced things like rubber banding and lag in the last decade? Of course. But rarely can I attribute it to the wireless network rather than server issues, since typically it'll go away when I change servers.

I will say that, personally, I don't find a lot of value in >120fps unless it's important to read a lot of moving text quickly.