I live in a one-room cottage that I built myself. I never intended to work out of here, but I’ve adapted slowly but surely. One thing I haven’t done is run an Ethernet cable from my router to my desk. It’s only about 12 feet (it’s a one room cottage after all) and I have an Ethernet adapter, but the cable routing will be a hassle and my WiFi has been fast enough.
I’m curious though if the rest of you, working from home, have made the same compromise. Who’s run cable and who’s settling for wireless.
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Mostly wired, but my case is unusual. I moved to my current house in 2005 and had the opportunity to have a lot of remodeling done before we moved in. So I had CAT6 cable run throughout the house all terminating in a network closet.
However, I have since purchased a hammock for the back yard, and discovered that I don't get a usable wife signal to it, and so I have been upgrading my wifi setup as well.
If there is anything at all to learn from my experience it is that people have different circumstances and needs. I'm not going to advocate for one or the other for you. If you current wifi set up works, stick with it (as long as you are using WPA2 or above.)
I use Ethernet all the time, except for my phone and ereader when I want to connect them to home internet. But I always work from home and we had cables run from the router in the hall to home office shortly after moving in.
Gig cable run through most of the house where we'd have permanent connections. Wifi everywhere else is sufficient. I'll eventually have CAT 6/7 everywhere though. Hardwired will always be better.
Pre-COVID-19: in a small flat with everything wired with gigabit internet. 60 down 20 up though they're just installing the gigabit infrastructure there now.
During COVID-19: new modem/router combo from ISP which helps a bit though had to ditch my Archer C7 v2 (DD-WRT) router. Running ethernet (hopefully gigabit) to my Raspberry Pi 4, Hue Hub and BT Whole Home mesh WiFi. The rest of my devices are on WiFi. The mesh helps strengthen the WiFi connection a lot further but do get the occasional blip. Could be to do with my Dell XPS 15’s Killer wireless card though.
Definitely wired as long as I can hide it in the walls or otherwise completely out of sight. One reason is latency, and I have plenty of chatty WiFi devices (cameras, thermostat, outlets, mobile devices, etc.). Getting some things setup for working IT from home was definitely interesting and a great excuse to finish up that type of thing. And buy a few new pieces of hardware :)
The first thing I did after (rather during) moving to our current home, was drilling some holes through the walls.
We relied on WiFi a lot in our last flat, but streaming was not possible, when we were using the Microwave.
So this time it is cable to all the essentials:
There is no workaround to fix the microwave issue? another band?
Well, ist was the second one, that made it impossible to watch a stream on TV.
I assume it wasn‘t as shielded as the other one before.
But since one never knows... cable it is.
Wi-Fi, since the router is far away from my desk and the speed is still the max I can get with my provider (300mbps), so no logical reason to use ethernet as far as I can tell (or notice).
I am using Ethernet.
I just moved and found that my apartment is wired, but, sadly, the Ethernet port is on the opposite direction of where I'm going to install my desktop. So, I'll need to wire up the room and, during these times, not a project I would do. So, I'll remain using Wi-Fi. What I did is get a better Router (Asus AC1900) and will be extending the range of my coverage.
I run all WiFi but it is AC speed so pretty solid. I also live in a house where there are no other wireless networks in range so interference is not an issue!
Thanks to Nocnica for starting this thread because there is a lot of great information here.
I have Verizon Fios. I upgraded from the 150 Mbps plan to the 1Gbps plan.
With a 2 year contract, it wound up being $3 cheaper than I was paying before. The router gets roughly ~980 up and down.
I am using Wifi all over the house and am kicking myself for not running Ethernet cable when I first moved in. The main router is upstairs in my son's room with an extender downstairs.
The Wifi connected devices are getting 250 - 300 Mbps, but it seems inconsistent and we sometimes lose signal strength. It seems to work fairly well, but my wife is complaining that she is lagging when playing Destiny.
With three kids home doing schooling and all the devices we have connected I am thinking about upgrading the router to a new Wifi 6 mesh system, but perhaps I just need to adjust the channels.
Ethernet via Powerline so I dont need cables around the house.
I cant get enough WIFI speed in the room I work.
I got the cable out. WiFi is not very good in our extra room because of a fire proof wall..
The one-room cottage that you built sounds great!
I'm fortunate enough to have a Gigabit connection and my MacBook Pro is always connected using Wi-Fi. It doesn't give me quite the same speeds as when using Ethernet but it's more than enough for work, calls, etc.
My gaming PC, however, is connected via Ethernet. Gotta keep things as stable as possible there. ;)
I set up a wall dock with a pair of Ethernet connections just for getting the computer wired. It's always faster, more stable and of course, it gives you more bandwidth. It is not necessary on all tasks but it helps on some.
When i need to use my laptop from the living room i use 5GHz WiFi (channel and band tuned for getting as few interference as possible) where the SmartTV is connected too. All smartphones are connected at 2,4GHz WiFi (also channel and band tuned) to separate bandwidths.
Using ISPs router as modem only and a LinkSys WRT1900ACS as main router.