• bruhduh@lemmy.world
    0·
    3 months ago

    Better make WiFi routers hubs between every 20ft and interconnect them as mesh network this way your setup will be many times more robust, speaking from experience, on the job we have internet cables drawn inside walls so they aren’t accessible and some cables can lose some signal strength after a few years of usage, these hubs are mainly for strengthening signal at key points, but also if at some point signal is lost then WiFi bridges can act as temporary solution until you find where is that cable in chain of cables and replace it

    • blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
      0·
      3 months ago

      some cables can lose some signal strength after a few years of usage

      Roughly how many years are you thinking about? I’ve been using the same 10m ethernet cable for more than 20 years. And my expectation was that only physical wear would damage it (eg. rolling and unrolling it to deploy in a different place; possibly closing a door on it accidentally… that kind of thing).

  • sylver_dragon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    When we finished our basement, I had the electrician run two Cat-6 cables to a box right by every outlet and back to a single point. I had to terminate and punch everything down. But, now I have Ethernet throughout the basement.
    Totally worth it.

    • Katana314@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      I have a bunch of useless phone jacks in several rooms of my house, and I’m wondering how much this would cost me. I took a look at the housing behind them and it doesn’t seem like anything I could convert myself, so it seems like a qualified electrician job…

      • JTPorkins@lemmy.world
        0·
        3 months ago

        You can just cut them out and replace them with Ethernet wall jacks, they are pretty cheap. Most have color coded punch downs on the back. Use the existing phone lines to pull the cables through the walls to wherever the phone lines end in a junction and that’s where you can set up a switch or router.

  • Majorllama@lemmy.world
    0·
    3 months ago

    If your house was built after 2000 (or has updated wiring) you might wanna look into Ethernet over power. The kits are usually less than 50 bucks (depending on the speeds you’re using) and they allow you to hardline your computer without running a cable across the entire house.

    The way they work is by plugging a parent box directly into the wall near your router you can run a short Ethernet to the box and then plug in the sister box near your gaming rig and run another short Ethernet from the wall to your computer. It basically just uses the copper wires of the house wiring to transfer the data.

    There are some exceptions to be aware of. If you have a particularly large house the speeds might suffer over a long enough run. Or if they have the internet on an entirely different breaker panel it won’t work.

    I am currently using one at my house. The wire gives me better ping, but slightly lower total download speed. So if I’m downloading a big game or something I’ll just unplug the Ethernet at let it download faster over wifi and then I switch back to wired for gaming.

    • Katana314@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      I wish there was a way to test this without spending 50 bucks. My results have simply been that the resulting signal is just as unreliable as WiFi.

      • Majorllama@lemmy.world
        0·
        3 months ago

        I have never had that issue. I would have been very curious to try and trouble shoot that. Was it older house? Plugged in near the microwave?

        • Lojcs@lemm.ee
          0·
          3 months ago

          Older but not too old. Not near the microwave. There was a problem with the WiFi not penetrating a wall well so a WiFi extender on the other side connected to Ethernet over power was supposed to fix that. But that turned out more unreliable than before. In the end a WiFi mesh network worked the best.

  • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
    0·
    3 months ago

    I needed to get internet to a building that’s around 400 feet away. I had the opportunity to get a trench dug, so I took a gamble, laid a conduit and ran shielded CAT6. I say gamble because that’s over the rated limited of CAT cable, but I figured it was going to be easier then trying to get a reliable wiki bridge running. The home network itself has been solid since.