My rule is if the device doesn't move much (or at all), it should have a wired connection.
Basically my phone and my watch are the only devices in the house on WiFi.
Yeah, anything sensitive to latency will have a wired connection in my home. It's non-negotiable.
I've got my watch on ethernet. The connection is rock solid, but it's a bugger to get around.
Remember those curly telephone cords that stretched out to like 40ft when your mom walked around the house while on the phone and you had to dodge the cord like Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment? And then the cord shrunk back to like 8ft when she hung the phone back on the cradle on the wall. And the next time your mom hung up the phone, the cord was like 10ft long with a bunch of kinks and twists. And the next time she hung the cord was like 12ft long and starting to bunch on the floor. And eventually there was like 30ft of telephone cord on the floor under the cradle that just gets kicked out of the way into the nearest corner and collects dust bunnies until the next time the phone rings and your mom answers and walks all around the house like she always does. (I could keep going but I don't know where it will end.) Remember those curly telephone cords?
You need a curly ethernet cord like that for your watch. It could help to get around.
Also, what model watch do you have that has an ethernet port? My watch works fine but my gf is always complaining about a rock solid connection so I'm thinking about getting a new one.
Gotta make it happen it's a huge improvement, even if that means running a big cable taped to the wall
just make sure if you do that, its an armoured cable (not the flat ones!), so crushing it doesn't hurt the cable.
you can get extra wide duct tape and make a channel in the corner of your ceiling and wall to run lots of cables as well
Your neighbor is on an older router that does 2.4ghz, lower frequencies penetrate walls better
This diagram is only missing that one super speed zone into another dimensions high speed internet that is hidden up in the attic during the season just before Christmas as you dig through your stored belongings and wonder why you have so many dumb yard inflatables.
Wired + Mesh Wifi is the best combo. House not wired? Try powerline Ethernet. It does degrade the more you have so I only have it for my computer and PS5.
That's what I have. My house is quite long, so I'm guessing my landlord ran a cable from the front wall in the lounge through to the office/bedroom at the back upstairs. As a result, we have two mesh nodes hardwired to the router, then a wireless one in the middle to just fill in any gaps. I've never had better wifi.
Sounds like you might have lead paint or thick cement in the walls.
I would just add another node using a powerline near your most popular spots. I would limit it to 2 max.
I have one AP on the west side of the house pointing east, and one of the east side pointing west... great signal everywhere. Don't have ethernet in the walls? Run it. I took 4 hours out of a Saturday to buy cable, fish tape, a crimp tool, some ends and some wall outlets and wired up my whole house with the help of youtube. No, I don't do that for work. Oh, and I had to get a 12 inch drill bit, apparently I have 3 2by4s in a row up in the ceiling.
Eh, just sell one of your vacation homes (not the cabin obviously) and buy a quick house just to see if it works. Better than not knowing!
Honestly, just don't settle for the shitty router that your service came with, get that damn thing out from behind the TV or wherever it shouldn't be, get it up close to the ceiling somehow, and you'll probably never want to use a fishtape even if you can.
Mesh networks are probably the solution for apartment dwellers. The routers all act as one router but are separate smaller routers that talk to each other so you can put them all around the house, and you just need to plug them into power. No mods to the apartment are required, it's all wireless. The catch is expense, but if you buy once, and cry once, then it becomes like a piece of nice furniture that moves with you.
But again, one $40 modern router that isn't the shitty combo unit from the ISP, keep it up high and unblocked, get enough extra Cat cable to reach where you put it, and you might be happy enough with that.
Hell, get the router out from behind the TV if that's where you put it (everyone tries putting it there to hide it) and you might get all the signal you need.
Look into powerline, it uses your electrical lines to transfer ethernet. it doesn't work in every house but when it does its pretty great!
Powerline is alright if you have literally no other option but I'd take wifi instead 10/10 times unless my PC was trapped inside a Faraday cage.
Powerline has much better latency (and much more consistent latency) than wifi, so it'll give you a better experience for stuff like gaming. Depending on how exactly your house is wired and what else you have on the circuit it can have reliability problems (although if you live in a dense area wifi isn't exactly reliable), but if your house is suitable it works very well, I used it about 5 years with no problems.
I'm currently using powerline because running an ethernet cable across the apartment seemed gaudy at best. The suggestion of a flat white cable stuck to the wall seems interesting.
I have the modem and router on a UPS because power flickers semi-regularly here. Sadly, powerline cannot go on a UPS.
I've been renting for the past 7 years. You can buy flat, white Ethernet cables that can be fixed to the walls with sticky clips. It's less ugly than the round cables and while obviously not earthquake proof, the clips do a fairly good job at keeping the cable in the corner.
Powerline ethernet uses your existing electrical cables as the network cables, but on a different frequency. Beware when using in shared units such as apartments.
If you live somewhere that'll let you then access to a crawlspace like an attic will let you do this
For example at my place getting into the above house crawlspace lets me access the insides of my walls from above. Simply run Ethernet from above where you'll want each end of a plug to be, then drop it down and put it in place through a cheap (like .45c) Ethernet wall adapter. Hardest part is cutting the hole into your wall for said wall plug
I'm simplifying a bit but honestly it's incredibly easy to buy a length of Ethernet wiring and some rj-45s, Google how to wire them, and run it yourself. I ran a short wire across a room once and it only took like an hour. Would be less in future now that I have experience
Question because you seem knowledgeable on mesh. I've got a network that spans a large area. I connected 3 mesh network aps to one switch which connects to my main router. Should the aps still be close together, or I'm good to spread them a bit since they're all hard wired?
Thank you for the response! I'll look to see if the proprietary app has tips on this. Thanks!
i mean this isn't really a networking thing, it's just waves being blocked or reflected such that different areas have different coverage.
it's like trying to read an optician's letter poster in a house made of glass of varying opacity.
It just goes to show ya that you don't need your router when you're stealing the neighbor's wifi.
Use it as an access point for better coverage if you don't have to pay for it separately, but not as the primary router
Based on this image, the router is unidirectional and is simply pointing the wrong way. This is why you shouldn't use something like a Ubiquiti Nano as a router. :p
Dude am typing this on my neighbors wifi XD. Btw they left the 5ghz band public so have been using it for the past 1 year or so. Lol its quite fast too!
I've been doing that for 6 years when I didn't have internet connection. I was 8 when I got a first smart device, Android tablet. One of the first things I tried was connecting to Wi-Fi of all neighbors. 2 of them had the ultra-secure password "12345678". I remember the first website I visited was Wikipedia.
However, I have tried to not spend too much data. I only watched videos in low quality (240p) and browsed the web. For downloading large files (which I considered anything above 50MB at the time) I've used public networks. Usually at the bus station or a nearby pub.
Sometime later I got access to even more Wi-Fi networks using the convenient "WPS WPA Tester" app. Like a third of all networks used one of the default PINs.
This will seem counterintuitive, but if this is your actual layout, move your wireless AP to either where the bed is or where the xbox is, assuming there's power and wiring in either spot for it.
