Comment by blfr
15 hours ago
It's the first because we finally caught up on speed. We have it better than I imagined possible.
Last year, I saw 1600 Mbit/s from the Internet at a normie's place with an ISP-provided router. Still have a cat 6 cable around the living room but haven't used it in the last 2 years. Not exactly wifi but I routinely get 600-800 Mbit on 5g networks in crowded areas.
Ethernet isn't just about speed, it's about reliability. Before I wired my office, I regularly experienced latency spikes and hangs on video calls. After upgrading, I essentially never do.
If you're using a Mac, it could be from the brain-dead way Apple OSes implement WiFi based geolocation.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31356730
Or from keeping AirDrop enabled all the time.
It's 2026 and I'm running more cat-6 in my home to all my static devices. My theory is using wires lowers wireless contention, leaving more WiFi for the mobile devices.
I put in 2 CAT6 wires to every room in the house (4 in my office, 4 in garage), with one big PoE switch in the garage.
Everything with an Ethernet port is wired, wifi is for phones and tablets only (a few UniFi WiFi 6 APS).
Works great!
Internet has never dropped for me while working, family loves the always working NAS streaming via wired Apple TV.
Not theory, this is literally just how it works. Only one device can transmit on a WiFi channel at any given moment. A whole lot of the WiFi standard is just dealing with scheduling multiple clients wanting to transmit on the same channel at the same time.
The more clients you have on the same channel, the less bandwidth they all get (effectively). Using wires where you can will improve wireless for everyone else, including your neighbors.
Incidentally I ran cat6 to a few locations but its so thick and stiff I kinda regret it. The internet seems to think 5a is more than enough and 6 was a waste.
I did this five years ago, and it's been great. My wired access points are still Wi-Fi 6 and I've got no inclination to upgrade them yet, connectivity has been near-bulletproof.
anybody tried fiber network / hubs at home ?
It works, but kind of inconvenient for things that aren't desktops... or you need a switch with sfp to act as a media converter everywhere you have devices.
And I have cat5 in my walls that was installed 25 years ago (way before it was my house)... That gets me to 10g everywhere I tried, so no reason to pull anything else.
I have a 10gbit LAN running over fiber with Mikrotik switches and cheapo Intel NICs. Works fine, and it makes remote disks quite a bit nicer than when they are over 1gbit.
I put some fiber in the walls just in case but there are not really many cases for this to be worth just yet
I wired up my office, and thr speed test after was slower than on wifi. haven't had a chance to debug it yet, but it's something to consider.
If wired Ethernet shows less than 1Gbps, something is wrong. This stuff is super reliable.
USB Ethernet dongles generally suck. Even “name brand” dongles are cheap crap from contract manufacturers.
A few years ago, for some reason my ISP began to screw up my WiFi. Tech support could not help; I had at least two devices showing the same symptoms; at one point I even shut down my home connection out of frustration. I could only think of two possibilities: that there had been some kind of security event that tripped their security AI and was blocking my WiFi (and inexplicably leaving all Ethernet connections unhindered.) Second possibility: they were deliberately (but deniably) messing with my WiFi access at home so that I would use more mobile data. In fact a salesman told me that would be a logical move. Except it was affecting my Chromebook too.
So my only choice was to purchase a third-party router/WiFi. I did not want to make the network more complex, but if my ISP router couldn't provide WiFi, it would need to happen.
So now I have a working WiFi 7 router, and my ISP's device is permanently in Bridge Mode. I went to the hardware store and purchased a bunch of little cable staples, and I nailed up an Ethernet cable from the router to the bedroom. There are 3 desk positions in here that can be reached by Ethernet cable.
Unfortunately, if I am out on the balcony, I normally need to use WiFi, because I can't fully shut the door when a cable is snaking out of it. Also, I picked up a little USB-C-Ethernet dongle for my phone, if worse comes to worst. The bandwidth is great; besides, my downstream is only 100Mbps, so who needs overpowered LAN bandwidth?