Comment by stiray | Hacker News Reader

Comment by stiray | Hacker News Reader

I had my mileage in wifi/routers development and I will say you just a proverb:

"The one who knows how wireless works, uses cable." ;)

When renovating an apartment I have put a shitload of ethernet sockets everywhere, there is no place in 80m2 apartment, where you would be more than 2m away of nearest (including toilet) and as 4 of them were not enough behind TV, I have added a router there.

Wifi is just a patch if you don't have that option. On fiber, my cost to uplink is 1000/500 for 35 euros / month and I want to use it on clients too.

I have 2.4 and 5GHz turned on, but the LTE is better alternative so no one uses them. I have Mikrotics everywhere and Wave 2 is an option, but really, why bother if the ethernet cable works so much better? Not to even mention PoE (+ injectors).

Physics cant be broken by whatever the current fashion is.

So at the end, if you cant (for whatever reason) use ethernet in apartment and your mobile sucks? Go for the latest trend in wireless. This is not an issue? Use cable, nothing comes close to it.

Unfortunately, many smart TVs use 100 Mbps RJ45 ports, so WiFi is usually faster. Some TVs allow you to plug in a USB to RJ45 adapter, but most of the USB ports are only USB 2 speed, so the practical limit is 300 Mbps. Some nice ones have USB 3 ports enabling 1 Gbps through an RJ45 adapter. I wish the manufacturers put at least gigabit (if not 2.5 Gbps) RJ45 ports on TVs.

Faster, but probably less reliable and more inconsistent. For this reason, I wire my TVs into the network :)

I would never plug a smart TV into any network, but regardless of that - when you have an individual endpoint like the smart TV (or the Apple TV, Android device, etc), what's the practical advantage of a 2.5Gbit port on that device? You aren't able to watch the movie/TV show any faster.. so you're constrained to the data rate of the content you're consuming at ~1 to ~1.5x speed (if you are in to that sort of thing).

Taking a 4k stream as an example, a compressed 4k stream is not going to exceed about 50Mbps, so even a 100Mbps data rate will have a 2x safety factor - and since you're wired, you're going to get full use of that data rate unlike Wi-Fi. You're not streaming uncompressed video as that would require more than 2.5Gbps, and if you want to upgrade to 8k video, you'll need a new TV anyway...

I always wire in my TV and other fixed infrastructure because, since they aren't moving, there's no advantage to using a data layer protocol that, by definition, enables mobile access. In addition, latency and jitter is always better on wire versus wireless, and keeping these devices off the wireless frees up precious airtime that the rest of my devices that do move can use instead. It's a win-win-win all around.

> Taking a 4k stream as an example, a compressed 4k stream is not going to exceed about 50Mbps, so even a 100Mbps data rate will have a 2x safety factor

That’s average throughput. Peak can be much higher, especially on high bitrate content and remuxes, and especially with newer HD audio formats. Modern smart TVs have a pitifully short buffer, so you can run into problems. I did on my Sony, and switching to wifi solved it.

Excuseme, what kind of content do you have with more than 100mbps bitrate?

This should answer your question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIef8iRZhLE

Exactly. Streaming a 4K Dolby vision blue ray remux that I legally own on my NAS uses 60-80mbps.

The built in port has DMA. USB to Ethernet adapters don’t and have to go through the CPU first. You’re stressing the CPU for bandwidth you aren’t actually using.

I'm glad wifi exists. It's very useful. It isn't always 100% reliable, but I don't really expect it to be. I have 7 wifi routers around my property for different uses. 5 of them are for IoT devices so they can live on their own network. 2 of the wifi routers are for my family's personal devices.

But every computer I use other than my laptops are wired with cat6 or better. I even run an ethernet line all the way out to the separated garage because I have a backup computer out there.

Ethernet is great, but wifi is also pretty great, they each have their use cases.

> where you would be more than 2m away of nearest (including toilet)

When I visit you and poop, do you have a way for me to connect my phone to your wired network?

I'm going to be honest with you: Modern WIFI is really awesome. I don't have problems with reception now that I bought a powerful router. (And "just run a wire" isn't a solution; the devices that had reception problems don't support wired ethernet.)

Non-sarcastically, yes. The USB-C hub I use to connect my laptop works perfect charging my iPhone and Android my phone while providing gigabit speeds to the android and USB 2 speeds to my iPhone!

Not in my bathroom yet though, I'm still renting.

No? You will use LTE and not bother with local connectivity. As I said, I have Wifi turned on but no one uses it.

> "The one who knows how wireless works, uses cable." ;)

Scientifically, of course you are 100% correct. But does it really matter if I can install a 3 satellite mesh and get 200 Mbps over WiFi even at the biggest “dead zone” in my home?

> where you would be more than 2m away of nearest (including toilet)

Why the toiled though?

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