But my WiFi is just fine!

What's the criteria?

Speed and reliability? Snakeboi.

Ability to move around unimpeded and/or taking a dump while being on Lemmy? $350 router with spikes.

And if prison rules, I'm going router with spikes...

I handle a lot of internal support for a dev outfit.

"My shit's slow."

"That's because you're on wireless at your house. Not my problem, but I'll try to help. Can you hardwire it?"

"That would be IMPOSSIBLE!"

"Suffer."

Have that router. Snakey boy wins.

Cables are fine until that stupid clip breaks off and every nudge unplugs the fucking cable ever so slightly that it doesn't work but you can't see it.

The sheer amount of engineering, FCC regulations, and wizardry that goes into making 802.11 fast is insane. It feels weird seeing so much data get shoved through radio waves which are still subject to only one transmission at a time which is why we have stuff like CSMA/CA and MIMO

Still no match for good ol ethernet though lol

If it's permanent, just run a cable to it

Image Transcription:

An image titled "who would win?"

On the left side is an image of an Asus RT-AC5300 Tri-Band Wireless Gigabit Router, a square, black router with a red line around the side near the upper edge, and 8 antennas coming up from the bottom. The text beneath the image reads "A $350 router with scary spikes"

On the right side is a blue Cat6 ethernet cable. The text beneath this image reads "A $3 snakey boi"

[I am a human, if I’ve made a mistake please let me know. Please consider providing alt-text for ease of use. Thank you. 💜 We have a community! If you wish for us to transcribe something, want to help improve ease of use here on Lemmy, or just want to hang out with us, join us at !lemmy_scribes@lemmy.world!]

My favourite thing is to hear people talk about having 'great WiFi' as if that is an internet connection.

Obligatory warning AVOID CCA CABLES! They can be a hazard!

Go for copper. More on this issue:

https://www.truecable.com/blogs/cable-academy/cca-vs-solid-copper#page_comments=1

The cheapest way to get cables is to know somebody who crimps it themselves, but for the majority of people probably buy from shitty places like walmart for a 1,000% upcharge.

Well until you have to guide that snaky boy through the whole apartment and through door frames.

If your TV vendor decides to only put 100Mb cards in their TV then unfortunately spikey boy wins and you lose unless you're willing to downrez your AV catalog.

Latency is the name of the game if you're gaming. Copper will always give you the fastest ping times compared to the fastest wifi you can buy.

But can snakey boi summon daedra?

Depends, am i routing data or cosplaying the lich king?

Depends on the challenge. Snakey boiy loses if the challenge is to move around the house and go into the backyard.

What's the speed? Do you have a shitty 10mbps connection like my parents? Then WiFi, because you're easily saturating that line either way.

Do you have gigabit? Then Ethernet, but then again getting like 600mbps wirelessly is good enough.

Biggest thing is having GOOD coverage. My house has multiple access points so that my connection is great everywhere. People with a shitty ISP router shoved in the cupboard in their basement make no sense lol.

We ran snakey boys throughout the house using command hooks on the ceiling when my wife and I had to go WFH 3 years ago.

The temporary fix is still going strong. At this point, the place would look weird without hastily strung up CAT5 all over the place.

Why is this my top post? What joke am I missing? So confused.

Real talk though, I own that router and it's awesome. Can't say the wifi signal is much different than any other router I've owned, but it's got loads of awesome features I use for hosting stuff. DDNS support plus Let's Encrypt plus OpenVPN support in one box. Very handy.

Mobile devices -> Wifi Devices which can't be connected via Lan (various reasons) -> Wifi Else -> LAN

It's that simple

As someone who runs a mini homelab in a building I don't have access to the Internet hardware, you'd be surprised how a combination of the two can be very reliable and fairly fast.

All my devices have a gigabit connection to one another but the web router is just a 5gHz link.

This is quality

If it is cat6 ethernet wire wins

Doesn't matter, I'm on 5g home internet (about 10 times faster than the best wired option and 3 times cheaper) and I'm not about to drill holes into the rental or run cable on the floor to still have higher than average ping. I don't play multiplayer games.

I'm guessing snakey boy is copper clad aluminum though.

Don't forget the hundreds or thousands of dollars it'll take to wire up your whole house with Ethernet plus the wireless router you'll need anyway for any device that doesn't have an ethernet plug

FTTP + mesh wifi FTW!

you realize that you need a router to plug in a LAN cable