quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:


Bottom line is: Do I need physical ethernet jacks installed to make the best use of the gigabit internet speed that I'll be paying for or is WIFI technology improved to the point that it equals physical connections?

For mission critical things like high resolution security cameras, wired ethernet is still more robust.

Wired will be faster & more reliable than wifi, in general & usually in specific. Certain implementations of wifi can be faster than gigabit, but it will be rare to actually get that speed.

For general use, it won't matter. Streaming video, web browsing, general computing will all have other considerations that can impact speed much more than wired/wireless.
'Cloud backup' maybe would benefit from wired. Not 'hire an electrician to run CAT6' benefit. Like 'I'll set the laptop next to the router & plug in the cable' benefit.

When I upgraded media servers, I moved multiple terabytes of data through 1GB & it was painful, wireless was out of the question. Hot-swapping 250GB SSDs was faster.

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
Bottom line is: Do I need physical ethernet jacks installed to make the best use of the gigabit internet speed that I'll be paying for or is WIFI technology improved to the point that it equals physical connections?

As others have noted: In the vast majority of cases, WiFi won't perform at gigabit speeds. Even if the APs are capable of it, the clients often will not be.

The bigger question is: Do you even need it? Other than computers and NAS' doing backups/mirroring (off-site?), your biggest consumers will be high-definition streaming devices.

To give you an idea: For a test I once had our old AP, an EnGenius EAP1300, feeding four (4) HD streams simultaneously (varying bit rates: 15-21mb/s) and simultaneously did a flood ping against a fifth WiFi client from a wired device. None of the streaming devices buffered at all and not a single packet was dropped during the flood ping.

The AP was busy, though: Hitting 82% CPU utilization.

Point is: Again, other than perhaps (off-site?) backup/mirroring, gigabit speeds on your LAN/WLAN aren't really necessary.

Exception: "Scrubbing" ("fast-forwarding" and "rewinding") of HD content will be smoother, less jumpy, with more bandwidth. E.g.: With our old EAP1300, scrubbing with HD content with our Apple TV 4k's was painful. With the new EnGenius EWS377APv3, it's much, much better. With the wired ATV4k in the computer room it's flawless.

Somebody mentioned security cameras. You don't want those to be WiFi, if you can avoid it, in any event. A good WiFi system won't have a problem supporting their rather undemanding bandwidth demands, but, they'd of course be subject to WiFi jamming and, unless you're going battery-powered (which is a PITA, IME), you'll need to get power to them, anyway. So might as well go PoE.

All that being said: If the place is wired everywhere for Ethernet: Wonderful. If you can afford/justify the expense of getting it wired, if it isn't, already: Wonderful.

Lastly: All of the above WiFi vs. Ethernet comments were assuming a good WiFi network. That doesn't mean typical consumer-grade NAIO (Network All-In One) "WiFi Routers," that combine router, network switch, and WiFi AP in one box. It means a capable router, a capable switch or switches, and a capable WiFi Access Point or points, the AP(s) well-sited and with Ethernet backhauls. None of this mesh nonsense or WiFi extenders/repeaters.

As usual, I get the quality advice I always get from forum members. Thank you all for your input.

One thing I didn't see mentioned here...
If you're living in suburbia or an apartment, then you can expect a vast number of competing wifi signals.
Your neighboring houses can end up cluttering the wifi spectrum enough to render your wifi network almost unusable.

quote:

Originally posted by creslin:
One thing I didn't see mentioned here...
If you're living in suburbia or an apartment, then you can expect a vast number of competing wifi signals.
Your neighboring houses can end up cluttering the wifi spectrum enough to render your wifi network almost unusable.

I get that now where my place is 30 to 50 feet from my neighbors. I see their wifi signals but it doesn’t seem to an issue for my phone. I do have the 2 TVs and laptop hardwired.

In an apartment complex, condo complex, townhouse PUD etc., overlapping signals could be problematic. I don’t think it’s really an issue in RSF, residential single family, neighborhoods especially on the 5GHz band. My next door neighbors are 15’ away, across the street neighbors are closed to 200’ away, and while I can see their networks their signals are really weak in my house.

I haven’t noticed any issues and there are enough channels on the 5GHz band that I can pick on that doesn’t overlap with the neighbors even if I set mine to 160MHz wide.

With my iPhone 12 in the furthest part of my house from our EWS377APv3 (yes, the same one ensigmatic has) my signal strength shown by the WAP is -74dBm on the 5GHz band and I’m still getting 270mbps with SpeedTest. I’m probably 50’ from the WAP with three walls and a solid core door in between. I’m the same room as the WAP, my phone gets close to the 400mbps our ISP is providing.

My previous house was in suburbia.
Wifi was all but unusable for me due to the signal congestion.

quote:

Originally posted by creslin:
My previous house was in suburbia.
Wifi was all but unusable for me due to the signal congestion.

You don't say?

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:

quote:

Originally posted by creslin:
My previous house was in suburbia.
Wifi was all but unusable for me due to the signal congestion.

You don't say?

I’m not saying creslin is wrong about having had an interference issue, but there has to have been something unusual going on.

There generally shouldn’t be any problems setting up reliable Wi-Fi in low-density single family home areas like typical suburbs.

There are situations where you can have problems, but they are atypical.

I haven’t even had any trouble setting up reliable Wi-Fi in high rise apartment buildings several times.

quote:

Originally posted by maladat:

I’m not saying creslin is wrong about having had an interference issue, but there has to have been something unusual going on.

There generally shouldn’t be any problems setting up reliable Wi-Fi in low-density single family home areas like typical suburbs.

There are situations where you can have problems, but they are atypical.

I haven’t even had any trouble setting up reliable Wi-Fi in high rise apartment buildings several times.

^^^
Completely agree with you on all points and would like to add to achieve that you would have to do a lot of things completely wrong.
Unless of course it was a supernatural force.

quote:

Unless of course it was a supernatural force.

hmmmmm.....

I don't agree with everything in this video, nonetheless is has some useful info, which pertains to the 2.4 GHz band.

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:

quote:

Originally posted by maladat:

I’m not saying creslin is wrong about having had an interference issue, but there has to have been something unusual going on.

There generally shouldn’t be any problems setting up reliable Wi-Fi in low-density single family home areas like typical suburbs.

There are situations where you can have problems, but they are atypical.

I haven’t even had any trouble setting up reliable Wi-Fi in high rise apartment buildings several times.

^^^
Completely agree with you on all points and would like to add to achieve that you would have to do a lot of things completely wrong.
Unless of course it was a supernatural force.

I also agree with you two. Heck, I just got back from a 2 week vacation where I stayed in a condo and there were a total of 66 condos in the immediate area and another perhaps 130 that were adjacent.

The WiFi worked just fine under those conditions.