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.”
But my WiFi is just fine!
Submitted 1 year ago by Doomguy1364@lemmy.dbzer0.com to [deleted]
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/9c34e01b-b8f4-415d-b3e6-9097b86e995c.jpeg
Comments
shalafi@lemmy.world 1 year ago
azvasKvklenko@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
I used to work on a tech support hotline for a ISP 10 years ago and that was the usual thing.
- My shit’s slow
- Ok, I see you’ve got perfect parameters for your ADSL, I just logged into your router, trying out download… and upload… It works exactly as it should, so maybe your WiFi? Could you connect a wire?
- Plz come fix asap, TECHNICIAN VISIT WHEN??!!
If the WiFi sucked on router provided as part of the service then sure, I could send a technician, but usually the router only had one ethernet port.
alienzx@feddit.nl 1 year ago
Have that router. Snakey boy wins.
mvirts@lemmy.world 1 year ago
You must have forgotten to sharpen the spikes 😹
eating3645@lemmy.world 1 year ago
How do you find it? Do you manage the scary spikes?
SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world 1 year ago
If you flip it upside down it’s a Halloween spider decoration.
SternburgExport@feddit.de 1 year ago
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.
PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Get a crimp tool and a 50-pack of connectors. If one breaks, it takes all of 60 seconds to re-crimp the end and you’ll only lose about an inch of cable length.
GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk 1 year ago
Make sure to get pass-through RJ45 connectors.
It’s 10x easier to trim the excess after crimping, rather than getting the lengths spot on before.
kklusz@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I have zero experience with networking hardware. How hard is it to recable an apartment for a newb like me? How does that even work, do I gotta pull wires out of the walls?
mesamunefire@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I have a collection of 3d prints on thingiverse that reattach that part. Highly recommend.
geekworking@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This is why Pro level is to terminate all of your permanent cabling with punch down jacks and patch panels, then use throw-away patch cables from jacks to devices.
A7thStone@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Look at mr moneybags with their fancy data closet.
saigot@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
It’s pretty easy to crimp a new one back on, and even easier with a 30 dollar tool.
nueonetwo@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Easy fix with a tight layer of electrical tape to act as a wedge. You can also shove a toothpick in the top for extra staying power.
uis@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Crimp tool: 2$
100 RJ45: 3$
Your problem will be solved for rest of you life and life of your children for 5 dollars.
SternburgExport@feddit.de 1 year ago
Stealing them off my workplace :0$
Rand0mA@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Haha true story
mlg@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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
szczuroarturo@programming.dev 1 year ago
Just the sorcery that makes wifi a thing is amazing itself.
FordPrefect@startrek.website 1 year ago
802.15.4a/ab/ac, seems even weirder, given what we’ve become used to with AM/FM signaling modes.
After the usual “Huh, that seems like a clever way to send signals” reaction, a closer perusal of the tech & its established industrial capabilities, reveals Surface penetrating radar for machine vision & medical imaging, P2P, P2MP, local file-exchange, low-power low-latency streaming, greater range than bluetooth, greater interference resistance than WiFi, & reduced airtime per Mb, at lower emission power than a hair dryer or cellphone.
Gee, I wonder why it got forcibly channeled into exclusively device-to-device location pings, with no direct radio access or firmware, available to devs?
Seriously, go look at what the military, industrial, security, & medical sectors have already been doing with UWB, then look at the specs for the compact chipsets & SOCs released since 2017, & then look at what BMW, Apple, Google, & Samsung are doing with it. Oh yay, Airtags. I mean, they do work, but they’re about 1/1000th of what the U1 could do, if app devs had access to the radio instead of being gatekept behind the FindMy device-to-device services.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Even plain old wifi is fascinating in terms of signaling, they use ofdm, or orthogonal frequency division multiplexing to encode data. The whole concept is crazy.
To summarize, the waveform (sine wave) is measured by degrees from zero, where 90 is the peak, 180 is when it crosses the middle line again, 270 is the trough, and at 360 it returns to zero. What OFDM does is interrupt the normal sine wave and jump from 90 to 180 to encode bits.
What gets crazier is that this is divided into dozens of different positions that represent different bit encodings. Then they go more crazy and run… I think it’s 10 by 2mhz wide carriers, all doing this same thing (for a 20mhz wide channel width) to encode more data into the bandwidth.
Then they get more crazy and implement AM on top of it, so you get high power OFDM and low power OFDM divisions that can do upwards of double the symbols on the same carrier.
The wizardry to make all this work is insane, and the fact that we’ve mastered it to the point where we can sell wifi cards for something like $20 USD just kind of blows my mind. This is crazy to me!
uis@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Airtags is just bluetooth WiGLE for one vendor
Cockmaster6000@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
MLO is gonna change everything
quantumbadger@lemmy.world 1 year ago
If it’s permanent, just run a cable to it
norgur@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
I tend to encounter a cable’s greates enemy: Walls in a rented appartment you can’t just drill through
Resolved3874@lemdro.id 1 year ago
I drilled holes in the ceiling of my rented house to run cable through the attic and down into separate rooms. Never heard anything. Don’t need a big hole so it’s easy to patch when they come through for nail holes and such which are expected.
Da_Boom@iusearchlinux.fyi 1 year ago
Sometimes you can have great success using the wires in your walls, provided it’s in good nick and isn’t isolated. Try a powerline adaptor.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Protips for diy renters: you can buy conduit baseboards. They’re baseboards that have a void behind them for cabling. If you’re good with tools, you can remove the existing baseboards and put those on. When you leave, either replace the original baseboards or just pull the wires out and leave them there…
What I did was use cup hooks to put wire along the top of walls. A small step stool helped me get up to the ceiling line, put a nail partway in to get a “pilot” hole, then screwed in the cup hook… did one hook every 18-24 inches about 2 inches from the ceiling. With larger cup hooks, I easily fit 4 ethernet lines in. I also got some wall mount wire conduit to go down the wall to my router. For doors and such, vertical wall mounted conduit to the hinge, under the door at the hinge, then back up the wall on the other side to the ceiling to continue (or along baseboards to the device). I only had trouble with the vertical conduit (I only had one) when I left since it was attached with mounting tape.
My way was pretty clean, never had to look out for cables on the floor, I didn’t really notice them at all, and all the important stuff was wired.
If you’re just going between neighboring rooms (eg. Your router is in one bedroom and you want to get to the bedroom next to it), look for telephone/cable TV hookups. If there appears to be one on both sides of the wall in the same spot, open it up, there’s a good chance the wiring box for those lines goes straight through the wall. If you want a more professional look to it, buy keystones and use a short bit of wire to link two together, and just put them on either side of the wall using Keystone faceplates… so you can just pass the cable through the wall…
There’s also MoCA if you have coax in every room. Look it up, it’s great.
There’s a ton more I could say on this, I’m a big believer and advocate for ethernet over WiFi, because after spending a long time working on WiFi professionally, I’ve realized that all wifi sucks. My mantra is “wire when you can, wireless when you have to”. If it’s feasible to run a wire, do it. For mobile and non-stationary devices, wireless since those move around and it’s impractical or impossible to put ethernet everywhere it could be.
stardreamer@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 year ago
True story:
*Grabs Cat2 cable out of lab storage and hooks everything up to it*
“Why is everything so slow?”
DarthBueller@lemmy.world 1 year ago
4 Mbit/s baby! Now we’re working with power! Hachacha!
Transcriptionist@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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 c/lemmy_scribes!]
Rambi@lemm.ee 1 year ago
An important note is it has an epic gaming aesthetic which makes it faster
BilboBargains@lemmy.world 1 year ago
My favourite thing is to hear people talk about having ‘great WiFi’ as if that is an internet connection.
Soggytoast@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I used to work for spectrum. I’d say around 60% of people legit do not know the difference between wifi and Internet. No wifi means no Internet, to them. Makes some trouble shooting harder
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
I hate that people refer to ethernet, unironically as a “wifi cable”.
It hurts my soul.
FordPrefect@startrek.website 1 year ago
Them: “The WiFi is down.”
Me: ‘… No, I still see the TV & the laptop & Pi, on the network.’
Them: “I can’t connect to Flipboard.”
Me: ‘Ohhh, the internet is down. It’s probably at the cable modem. Wait a moment for it to failover to wireless, then try again.’
Them: “Yep, now the WiFi is back.”wholeofthemoon@lemmy.world 1 year ago
‘Ohhh, the internet is down.’
One could argue that’s not right either 😉
MooseBoys@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Most consumer devices these days, if they detect the internet is down over a wifi connection (e.g. by inability to reach
1.1.1.1), will automatically disconnect from that wifi network, or at least show the same UI as if it had.
rigamarole@lemmy.world 1 year ago
And you want to explain the difference, then decide it’s not worth the effort.
Piers@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I really don’t understand why it’s such a common confusion. None of these people struggle with the difference between their gas supply and their oven.
teuniac_@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Obligatory warning AVOID CCA CABLES! They can be a hazard!
Go for copper. More on this issue:
tautalas@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Ok, that was an interesting read. Learning is fun y’all
FordPrefect@startrek.website 1 year ago
I’m just waiting to hear about someone trying to charge their escooter via POE.
uis@lemmy.world 1 year ago
For PoE? Yeah. For data only? No. Short reply: if cable passes test for its category, it passes, otherwise it does not.
CancerMancer@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
The difference in cost for 1000ft spools is <$50 CAD, and you get a product you know always works, is less brittle, can do PoE without becoming a fireball, can be used in commercial installation legally, and is actually in spec. I mean a lot of people who are actually running cables already have separate spools for solid and stranded, plenum and riser, maybe even shielded/burial… no need to add CCA to the mix with all of its downsides.
barsoap@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I won’t defend CCA wire but aluminium is an excellent conductor… by weight, not by volume. It’s not that you can’t make good aluminium wire it’s that CCA wire are generally shoddy. Brittleness is an issue but with time copper work-hardens so you can’t mess with it infinitely, either. It’s especially useful for overhead lines as it’s so light.
Somewhat not entirely unrelatedly: Steel bike frames are generally better than aluminium. They’re it practical terms about as erm sturdy at equal weight, but steel bends quite a bit before it breaks so a good steel frame will be lighter than an aluminium frame and can get by without shock absorbers when the geometry is good, that’s why you see curved forks (not if it’s a downhill bike, of course, and “generally” means “if you’re not looking for a carbon-fibre race bike”, there’s reasons to want stiffness in bikes just not for most people).
Next up: Oxygen-free copper and audiophiles. Practically no increase in performance (and definitely none compared to simply using more copper), meanwhile, so cheap that when you’re at a decent store (say, Thomann) and sort by price the cheapest stuff will have OFC.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
I don’t like to use aluminum for anything, mainly that it fatigues more easily and will thin/break of strained. My home insurance provider also hates aluminum, I couldn’t get insurance if I have any aluminum wire for my electrical work. Anytime I see it, I just want to pull it out.
CCA feels like the worst of both worlds.
Copper is king for me.
There’s a plethora of problems that can be listed for both aluminum and copper and CCA. Aluminum/CCA is cheaper, but the trade-offs are not worth the savings IMO.
GCostanzaStepOnMe@feddit.de 1 year ago
Well until you have to guide that snaky boy through the whole apartment and through door frames.
Sneptaur@pawb.social 1 year ago
If you connect both ends of that snakey boi into the router then you’ll find out who wins real quick
NOPper@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That shouldn’t be a problem for a thing built in the last decade for sure.
adespoton@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
My router handles that just fine?
It’s a newer version of Spike, too.
doctorcrimson@lemmy.today 1 year ago
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.
andrew@lemmy.stuart.fun 1 year ago
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.
jaschen@lemm.ee 1 year ago
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.
Taleya@aussie.zone 1 year ago
Depends, am i routing data or cosplaying the lich king?
Polar@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
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.
LillyPip@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Why is this my top post? What joke am I missing? So confused.
stephenc@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Too old and achy to run snekbois all over the place any more (I used to), if wifi isn’t good enough, tough.
hrimfaxi_work@midwest.social 1 year ago
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.
SickPanda@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Mobile devices -> Wifi Devices which can’t be connected via Lan (various reasons) -> Wifi Else -> LAN
It’s that simple
Ignisnex@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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.
whome@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
art@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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.
ShittyRedditWasBetter@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Holy ducking hell you nerds.
A 5ms round trip isn’t causing noticeable latency in games.
You are just bad. Stop blaming your router. You sound as dumb as idiots plugging in controllers because they think they are a step away from being a pro gamer.
proflovski@lemmy.world 1 year ago
If it is cat6 ethernet wire wins
Default_Defect@midwest.social 1 year ago
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.
RocketBoots@programming.dev 1 year ago
I’m guessing snakey boy is copper clad aluminum tough.
NENathaniel@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
This is quality
eochaid@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Don’t forget the hundreds or thousands of dollars it’ll take to wire up your whole house with Ethernet.
soggy_kitty@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
A good mesh WiFi system will cost you under 100 and it’s more than adequate for any consumer level application. Elitist ethernet users can’t accept this
Tbird83ii@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
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…
mvirts@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Idk… I’ve got some pretty long snakey bois
tpihkal@lemmy.world 1 year ago
SAME…ladies?
A7thStone@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Are you hitting the max yet? 100m
Ya_Boy_Skinny_Penis@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yo
Rootiest@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Reliability 100% the snakeboi
But for speed, WiFi can actually out-perform those particular snakebois in many scenarios.
pedz@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
In perfect conditions for Wi-Fi. I live in a high rise and the 2.4 Ghz band is hardly usable. My previous phone didn’t have dual band Wi-Fi and it was much faster on 4G than WiFi.
Plus, modern routers and APs often rely on band aggregation and so even with devices that have dual band, crowded airwaves will have a negative effect on speed.
Wi-Fi is very fast when I’m in my cabin in the countryside. But when I get home with the same devices, it’s barely usable.
You could argue that I need a better router with the newest protocol and gizmos but so far, even with new bands and protocols, Wi-Fi is still a competition of which router and devices will shout louder than their neighbors.
v81@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Nope. While WiFi has fancy claims you’re not going to get any more than around 1200mbps at 20 metres on the best day with the best gear.
While with cat6 you’ll probably do 2.5gbps to 100m no problem, and even 10gbps. Even cat5e will do those speeds at certain distances.
A7thStone@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Snaky boi is consistent
PixxlMan@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I have 0 faith that a router which doesn’t have high speed ethernet will ever be able to deliver such fast WiFi. If they’ve cheaped out on the ethernet I doubt they’ve splurged on WiFi most devices can’t use. And if you’re talking about fast ethernet, then WiFi is chanceless.
uis@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Unless your toilet room just so happens to have a RJ45 socket in the wall. I know one that has two of them.
rostby@lemmy.fmhy.net 1 year ago
There are some pretty long snakebois in prison, there usually in the shower areas
jaybone@lemmy.world 1 year ago
But router needs cable.
tryptaminev@feddit.de 1 year ago
What communitys do you browse that dont load satisfactorily with a normal wifi router?
themusicman@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Normal router wasn’t one of the options